Blog
Medicated
January 8, 2021
My medicine comes in tiny little white pills. Indistinguishable from other types of mind altering, mood stabilizing, or antipsychotic. But they are the last category. A word that brings up such terrible connotations. Antipsychotic. It always makes me think of horror movies, Psycho. It makes me think of uncontrollable, insane, and other bad words.
These little white pills build up in my bloodstream over time, I take one every day and they are always stacking themselves against the impulses in my brain that used to make me … crazy.
I’m not supposed to use that word. People cringe when I say it aloud. But it’s the truth. I was crazy. Part of me still is, but that part is coated in the meds, they liquify in my blood and coat over the harsh edges. The edges that poke and prod and revel in the absurd.
I sometimes long for the rush that mania gives. I sometimes daydream about the intensity with which I experienced the world. When I was manic and we thought I was coming down off an accidental dose of acid, my brother told me that I essentially already lived my life like I was on acid the whole time. He’s right. I saw colors so vividly. I experienced the sparkle in the everyday mundane. But the prescription drugs stop that. They put a muddy film over everything and make it all look grey. That’s why I want rainbows and unicorns and glitter all the time, they make it seem like I’m living in my acid dripped reality.
I read about characters who are living in their mental illness, reveling in it. And I want that excitement again. The unpredictability. The rush. I know I can’t have it. It isn’t safe. I don’t even think it’s going to turn out well for them in the book either. But how can you stand a world so dull when you know the shimmer it used to have?
I try to pry out these words, focusing on the choices and the feelings, extracting from my memories the intricate way they fall together. It is a chore, mining my brain for the words these days. When I was in college, undiagnosed, unmedicated, and loosely aware that something ‘wasn’t right’ I would spill the words on the page in a rush, never thinking about them for longer than it took my hand to whip the felt tip markers across the page. It poured out of me, the creativity.
Now, I must drill down to the core for it, pushing through layer after layer of stability and normalcy until I find the fountain geyser of it at my center. It is hard work, mining myself for these words. And yet, after years of layering the rocky foundations above it, I have found a way in. I have found a way to extract something from deep within and spill it out on the page again. For this I am grateful. I thought it was lost to me forever, a choice between stability and creativity and one I reluctantly made.
How Fast Can You Take Off Your Clothes?
December 1, 2020
"How do you do a quick change?"
This was asked of me by a friend I've known for years recently. At first, I didn't know how to answer him. I've been taking people's clothes off and putting them back on them since college, it's second nature to me now. I don't think through the logistics of the transaction anymore.
But how do we transform them from one scene to the next in just the space of a black out? Sometimes putting on complicated three piece suits with accessories, sometimes going from street urchin to focus of the scene in a matter of moments.
The first step to a successful quick change is a quick rigged costume. We sew velcro into places where the fabric needs to tear apart quickly, or more preferably snaps. We use a lot of velcro and snaps. We change out the cufflinks on dress shirts with ones rigged with elastic. We also use elastic in place of shoe laces almost always, so they can slip their feet right out of a tennis shoe.
Once you have the costume rigged for success, you talk through the steps of the change with the actor. Sometimes the performer will underdress parts of the next costume under their current one to make the change go faster, this must be discussed in advance, so they know to start the show with three pairs of pants on.
Every actor is different and even the best rigging can't save an actor who panics during their change. I've met people who can do any change on the first try, and many more who require a lot of patience and practice before we get it right.
The next most important part of the change is the preset. I have spent many, many hours of my life presetting costumes for changes. Mostly this means that everything must always be in exactly the same place so that no matter what else is happening, we both, the actor and I, know exactly where everything is. Pooling dresses on the floor with the shoes in the middle is commonplace. This way the performer can step right into their shoes, someone can pull the dress up, they can do whatever else they need to with their hair or accessories, while I zip them up from behind, and perhaps bend down to buckle their shoes.
Though, to be clear, I will nine times out of ten find any other way to facilitate a change than have to buckle someone else's shoe on for them. It's too risky; an undone or loose buckle can lead to career ending broken ankles and I never want that kind of pressure. If there's a way for them to do it themselves, I always prefer a performer to secure their own shoe.
Above all of this preparation for a quick change, the only thing that honestly makes things quick is practice. I need time to learn the actors habits and needs. They need time to be familiar with the costume. We need time together to learn how to move our bodies around each other in tight quarters. The more rehearsal time devoted to our changes, the better they will be on opening night.
On my most recent show I had one full costume change in 30 seconds for the finale. We became so practiced at it after several months that we started having a thumb war backstage before he would enter for the end of the show. This is the ultimate sign of success, when the performer has time to take a breath, a drink, a moment, before entering again to do the next thing.
The things that are happening behind the scenes, in little alcoves with low light, are just as rehearsed as the choreography going on in front of the curtain, but no one gets to witness that magic except me and my cast.
Unfinished Business
November 25, 2020
This holiday season is different than any other I've ever had. My mother passed away in February and it's the first time I won't be bringing her apple pie, or at least talking to her about the pies I made for my friends while I was somewhere else. Her recipe has been passed down and is, hands down, the best apple pie in the world. It's also the first time I won't be hearing "Rackeye, rackeye, rackeye", her words that replaced everything else in her vocabulary after her stroke.
My mother dabbled in writing herself. Somewhere on a hard drive I have pages and pages of blog posts from her Wordpress blog she maintained through the early 2000s, tucked into boxes I have the journals she wrote in intermittently, not a single one full until the end. In my storage unit I have an entire giant rubbermaid bin of unfinished quilting projects she was in progress on before she suffered her stroke in 2010. She left a lot of things unfinished and I feel a pressure to finish those quilts, but also an overwhelming sense that I cannot possibly.
This year, for the first time, I have participated in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and I am about 6,000 words away from the finish line, which should only be about two days of writing. For the last two days I haven't been able to bring myself to write the climactic scene that would essentially end the story.
I know I will finish the project, complete the rough draft and let people read my jumble of a murder mystery. But that's what is, I think, holding me back. I've promised to send the rough draft to a few people upon it's completion. I am scared of their judgement and criticism, even though I know my story has a ways to go until I would consider it publishable. It's also what keeps me from finishing my mother's quilts. And I think it's what kept her from finishing a journal completely.
There is a level of expectation for a finished project or work. If it's still in progress, we can pass off it's inadequacies so much more simply than if we've deemed it done. That judgement and criticism can be hard to take, and I for one am scared of it.
That's the hard part, allowing ourselves to release our finished projects into the world to be judged on their quality from an audience of people who likely will never understand the amount of work, or the emotions brought forth, by actually finishing the damn thing.
I suppose I should stop writing about unfinished works as a means of procrastination (another quality my mother passed down to me) and instead get to finishing something, because perhaps the sense of accomplishment will outweigh these other fears.