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woke up this morning with this blister from turning on and off a light a bunch last night out of pure ocd compulsion <3 has anyone used nocd before can't tell if it's fr or not

anyways i last used this account during quarantine and wanted to revive it for writing instead of making a substack. this isn't necessarily for anyone just to force myself to #justdoit. ideally i'll write here once or twice a month and include theatre writing cuz i need to practice. here are some words about a dance piece i saw in January that i never really finished or did anything with -

took my girlfriend amelie to see Many Happy Returns, a Monica Bill Barnes and Co. production, at Playwrights Horizons last month. she wore a Blondie t-shirt and the co-creator, Robbie Saenz De Viteri, wore a NY Liberty shirt. he complimented her shirt (i should’ve shouted out his) and then offered us some Lifesaver mints upon arrival, the type of mint that should be chalky but is instead perfect. A couple minutes after picking seats, co-creator Monica crouched before us and asked if we could help her arrange some peonies. She took us up to a table center stage littered with bouquets and we got to work. She asked why we were here and I told her about my friend Sara Richter, a dance and anthropology dual major (we were convinced by the same professor to join anthro) who had performed a solo of monica’s from the show for her senior thesis. We gushed about Sara, and Monica introduced me to Indah Mariana, a cast member who attended the same pitiful SUNY as us. i actually really loved going there (it is consistently ranked the ugliest campus in the country). my girl geeked out over Monica, who choreographed one of her favorite films, Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women, as we returned to our seats. and then Robbie took the mic.

the piece is effectively a memory play about three old friends of Monica's who loitered a T.G.I Friday’s with her. i was immediately reminded of my three best friends from high school. We would go to the Shake Shack at Atlantic Barclays every couple of weeks and stay there for three to five hours, gabbing about nothing and everything (did he really say that during APUSH? will that one girl who’s mom is a teacher at our school play eliza doolittle? do you guys ever get intrusive thoughts?). Monica's friends all disappeared in the years following in their own ways; one in the literal sense, one in the physical sense (they call sometimes), and one emotionally (when they ran into each other some time ago, one didn’t recognize the other (i forget which)). My friends did too. in their own ways of course. One is getting his BFA in musical theatre from a program in Long Island, constantly swarmed by a horde of twenty year old girls with mixed belts. When we do see each other, it’s like we’re the only two people in the entire world. It's one of my favorite feelings. The second still lives really close to me, actually. She and I send each other instagram videos and chat sometimes, but we never seem to find the time to share physical space even though we’re a mile apart. She has a wonderful boyfriend who takes her on tropical vacations, though, which is a really good excuse. the third i lost on my own volition. I couldn't handle it. it was a mistake, but at the time i needed to do it, and i don’t necessarily regret it. It’s wrong and right at the same time. We reunited when our mutual good friend brought her up to our college campus. She drove us around in her car. it was warm, and i couldn’t seem to stop smiling. She's an art student upstate now. She spends a lot of time in nature. She used to go to a farm camp every summer. Looking back to when we fretted over college applications, she got exactly what she wanted, and I smile when I see her posts, often posing in green pastures. 

To the three of them, I probably did the same in whatever my own way is to them. I didn't mean to, of course, or maybe I did a little. When I started college I remember feeling so old, so close to withering away for some reason, a sensation that had begun to sprout when I logged onto a zoom class or walked along my nearly deserted westchester campus, shrouded in snow since they didn’t have much of a reason to plow. I moved through the world with a notion that I could really truly drop dead at any moment. Perhaps soon. Maybe i could be done. I never got that feeling in Shake Shack. I mulled over this as Monica and her fellow dancers traversed the stage, mimicking partnering and other popular moves as Robbie pseudo-narrated (him and Monica were technically one and the same in the piece, just different facets of a whole). But i think the piece expected my sadness, since a duet between Monica and Flannery Gregg to islands in the stream came at just the right time. they alternated between sitting in twin folding chairs, standing from said chairs, traversing and lip syncing together, really just having a ball. i hear the opening in my mind often now, which kenny rogers croons in earnest;

Baby, when I met you, there was peace unknown

I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb

I was soft inside

There was something going on

i appreciated the use of love songs in a show about old friends. i was in love with my high school friends in a way. i still am. they were the first people i ever met in an educational setting that i felt knew what i was going for. well not always (ex - one of them i first met in the holding hallway for brechtian sound of music callbacks (actual thing that happened at my high school), explaining brecht in fourteen year old terms to him and the cool park slope girls who doted on him), but they definitely tried. it was peace unknown, to have your peers try and get to know you between apush and legally blonde rehearsal. 

the piece’s last ten minutes recreate a party from years past. a fun one too. Dreaming by Blondie blared, and i looked over at amelie’s shirt, then up at her as tears streamed down her face. she was probably thinking of people i’ve never met and parties i wasn’t at. it was nice to remember a substantial moment in my life alongside people i didn’t know and someone i loved but haven’t known for a long time. we were all in a way having the same reminiscence i think. the same feeling of oh wow how lucky am i to be a person and connect with other people and feel nice about it but also oh no how awful it is to remember those i loved but can’t anymore. anyways it was a really beautiful show.

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literally skateboarders on college campuses don't fear death or god. no brakes no handles just a blank faced college student hurtling past you faster than a semi truck on the interstate weaving through crowds iced latte in one hand speeding into traffic and dodging cars like a fast and the furious movie. they approach a 200 foot drop and you're begging screaming for them to stop but they just go right over the edge and ride down the entire cliff face at a 90 degree angle and skate off like it's nothing and not a drop of the iced latte has spilled

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what do red pandas even do

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i trust we are having a normalcore day

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‘Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.

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gender prof saying “you need dykes. and you need urban planning” …so real

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fucked up that i can’t listen to a podcast, listen to an album, study, draw, read a book, watch a tv show, watch a movie, journal, facetime a friend, go on a hike, go on a run, and bake all at the same time 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 guess the only option is to do nothing

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Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, [Paper delivered at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” Chicago, IL, December 28, 1977. First published in «Sinister Wisdom» 6, 1978, and The Cancer Journals, Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, CA, 1980]; in Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider. Essays and speeches, The Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY, 1984, pp. 40-44 (pdf here) [Cover Design by Mary A. Scott. Cover photograph by Salimah Ali]

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i love drag race actually