hey hartlist,
First off I want to say THANK YOU so much! to all of you who have jumped on the Clear Tarot bandwagon and signed up to download your copy of my book, RESPECT FOR TAROT: a new way of seeing. It is always thrilling and scary to bring something new into the world, and awesome to get to share it.
Speaking of new things coming into the world…
I don’t know if my weeks have always had themes or I just notice them now that I write a weekly newsletter, but this was definitely the “KIDS” week here in Hart World.
If you missed Sunday’s The Chrysalis #60: KIDS (Not Just for Kids), here it is! in this newsletter.
Please enjoy me singing a couple of classic folksongs and then reading you all of Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book. (A hilarious and unsung text.)
NEXT CHRYSALIS: #61: _THEME_ will be SUNDAY 4PM APRIL 24
I went right from there into the first rehearsal for the forthcoming extremely charming and tongue in cheek puppet musical “Mary Had a Little Lamb and Also a Substitute Teacher”, which I will be co-narrating for two extremely cute afternoon performances at La Mama in May. (I LOVE music rehearsal. I forgot about it! Plunking out notes over and over, tentatively finding the harmonies, drawing little weird arrows all over the score to remind yourself “this note goes UP” (just me?). It’s like doing the crossword. Or the Wordle (which by the way I am KILLING).
Anyway: written by my pal Molly Reisman with an actually quite kick-ass (and not easy) folk score by Clayton Briggs, it’s happening May 21 at 2PM and May 22 at 12PM at LaMaMa in the East Vill. Bring the wee ones.
Speaking of Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book, I’m tired. It turns out that starting a business, finishing a book, finding new acting representation (!!), and searching for spring gigs for your band might be a lot for the same month.
Especially when those gigs do not happen. Everyone is too busy. Stop it. Right now we’re looking at the Fall before we play for you again! But band meeting is tonight, so you never know. (It might be the winter! jk.)
But still, I must have been riding the wave of some childlike enthusiasm, because I signed up this week to do “30/30” once again in April. 30/30 is a writing challenge for poets to write 30 poems in 30 days. I did this in 2015 (?) - with songs - and became a total convert after this song sprang fully formed from my temple on night #13.
And by ‘total convert’ I mean, “didn’t do it again until now”, but better now than never. What I remember most clearly about the challenge was this feeling of shaking off the chains of self-consciousness, of Writing and Trying To Do It Good. Because when you just have to turn something in before midnight, you just get over it and make something already. Doing It Good takes a backseat to Doing It, and Playing Seriously (eventually) takes a backseat to - dare I say - Playing. Just relaxing (!) and letting your freak flag fly until the song writes itself. Which is always what it does anyway, if you’d let it.
I’ll be sharing some of them here; stay tuned.
I’ll leave you with the immortal words of an anonymous first(?)-grader, a student in one of my dad’s long-ago kids’ theatre workshops:
“If you stop using your imagination, it rolls up to the size of a pea and falls out of your nose.”
You’ve been warned.
Love,
Rebecca
you crazy kids