If You're Mad, Get Mad

It's 8 PM. Do you know where your Alice is? In bed. That's right, y'all. NOT IN THE THEATRE. My thesis play has closed. Big hurdle. Jumped.

I do not miss it. Not to say it wasn't a wonderful experience. It was. But every time the usher asked for my ticket and I responded, "Oh, I'm the playwright," I didn't feel the burst of Katy Perry triumph I Am Artist Hear Me Roar (I've got the eye of the tiiiiger!), I felt an impending doom like "I have to answer for this." I recognize how tired the tortured writer thing is, and I really don't put myself in that category, and yet here we are.

There is a lot I could say about this production and process, but the thing I want to say at the moment is that I believe in the power of reaction. The end of my play was controversial. I wrote an ending that didn't quite sit within the context of typical dramatic analysis and one that definitely didn't sit right with a majority of audience members. Some (many?) still enjoyed the thing (the play, yes, I'm calling my thesis "the thing"), but there's a squidgey discomfort about it. At the end of the play, people were confused, thirsting for different answers, and sometimes angry. And, I like that. Not because I believe in art as an inherent "stir people up and make em bonkers." But because I believe art should not only make us evaluate situations, but it should make us evaluate ourselves. And when we feel strong emotions (not just through the narrative, vicariously, but AT it--ie "I do not agree") we either reaffirm what we love, what we stand for...or we become more open-minded.

Act II, Scene ii.

I'm not saying the ending was perfect. I've got more revising to do. But there's importance in disliking things. I just wish I didn't have to sit in front of a crowd as the stamp for the disliked thing.

Earlier this week I watched the Miley episode of SNL over a bagel. Talk about someone who is disliked. But good for her for being such a THING. Such a disliked thing. Such a way for women to teach young women what not to be. But for who the media has been hounding as a complete trashball slut for the past month, there's still an innocence to this girl. She wore white, sat on a stool, performed an acoustic cover of "We Can't Stop." She really is a remarkable singer. Something in me fluttered when the camera closed in, she crooned, "It's my mouth I can say what I want to." I don't know. She stands for a lot of things I hate, but, also, I am hating AT those things, and that human is not a thing.

Plus, I love "Wrecking Ball."

Gettin' It Out

Your touch is a heartbreaker.

I just have to write something somewhere about Andrew McMahon or I'll explode. I can't write it to myself because everything gets just too creepy...jotting notes in my diary about art and Andrew blah blah blah. No, let me just barf some ideas out right here and right now before I clunk into a heavy heavy sleep that is WELL deserved. Holy Toledo, Weezer was a work-out. I was sweating buckets. BUCKETS. Irrelevant.

Important Ideas:

-I like to have a discourse with things and people and ideas. Not everyone does, but it's also not unique. It kills me to not have a discourse about Andrew's music with him maybe because I like it so much (God knows why--objectively, honestly, I know it's trashy) so much of it doesn't make any sense and I. Want. Answers. But, he's not famous enough that I can find answers...making me feel like I need to investigate them personally. Or, I just want my appreciation to be noticed. Either way, discourse denied.
-Seeing him as an opener tonight was so sad! Hardly anyone cared, and he couldn't be interesting or charming at all. He played a snappy set of seven songs--the most well-known of his bunch, and high-tailed it off for the much less sharp but much more loved guys of Weezer to take over.
-How much as an artist are you indebted to fans? What is the proper way to show respect (if any)? How would I like to in my life in any forms of art?

Mother of pearl, I have got to go to bed.

My love is a life-taker.