Hey Hartlist,
You know that thing where you wake up in bed, open your eyes, take one breath…
…and somehow pull a muscle in your back?
(Is breathing dangerous now? IS THIS WHAT TIME DOES TO US???)
JUST THE GIGS
FRIDAY 3/31 7:00PM Rebecca Hart & the Wrong Band at Rockwood Music Hall 3
Go HERE for tickets… or cash at the door.
FRIDAY 4/28 7:00PM Rebecca Hart & the Wrong Band at Rockwood Music Hall 3
Go HERE for tickets… or cash at the door.
MAY 5, 6, 7 - ‘How To Read Tarot Cards’ at The Cell Theatre NYC
save the date for my upcoming solo show commission/residency, dir. Chloe Treat
FROM THE CHRYSALIS
OK, “What Time Does To Us” (see also: ‘Aging’, or ‘Change’) is kind of a heavy topic for a weekly newsletter.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that the topic feels less and less Heavy to me, per se. Emotion-stirring? Sure. Gives-Me-Pause? Often. But Heavy or Dark? Less.
Maybe this is one of the Things that it Does To Us.
It’s on my mind for a variety of reasons, none of them ‘bad’. Just:
Last summer my niece was the perfect height for me to rest my elbow atop her head and pretend she was a shelf (don’t ask me why this is fun); she is already too tall for this.
Tomorrow my family is having a party for a relative who is celebrating a Big Important Birthday. It’s going to be awesome and not just because I was in charge of the entertainment. And also, I don’t know if you know this, but it turns out that on these occasions time moves forward for everyone, not just the birthday person. (!!I KNOW.)
Today I had lunch with a director friend I adore and rarely see. A while back we did a play together and I remember him telling the cast that his desire to work on that particular piece had to do with an approaching Important Birthday. I remember also thinking something like Wow yeah, that IS an important birthday, what a distant unrelatable idea, hm, when’s my scene again?
That Important Birthday is now two years away.
***
Ok it’s possible that I’m in this frame of mind because last night I both saw a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles , Prince of Tyre AND read all of Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing on the subway and you might not think those two artistic works would have anything in common and you would be wrong. (Is it too late to produce this mashup?)
Maybe it’s like how people say don’t eat cheese before bed because you’ll have weird dreams. I don’t recall any dreams last night, but then again I did hurt myself BY WAKING UP.
The thing is, while thinking about Time and Change is not in itself a problem, it gets tricky when we start to tell Stories about what Time and Change Mean. I can’t really blame Shakespeare (entirely) for the fact that yesterday (ok, yesterweek) was One Of Those Days (Weeks). Where Everything is Basically Fine except for that Creeping Existential Dread. You know. You wake up in the morning and write “Self Improvement Plan” in big letters on the chalkboard of your day and around 4PM you find that someone (you) has erased it and written “What, If Anything, Have You Done With Your Life?” It’s very annoying.
This question (to switch metaphors) was reverberating and gonging around my head last night as I walked from the subway (it’s possible Ephron was not helping). Usually, once this voice starts it’s pretty hard to silence and can ruin an evening. But it turns out that one of the things Time Has Done is to give me some things to say back.
One of them is that My Life is, actually, at this time, not over yet, thanks.
(I mean, I don’t know the future, and I guess I could fall off a cliff tomorrow, but -as a therapist once pointed out to me - in that case, there’s no problem.)
Maybe this is in the air. I asked people on my Tarot Page this week what kind of questions were on their mind and one of the first responses was “Am I Doing It Right???”
I asked her what “it” was, but not because I didn’t understand. I understand.
Ok. After I wrote that sentence I wrote two more paragraphs, got bored and confused, erased them, and then left to go to the Irish Arts Center to see Loah perform and omg it was so great and I didn’t even put it together that I’d snagged this ticket on St Patrick’s Day but Ireland has a funny way of just putting things together poetically in my life. And there’s no time left to tell you why that show was so good but, for one thing, it’s great to talk back to your negative thoughts but also have you tried singing The Auld Triangle at the top of your lungs with a room full of people? Because that works too.
And by the time I left I was reminded that all these torturous questions, What Have You Done With Your Life, Am I doing It Right, etc., are really just What does everyone think of me? in disguise. And as such, they are pure ego and only belong paving the road to hell and nowhere else.
I don’t know about you, but the minute I actually start Doing something I care about, these questions disappear entirely. And even if what I’m doing might someday turn out to be Impactful and Important, I’m sure as hell not thinking Wow I’m really leaving a legacy right now. I’m not really thinking at all.
May we all be brave enough to keep encountering the Next Thing and the Next, rather than dwelling in safer stories about how it’s probably all over. May we all spend more time Doing The Thing whatever it is, than wondering if it is Enough.
AND THE AULD TRIANGLE
WENT JINGLE JANGLE
ALL ALONG THE BANKS
OF THE ROYAL CANAL
(No alcohol was consumed in the writing of this post.)
Love
Rebecca