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Omigosh! I almost forgot! The whole reason that I opened up my blog in the first place wasn’t to post the Erin poem at all, but this quote I found yesterday in Tin House, volume 8, number 4. Because it suits the Agnes de Mille post I wrote a few days ago, and also some of the posts before that. This is it:

(It’s from an interview with John Banville. Who apparently is a famous novelist. I haven’t read any of his books. He is appeallingly (no typo) arrogant throughout most of the interview, talks about being dissatisfied with previous books, and this is what they end the article with.)

“Jennifer Levasseur/Kevin Rabalais: You’ve talked about disliking your books. Can the artist hope for more than failure?

JB: As Beckett said, ‘Fail again. Fail better.’ It’s all we can do. Everybody fails. The acknowledgment of that failure is very important. Perfection is not of this world. It’s the quality of the failure that counts.”

I like this because it resolves something for me about this point of view, namely: if all we can hope to do is fail, why try very hard? I do find the notion “perfection is impossible” both comforting and freeing in my own work, so I’d like to be able to reconcile it with honest effort and a thing to strive for. But this is why to try: the quality of the failure counts. My next play won’t be perfect, but it’ll be a better failure. That’s worth working for. Thanks, Sam and John.

Quick! Poll: it’s 8:30am, I’m getting over a cold, and I haven’t slept all night. I have a lunch date at noon and a date date tonight at 9:30. I also have an hour or two of work to do to prepare for next week’s fundraiser. Do I a) go back to bed and do some more trying-to-sleep for a couple hours? or do I b) resign myself to skipping a night of sleep and maybe nap in the afternoon, after my lunch date?

decisions, decisions.
Alissa

Well, it’s 8am, and no sleep for me all night. I’ve been trying since two. I blame the cold medicine I took two–no, three days ago for throwing my schedule all out of whack. Hence the 5am poetry yesterday and here, now, the 8am poetry today. I gotta start sleeping at night or I’ll inundate my so-far-faithful audience.

A poem for Erin

She knew the dress would be too tight.

It was a knitted dress, homemade lining sewn in,
and spying it in her grandmother’s cedar chest
she knew also that it would look well on her.
That too-hot day,
the too-thick garment—
alone in her grandmother’s house,
she laid out the dress on the bed
and abandoned her shorts in a crumpled pile
on the bedroom floor.
the dress inched over her shoulders—oh, tight, but smooth,
a tug or two wedging it in place.
Her breasts squashed in it, her arms
restricted to 45 degrees,
she regarded herself in the mirror,
a funny old-fashioned girl,
comely, in an old knit dress. A fly
buzzed at the closed half of the half-open window.
No breeze stirred the gauze curtains.

When her grandmother returned,
the girl, in shorts again, shamefaced, explained.
The dress, too hot, too close, would not yield.
Difficulty breathing, half an hour’s stifling lonely struggle,
half-clothed and her sweat soaking into the old dress,
the delicate heirloom, the old treasure.
The clinging of the lining.
Trapped. She could not move her arms.
Discomfort, dehydration, panic. Scissors.
Her grandmother’s astonishment.
“but I made that dress in 1950…”
“I know, Grandma. I’m sorry.”

-Alissa

I started to go in to bed with everyone else, but
as I turned to close the sliding
glass door, I caught sight
of the light.
Those hard cut-out shadows cast
by the patio furniture
were not from any streetlight,
but the nearly-bursting moon,
fervently beaming all over the valley,
crackling through hushed desert air,
slamming light off the concrete.

My grandparents’ mansion reclines on a hill
looking out across Dove Hollow in ranch-land, southern California,
into the holdings of other palatial residences
one hillside over.
They face each other in uncomfortable
camaraderie—it feels safe, cozy, this night-time curl
of inward-facing millionaires, but a little
too easy to look through each others’
illuminated picture windows.

Swimming in the infinity pool
with my mom this afternoon
were a dozen stupid and angry
bees, who must have thought a dip looked
inviting. We scooped them out
with the same long-handled pool net that,
later,
my dad used to capture the baby
black widow
we found under the lip of the Jacuzzi.
As I sit here on the patio,
I’m in the middle of one of the light-colored squares
of concrete ringing the pool.
I was going to sit on the edge
of the planter, but today Joan warned me
that’s where the black widows were most infested.
Here on the light concrete, I reason,
I’ll see a little dark shadow coming towards me
before it’s too late.
Joan also told me about
the scorpion she found in the front doorway,
and how before they had the exterminator come
they would go to the bathroom at night
with their feet hoisted in the air,
out of the invisible scuttling insects’ way.

The people here have orchards
for tax reasons.
They keep a whole room off the kitchen
to store the booze.
You can look across the way and see fences
rolling beautifully across acres
of empty, arid land.

A neighbor’s Chihuahua’s throat
was slit ear to ear by coyotes,
a few months back. They say
the coyotes call to the dogs, invite them into the pack,
then turn on them and attack them.
Well, when the neighbors found their Chihuahua,
they took him to the emergency vet straightaway
and saved his life.
But the very next time that dumb dog heard the coyotes calling—
“Here, we’re here, your wild desert freedom is here—
Your rough & tumble gang
from the wrong side of the tracks—
Your brethren cauterized by hard life,
your tough brotherhood, your tarnished paladins—
We’ll take you in
if you can take the heat—“
That crazy dog ran away to join them
a second time.

Working on the script right now has got me reaching for all kinds of distractions. In my stuffy-head-cold state, I’m allowing the distractions in.

I spent half the night reading “Dance to the Piper”. It’s an Agnes de Mille autobiography, but she devotes much (maybe most) of her prose to describing fellow artists who influenced her, from her father in the movies to Martha Graham to Anna Pavlova. These portraits are punctuated by stories of de Mille’s struggle, constant obstacles and financial peril, and eternally thwarted success.

For a young, self-producing artist, it is not a heartening read. (I’m just over halfway through the book; perhaps it brightens up later.) Agnes published this book in 1951, and things are much the same now as then as far as available money to fringe arts.

What consumes me as I read it is that all the great artists that Agnes had the fortune to run across in her formative years as a dancer are described as temperamental, unstable, and slightly insane. Few of them have business sense. The people that she describes as even-keeled and successful are people whose work she does not bother to comment on.

And I ask myself, is it necessary to be insane to be great? And I ask myself, from whence comes this private certainty that I myself am destined for greatness? And I ask myself, am I insane? And reluctantly conclude that I am not. That I am sane and therefore mundane, and therefore no tormented artistic genius. That I am not driven to mad distraction by intense contemplation of my work. That I would rather compose a blog entry than wrestle with a difficult bit in the script, which I have been avoiding all evening by reading about insane genuises. Genii.

And I ask myself, am I willing to face failure after failure after disappointment and continue to do the work, as Agnes de Mille did? She ultimately won acclaim and made real strides in the field of dance. But her name fades pretty darn quick…I would say that of the people who inhabit this country, maybe a third know vaguely who Martha Graham is? And of those 33%, maybe a fifth have even heard of Agnes de Mille, and maybe a tenth of that subset know that she is a choreographer. I don’t, myself, know anything about any of her work except what I am learning from reading her autobiography, and I am a person with a peculiar interest in this sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, so obviously you don’t do this for fame and recognition. You don’t do it for money. You don’t do it for the respect of the public at large, who recognize performance on Broadway and very little else as a measure of success in the theatrical world. You do it–right? Because you must, because somehow it makes more sense to do this than anything else. But what is the reason, the real reason?

If I wanted to reach more people, I could be making film or music or even TV. So I can’t claim that I want to change the world, really. There are more efficient ways of doing that.

I would say I went into the field where my talents lay–but the truth is I’m a bright young lady with lots of talents, and there are many fields in which I could do well that have nothing to do with theatre. And as an actor, I’m only competent on my best days. As a playwright, well–here I am, script open in another window and neglected while I ramble on to the 8 or so people who read this. About my own existential angst. Oh dear, I just suffocated in my own pretentiousness and pompousness. And now I’m drowning in my self-pity and choking on my self-conscious irony. Argh, the recursiveness! I’m stuck! Heeeeeeeeeeeelllllllp!

But returning to the central point: why do theatre? When people ask me I say it is because of the relationship between performer and audience. I think it’s the same as with dance and live music performance and any other kind of activity that involves a performer and an audience being in the same room at the same time. And I can’t say anything about that that doesn’t sound utterly schmaltzy. (Is that the right word for corny and saccharine? I’m not up to par with my pidgin Yiddish.) But there’s this energy, right? This…uh, yeah…this vibe. …and it has to do with generosity, on the part of both the audience and the performer. And…I think that live performance just makes everyone in the room more human. Even bad live performance. I think.

But damn it! I’m making that up. I do it because I like it. Because when I came offstage after my first guitar recital in first or second grade, I was so buzzed I still remember the way my footsteps echoed in the empty school hallway on the way back to the room we were using for tuning. And I really want my reason to be grander and less ego-driven than that. But I think that’s really it. I do it ’cause nothing else makes me feel quite as alive. And right after using the word ‘generosity’ in the last paragraph, here I am saying I just do it for me. All for me. All the time. Mine. ME! I don’t do it for anyone else. I don’t even particularly care if the work I do is earth-shattering or important. (That’s a secret, by the way, that last part. If you confront me with it I shall deny it vehemently.)

And I was saying to David the other night that my favorite thing on Earth is when life works out so that I get to do exactly what I feel like doing, and it accidentally makes someone else happy.

I hope Claytie doesn’t still read my blog. She’d repudiate me. :-p

Love and selfish generosity,
Alissa

I just have this feeling right now that whatever I do next with my life, it’s going to be something wonderful. And that my current life is also wonderful.

Do you think that’s tempting fate?

I’m hanging about my apartment at the moment. My dinner plans were canceled, and I’ve cleaned my room, done my laundry, and sorted through and dealt with ALL my backed-up mail (which, if you’ve looked at my desk recently, you know is no minor feat.) I also realized that last night I parked my car in a zone where there is absolutely no parking between 4 and 6pm, vowed to move it before 4pm today, and totally forgot about it. So I ran out and checked, and sure enough…it got towed. Sigh. So that’s what I get to do tomorrow morning.

As twin reward for my productive evening and consolation for my towed car, I went to the mini mart that’s right next to where I wasn’t supposed to leave my car, and picked up a bottle of House Wine and a bag of orange Milanos, both of which I am attempting to consume in moderation. I can’t decide what to do with tonight.

A) go see a movie by myself
B) keep working on the script (this is the gold star option, but I’m feeling like I need a break…no, hang that, I’m just being lazy. Damn. Am I a real artist? Am I a good one? Shouldn’t it be calling to me? Oh dear…the only way to make this self-doubt stop is to open up the script…maybe I’ll do that. I did work on it for about 5 hours today. But only 1 hour yesterday. And 1 the day before.)
C) read “Dance to the Piper” which I got in the mail yesterday (I ordered it after I learned of that quote from it that I put in my last post)
D) go to the salsa dance that starts at 9:30 a few blocks from my house (I HAVE been needing more exercise. This might be the only acceptable alternative to working on the script.)
E) Go browse Half Price Books, which is open satisfyingly late
F) Do my dishes (There’s only like 20 minutes of dishes. But it seems daunting.)
G) Sit in front of my computer, surf the ‘net for 5 hours, finish this bottle of wine and all these cookies by myself, and completely squander my unreasonably good mood. (It’s really appalling how appealing this option is, even though I KNOW that I will go to bed depressed if I do this.)
H) practice guitar
I) write a poem
J) work on the 501(c)3 paperwork I’ve been avoiding for so long (this is definitely not going to happen. I’m just putting it on this list for due diligence’s sake.)
K) take a nighttime walk in Cal Anderson Park
L) Work on defining Nebunele’s new Sponsorship Levels in preparation for the fundraiser later this month
M) Call all of my friends to see who wants to go to that new bar Kurrent with me and make fun of it
N) sew buttons on clothes that have lost them

But honestly? Just look at this list! I could do any of these things right now. How great a life is that? Pretty great. I love being a grownup.

Heh, Mez just pinged me on IM as I was writing this with feedback about the play. I think I can take that as a sign. Maybe Salsa later. Dishes? …if I get inspired.

Life life life
Alissa

Been a good day, long couple of days. From rehearsal to meetings to scriptwriting to business-doing to brainstorming to rehearsal again. I also did my laundry AND had my flat tire fixed. I am feeling very productive.

Last Thursday, Claytie and I had a wonderful (if somewhat boozy) brainstorming session about how to live life as a theatre producer. We came up with these notes to live by. They…er. They all seemed somewhat more profound after a couple of screwdrivers. I recommend consuming some vodka before meditating on them.

Ahem:
“Oh look! More life.”

-embrace the stress (i.e. “Oh look! More life.”)
-being proven wrong is a GREAT experience (”Oh look! More life.”)
-never hate ‘those people’ (”Oh look! More life.”)
-always just setting a foot down on the path of the next thing (”Oh look! More life.”)
-zooming out helps you find the path again, around the obstacles (”Oh look! More life.”)
-dreaming is necessary. doing is necessary. (”Oh look!…” …actually it doesn’t work as well with that last one)

In other inspiration news: David sent me this quote today via his apparently awesome friend Cary. It is kind of perversely reassuring.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly to keep the channel open. You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever, at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

-Martha Graham to Agnes di Mille in “Dance to the Piper”

Since I just saw the Martha Graham Dance Company with David on Saturday night (they were awewewewesum, by the way) the timing was nice. She was a crazy smart lady, that Martha.

xoxo
Oh look! More love!
Alissa