I Just Want It To Be Great

I've never felt as sick walking into a theatre for rehearsal as I did today. I've been revising my solo show all week--posting up in the donut shop, running out to the grocery store for bear claws to consume at the kitchen table, tittering away in the morning before Puhg woke up on his birthday, pushing all my notes around the table in the gym foyer, sunk into the couch. It is not fun. I am not enjoying this. My director tells me if I just do what I did last time/last year, it will be good. But I want it to be great. I want to nit-pick and fill in gaps and waste no one's time or eight dollars. I suffocate inside the context of this script. I want every word to weave and stick like a perfect spider web. Instead, I have sloppy glue traps in the middle of monologues and concepts I don't know how to implement and a pressing fear that everything is boring.

As a "break" I went to VG alone last night. It's closing weekend of a play that had an intriguing email blast, and I had a show tonight, two tomorrow. I stopped at Walgreens for a bag of Riesens. I sat in the theatre alone chewing the caramels one seat away from an old lesbian couple and next to three college kids. The lights seemed to go down early. Was there pre-show music? Was it just very quiet? I suddenly heard so much. "I'm so happy I'm seeing this with you," someone whispered next to me. Another voice: "Did you get here okay?" Settling bags, phones turning off, leg pats, and settled butts. For the first time in a long time, a bitty proscenium felt like home.

It's hard for me to enjoy theatre anymore. Certainly not making it. And often not even seeing it. I'm too involved in the ingredients and gaging what I can learn. I remember seeing and doing my first improv shows. I wished they were endless. Shark said in the green room last month that he never goes to shows anymore. "I have ruined improv for myself," he said, "I'm glad I ruined it. I was destined to, but I ruined it." Too real.

I put myself through this torture. I'm the one who wrote the thing. I'm the one who applied for the space. I'm the one who cares so much. I could phone it in. I could eat the deposit. I could move. I've considered all of it. I'm sitting in my favorite diner with buffalo tofu in my tum. People have told me this show changed them, inspired them, was a joy. Today, I can't comprehend it. I do not feel like "YEAH, I CAN DO IT" even though I desperately wish I did.

Love You As Much As I Do

The first day of fall has not disappointed. Bisque and I drove into Phoenix right as the sun set. Gold over the highway. The windows are open. We didn't deserve this--it's been hot all week. But a respite, a hard-shift, for my favorite season.

This afternoon I was plugging away at revisions, feeling like a semi-failure, and I did something really annoying to my boyfrand. (The kind of thing I couldn't have gotten away with four months ago, but, here we are at eight months. I wear gym shorts on half our dates.) I set aside my computer, I tapped him, I asked, "What's your favorite thing about me?" Yes, I'm gross, but, come on, we all want to do it sometimes. And he gave an answer that did not have to do with the current play project/torture chamber I am in.

The people who truly love us in this world want to support what we do the most, but they care the least about how it actually turns out. Our primary work--ourselves--is what they're in it for. Talent, pay-off, success--these are nice things. But they are nice things that probably don't make you a better friend or girlfriend or sister or teacher or daughter or stranger or roommate.

You say I wanted you to be proud of me.
I always wanted that myself.
He says, "When you gonna make up your mind?
When you gonna love you as much as I do?"