Ring out the old...

Ring in the new.

I'd rather hurl out the old and pull in the new but whichever works really.

The holidays have been difficult this year.  I don't really know why.  There hasn't been anything especially good or bad about them.  I've just been extremely emotional.  I finished reading Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking" last night and now I'm semi-convinced that I'm bipolar and need electroshock therapy and/or medication.  I'm never really manic though.  Maybe I just need/want to spend some time in a peaceful, pretty mental facility where I can sort out all the crazy thoughts in my head.  It was strange reading about that thought because yesterday I also finished reading the book "Of Lena Geyer."  Towards the end of the novel, Lena collapses onstage from sheer physical and mental exhaustion.  She goes into a coma, briefly, but then takes years to recover.  And I kind of feel sometimes as if I need years to recover.  From what?  I don't know exactly.  All I can say is that life is hard.  Sometimes, most mornings, it takes most of my energy to get out of bed in the morning and come in to the office and get things done.

The blessing and curse of my current situation is that I have nothing work-related to accomplish.  So I've spent the past few weeks finishing grant and fellowship applications.  There's been a lot of essay writing and I feel as if I'm applying for college all over again.  But it's made me really examine my work and life as a director.  I'm certain there's nothing else I should be doing but the question remains: how to do it full time and make a living?

I've also applied to be a New York City Teaching Fellow.  I read the signs in the subway every morning so I figure I might as well give it a shot.  I've been passed on to the interview stage.  So the first weekend in February I have a day-long process to go through.  I need to figure out a five minute lesson plan.  I mentioned it to mom at dinner the other night and she was too excited.  "Your father and I always thought you should go into teaching.  But you had to try this for yourself and it didn't work out..."  Well, it's not that it hasn't worked out, Mom.  It just hasn't really been easy.  But I've been looking for teaching jobs for over a year and that's not easy either.  I want to, ideally, teach on the university level.  But I could deal with high school.  I need to figure out a five minute lesson plan to teach at the interview.  Did I say that already?  Well, I do.

The "ring out the old, ring in the new" always makes me think about "Sunset Boulevard".  That was the first show I took Present-Ex to see.  I call him Present-Ex because even though we've been broken up for some 7 years now we were together almost as long.  After breaking up we made a real effort to stay friends because although we were no longer in love with each other we certainly loved each other and had a profound effect on each other's lives.  Plus we were so intertwined in each other's families it was impossible not to be.

We met in Philly through a mutual friend while I was home from NYU on summer break.  We started dating late in the summer and continued long distance (well, 90 miles away) from there.  

Present-Ex was terrified of my parents because I came out upon meeting him and he was convinced they thought he made me gay.  And he totally did.  So there.  But I decided to take him up to NYC with me for a few days because he had never been and it was the beginning of the semester.  Mom, Dad and I drove to pick him up at his apartment.  It was awkward and forced.  Mom offered him some bagel and OJ but Present-Ex politely declined.  Later on the bus he said it was because he was afraid my mom had poisoned it.  He wasn't kidding.  We exchanged an awkward goodbye with Mom and Dad and hopped on Peter Pan to NYC.

I took Present-Ex to my dorm room.  It was a two-person suite on the penthouse level of the dorm on 10th and Broadway.  I loved this room especially because the old RA had given us a key to the door at the back of the room that opened up to the rooftop.  We spent many nights here on the roof, looking down at the traffic.  The steeple lights for Grace Church were placed on the roof here and I would look up at the steeple and the sky for what seemed like hours.  It was truly a beautiful sight to behold.

Present-Ex and I dropped our bags and headed out to grab some sandwiches at Bagel Bob's on University.  It was a beautiful late summer day and I was thrilled to be back in NYC and in love for the first time with someone who loved me back.  We took our sandwiches and sat in Washington Square Park and watched the people go by.  What did we talk about?  I'm not sure.  I can be really quiet most of the time and I wonder if I was this day.  Or maybe we talked about seeing the show that afternoon.

We hopped on the train to Times Square.  I was already familiar with "Sunset" from the movie and the original London cast recording with La LuPone.  I was excited to see the show and to see Betty Buckley.  I was not disappointed and I don't think I could have picked a better first show for Present-Ex to see.  Talk about spectacle.  First of all, Betty Buckley's voice is a beautiful instrument and as difficult as she is to work with, her performance was commanding.  The diva gets to sing in Sunset and sing she did.  Physically, Sunset was a towering production.  When the mansion set rose in the New Year's Eve scene to reveal the tiny, cramped apartment of Artie Shaw it was sheer theatrical genius and spectacle.  I probably gasped and applauded along with the rest of the audience.  My most vivid memory of the production was the very end.  Norma came down the stairs and spoke her infamous "Mr. DeMille" line and the curtain came down.  But as the curtain came down there was projected upon it the film of a younger, laughing and smiling Norma Desmond in her youth.  Well, it just gave me chills.

Sunset played in the barn that is the Minskoff Theatre.  Our seats were way up in the mezzanine, which has no center aisle it just goes straight across and our seats were way house right.  But I was leaning so far forward I might as well have been onstage.  I miss that excitement.  

These days I feel as if I'm trapped on an island of my own and even though I can see everyone else I can't make passage to them and they can't make passage to me.  And in my head the image of the curtain going down on a laughing, smiling, younger version of myself plays over and over again, haunting me.