26. The Week in Me
Alpacas, Here Lies Love, crying in tunnels.
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I come to you this morning after watering
‘s plants while I listen to the new Carly Rae Jepsen album. as I housesit in her beautiful, beautiful home1 in my beautiful, beautiful second city. The Carly album is unexpected, more Daft Punk, more Radiohead than I expected, and several of these songs will not only be in heavy rotation but heavy Carly rotation, which is when I am between a 9-10 or conversely a 3-42 on my emotional spectrum and just play a lot of Carly on shuffle.I love “Kollage” for a lyric that winded me in thinking about The Fucking Drummer: “Leavin' you was certainly the hardest part of all/But I was livin' like a servant.” (That essay, by the way, has been viewed over 515 times. That was my first post to hit 500 reads and I am delirious with gratitude.)
Then you’ve got “Psychedelic Switch” and “So Right” and “Come Over” and Loves, Stadium and Weekend and….folks, our girl has done it again! I do and will always recommend Canada’s finest export but you can start with this one today:
I have my phone on Do Not Disturb as I listen to the album on repeat. This has been a point of contention for a number of people in my life lately. (Skip the next few paragraphs if you don’t want to hear me complain about something woefully self-absorbed when the world is on a baby’s-genital-reveal-via-blue-or-pink-fireworked forest fire.) My relatives of the Boomer generation are on principle: my mom doesn’t get why I feel I have a right to not be instantly accessible. She sees it as, more than a safety matter, an asocial activity (yes) and likely one that chafes against the way she raised me to not feel safe setting boundaries, to not really understand boundaries at all. (Of course, it’s fine, has to be fine, when she leaves her phone at home by mistake or is walking the dog with her friend Connie and wants to get off the phone.) I owe my uncle a call back, a favor for an aunt, but I am so overwhelmed when I look at the number of texts I receive each morning (10-20 upon waking up) that I can’t do anything, even when it’s my closest circle.
I need to, as Matt says every day when I look at him near tears and tell him I am a terrible person for not getting back to everyone within 15 seconds like I used to, that I took two days to get back to the…200 texts I received on my birthday3 (and actually didn’t answer seven of them), staring at another request for my time/attention/validation in the form of a meme that I don’t understand from a friend or an expensive task for someone who has flaked on every birthday party I’ve had for the last seven years, “close your fucking circle.” Let some texts go without a reply. Ask what these people have done for me, recently, ever. When I sobbed, heaved and sobbed, the entire car ride into New York on my birthday to attend
’ book release party because a friend sent me a frustrated text message, one I didn’t feel was fair on my birthday or given my layoff but which made me feel guilt nonetheless4, Matt said “close your fucking circle.” When I got to Hattie’s party and Hattie and our friends immediately whipped out a birthday cake with my face on it5, sang to me at an event that wasn’t about me at all, rejected my dismissals of “It’s not my day! It’s Hattie’s day! Don’t worry about me. I’m all fucked up today anyway,” gave me presents, and made me cry happy tears6…Matt looked at me and I knew that he was indicating exactly the thread my circle should be stitched from.I’m learning that the people I should trust, give all of myself to, are the ones who give me grace when I hit that focus icon and say “Yeah, it’s selfish. Be selfish.” I should give all of myself to people who will offer to sit behind me and hold me while I answer an email, take a recruiter call, “breathing together with our hearts beating in a calm unison.”7
I tell myself I’m an asshole every day for putting Do Not Disturb on. But I’ve been telling myself I’m an asshole every day since well before I lost my grasp on being a replybot.
And so my phone’s off. I feel guilt, so much guilt, but only when I pick up that phone. When it’s facedown across the room, I can almost forget it’s there.
And now, for the fun stuff…
The days after my birthday offered a bounty of fun surprises.
I met fleefy girls. In Tara Vernacular, all llamas or alpacas regardless of gender are called “fleefy girls.” Matt took me to Bluebird Farms to meet them. We were greeted by Nick, who owns the farm and speaks exactly like Mister Rogers and arranged for a complimentary alpaca stroll for my birthday. We love Nick in this house. I got to feed various and sundry alpacas and walk Merida. I was warned that Merida, who I picked out because of her very silly, very stupid eard hairds, was “sassy” and “liked to trot” in the way that the Westminster doggies like to trot. I didn’t have on one of those tragic skirt suits all of those women wear when they run the dog around the stage, but Merida still let me trot a little. She was wonderful. She did nuzzles. She did hugs. I love her and I bought several ornaments made from her sweet, soft fur so my new friend will always be with me.
And yes, I am wearing a Joe Versus the Volcano shirt. New York, a magical place that smells like whatever the Maui Waui strain of piss would be but where where you wind up with free floor tickets to the new David Byrne musical and then buy your favorite living actor a drink at the bar next door on a random Wednesday.
My beloved friend Michael offered me in one of his usual bouts of kindness a free floor ticket to Here Lies Love, the Imelda Marcos musical. No, there was not a number about shoes. No, I don’t think shoes were even mentioned once! The musical is novel for a few…novelties: the theater’s orchestra seats were ripped up to create an immersive dancefloor experience: a small stage and a large connected band of platforms in the center of the venue that are expertly dissembled and rotated by the stage crew during the show and even during musical numbers to enhance the storytelling. Being on the floor means you will absolutely get separated from your party but the show has so many immersive elements (projector screens featuring timelines of the Marcos regime, dancers in every corner and level of the space, an emcee, pink boilersuit-clad ushers on the floor escorting you around the space, and moments of audience interaction that you won’t mind peoplewatching once you’re parted.
Beyond this being a new structural way to experience theater, it offers an emotional context that I have not often experienced. One minute, the emcee is telling you to stand up and dance and the next you are part of the crowd at Ferdinand Marcos’ political rally, and the next you are a bystander to martial violence and doing nothing but stopping to stare. It, like Slave Play’s draped mirror that broadcasts your own (possibly white) face back to you as you take in slave narratives of mental, physical, and sexual assault, makes you complicit in the events of the production. It is a slick and subtle choice. I highly recommend the show not only for its singularity and spectacle but also impeccable work from an all-Asian (and I believe all Filipino) cast, many of whom were in the show nearly a decade ago in its first mounting and many of whom are also enjoying their Broadway debuts. I was blessed enough to have forgotten every big name in the cast, so I received one hell of a thrill when Conrad Ricamora stepped out as Ninoy Aquino (and gave a performance that should be noticed by the Tonys, charming, harrowing, full) and then Lea Salonga walked right in front of me to perform as his mother. The audience went wild. She looks phenomenal, for one, and sounds it, too - this is the same voice you heard on the Mulan soundtrack, if not more informed.
Because Michael is Michael and knows everyone, he suggested that we stroll over to a nearby bar I honestly want to guard like a hipster cretin for a while longer to grab a bite and visit his friend Cynthia, an extremely cool rockabilly sommelier. We sit and start discussing the show when I spot its emcee saunter in and, acting like a total herb in a way I have trained myself not to do in my many years of attending New York theater, approached to congratulate him on a wonderful job. (His friends around him applauded, I offered him a curtsy, it was cute.) I pop back in and continue chatting with Michael when not three minutes later do I look up (way up) to see Michael Shannon in the bar. My favorite living actor (man - if this is a bifurcated gender split, Carrie Coon is my favorite living actress). I in the mood that only appears to me when I look incredible, yell without thinking “Cynthia! Please put that lovely man’s first drink on my tab!” He smiled at me. Michael ass Shannon smiled in my face. He came over to thank me, I told him it was the least I could do for a striking actor, I told him Matt and I watch Pottersville8 every Christmas, he said “God bless you” and I emailed myself the receipt because I may have to slide it into a photo album. Jessica Chastain walked in not long after and I was cool enough to not bother her at all. I wore red lipstick and didn’t get any on my teeth. What a night.I am halfway through
’ new book of poems. The ghazal is my favorite as this was my first birthday without my best friend and I felt that grief ceaselessly and felt it in this poem, and I will share it here. If it’s not obvious, I do feel you should subscribe to her newsletter:
I watched Point Break for the first time last night and it confidently skydived into a spot deeeep in my countdown of favorite movies. Off of one viewing, that shit’s in the top 20. What a film! Patrick Swayze is his most beautiful and maybe the most beautiful a white man has ever been in this movie. Keanu acts! I refuse the slander that he is wooden and this is a bad thing! He may be flat in affect, but so are a lot of people! And he is telling the story of these people and their lives and their smooth foreheads because they don’t emote a lot! His acting is praxis for that community! Lori Petty looks like something out of a fairy painting, giant icy eyes, a dark Peter Pan shag framing her face, a swimmer’s slimness. And then there’s Gary Busey, who didn’t turn his character’s name Angelo Pappas into an acrostic but is still intensely, supernaturally enjoyable in this movie. What a gift. I plan to watch it again this weekend.
Thinking of Sinéad today. We all know about her most famous cover, but here’s one I discovered this week:
If she died how I assume…I can understand better than most that there are souls who are only tucked in peace by death. And I wish hers peace. All of it.
wrote, naturally, a staggering short eulogy of rage:
Okay yeah, that ended on a bummer. I’m sorry! as I started writing about texting overload above, I shed some of that burden as writing assists in doing and got down to four text messages left. which is a good thing! I can leave you with that and another humble entreaty to close your laptop, put down your phone, and go watch one of the greatest pieces of “dudes rock” media I have ever beheld with my sweet little ojos Point Break on Tubi, free with ads but still free.
I am now off to put on face masks and gab with my friend Erica at her house. She left the below instructions and I one-upped her by being makeupless AND braless. Take that!!!
Love you bitches,
TG
Arielle is someone I wish I was more like in 75 different ways, the biggest being her intentional, welcoming, and deeply deeply individualistic home.
Anything lower than a 3 and I wind up in a black hole of Elliott Smith, this version of
”Pictures” by Vita Bergen that they inexplicably rejected for a far inferior, busier version on their EP, Jesu, and - when shit hits a 0.5 - Bell Witch. I still haven’t, thanks to my Cymbalta scrip, listened to the new Bell Witch release. And we should all be grateful for that.
I have preempted this reveal to each friend I’ve told with “I don’t mean for this to be a brag” and each has responded “….That’s not a brag. That’s a horror movie.” Erica told me she would have thrown her phone into the ocean. I still have 17 texts to get back to from that weekend. Help me.
Me driving through the Holland tunnel:
The person who said this…a wonder in this world. Hi.
Watch the movie. Now. Tomorrow. Alone. With your girlfriend. Don’t you dare look up the plot or the cast. Just pull it up on Netflix, heat up some popcorn, feel your body and soul change at a mitochondrial level.
If Keanu's wooden then it's the finest mahogany, polished to perfection, with just the right amount of detail in the grain.