Proud to Be an American

Drones closed last weekend, and while I was relieved because I started to drown by the end of the process, it's typical to feel slightly sad when a show is over.

The cast after opening night.

Our curtain call music was "Proud to Be an American"--a song I've always despised. It takes me back to middle school when it played incessantly on the radio post-9/11. Even at that age I was skeptical of it's message. I have a vivid memory of hanging around a Poms competition and that song blasting through this giant gymnasium and all these people singing and clapping, and all I could wonder is "Why is being terrorized something to be proud of?"

I'm not anti-America. I'm really not. I love my country f'real, but the song is hokey and a bit unwarranted. Drones was about military ethics and, in my interpretation of the play, how screwed up they are. Our director chose that song kinda ironically, and I loved bowing to it.

So, while ten years ago a super emotional song did nothing for me even though it was linked to horrible tragedy, now, I will always feel nostalgic when I hear "Proud to Be an American" because it will transport me back to the black box in Arizona, waiting for my cue lines with Simba next to me making faces and scrolling through Instagram.

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.

And I won't forget the men who died, and gave that right to me.

E.L.A.I.C.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close began with a blue New York sky. I felt as though I were wearing a necklace, maybe a golden timepiece, and the screen had scooped it up and was tugging it slowly--comforting on the edge of a choke.

I felt moved up and out from the first moments because I experienced the whole book again and then the experiences with the experiences and the experience of today with the experiences.

A boy from Alabama played Oskar Schell in his Dramatic Interpretation piece in my speech national final round in 2006. I met him while I was looking for my skirt which had fallen out of my bag.

Two months later my friend Claw told me to visit her at work the day before I left for college. I drove to the pizza place and found her extremely high. She left her post, went to her car, and emerged with her copy--incredibly marked up. She said I'd need it and told me I looked like I was going to a tea party. I looked to my right today. Henne was next to me, high school.

I kept the book on my dresser throughout my entire first term of college and read it over winter break. I read pieces of it to Vince in my St. Louis bedroom after Thanksgiving, I kept it in the back room at the ice cream store, and I sat on a tub of strawberries reading it.

A year later I bought a second copy for Kay, and we both read it in our first December together. The weeks leading up to my visit to his home when he was still back in Illinois at swim camp and I was nannying my baby cousin in San Diego. Kay and I brought our copies to the dunes of Monterey and could not speak. We stayed silent for hours watching the waves and climbing the sand. Now, I haven't spoken to him in a year. I can't remember what kind of hair he had. This bothers me. How did he look? We read what he called "the red hand book" together and now I don't remember if he hair was long enough to be curly last we spoke. I know he smelled faintly like burnt muffins from working at the bakery.

I'm sitting in the theatre though. Oh, I love this story. And while the movie encapsulates about 8% of the novel's goodness, I cry several times.

Henne sits across from me at the sweets shop. He takes his stubs out of his pockets and rips them in halves. I ask why. He says I probably keep everything, which is slightly true--at least until I decide if its worth scrapbooking. He asks if this night is worth remembering. And maybe that's it--I think everything is worth remembering.

I will always remember seeing my favorite book as a film with my high school friend and Hill and Hill's boyfriend and his roommate because we were a microscopic community and everything pieced together for me to feel this way and be this way and live this way. And it doesn't make any sense but that's why it does.