Hey. I’m still here! And still complaining!
I had Covid. It was a real drag. I don’t recommend. If you’ve got it, I’m sorry and here’s to your good health soon!
Look I think I use social media too much and therefore it scratches the itch for a blog post of HERE’S WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING. But really what’s behind the scenes? The truth is every day I wake up and have coffee and write my goddamn morning pages and sometimes I write more after that (lil’ timed freewrites.) Then usually I decide what are my fifteen minutes of exercise stretch walk cardio dance let’s side to side jazz dance owww maybe yoga is better? well we’re out of time. Maybe tomorrow. How about some toast or bean/rice situation with fruit brekkie while I log into my job (from home thank god) at 8am and then i answer calls and pretend I know what I’m doing and maybe I’ll have an existential crisis by 10am.
Writing this 90’s skate musical as a play/ bunch of scenes/ an actual story feels hard. Working on the songs bit by bit alone and then collaborating with the mega talented and supportive Chase Horseman feels better and more doable. Recording demos is fun. Playing shows is fun. Writing is still hard. But it’s gotta get done. Unless I want to improvise the whole thing….which maybe…….ok no. Something has got to get SET. I’m in a web of procrastination frustration which could be eased if I write already. I was so good at being kind to myself when I was in the early stages of this thing. I had no expectations and I didn’t care. So I worked on it. Just wrote scenes not caring throwing spaghetti at walls. Laughing to myself and feeling surprisingly good in pandemic isolation. Doing all the characters. Wearing wigs and mustaches and finding cool shit I forgot about in my closet and making improv videos and I just gave up the pressure on myself to be PRODUCTIVE. Just “Oh yeah this is fun. Cool! Now i want a pizza!” (Oh yeah, and unemployment helped structure my workdays into creative fundays). And now that i’m back in real life (real life what the hell is that? oh you mean you’re having to work a lot to make money to survive again? oh right. Oh you mean you want to be PRODUCTIVE and you want RESULTS? I remember that heavy anvil on my head from the old days), I find myself with less time and energy and deflated feeling. BUT I see that I have indeed written a surprising hodgepodge of scenes that I like. So there’s that. But I still want to throw this “script” across the room. Or worse, look at it sadly on the coffee table. Just sitting there. I made notes. I also got good notes from a couple trusted friends. But it’s still sitting there and even my “just try 10 minutes” brain trick isn’t working. It feels BIG. Those mountains of pages. It just feels OVERWHELMING. I want a helper but mostly I want to whine and cry and have someone hold me and tell me it’s ok and I can do this. Like the Mother I didn’t have.
And Isn’t It Ironic in an Alanis Morrissette way that this musical is filled with Mothers. A bunch of bad mothers and good mothers and chock full of funny and painful mother- daughter dynamics.
And yes I know I am learning to be my own Mother. We didn’t make it through all that therapy not to know about the elephant in the room. And now I ask myself again as both Mother to myself and self to my internal Mother…..Too early for pizza?
Never. I love you kid. Thanks I love you too.
See what I did there?
In other news I went to BALTIMORE AND NYC in MAY. It was how you’d expect. Goddamn Brilliant!
Here’s some pics n video magic. All Baltimore pics + Vid by Kristen Anchor at The Metro Gallery.
Melody Easton (of $100 Girlfriend) plays Nancy Kerrigan on “The Last Skate”. Ridiculous Fun!!
Thanks to The Selkies (and Joan Sullivan) for asking me to play and putting this whole show together! The Selkies are a really good band and I want to play shows with them all the time now.
Me as Scott Hamilton. Because why not?
Here’s some new york snaps of me and Susan Hwang and Leslie Graves on a rooftop. And dance moves. Oh more NYC time soon don’t worry. End of Aug early Sept PENCIL ME IN cause rumor has it i’m going back for another Nancation!
