'Cause It's a Very Big, Very Fraught, Simple But It's Not, It's a Very Big Undertaking

I've been thinking a lot about why we like the things we like and if the things we don't like are deserving of our attention. What it means if a piece of art doesn't speak to us and how we can make things that speak loudly to groups of people, or individuals, and if it matters if the things we make speak to anyone else. And how we can make art, specifically theatre, that does this, this speaking of things that matter or might not, even in the face of 'Two and a Half Men'.

Maybe we should replace all of those collective pronouns with 'me', 'my' and 'I'. Although I like to think of myself as being as important as several people.

Do we have to do things hoping they'll reach people? Is how many people important? Do certain opinions (critics. Or the people I want to impress, for either professional or dating reasons) matter more? Yes. No. I don't know.

These pictures are all backlogged from a trip to New York in January, when I saw this exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum.

I have no ability to talk about why I liked this piece so much, but I really did. I'm not prepared to talk about my experience with it, but I'm pretty sure I had one.

I used to think that I knew very clearly what I wanted to achieve with theatre, and now I'm not so sure.

Part of this is because I'm at the point in a rehearsal process where I don't know anything anymore, and I don't know how I'm doing. So everything is thrown into a state of confusion, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how I should go to pastry school. Because my chances of being on TV seem a lot better if I could develop some sort of reality television show about me starting a cake business, than if I could develop a pilot about me starting a cake business, which likely would never make it to air, or even to paper, let's be honest, I fall asleep a lot.

I have to trust things. Including myself, maybe? Ugh. I don't want to trust her, that girl sucks.

But I think a trust in the work and in what you're doing and what the people around you are doing maybe makes it less necessary to reach others in a certain way. Allows you to present the work and say, 'here it is, what did you think?' and not fall to pieces when what they think is ZERO STARS. Or whatever it is that I'm afraid of. Empty seats. No one wanting to work with me again. I don't even know what there is to be afraid of. I'm not sure if any of those things is really the end of the world, but whatever I'm fearing sure feels like the end of the world. The Beastie.

The other side of this is, of course, that I desperately do want to reach people, I want communal experiences, shared experiences, that's part of what theatre is. So I have to go out hoping that someone sees something akin to what I see....right? I don't know. Maybe I'm the worst kind of artist and the stuff that I do is worse than 'Two and a Half Men'.

I'm rehearsing something and not writing, wishing I could write more, wishing that I could produce more, too. That I had the balls or the friends or the money, or whatever it is I lack that keeps me from being someone who does things, instead of someone who writes about the things that other people do on the Internet. I do some things, but there are so many more that I want to do.

Working with people who have so much more experience than me and were all a part of the formation of the theatre community that I am now trying to step into makes me feel very green and very old at the same time. They've all done so much, and I spend so much time on the internet. They talk about things and they're like the dreams I used to have of what a life in theatre was like, everything is hard but exciting, and everyone is crazy and everyone knows everyone. They all did so many projects, its like they never stopped. I feel like I never have any projects, nothing ever happens, I have ideas and they are all killed by my own complacency.

Hm. This all became very rambly and I'm not sure how. These are all the things that are buzzing in my head right now, I suppose.

Why am I doing what I'm doing? What is it that I'm doing? And am I doing it the way I should be? Is that the way I want to be doing whatever it is?

A NICE NIGHT FOR SELF-ABSORPTION, DON'T YOU THINK???