Long (and only sort of lost) Weekend

It's been wild couple of days. And it's really reinforced my feelings that sometimes, at least, it's either writing or living. That there may not be really room for both. Wordsworth (I think) once described poetry as (and I'm seriously paraphrasing here) intense emotion recalled in absolute stillness. That's surprisingly true. It's not about writing out of the passion of the moment, but there's something about the quiet reflection, the recollection of passionate feelings. So I'm trying to just have passionate feelings.

The wacky Christmas show I was working on opened last night and it went...well. Surprisingly well, I think. The house was distressingly small, but it's that time of year and there certainly isn't a lot of immediate draw to the play (no stars or particularly noteworthy names and it is a Christmas show). But they seemed to enjoy it and the show's tightened up considerably since the first preview. It'll be interesting to see what the reviewers (if any come) say about it. And if we manage to find an audience.

I've been a little disappointed in my ability to bring audiences in for it. I usually can bring them out, but I've found it to be kind of hard of late. I'm not sure why. Part of it is that I'm not attached to a theatre, or a job, so the number of people who feel obligated to attend things, since they're going to have to face me is pretty small. And my family is really, really egregiously terrible about seeing such things. I mean, super bad. Since it does have a bit of a run, we'll see if anyone of them make it before it closes. I'm not holding my breath.

So I'm still on break from doing any writing, and even, it seems from doing writing related things. And that's good. Well, that's not exactly true. I have auditions tonight for the next thing, so we'll see how that goes. So far this has been an interesting process. I'll get into it all in another post, I think. We'll see.

So the living...is okay. Confusing. I'm going to talk in generalities here for a second, but did you ever have something hit you completely out of a blind spot, totally sideways and knock you off course? Something that, sure, you wanted, but certainly wasn't expecting. And now you're hip deep in it and scared and confused? Yeah, that's living. And that's where I am. But I'm pretty psyched to be there. What happens next is anybody's guess.