If We Don't Laugh, We're All Going to Drown in our Tears and Mutual Anxiety Over the State of our Country.
You ever do something terribly clever? Or make something, or comment in a group setting and be lauded for your thoughts? You ever hear an applause at the end of your performance, or get a high grade on a test, or perfect a difficult pavlova recipe and think, “Well, that’s it. That’s all I got. It’s all down here from here, kid.” Because I do, multiple times a day.
I had a blog, then I had a podcast, then I had neither. And, this could easily and quickly become an aggressive rant on the pitfalls of working partnerships with unqualified “producers” unwilling to sign release agreements, but who has time for that really, we're in Trump's America now.
What I want to focus on is myself, like the good Millennial that I am. Why don’t I have anything to write about anymore? Why can’t I seem to muster the drive I had before to revive the blog, to revive the podcast? Why can’t I think of anyone to blame for this purposeless existence? Is it ok to have periods of time where you don’t make shit and things are truly “fine” and that’s alright?
Here’s my running list of things that inspire me currently:
1)lots of coffee
2)Tito’s and soda with a lime (or, what I like to call, “The Drink of the Gays”)
3)being outside
4) M Train by Patti Smith
5)the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 113th and Amsterdam
6)swimming in the ocean
7)pigeons
8) talking about death
9)online rug shopping
Aside from all of that, everything else is mildly depressing. But I’m happy! Happy-depressed I guess. I have an off and on longterm acting gig, I have a magic dream apartment with a boy I love, I have brows I do nothing to but are powerful enough to launch a thousand ships. I get a lot of compliments about my brows, now that I think about it. Fuck, my brows are more inspiring than me now.
Last November I met two young women in Berlin who changed my life. I was traveling by myself for the first time ever and embarrassingly terrified at the prospect of doing so. The first night there I wandered around Kreuzberg because the trendy young man at the check-in desk of my hostel described it as “the Williamsburg, Brooklyn neighborhood of Berlin.” Still not quite sure why this was a selling point, but I took his advice. Committed to being alone and doing it right I took public transportation. Well, I took it two stops until I realized I was on the wrong trolly and then hopped off, grabbed the first cab I could and continued along. It was lightly raining and dark outside but many of the shops and restaurants were open. People were walking around in fashionable glasses, walking spoiled rescue mutts, and no one seemed bogged down by the demands of their long day at their jobs. I really was in Williamsburg.
That first night, getting lost, and wandering around alone, and eating mediocre Indian food next to a couple fighting in German, eavesdropping on their conversation even thought I didn’t understand a word (he was definitely in the wrong though), drinking in a seedy basement bar, talking to strangers when I wanted to and being quiet when I wanted to, reading, and writing down everything I saw, that was the perhaps the last time I was purely inspired. Really inspired, which feels different than happiness. I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to hold onto the secret concoction of that magic night and keep it bubbling inside me so that I could be inspired forever, whatever way that would/could manifest itself.
Habits die hard. I woke the next morning at the ass crack of dawn, ready to sight see and travel alone and keep to myself. But then I signed up for a six hour group guided walking tour of Berlin sooooo my concept of reflective and individual solitude was subconsciously seriously skewed. As I let the intense and excessively tall, talkative Canadian man lead me through Berlin I tried to keep to myself. I tried to answer the other tourists on the walking tour with one-word answers and a face that said, “Hey, thank you for thinking I’m cool and wanting to engage with me, my mom thinks I’m awesome too, but I’m trying to find myself right now through introspective thought through Germany’s rich yet emotionally wrought history please don’t talk to me right now.” And then, after trying not to, I made friends.
“This Canadian guy is kind of an asshole. Why is he living here if he dislikes it so much? I bet he was deported…No no no no Canadians don’t deport anyone they are so nice,” are snippets of conversation between the two young women behind me. One is short, the other tall. One is dark haired, dark complexioned, the other very pale and blonde like me. Both are around 22. Not so much like me.
“He’s kind of a dick and I was about to leave but then he let us stop for a beer and redeemed himself in my eyes,” I quickly insert into a conversation that didn’t involve me. But, when one finally embraces ones inability to be completely alone, one might as well talk about beer.
These two smart, young, recent graduated of American Culinary Institute had been backpacking across the world for the last four months, with two more months to go. They had worked on organic farms in Italy, and bartered in Istanbul, and lived off the clothes in their backpacks. I, on the other hand, arrived in Germany with no less than three full length ball gowns. Three. Because, what the fuck is wrong with me.
We spent the better part of that day, and the next day together. We realized we were all staying in the same hostel and the last day I bought them breakfast as a surprise to say in my own special way, “thank you for being badasses and making me want to be a badass too.”
Since Germany a lot of terrific things have happened. I started the podcast. And then the podcast fell apart. I have worked a great deal onstage, and I have had periods of no work. I have stopped writing. The current state of our country is depressing as hell. And nothing seems to be changing, and it feels difficult to retain any semblance of honesty and humor in aworld so wrought with political and social bullshit.
A while back I took myself on a vacation to the beach by myself for two days. I turned my cell phone off, I got a bottle of wine and a large wheel of brie and I lived my best life. I realized very little of actual substance, honestly, but what I did take away were the following thoughts:
- I want to one day buy my parents a beach house, they deserve it.*
- Even at their most exhausting moments, the female relationships in my life are a constant source of inspiration and commitment to growth.
- Narrow minded, controlling people should never deter you from making shit, or the terrorists win.
- The ocean is straight up magic.
- Me reviving the blog/podcast is inherently rooted in a selfish desire to leave something of myself behind but maybe also it could do some good, make people laugh.
- Writing again makes me happy and makes my brain happy. It makes the pen stained left side of my hand very unhappy.
So I guess, I’m back. You can’t keep a good bitch down for long. That’s science.
*Ma, don't hold your breath here, I just learned how to check my credit score without having heart palpitations every time.
