Lately, I’ve been feeling the absence of a creative project. I think it’s a combination of going to see a couple great shows – The Book of Mormon and The Motherfucker with the Hat (Steppenwolf) and all of these award shows on TV. I like seeing talented people do good work, but it always sort of makes think, “for every 1 of these talented people doing good work, there are like 100 talented people not doing good work — not doing any work even.” I’m one of them.
I’m creating all the time. While I drive. While I shower. While I wash dishes. While I grocery shop. While I read my dull statistics textbook. While I sleep. But I don’t have an audience. I miss it.
Sometimes, I wonder if maybe there is some great project lying dormant in me that will one day just have to come out. And if there is, what is it? Is it a book or a play or some role I will create or play I will direct when I’m 65?
Usually during the day I’ll think — maybe I’ll do something really creative today after all my studying, and working, and child-rearing and cooking and cleaning are done. And I intend to, I really do, but then by the time all of that is done, the plain boring old truth is I am too tired to do anything that requires any sort of real effort on my part. I’m too tired to do almost anything at all. So I read. Or I watch a good movie. Or I listen to some music and maybe cry at the poetry in the lyrics.
I guess I turn into the audience and not the artist at the end of the day.
I miss it though. I miss a good audience.
In other news, I spent a large majority of my free time today (which was like maybe 20 minutes total) dancing to Kelly Clarkson in my kitchen. It was really good. I felt like a good dancer. I’m not a good dancer, but I felt like one and it was nice. I wonder if my neighbor saw me and laughed, because… hello, pregnant ladies dancing are just bizarro.
The Motherfucker with the Hat was good. I think. It was hard to tell because I had the worst seats in the universe. But they were free so I’m not complaining. It was very strange though, because from where I sat (almost in the wings/on the side of the stage), the staging was so flat. I mean, it was a ding dang Anna Shapiro piece. She staged August Osage County which was some of the most complex amazing staging I have ever been lucky enough to watch. But in this play, everybody just sort of stood midstage, faced each other and talked. There was almost no depth going on, and so I was almost always looking at the back of someone’s head. But even not seeing the faces, I liked the play. The writing was just spot on. The role of the cousin. Oh, he got to say the best lines ever. Leave the gun, take the empanadas.
I also saw The Book of Mormon as I mentioned and I’m still processing the magnificence of that one.
And I have to say that I also really enjoyed all the Golden Globe speeches I saw. My mother in law thought that Jodi Foster might have been high, but I actually really liked her speech. It made me moderately uncomfortable and I thought she was a bit wackadoodle. But that was besides the point. She was of the moment, you know. Like she was big enough for the moment. You’re getting the Cecil B DeMille award. Be memorable. I only caught the tail end of the program, but it was nice to see a lack of the usual “OMG you guys! I can’t believe I won. This is TOTALLY crazy. Ok. (Pulls out little piece of paper) I just have to thank a few people: LONG LIST OF NAMES THAT I DON’T CARE ABOUT.” Everyone who accepted was so smart and said wise things that made me think that they understood the poetry of life. They were articulate and grand and humble all at once, and this made me feel like they were actually artists and not just famous people. Because there is a difference sometimes. And I can celebrate artists doing really well and being self-congratulatory, but I guess I am too petty to celebrate merely famous people doing the same.
Though Anne Hathaway (who I love) made me super weirded out by how she was hugging that ghostly looking child during the Les Mis speech. I don’t know if it’s because they were both so thin and they looked like a couple of noodles hugging each other or because the young sprite did not seem to be hugging her back as enthusiastically, but I wanted to be like Anne, you are freaking America out. Compose yourself.
Anyway. I’m all over the place here and I could keep going for, like, EVER.
The end.
I shoulda stopped like 100 paragraphs ago
P.S. I’m reading Let the Great World Spin at the moment and it is good. Have you read it?
