Flying Dreams (poem)

 

They begin when I am eighteen, dreams
Refusing subtlety, rising from books that say
You can leave your body, it feels like flying.

I don’t believe it. Then it happens to me.

The first dreams take me up, not like wings,
But suddenly, without warning, slowly at first.
Then faster and higher than I’ve ever been or will be
Like a comet, flying high over the trees until

The clouds turn hazy and I swoop, like a bat, 
Past branches, moss, leaves, a sky bereft of animals
Speed is all I have to pull me forward, spiraling
Like rice paper, lifted by the wind.

See more in my post for Medium.

Photo by Look Up Look Down Photography on Unsplash

When You Fail/Die/Bomb Onstage, What Can You Do to Recover?

 

Have you ever had to perform a show without one of your cast or band members when no understudy was available? I have, and though I never want to do it again, I’ve never forgotten what happened.

I was in a punk-pop-rock band, working with a manager who found us college gigs. It was a Friday night, and I think we’d been advertised as more of a dance band than a concert. We’d have been better off with a seated audience, but a lot of colleges preferred dance bands at the time.

As it happened, our lead singer/songwriter/guitarist was really sick, and could hardly stand. He was willing to go with us anyway, but we couldn’t bear the thought of him falling over onstage and told him we could perform without him. I think we also wanted to show him we could function without him, if we had to — though in fact, it wasn’t true.

Once we arrived and started setting up the stage, I was feeling less and less confident. All we had was a bass player, a drummer, and a vocalist (me), whose signature songs consisted of harmonizing with the lead singer/founder. We tried playing the songs we were used to doing, but they sounded weird without either acoustic or electric guitar.

After a few songs, people in the audience began booing us and telling us we sucked.I hated to hear it, and at the same time, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand. In fact, I didn’t like how we sounded, either. After a few more tries, we ended up leaving and telling the staffer at the door that one of our members was sick and we should have canceled.  As you can probably guess, we didn’t get paid.

Of course, people bomb out for all kinds of reasons, but when it happens to you, it can feel like a monster squeezing his hands around your throat. Was there something we could have done? In hindsight, nearly everything.

Read more on Medium.

Seeing Family and Old Friends Made me Realize How Much I Miss Them: Because Careers and Friendship Shouldn't Compete

 

I tend to be ravenous about advancing my career. Every year, every opportunity I snatch or miss is always an occasion for obsessing about what I could have done better. And while I love my family and friends, I don’t always show them what they mean to me.

Now, I’m reaching an age where I think much more about who I want to be as much as what I want to do as an artist. Finding myself at dinner last week with friends as I reached my birthday, I had to think for a minute when a friend asked if I had any thoughts on where I’m going.

The first thing I thought about was that it’s been too long since I’ve seen the people I grew up with or who I became friends with during my twenties. The time I spent with everyone shows me how strong you can become when surrounded by people you’ve known for a while. In my usual day-to-day routines, I take walks, write, eat, talk on the phone, do errands, and send emails, but have to work harder to connect with people.

When I’m visiting good friends and family, we’re able to pick up where we left off instantly, and our lives reflect that closeness. I’m lucky to have a husband and even luckier to say we are happy after more than two decades together. Would life be perfect if I were nearer to other relatives and friends? No, because nothing is perfect. But it would be a whole lot closer to the kind of life I’m looking for.

What I discovered during the past two weeks about the people I love: When we are together, we share everything. We are braver, funnier, stronger, more perceptive.

Do they miss me as much as I miss them? I don’t really know. I can say it felt enormously good to be with them and made me second-guess my choice to move to the Midwest many years ago.

Read more on Medium.

Photo: Taken by a friend; property of the author

Did I Lose My Fearlessness?

I smoked Marlboros or Parliaments; drank Manhattans, stout and burgundy wine. I took risks of all kinds with my friends — including auditioning for parts we thought were right for us. When they didn’t happen, we dealt with rejection and heartbreak, pulled ourselves up and started over. Romantic relationships were pretty crazy, too— but they taught me so much, they were worth it. When all this happened, I was twenty.

Looking back on those days now, where did my courage and confidence go?

It seems to have vanished, and I need it now, more than ever. There are days life gets to you, and you know you’ll rebound. Today, there is no rebound — just a lot of fear where courage used to be.

I lived in Boston four years as an Emerson College student and then stayed one extra year in an administrative job for what may have been a community college. (I could never figure out what it really was.) What would academics do without newly minted graduates who neaten up their bosses’ lives?

I lived as I imagined people should live, if those people were twenty. Once, I set out with my laundry and ran into two castmates from a play who invited me to a friend’s wedding. Scooting home, I dumped the laundry and changed into a dress that was bought at a thrift store. After eleven glasses of champagne at the wedding, I came home sailing on a pink cloud, making my roommate laugh.

It was a time of fearlessness and confidence. The belief that while I was an unholy mess and the world was an even worse mess, I was going to triumph, one way or another. I couldn’t have told you what that way would be, except it would involve either acting or writing.

Read more on Medium.

All Grown Up and Reading Middle-School Books? Me, Too

Yes, I read fiction and nonfiction for adults all the time — but I’ve been reading middle school and young adult (YA) novels for a while. I started thinking about young readers after going to work at Scholastic Choices Magazine. It was one of the more fun jobs I had — and I loved meeting seventh and eighth graders and finding out what they thought about the world.

Still, as an adult, many people say you’re not supposed to read middle school or young-adult fiction. When I was in my twenties, it was unheard of — and if you did, you wouldn’t tell anyone for fear of them judging you as a reader and a person.

What people may not realize if they don’t read this genre is how spectacular some of the authors are — and how much you miss by not reading them. They also may not know that middle school and YA books can help us understand our kids better — if we have them.

My own situation led me to younger readers’ books after I had to leave Scholastic Magazine to move to the Midwest due to family job changes. Luckily, I was able to write articles for Scholastic as a freelancer. I wrote about budgets, cooking, teen marriage, and much more — along with expanding to another Scholastic magazine focused on current events. I didn’t think about middle school books, though, until my friend Tori became a copy editor in the book division.

Read more on Medium.

What We Say About the Old

With my favorite season upon us, I really don’t want to think about the debate and how scared everyone is about President Biden’s ability to do his job. I’m going to leave it to others to write about him, because I’m more interested in what no one talks about — which is how we see getting older and how we talk about the older adults we know.

I say "we" because I'd like you to take a few days and listen--to the radio, your friends, to anyone you normally listen to--and track what they say about older generations.

For several years now, I've heard President Biden called "feeble" or "senile" or other words related to directly to stereotypes about being older. Having worked for a decade helping older generations and the people who care for them tell their stories, it's really disheartening for me to hear words like this--though not surprising.

Read more on Medium.

Why "The Last Five Years" is Still One of My Favorite Musicals

A young couple moves to New York together; he, to follow a writing career and she to become a professional actor. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, while she gets very little work and ultimately comes to see her career as a failure. As so often happens in such situations, the couple goes through a few years of angst and then breaks up.

This is the premise of The Last Five Years, one of my favorite musicals, which I only saw a few years ago and which is told with an impressively innovative structure. The lead character Cathy starts her story at the end, singing “Still Hurting” after the couple has broken up. As she works her way backwards, her husband Jamie tells his story more conventionally. They meet up once in the middle, during their wedding. 

So much for the tried-and-true rule that says we always need “a beginning, middle and end” in that order. This show proves we do not.

Read more on Medium.