sundries

Good morning world. No, really, GOOD MORNING, WORLD. It is a very good morning, indeed.
 

First Inception: the Musical rehearsal last night. I was shakier vocally than I expected to be, but I also handled my shit better than I expected, and it will be fine, because I'm a hard worker, and when it comes, it comes. Also, I have no voice after eating brie, not sleeping and being on the rag (does anyone else have this, where you totally lose your range when you're menstruating?)

Also, Megan is the fuck HILARIOUS as Eames, although I confess to possibly finding all of that funnier since she's my ex-roommate AND because there's a whole long sequence in which she hits on the The Mark by doing all this "Well, helloooooo, Mr. Director" stuff, that's funny even if you aren't Megan and I, but is stupidly funny if you are.

And, most importantly, perhaps, things are afoot.
 

No, no, things are really afoot. Dogboy & Justine is totally happening. And last night, I, in thinking about something that got said in the Luhrmann masterclass and how I was actually applying that to something else, somewhere else, had an inspiration for what this project is and how it should perhaps be tonally. The other party involved totally gets my ideas, is running around with her own awesome ideas and can compose the fuck out of anything. Which is to say, er, hey, now we're naming our production company.
 

And, there was a Friends of the Text meeting that was AWESOME. In part because we are all awesome, in part because thank god Kali can keep people focused. In part because we are closing in one some great ideas for 2011. In part because, OH SHIT, everything I'm doing totally related to everything else I'm doing, and if this goes the direction I think it is, I know exactly the abstract I'm writing up for this thing and it's SO GOOD. And so about my sweet spot of fixation. And I am SO EXCITED.
 

On the other hand, I've slept way, way too much today. So the schedule of things I must do today, is perhaps different than I thought it was going to be last night. But that's okay, I needed the sleep, and the important thing is no fucking off. I've things to do! Both in terms of art and grocery shopping and Cleaning All the Things and such-like.
 

Tomorrow, Patty and I have a date!
 

Right now, it's not raining. IT'S NOT RAINING. I've decided, among other things, to go out and take a walk. Soho is calling to me. I don't know why. But I listen when called.
 

Got a birthday card from my parent, which in all its birthday card sentiment was really and truly sweet and really and truly moved me. In short, the translation could be "You're a queer artist and we actually think that's kinda awesome." Seriously, the card is that good.
 

Weirdly, I still have no plan for my birthday and still feel okay about that. Is it crazy that I think something's going to come, or that my own work ethic is plenty to keep me entertained?
 

Am I being too intense lately? I feel so jazzed, but like this all must be really tiring to read.
 

The legal debate around the suicide of Tyler Clementi. Lots of people have been talking about "well, no matter how bad it is, you don't kill yourself if there isn't an underlying problem, and you can't blame cruelty for that." Cruelty is cruelty. Abuse is abuse. Any person can be vulnerable. Any act of casual maliciousness can be fatal. Tyler Clementi killed himself because Tyler Clementi killed himself. Tyler Clementi also killed himself because he was ridiculed, harassed and had his privacy invaded because of his sexual orientation. All these things can be true at once. And are.
 

There will be a vigil in Washington Square Park in NYC on Sunday October 3rd at 9pm related to the recent suicides of gay teens. Yes, this is not a new phenomenon. Yes, it is disgusting that it is only being acknowledged now by the mainstream media like it's this year's shark attack, but it is vitally important than we keep the story alive, in hopes that that can engender change which will help keep kids alive.
 

Michigan ADA who bullied, stalked and harassed campus leader, now on leave.

For October, Mud Brick is focusing on the archaeology of death.

thank you for your open arms

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones
- The Decemberists

I always misquote that song, when I'm wandering around singing it. For me, the second line is "and this is the place that we call home." It's a small detail, but an important one, because I went to Soho today.

Soho is where I did, but didn't, grow up. My parents took me to watch my mother buy gowns and purses in the lofts -- the homes -- of artists and designers in the 1970s and 80s, before they got famous. And so when I think of the Soho of my childhood, I think of warehouses and rain, of living rooms filled with screens to change behind and racks of clothes, great baroque upholstered chairs, people smoking, peacock feathers, an orange lying on a table all stabbed with cloves. I am no older than five, and I remember this one moment perfectly.

Soho changed, not fast, but studiously. It plodded along. A trendy shop or two opened up. Its art galleries started to matter. In the 80s, there was an outrageous makeup store right on W. Houston. I can't remember the name, but my mother always let me buy lip-gloss there. Because we were still going to Soho. My parents had friends who owned shops, and there was this little Italian place we liked. And still when I think of it, it nearly always rained.

In high school, I'd cut classes to wander between the warehouses, to imagine living in a loft, to pick up invites to club nights on the counters in shops, imagining them like trading cards. I always ate at Ben's Pizza: a slice of Sicilian, and a small fruit punch, always mixed wrong so it was like syrup.

In the tenth grade, I met a girl whose family lived down there, in the first building into Soho on one of the streets east of W. Broadway. Her bedroom was a little house in the middle of the apartment, that when you opened its window, let you stick out your head into the living room of her parents' world. She was so cool, and she thought I was at first because of a limited edition (and probably very valuable now) Keith Haring jacket I had. I wore it to school a lot, and the other kids mocked me for it, but she thought I knew of the world, and I knew nothing. After the big make-out party she had that was super awkward, especially when I didn't want to smoke with her and her friends, she never really had time for me anymore.

But Soho did. Even as it got rich. Even as it turned into Rodeo Drive. Even as men took me to dinner there thinking I didn't know it first, that this city wasn't more mine. Even as they stood me up at the Cub Room. Even as I once had to ask Michael there Are you ashamed of me? and do my best to believe him when he said No.

When Megan and I lived in the duplex, one of the most lovely and appalling times of my life -- when I decided I wanted to be, and could be, more than only a writer -- was when I wound up stage managing a production of Romeo & Juliet, that rehearsed in a dance studio in someone's loft home on the edge of Soho. Megan surely remembers the night I came home to her watching Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and I just went aaaaaaaargh! and ran upstairs. I'd been watching three different filmed versions of the damn play with the director each day for weeks, and the interpersonal tension on the show that I both was and wasn't involved in was intolerable (although occasionally interesting) and there just wasn't enough breakdance fighting in the world to make up for it. At that point, I just couldn't take it anymore.

But what was lovely was the ritual I surrounded that show with, that was private, and all for me. I would walk to the studio, and from Le Pain Quotidien buy a small dark hot chocolate and a slab of french bread smeared with butter (this was, of course, before I got sick). I would eat that sitting on the stoop of the studio's building, thinking one day I'd be a star, or a director, or a working actor, or, or, or.... something!

And after rehearsal each day, I'd walk up into Soho, looking in windows of lofts, at the secret gardens on roofs, at wealthy people sitting on their double-wide fire escapes and smoking, and put all the people in my head into homes there. I had some streets I favored more than others, and it felt like a warm secret every time.

Today I went downtown. Got off at Houston and Broadway, tried to endure that strip of shops -- maybe I wanted new jeans, maybe I wanted new boots, but couldn't really take it. So wandered west and found the streets of my childhoods' in Soho. Stopped in Mariebelle for chocolates and swooned to opera. Stared at the people lunching at Cipriani Downtown and wondered what was wrong with me that I wasn't one of them. Eventually, found myself strolling again and singing:

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
this is the place that I call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones
And it was so fucking true. There is this part of writing that is like exorcism. It's not just having stories I want to share with the world; it's having longings one gets sick of living with, and I always think maybe I won't always need to be telling the same story over and over again.

But that's so foolish. Because we're all doing that. All the time. Retelling and retelling is what we do when we're holding court in a bar or blogging, writing fanfiction or dreaming up Star Wars. Retelling is us placing ourselves into the world. Retelling is us remaking the world in response to our desires. It's not just that retelling is the unavoidable. It's that it's the good, that it's the hook, that it's the art.

Which is why I'm always like thank, fuck, especially if I've been long-absent, when I go downtown and Soho welcomes me back, unconcerned with all my attempts at eviction. My characters still live in those apartments with their exposed brick and tin ceilings, their spiral staircases and secret gardens, while my childhood still remembers brocade purses, my mother young, the rain and smoke.