lost-making

things to make a person feel lost:
1) losing a personal journal/diary/daybook. (red colored. leathery cover and bound-ish. three-quarters full.)
2) losing a loved one (or hearing of a friend who did and feeling overwhelming sadness and complete fear at prospect of losing a loved one myself).
3) having your pregnant sister have to go into the hospital with an appendicitis. scary x2. (see number 3)
4) having four days pass and still not being able to find your lost journal/diary/daybook.
5) losing control of something or someone that used to feel right and good and THERE.
6) all or any combination of these things.

on the upside, this happened:


(remember good things)

jump in

it is not often that one gets to feel like Clarissa Dalloway and a naked-but-for-body-paint "Earthling" in one weekend.
I had that rare opportunity.
sometimes when it rains it pours.
hosting a party is a very special experience. We did it! Chefs as friends doesn't hurt but getting the party dancing is a skill not to be undervalued either...
everything went grand and our house is now officially 'warm-to-very hot."
then saturday was an event called Eco-Nouveau. fashion/film/art/dance/DUBLAB afterparty. Backstage is so fun! Madness! Models everywhere and so many assistants and flashes popping and the I have never heard the questions "are you done?" and "which shoes are you wearing?" so often in one day. It was fun playing in that world for a day. Getting painted and hair done and performing on a giant catwalk in a grand cathedral downtown is sort of a grown-up Eloise experience I think and I embraced it as such. I feel a little bit closer to Demi Moore now (that Vanity Fair cover). And to spencer tunick and the lovely ladies I performed with. there is nothing like the feeling of skinny dipping through a crowd.

for what its worth

please look at someone/something/yourself today with a little more love
a little more patience
a little more laughter ... humility ... pride
a little more space

look for the subtleties
they are there

I promise

Miss Musical

Apparently I am a huge musical aficionado. Actually, I'm not. But I have seen two in the past four days. And I saw a couple this summer, and I saw one this spring/summer about 7 times. Why, you ask? Well, for many reasons. For love. To support. For fun... For reasons to do with the musical that my mom and I are working on. For the reason of being on a quest to satisfy multiple unusual obsessions with the recordings of musicals I had not yet seen. That sort of thing.
On Saturday I went to Wicked which I feel like I am the last person I know to see-- even all the 11 year-olds I know saw it LAST year... and tonight I saw A Catered Affair, a brand spanking new musical by Harvey Feurstein. It is going to Broaway next Spring but if you can get to San Diego in the near future-- go see it!!!!!!! it was absolutely amazing. There was a talk back after, which was actually very illuminating and lovely because no one was too full of themselves, even though in my book these people have a right to be, and the dramaturg stayed out of the way and didn't get too esoteric or abstract... anyway, some people felt that it was more of a play with music but it truly was a musical, just a COMPLETELY UNIQUE one. and not in the way the Spring Awakening is unique-- because it uses rock and minimalism and has so much style... but because I literally felt inside of it, on a journey with the characters the entire time-- beginning to end. That never happens in musicals. Rarely does it even happen in plays for me. Truth be told, and I hope this doesn't scare anyone away, ... I also felt like my eyes were nearly filled with water/three stoplights short of full-on tears for most of the show. The subject matter is ordinary and yet momentuous. It is 1945 or so and a son is dead and a daughter is getting married, and money is tight and tempers are fierce. It had the simplicity of It's A Wonderful Life-- and of course, in that simplicity there is a universality. Wow. CHARGED.
Now as a theatermaker myself, the differences between WICKED and A CATERED AFFAIR were huge, Wicked was massive and epic and spectacular, a spectacle with substance to back it up... and A Catered Affair started quiet and simple and surreptitiously snuck inside you and rocked you to the bone; heart and mind's string playing vibrato...

musicals really are a wide open affair.
go figure

antidotes for heavy boots

So this kid in an ESL class I was teaching in the other day brought up this letter and asked me very politely to read it over and make sure it made sense, etc. He looked about 15, definitely shorter than I am, but very cute with a great smile... and so, the first line caught me a little off-guard.
It went like this:

I am so happy being married to you.
I desire you and I love you.
You are the most beauty.
You are so precious and funny laughing.
Being married to you means getting to spend the rest of our lives annoying each other.


...
!
It went on and I asked him about the sincerity of his message. Was he really married? Did he mean this stuff? Or, was it a joke? I thought that last line was extremely brilliant and funny and probably true-- but I was trying to get a sense of his intention. I asked him if he wanted to say something 'good' or something 'bad' or something 'funny.' Very sternly he said, "no no Miss, not funny. Not bad. Only loving." I figured out he meant to say "enjoying" ... instead of "annoying" ... I think it really works either way though. For now anyway, that is one lucky lady.

music - part II

Last night I got to go to the gala opening of the LA Philharmonic's season at the Disney Concert Hall in LA. My friend's friend is the principal oboiest, and I am SO GLAD we ran past the free wine and coffee and crumpets in time to catch her solos in the 'love scene' from Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet." She was incredible. Gehry's design and the acoustics were incredible. Esa-Pekka, the handsome, young, conductor was incredible. Renee Fleming was incredible. And Jack Nicholson and Diane keaton, seated to my right, were INCREDIBLE.
A hundred or so musicians working together, playing so brilliantly, but with such subtlety and nuance, to transport the entire hall into edge-of-your-seat mesmerized stillness... oh my gosh-- I loved it. Renee Fleming even led the audience in a sing-along version of "I Could Have Danced All Night." And yes, the entire group sitting around me beamed at each other as we sang; the older tuxedoed gents leading some of us younger, casually-attired and musically-ignorant kids...
At the end Jack leaned forward towards Diane's ear, and, in a classic Jack stage-whisper said, "Thank you so very much." He adjusted his shades and was off.
I couldn't have said it better myself.

two bruised knees but BRIGHT eyes

First, thank you to the people who have left comments. Either in this forum or via email or post. I love letters and the sort of exchange that comes with feedback/response makes me feel less like I am being self-indulgent and more like I am simply writing letters to friends I may not yet know. So, thank you!

I do indeed have two bruised knees. It was accidental but I leaped headlong and physically into the 'falll forward' mentality last night... either that, or the street was suddenly transformed into the most slippery ice skating rink and I was 5 years old again... and I can say that I am happy to have gone forward, rather than backwards, I've suffered tailbone injuries aplenty and the donut pillow is not an old friend I would like to spend time with again(!) ... and, you'd never even have known I have the shiners I have from the way I jumped right up again. I was not really embarassed, or unhappy with the falls, they just were, and I got up, and that was that. And I recommend that stance in most 'fall down' scenarios be they physical or emotional...

I saw two amazing shows this weekend. Last night was Bright Eyes with the LA Philharmonic and M. Ward and Yo La Tengo at the Hollywood Bowl. We had a 'terrace box' and a picnic and wine and stars and stars in our eyes and our ears and even stirring in our hearts. To me, Conor Oberst is the most gifted lyricist/musician/singer/handsome chap. I love his voice and I usually feel like I understand exactly what he is saying in the songs. Like I would sing in that tone and those words if my vocalizations came out the way they feel in my head & body...

Also, I went to see Must Don't Whip 'Um at Redcat. It was an extremely awe-inspiring-- brilliant design -- lighting, video, live mixing off all the elements by the performers themselves (who are really more of technical artists-- and thus fabulously unusual to watch perform), INCREDIBLE music by Cynthia Hopkins' band GLORIA DELUXE... it was something else. I used to be very close with the people who made it, in a common creative community in NY, and intertwined socially and whatnot, and it had been about three years since I really saw many of them. It is a real gift to have that time away sometimes-- I saw how amazing the people are like it was my first time.

I got to go to the ocean again, dip in the water, bike up the coast a ways, read more of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (why are those two souls-- Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer getting divorced?? I feel like I know them from their books and I love them both and I think they are so incredibly lucky to have found each other and I just don't understand)
ANYWAY

here I am
seeking seeking seeking
and finding