Poetry & Blindfolds

As I enter Week Three of taking Chantix to quit smoking, I haven’t written much of anything.  I have told various people that I have been merely giving myself a bit of a break – after all, I’ve produced upwards to three shows a year for almost the whole of the decade.  In truth, I’ve just been in those murky depressed waters and my inspiration has been so dismal that I daren’t put it on paper.

This last week hasn’t been as bad as the week before – I haven’t found myself sitting at the train station after work, watching people go on with their lives and gradually feeling smaller and smaller to the point where I’m sure I will disappear, forgotten utterly.  So that’s good.  I do have a heaviness that is following me around, though.  I’m not sure if that has to do with stopping smoking or just getting my sense of smell back and discovering that Chicago stinks a great deal of the time.

I remain irritable.  Purposefully, I am avoiding Facebook.  Unfortunately, I have too many actor friends who use Facebook as their own free public relations firm, and I am inundated with how happy people are – CONSTANTLY – and how they have the best friends OF ALL TIME or have had the best weekend EVER.  Being on Facebook is like being in Stepford, though it must be said that even Stepford had trees and even the trees had shadows occasionally.

It got me to thinking that maybe I should whittle my Facebook time and friends down to something more manageable.  After all, I have reasoned, really successful people – the kind I would like to be – aren’t on Facebook.  They just haven’t the time.  I should be like that, I figure.

The irritation has levelled off and is sharing my mental stage with a sense of humor again.  Last week, I was unfunny.  Completely.   I would catch my reflection here and there and not instantly recognize myself.  This week is better, and I’ve taken to editing my play “Touching Base”, as well as looking at various databases to scope out some potential cast and crew, including director.  Everyone wants to be a director, but I seem to be losing that goal.  It’s such a shitty, shitty, shitty job.  So if I can write (and take a small role in the process) and have some other person direct…. cool.

I’ve also taken a good look at my piece entitled “Lilac”, in which a memory comes to terms with who he/she/it is while roaming the mind of a female character.  It’s the kind of play I would have avoided in earlier days.  Too Charlie Kaufman.  But, as it is coming together, and different memories interact with each other – as memories do in real life, merging and editing each other – the more appealing the project has become.  The standard arcs are in place (the memory character has a definite goal, and is transformed by the realization of what/who he/she/it is) so I’ve taken to exploring the shading of the piece, which for me is the most interesting bits of a play.  The plot points are all well and good, and well needed, but it is the casual observations or furtive glances that go unspoken — that’s the good stuff.