23

May

Better.

Broken Doll B & W

It’s hard to believe it has been two years since the bottom fell out. Two years since I lost my faith in permanence. Two years since I stopped believing that all things that were good would stay good.

Two years (and a handful of days) ago, James and I said goodbye to our beloved Chow mix rescue dog Leo. He was 14 years old, blind, rail thin, his poor doggie body ravaged by cancer. It was heartbreaking to watch him waste away, and even more heartbreaking to make the decision to inject him with the syringe that would induce eternal sleep. Little did I know two years ago that was only the beginning.

A week after that sad day at the vet’s office, an innocent phone call home to wish my Mom a happy birthday – a milestone, her 60th – quickly turned strange. Mom was tense, angry, unfamiliar. She didn’t want to tell me, but I pried it out of her. Dad had cancer. It was aggressive, inoperable, terminal. Dad was going to die.

And from there, it only got worse. Bad news kept coming faster than I could absorb it. The horrifying summer in Olympia where I realized that my Mom, who’d been slipping away, was already gone. Suddenly it seemed that everyone I knew was sick. My Mom, my Dad, my Grandmother, my dear friend Rory, and of course, Leo. One by one, they all left. Died. I started calling this time in my life ‘the vortex,’ referring to the whirlpool that kept sucking me down, down, down, underwater, with no end in sight, with no hope of resurfacing.

But end it did. Finally. People stopped leaving, stopped dying. (I feel compelled to knock on every piece of wood in my house.) For a while, I just surveyed the damage, a witness to it all. Shocked, shaken, yet still standing. For a while, I was paralyzed. I’d always been a writer, but I couldn’t write. I’d always been an actress, but I couldn’t act. Words sounded funny coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t string sentences together. All the creative ways that I’d normally express myself stopped working. I was completely and utterly stuck.

Eventually, I started to get angry. Angry about what had happened, the unfairness of it all. But also, angry about my inability to do anything about it. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the psychiatrist whose groundbreaking book On Death and Dying introduced her theory of the five stages of grief, said, ‘Anger surfaces once you are feeling safe enough to know you will probably survive whatever comes.’ I had survived, and as I surveyed what remained of my life, I became angry. I realized I’d been living a life that was smaller than what I wanted, that I wasn’t living up to my potential, that I was making my choices out of fear. And so I started to change.

I could say that life changed me. But I don’t think that’s true. I think what’s actually true is that through painful experience, life held a mirror up to my face, to show me the person that I was supposed to be. Peering into that unyielding looking glass has, at times, been brutal. But it has also been necessary.

Two years after it all started to unravel, the pain is still fresh. Sometimes it’s too intense for words. Sometimes I hate it. But it also drives me. It drives me to write and to create and to work harder than I ever have before. With my faith in permanence gone, the urgency to say it now and do it now and feel it now is unceasing.

Two years later, I could say I’m doing better. And in many ways, that’s true. Living through and dwelling inside the most intense emotions I’ve ever experienced has made me a better writer, a better actor, and a better me. I’m sadder and I’m less sure, true. But I’m also more alive.  I’m more awake.

Two years later, I still try. I still hope. I still dream. I still experience joy. But it’s different now. It’s tougher. But so am I. And so is my resolve. My resolve to never give up.

Two years later, I wonder if I’ll ever truly feel better. And sometimes, I wonder if I’d even want to.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Love/Me/Well-Being

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13

May

Mother’s Day.

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This past Sunday was the first Mother’s Day that I actively celebrated since my Mother’s death. It feels weird to say ‘celebrated.’ I certainly didn’t feel like celebrating. But I also felt that it was important not to feel sorry for myself or wallow in my Mom’s absence, but rather to observe the day doing things she would have enjoyed, and to be as happy as possible and as grateful as I could be for all that I still have.

Last year I ignored Mother’s Day altogether – or at least, I tried. It was a pretty loaded and impossible day. Not only was it the first Mother’s Day since my Mom’s passing, it was a mere three months after losing my Dad to cancer, and just a few weeks after my maternal Grandmother succumbed to aggressive Alzheimer’s disease. From the fall of 2012 through the spring of 2013, the hits came hard and fast. So I threw myself into work and felt grateful that when Mother’s Day arrived, I was in the midst of the six week run of a play. We had a performance on Mother’s Day, and that, combined with producing duties, gave me plenty to focus on. I stayed busy, I stayed distracted, and I pretended the ‘holiday’ didn’t exist.

Feeling more proactive and better prepared this year, I made a Mother’s Day plan with Zoe, one of my best girlfriends who had lost her own Mom way too young. We went big. We reserved a table at the fancy pants Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica – the exact type of place my Mom would have loved. Covered in fragrant florals, it’s a large, bright, breezy space with windows overlooking Ocean Ave. and the Pacific. Everything is overpriced, and obsequious servers in pressed pink shirts and flowery ties abound. Oh so Mother’s Day. Oh so perfect.

Just two days earlier, Zoe had accompanied me to see a friend’s play that was unexpectedly, a sort of emotional primer for the upcoming holiday. The story revolved around a family’s attempts to cope when the matriarch is suddenly afflicted with a debilitating neurological disease. She goes from a vibrant, highly capable and driven career woman to someone rapidly losing control of her speech and body. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, the family’s oldest daughter – who is halfway across the world – places a desperate phone call home on Thanksgiving. She doesn’t want to speak to her grandmother, or father, or sister. Only her Mom. And the Mom, who can barely move or speak, doesn’t think she can do it. But with the grandmother holding the phone to her ear, she manages to stammer through the conversation, finding strength she didn’t know she had to shakily get out the exact words of comfort that her daughter needed to hear.

That scene killed me. And at the end of the play, when Zoe and I both emerged from the theater with red, puffy eyes, I knew it had affected her as much – if not more – than me. Because as much as the fictional circumstances of the play were different than the real events of our lives, there’s something so identifiable about being sick, or sad, or in trouble, and the only person you want to talk to – the first phone call – is to Mom, because you know that no matter what, she’ll be able to make it better. And there’s something so final, so devastating, about no longer being able to make that call.

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I take comfort in the fact that even though she’s no longer physically here, my Mom is still with me. After all, our parents made us, so how could they not be part of us, inextricably linked? I believe there’s a love there that transcends our physical being, and that’s something that death can’t take away. But I’ll tell you what I miss. I miss the care packages on Valentine’s Day and Easter; care packages that were sent to me long after I was too old to receive them, filled with candy and stickers and silly things. I miss the phone calls on my birthday, when every year without fail, my Mom would sing me a slightly off-key version of Happy Birthday, always ending it by telling me that the day I was born was the happiest day of her life. I used to roll my eyes when she said it, thinking it was so cheesy. Now I’d give anything to hear her say it again. I’d even give anything to have her berate me for not getting enough sleep, or to dismiss a bad mood I’m in by telling me that I’m simply ‘not eating enough protein.’ Isn’t it ironic how all the stuff that used to drive you crazy about a person becomes the stuff you miss desperately once they’re gone?

All things considered, the first Mother’s Day I observed sans Mom was a pretty good one. I shared a lovely and indulgent brunch with one of my dearest friends. The weather could not have been more sunny, warm and Southern California perfect. In the afternoon, I struck the right balance between productivity and relaxation (I’ve always been a work hard, play hard, sort of girl). I was doing great, I really was. And then, leaving the Trader Joe’s parking garage, the friendlier than usual attendant wished me a Happy Mother’s Day, and then– off my face – followed it up quickly with, ‘Are you OK?’ “Yes!” I replied, a little too enthusiastically. He smiled. “I like the flower in your hair,” he said. Ah, bless you, kind stranger, for providing me that small victory. I thanked him and drove off, trying not to cry.

Grief is so funny. It’s rarely what you think will get you – the big stuff – that does it. More often than not, it’s something silly, like the off-handed comment from a well-meaning stranger. Or the restaurant getting your lunch order wrong. Or receiving a piece of news that’s so exciting you can’t wait to pick up the phone and call Mom and then realizing . . . you can’t.

In a way, it’s sort of like every day is Mother’s Day to me since I lost my Mom. I’m never not thinking about her, I’m never not appreciating all the wonderful things she gave me, and I’m never not wishing that she was still here. If you’re lucky enough to still have your Mom, don’t wait for Mother’s Day to hug her, or to send her flowers, or to tell her you love her. Please. Do it for me. Because I really wish that I still could.

Until next time, friends.

usc grad hug

12 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Love

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09

May

U2.

You’re on the road

But you’ve got no destination

You’re in the mud

In the maze of her imagination

You love this town

Even if that doesn’t ring true

You’ve been all over

And it’s been all over you

It’s a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

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As an ‘80s baby who came of age in the 90’s, I’ve never known life without the music of U2. And I’m OK with that. A lifelong fan of the band – especially their magnetic front man, Bono – their songs are forever entwined with countless formative moments in my life. Whether it was the history teacher that used Sunday, Bloody Sunday to teach us about ‘the troubles,’ in Northern Ireland, the awkwardly sweet high school slow dance to With or Without You, the hostel café in Berlin where strangers from different parts of the world became friends while singing an acoustic version of Running to Stand Still, or driving around the neighborhoods of USC in my friend Ryan’s Volkswagen Jetta, belting the lyrics to Beautiful Day out of the car windows – just because we could – their songs are forever linked to my happy and hopeful past.

And while I’ve been to numerous U2 concerts over the years – each one its own spellbinding– almost spiritual – experience, there is one U2-related event in my life that has eclipsed all the others. It was the time I worked at the Grammy Awards and met Bono – if only for a nanosecond – backstage.

During my sophomore year of college, I interned for an entertainment PR firm in Beverly Hills that shared an office building with the event company in charge of producing the Grammy Awards. The Grammy producer became friendly with my boss, and asked if any of her interns wanted to work the awards ceremony, their main job being to escort the talent through the various backstage pressrooms. Umm, yes. Yes, I did.

This was 2001 – the year that U2 was nominated for a whole slew of awards for their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and in particular, their single Beautiful Day. I knew there would be a ton of security around the band, I knew they’d be hard to get to, but I also knew that this was my chance. I was going to meet them, or at least, Bono, if it was the last thing I did.

The week of the Grammys came. At a volunteer orientation, I let the powers that be know what a huge fan I was. Unfortunately, a high profile band like U2 already had ‘people’ to take them through the pressrooms. But, U2 would be doing a sound check at Staples Center the day before the awards ceremony. Would I like to attend that? Oh.My.God. YES.

I’ll never forget walking into that stripped down, empty arena, press pass swinging around my neck, my roommate Kate in tow, both of our eyes wide as saucers as Bono, short in stature but big as life, took the stage and started cracking jokes with the band and the crew. No big deal, just business as usual. The band played Beautiful Day a couple times to make sure everything sounded alright. It did. I could have died right then, one of only a handful of people witnessing a private U2 concert. All in all – it probably only lasted about twenty minutes. But it. Was. Magic.

u2-in-concert

The actual Grammy ceremony and the nanosecond in which I met Bono, wished him congratulations and shook his hand when the band came backstage after winning the Record of the Year award for Beautiful Day was so impactful that I wrote a performance piece about it. It was a ten-minute monologue that I performed as part of a solo performance workshop during my senior year at USC. I called the piece Moxie, in which I recounted the night of the Grammy Awards through two dueling characters: Sarah (me) and Moxie, my braver, bolder, sassier alter ego who, rather than stammering like some idiot groupie, would have ever so coolly finagled an invite to the after party, hung out with the band, and become Bono’s bestie for life.

Thirteen years after that magical Grammy week, I still battle with the duality that I wrote about in Moxie. There’s the person that I show the world, and there’s the person that I know that I am, deep down inside. Though the disconnect between the two is shrinking as I get older and more confident, my ongoing struggle continues to be to challenge myself to be braver, to take more risks, and to live life on a larger scale. Essentially, to be more like Moxie.

Tomorrow – May 10th – is Bono’s 54th birthday (and perhaps coincidentally – or not – it is also the birthday of my friend and sound check buddy, Kate). So, in tribute to one of my musical idols and to a band that I’ve loved my whole life, I want to publicly say thank you. Thank you for the music. Thank you for providing the soundtrack that has helped shaped my life. Thank you for reminding me that even if I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, that’s OK. And thank you for the following lyric from that award-winning song; a song that’s all about keeping the faith in the face of despair, that no matter how bad things may seem, we are blessed with so much beauty all around us. A song that whenever I’m feeling a bit down, I return to:

See the world in green and blue


See China right in front of you


See the canyons broken by cloud


See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night


See the oil fields at first light


And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth


After the flood all the colors came out


It was a beautiful day


Don’t let it get away


Beautiful day

Touch me


Take me to that other place


Reach me


I know I’m not a hopeless case

What you don’t have you don’t need it now


What you don’t know you can feel it somehow


What you don’t have you don’t need it now



It was a beautiful day

Until next time, friends.

u211

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Heroes/Los Angeles/Love/Me/Music

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01

May

Fiction.

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I’m writing a screenplay that’s loosely (OK, maybe not so loosely) based upon my life. The lead character is, essentially, me. Except she’s cooler than I am, she’s more screwed up, she’s funnier than I am and she’s more of a bad ass. She’s me, but she’s more. She’s the me I wish that I could be.

As I’ve been writing, I’ve realized something: penning a story about a character that’s a hyper-realized version of myself is my attempt to re-write my life. I’m writing my girl into scenes that are thisclose to some of my actual life experiences, but I’m making them more exciting, more dangerous, sexier, and flat out more interesting than real life. This screenplay is becoming my own revisionist history, where my life is made more compelling (at least, that’s the goal) through added conflict and drama.

The opportunity to step into different shoes and experience lives that are more adventurous, bolder, and more on the edge than my own is why I like acting and it’s why I like writing. But sometimes I wonder if I’m spending so much time living in other people’s heads that I’ve lost sight of what’s really in front of me. I put my earphones in and daydream movies in my mind as I listen to music. I make up stories about people – both complete strangers and people that I know – because making up stories is fun. But am I so attracted to the fantasy version of life that it has eclipsed actual reality? And if that were the case, would I even know it?

The roots of this behavior began when I was very young. As a child, I spent a lot of time alone. Dad traveled a lot, drank a lot, and Mom was often sad and difficult to reach out to. My parents were loving, but – if I’m honest – they were emotionally distant and wrapped up in their own worlds and problems. I didn’t have siblings my own age so I grew up essentially as an only child, daydreaming up fantasy worlds and entertaining myself through songs, games and stories. If I felt like psychoanalyzing myself, I’d say that my early isolation is probably the very reason I became attracted to showbiz and the arts in the first place. My stories and my imagination were a coping mechanism, they were a form of self-protection, and they became my world.

I wonder about the fantasy/reality distinction in my non-fiction blogging as well. While the events I write about are all true and have all really happened, I wonder if I don’t make them sharper, more interesting, and somehow different than they actually are simply in the act of retelling them? It’s quite impossible for a storyteller to divorce an experience from their unique perspective on it. But if every single event, every single human interaction is filtered through experience, then is everything subjective and somehow, shaded?

Pablo Picasso famously said, ‘Art is not the truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.’ By telling stories about my real life and turning them into art, am I somehow getting closer to my truth? Or have I simply become entranced by my own fiction?

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Me/Opinion

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22

Apr

Faith.

photo-5

The dictionary defines the word faith as “belief that is not based on proof,” and “confidence or trust in a person or thing.” Faith is unscientific. More often than not, it is identified with religion and a belief in God.

My whole life, I’ve been sort of ambivalent about religion. Both of my parents were Catholics, though my Dad was much more devout than my Mom. Mom bore the unfortunate scars of Catholic school-inflicted trauma. She’d frequently recount tales of nuns that were so terrifying – routinely smacking their students with rulers, preaching of fire and brimstone – that she’d pretend to be sick so she wouldn’t have to go to school. Mom lived in fear of those nuns, and though she eventually returned to the church, that fear created a tension between her and Catholicism that stayed with her throughout her life.

So, between a mother that was skittish about religion, and a father who, while a believer, preferred watching sports on Sundays to going to mass, church attendance throughout my youth was sporadic at best, and mostly reserved for holidays like Christmas and Easter. Though I always felt pretty comfortable in the church, as I got older, my liberal politics – particularly my support for gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose – created a disconnect between my beliefs and the Vatican that I couldn’t reconcile. So I mostly stayed away.

As a liberal, I have a lot of friends who are atheists: a belief that I respect. I think it’s actually quite brave to believe that this life is all there is, and when it’s over, that’s it. But to be completely honest, that idea terrifies me. I find comfort in the idea that our souls carry on beyond the lives of our bodies, and that our spirits are so much more than our physical being. If you’ve ever been with someone you loved when the life passed out of them and seen that they simply weren’t there anymore, you know what I’m talking about.

September 29, 2012 was the date of my Mom’s memorial service. It was an informal waterfront gathering in Allyn, WA, on a parcel of land that’s been in my Mom’s family since the late 1950s. It’s a sort of family compound (my Grandfather, Aunt and Uncle all still live there) that we simply call ‘the beach.’ Despite spending the first fifteen years of my life with a permanent residence in Anchorage, Alaska, I essentially grew up at the beach, as did my Mom, and my Uncle Glenn. It was my Mom’s favorite place in the whole world and the only fitting place to hold her service.

That evening, sitting on the deck of my Grandparents’ house starting out at Case Inlet, I was struck by how beautiful everything was. It was an uncharacteristically warm, clear day for late September in the Pacific Northwest. The sound was flat as glass and reflected the heavens like a mirror. An enormous full moon gleamed bright white, hovering over a big-as-life Mt. Rainier. All was so calm and quiet, you could have heard a pin drop. And as I sat and stared out at the sound, for the first time in the weeklong chaos following my Mom’s death, I felt a sense of peace. I knew that she was here, that she was with me.

The skeptic in me immediately chimes in that I wanted to feel her with me, and that, of course, is true. But I simply can’t explain the power of that moment. It was as though the sea and the sky wrapped me up and held me in a warm blanket, and through the tremendous beauty of my surroundings and the almost trance-like calm that came over me, I could feel my Mom whispering to me, “I’m here. I’m O.K., Sar. I’m home.”

But the most powerful exchange I’ve had with my Mother since she passed on happened last Christmas, and it’s something I’ve told almost no one, and certainly not in as great of detail as I’m about to recount here, because it’s so incredibly personal. I was at the beach, and – as usual – staying in a mobile home on a piece of property adjacent to my Grandparents’ beach cabin. The mobile home and the piece of land used to belong to my parents but was willed to me after their deaths. And while I’m grateful for the inheritance, truth be told, I hate that trailer. My Mom inhabited that thing during the darkest period of her life, and the energy it contains is heavy and oppressive and oh so sad. Some joyful day I will raze it to the ground and build a new home in its place. But, I digress.

The trailer is also – until the perfect summer day meets my Uncle and I finding courage enough to scatter them – the temporary home for my Mother’s ashes. Whenever I stay there, I talk to my Mom. Sometimes, I hold the box of ashes in my arms and hug them.

But on this particular day – last Christmas Eve – I had hit a serious wall. After more than a year of being in survival mode, of moving from one crisis to the next, of working so very hard and keeping myself so very busy as a distraction from the weight of all the emotional baggage I’d been carrying, I finally, finally hit zero. I simply couldn’t pretend to be OK anymore. I’d arrived at a place of overwhelming hopelessness and despair. I knew I needed to change, but I didn’t feel strong enough and I didn’t know where or how to begin.

And so I cradled the box containing my Mom’s ashes and I wept. This emotional actress has cried a lot of tears in her life, but I have never, ever, cried like that. Uncontrollably, unceasingly, just this river of emotion. I didn’t ask, I implored. I begged. “Mom,” I sobbed, “I don’t know what to do. I am so scared. Please help me. Please tell me what to do. Please, Mom.” I have never been more humble. I have never been more afraid. And I have never wanted my Mother more.

I don’t know how the universe works. I don’t know if my Mom heard me that night, or if I was just crying to myself. But I do know that in my darkest moment, I asked for help and then help started to arrive. It wasn’t in the form I wanted. It arrived in a way that wasn’t pleasant; help arrived in the form of an unseen hand that grabbed me by the collar and shook me hard and slapped me across the face and screamed, “wake up!” It was a hand that pushed me through pain in order to make it clear that the only way out was through, that in order to live, a part of me had to die. It was gut-wrenching, but I can see now that it was what I needed.

Four months after that dark, dark Christmas Eve, my healing has been dramatic. I still have a steep mountain to climb, but I am more optimistic, more creative, and less afraid. I am making my choices out of hope now, rather than out of fear. I’m learning to trust myself again.

I don’t know exactly where I come down on the God question. But if faith is a belief in something that can’t be seen, then I have it. And time and time again, over the last two years, when I’ve stepped into something having nothing but faith, that faith has been rewarded. I’ve seen and felt too much not to believe that there’s a force out there that’s bigger than me. A force that’s compassionate, a force that wants me, you, us, to be our highest and best selves. I don’t know if that’s God or the universe or magic or what. All I know is what I’ve felt in the deepest reaches of my soul, and in the darkest moments of my heart. That’s my truth. I don’t need it to be anyone else’s, but it’s mine.  And now I’ve shared it with you.

Until next time, friends.

stub039

12 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Love/Me/Opinion/Religion

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17

Apr

Trouble.

Noir Lemon Melon

I like to fight. I can’t help it. My Irish father used to delight in telling his kids that our surname Kelly meant ‘troublesome’ in Gaelic. He’d laugh as he said it, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Dad was a trial lawyer, and by nature, he liked to argue. At family gatherings, my older siblings would often refuse to take the bait, preferring to pursue the path of diplomacy. Not me. I gave as good as I got. Frequent sparring became a central part of Dad’s and my relationship, and he’d pick fights with me on purpose, knowing that more often than not, I’d rise to the occasion.

When Dad was sick and living alone in his home in Olympia, he became even more stubborn and set in his ways. He was maddening, impossible. Everything was a negotiation. We wanted him to be in hospice care, he wanted to die alone at home. We tried to get him a live-in caretaker; he absolutely refused to have a stranger – no matter how qualified or permissive or kind – in his house.

And so it went, the battles. As Dad’s health declined, he labeled me the ‘aggressive’ one. My sisters were much sweeter, nicer, more patient, while I still fought Dad at nearly every turn. And I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it.

One of my last visits to Olympia coincided with an epic football match up between our alma maters: Dad’s beloved Oregon Ducks against my USC Trojans. Dad not only refused to watch the game with me because I wasn’t rooting for his team, he went so far as to banish me to another room, where I watched the game, sequestered away from him where he couldn’t hear me cheer if USC scored a touchdown. While my sister Deirdre shuttled back and forth between the two rooms, Dad and I watched and rooted against each other in our separate corners. At halftime, he abruptly shuffled into the kitchen to make himself a drink, barked ‘exciting game,’ and then retreated back to his den.

It’s no wonder I take sports so seriously. It’s no wonder I’m so competitive. I learned it from my Dad. I learned how to hold my own in fiery, contentious arguments. I learned that fighting with style and eloquence and passion is more effective than fighting fair. And I learned that the person who gets the last word usually wins, and so I always, always try to get the last word. A quality that not everyone finds endearing.

There’s a reason I’m drawn to the film noir genre and co-produce a noir play festival: I love to play bitches. The acting roles I get the most excited about are damaged, edgy, tough, dark and twisted dames who like to break the rules and who will claw and scrape for what they want. I may look like the girl next door, but I’d much rather be Lady Macbeth. After all, it’s a lot more fun to step into someone else’s skin if you’re able to take bolder risks and bigger chances than you’re allowed to in real life, and you’re not bound by the societal expectation to play nice.

There’s a part of me that understands that I have to follow the rules, and there’s a part of me that wants to break stuff, just to watch it shatter. I want to light things on fire and watch them burn. I want to crash the car, to jump off the cliff, to push the limits of what I can get away with.

I like to fight. I like to win. It’s why I’m still here. It’s why I won’t give up. And it’s why, sometimes, I live up to my last name.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Me

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11

Apr

The price.

For the last several months I’ve been meditating on a big idea. A vast, multi-faceted idea. An idea that can be approached from different sides and attacked from numerous angles. An idea that for me, as an artist and as a creative being, is on par with questions like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ ‘What’s my higher purpose?’ and ‘Why are we all here?’

I don’t think I can tackle the question weighing on my mind in one post. It’s too big. It will probably become a recurring theme in my work (echoes of it appear in my blog, Broken), or in a series of posts. I’m not sure yet.

But, to begin. What I’ve been puzzling over is this: in order to create great art, is suffering a necessary, and in fact, inevitable, part of the process?

Our history is rife with visionary creators who harbored broken souls. Tennessee Williams, Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath. More recently, Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The talented and tortured musicians who are members of that infamous 27 club: Jimi, Janis, Jim, Kurt, Amy.

There’s no doubt that among the gifted and the sensitive, there’s a proclivity toward addiction and self-destruction. But why? Don’t mistake me; I’m not suggesting that in order to be a great artist (or even a mediocre one), alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, even suicidal tendencies, are a prerequisite. If anything, this toxic and destructive behavior produces inertia that stands in the way of the creative process. But the idea that I keep coming back to is this: as artists, we suffer more than the rest of people. We feel things more exquisitely. In order to be visionary, we must be honest to the point that it’s painful. We must be willing to expose our most private, secret parts, our deepest vulnerabilities, and the darkest parts of our hearts. We must walk into the full range of human emotions open and unguarded.   And for that, we pay a hefty price.

I have a uniquely personal experience with the idea that the act of creation produces suffering, and it’s the reason I’ve been meditating on it at such great length. Over the last year and a half, I’ve lost three of the most important people in my life in dramatic fashion. And I lost not only their physical presence, but also something much deeper and more profound. Through their deaths, I’ve been faced with hard truths about my family that I didn’t want to know. Truths that have shaken and shattered my foundation and left me questioning everything I thought I knew: my childhood, my relationships, my history, and my very identity.

But here’s the gift. When I finally, recently, landed at zero, I became more creative. My writing got better. Ideas started clicking, and synapses started firing in a way they never had before. I found myself suddenly harnessing an authority that I’d never owned before; an authority that I’m not only compelled to share with others, but an authority that I have to share in order to survive. I know this like I know the color of my eyes or the place that I was born.

All human beings suffer. It’s inevitable. We make terrible, tragic mistakes. We experience great pain. We love deeply and we lose profoundly. Most people don’t walk into these emotions willingly. They avoid them because they’re painful, and only experience them as the inevitable by-product of being alive. But as artists, we wade into the most intense human experiences willfully, and with abandon. We welcome the pain, the joy, the agony and the ecstasy. We say bring it on. We want to feel everything. But sometimes we feel too much. Enter booze, drugs, sex, crazy, destructive behavior, in order to numb the pain. And that’s when we get into trouble.

Speaking from personal experience, it’s incredibly difficult to put my heart on the line and my grief on display in such a vulnerable way without becoming a little fucked up and unhealthy about it in the process. The intense feelings I’ve been wading into and moving through have made me feel closer to Tennessee and to Sylvia and to Vincent and to Kurt. I understand them better. My gift and my curse is that the hole in my heart is only filled through sharing my very personal story with the world. And yet to sit in those feelings without letting them swallow me whole is the great challenge that I’m still trying to sort out. The powerful conundrum that we face as artists is that our very lives depend on telling our stories – honestly, openly, nakedly, no holds barred – and yet the act of doing so is so dangerous to our psyches that it threatens our survival. It is the ultimate Catch 22, the tightrope we must all walk.

And so, my fellow poets, beautiful dreamers, dear friends, brave and broken souls, I invite you to join me in meditation on this question: how do we do what we must do, what we were born and put on this earth to do, without allowing it to destroy us?

It’s an open dialogue, if you’d like to have it.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Los Angeles/Love/Me/Opinion/Well-Being

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04

Apr

Nothing.

Tell me if this has happened to you before: you’re confronted with a problem that you don’t know how to solve, and so, rather than react, you wait.  And while you’re waiting, this problem magically takes care of itself.  It could be an email that you don’t know how to respond to, a request for help from a needy friend that you just don’t have time for, or a work problem that you’re not sure how to tackle.  And sometimes, as with a computer glitch, all you really need to do is turn it off for a while and leave it alone.  It’s the equivalent of shutting down and rebooting your system.

I’m the last person to advocate ignoring a problem in hopes that it will just go away.  I’m a doer.  Anybody who has worked with me on one of the plays or films I’ve produced knows that I’m about 100 miles from lazy.  It is simply not in my DNA to do nothing.

But sometimes in life, it’s important to take a beat.  Sometimes waiting and letting the dust settle is the only thing that can be done.  Sometimes, inaction is the best course of action.

Since I’ve become the girl who writes about very sad things – don’t blame me, blame the cosmic forces at work in shaping my life’s trajectory over the last twenty-four months – allow me relate the power of doing nothing back to another very sad thing.

When my Dad was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic and liver cancer in the spring of 2012, he decided that the best course of action was to do nothing.  The tumors in his liver numbered at least ten – too many to operate successfully – and the pancreatic tumor he had was so rare that the only chemo drug available was brand new to the market, experimental at best, and wouldn’t eradicate the tumor.  In short, there was no cure.  His only treatment option might buy him some time, but it could also make him very sick.  Why add more years to your life, if the life in your years was full of vomiting, pain and misery?

Dad, ever the pragmatist, opted to let his life run its inevitable course.  He figured that at 81, he’d lived a good life and he was going out on his terms.  Plus, any chemo meant that he would have to stop drinking, and there was no way the Irish rascal was giving up his booze, especially not with a looming expiration date.  As Dad’s internist said when his diagnosis came down, ‘If I had your prognosis, Bernie, I’d buy a one-way ticket to a Caribbean island, park myself on the beach with a tropical drink in hand, and lie in the sun until my time was up.’

I thought my Dad’s decision was brave, and it was the one I would have made had I been faced with the same set of circumstances.  My Mom, on the other hand, couldn’t accept it.  I had numerous conversations with her in which I laid out all of the facts on the ground and explained how all reason and logic necessitated that this was the only way to proceed.  And after all, it was Dad’s decision, and we had to respect his wishes.  But no amount of reasoning or logic ever got through to my Mother.  She became obsessed with the idea that this experimental, unproven, non-cure of a drug might work, or that there had to be something else, some unseen solution, something no doctor had ever heard of that just might be a miracle cure.

Accepting that there is nothing that you can do when someone you love is going to die is probably the toughest form of acceptance there is.  There’s a reason why there are five stages of grief and acceptance is the last one.  It is not an easy road to get there.  But as I reflect on the way that my Mom obsessed on Dad’s decision – to the point of making herself literally insane – and how that obsession exacerbated her own addictions and the numerous issues she was already battling, I can’t help but see her behavior as a cautionary tale.

I am my Mother’s daughter.  I am anxious like her and I worry like her and I make endless to-do lists and I lose sleep over the contents of those to-do lists.  I would always, always, rather do something than do nothing.  But, I am trying to learn to be OK with the fact that sometimes there’s nothing to be done.

I can be impulsive and a bit rash (blame the stars, I’m a Sagittarius).  Often, I try too hard and do too much and in doing so, I can turn a situation that’s just fine on its own into a mess.  I am impatient, and frequently just want to get on with it.  But there’s an art to knowing when to act and knowing when to let it be.  When to do something and when to do nothing.  When to take a breath, and relax and let life take care of itself.  And to realize that sometimes, time is the only thing that heals.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Me/Opinion/Well-Being

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28

Mar

The gift.

A recurring theme in my life these days seems to be the idea that good can come from bad, that great beauty can be born from great adversity, that even the most oppressive rain clouds possess their silver lining, if you’d only look for it.  Several days ago when I was having a particularly tough day, I returned to a poem called Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski.  It was introduced to me several years ago by my friend Barbara and I’ve leaned on it many times over the years when I’ve needed a lift (If you’d like to read it, it’s pasted below, at the bottom of this blog).  The poem is about dedicating yourself to your passion and being so committed to it that you’re willing to suffer through any hardship in order to make it happen.  A couple lines in particular stand out:  Isolation is the gift.  All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.

Isolation is the gift.  It’s tough to be alone.  It’s more fun to be with other people, to be social.  But it’s also a distraction.  My acting teacher said something in class a few weeks ago and I wrote it down because it really hit home.  Anyone who’s trying to do something wonderful will suffer in loneliness.  He was talking about artists – actors in particular – and the art of creation.  But I think it’s true for most people. As much as we are social beings, we need time on our own.  To do our work.  To figure out who we really are without the opinions of others reflecting back upon us like mirrors.

I have a complicated relationship with my aloneness. I hate it because it makes me feel just that:  lonely.  But I also need it.  There was so much to do after my mother’s death, that I didn’t have time to grieve.  My dad was ill and he was alone.  My grandmother was ill.  Bad things kept happening and crisis management stretched on for months.  And after both my dad and grandmother passed, I threw myself into work, co-producing a play festival and a film, and just keeping so, so busy.

At the time, I think being busy and distracted was what I needed to do.  I had to keep moving in order to get through.  But now – finally – I’ve arrived at the place where in order to get better and to heal, I have to sit with myself and let the feelings land where they land.  No one else can do that for me.  No one can grow for me, or process my emotions for me, or get healthy for me, or make the changes I need to make for me.  That’s my job.  And like it or not, it’s a path I’ve got to walk alone.

It feels paradoxical to say that because throughout all the tough stuff, I’ve been surrounded by wonderful, loving people who’ve buoyed me up, who’ve supported me, and without whom I never would have survived the darkest of the dark.  I don’t want to slight them or diminish their crucial importance in my life.  I’m eternally grateful for every helping hand and kind word.  But now I’ve got to scour the depths of my soul for what’s next and the only one who can do that is yours truly.

We don’t walk into the great unknown willingly because change is uncomfortable and, at times, terrifying.  But life, through circumstance, will drive us to change.  It pushes us to be better when we won’t do it on our own.  It shakes us up when we need to be shaken; it creates obstacles that we must overcome, so that we can surprise ourselves with our resourcefulness and stand in our own strength.  ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ has become such a cliché I almost hate to type it on the page, but clichés are anchored in our vernacular for a reason:  they’re true.

I’ve survived a lot of traumatic life events over the last two years, but I’m starting to see the gift in what has happened to me.  It’s tough to admit that because it almost sounds like I’m grateful for the bad stuff, or that I somehow wanted it to happen.  I’m not, and I didn’t.  But I’m grateful for what it has taught me, for what it is teaching me.  I’m grateful for the ability to look at my life through different, wiser (and yes, sadder) eyes and appreciate how truly beautiful it is, and what a gift I have indeed been given.

Isolation is the gift.  For me, right now, it is.  I’m surrounded by amazing people who love me and whom I love back.  I’m lucky.  But – at least for the time being – I’m on a path that, on a fundamental level, I must walk alone.  To grow.  To explore.  To write and to do my work.  And to just come home.  To me.

Until next time, friends.

Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski:

If you’re going to try, go all the way.

Otherwise, don’t even start.

This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind.

It could mean not eating for three or four days.

It could mean freezing on a park bench.

It could mean jail.  It could mean derision.  It could mean mockery — isolation.

Isolation is the gift.

All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.

And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.

And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

If you’re going to try, go all the way.

There is no other feeling like that.

You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.

You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.

It’s the only good fight there is.

12 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Me/Opinion/Well-Being

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21

Mar

Bye bye, BlackBerry.

photoI have officially entered the ranks of people living in 2014:  a week ago, I bought my first iPhone.  As much as I love the conveniences that my sparkling new 5s has afforded me, it was not easy for me to part ways with my dinosaur of a smart phone.  Call me sentimental, call me stubborn, call me touch screen averse – all true.  I will admit to being slightly irrational for holding on to it for so long, but damn it, I loved that phone.

I got my BlackBerry Tour just over 4 years ago (4 years!  That phone was indestructible. I am convinced that it could have survived a nuclear holocaust).  Purchased at a Sprint store in Tacoma, Washington, it was a birthday present from my Mom and my first ever smart phone.  My plan came with a generous Boeing discount, because, in the words of the friendly (Yes, friendly!  Because everyone is friendly in the Pacific Northwest) Sprint employee, ‘everyone here knows someone who works for Boeing.’

It may be pretentious and kind of weird to personify a phone, but over the last four plus years that BlackBerry was as reliable as any of my besties.  It traveled with me to London, Paris, Chicago, New Orleans, Phoenix, Amsterdam (to name a few), and all over the Pacific Northwest from Vancouver to Seattle to Olympia to Medford, Oregon with stops in between.  It was a vital tool in coordinating both creative endeavors (co-producing several plays, as well as my first film) and crisis management (planning details of my parents’ memorial services, fighting a bad case of identify theft, troubleshooting an insurance nightmare after a rental car break-in in Chicago).  Through it all, my phone was there, and with it, the ability to send lighting fast emails and text messages on my beloved keypad.

The truth is, I’m still a bit of an analog girl living in a digital world.  I love the smell of books and I’d rather hold one in my hand than read it on a Kindle.  I find sublime happiness in flipping through a glossy magazine.  And I’m convinced I do my best writing pen to paper, rather than fingers to keyboard.

Maybe it’s for these reasons that I resisted upgrading the technology of my phone.  Maybe (definitely) there’s a great deal of sentimental value attached to that pocket computer given who gave it to me and where it came from.  Maybe after all we’ve been through together, BlackBerry, it’s just hard to quit you.

But like all good things, this too had to come to an end.  For years, my phone was the little engine that could.  But when the battery started to go and I had to be plugged into a charger for any conversation lasting longer than 3 minutes, I knew it was time to say goodbye.

So bye bye, BlackBerry.  Bye bye generous Boeing discount, keypad and the beloved ‘ding’ you made whenever I received a text message.  Hello Instagram, super fast internet, convenience, and (gulp) a real cell phone bill.  You may be gone, old friend, but you’ll never, never be forgotten.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Lifestyle/Love/Me/Technology

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