We're Gonna Die

Never Done: I was asked for my creative input specifically because I am over 45

For anyone who came to reading this blog late, the reason I am doing this year-long Never Done project in the first place is to come to terms with my real age -- now 48, but 47 when I started -- and to discover what it really means to be ambling toward 50. Are there any limitations I need to accept? What are the opportunities? What can I push myself on? What should I be appreciating? What do I actually appreciate if I take the time to notice it? How can I come to terms with my disappointments about the past, and my fears about the future?

And so it could not have been more perfect that Young Jean Lee asked if people over 45 would watch and give feedback on a rehearsal of her new cabaret show, WE'RE GONNA DIE, which opens next week at Joe's Pub. She describes her show as an evening of heartbreak, despair, aging, sickness, and death. Exactly. What was I just saying about my disappointments about the past, and my fears about the future?

It was the first time that anyone specifically asked for my over-45 expertise, and in turn it was the first time that I felt genuinely happy to be over 45. I wasn't happy just because any old someone needed middle-aged input -- I wouldn't have felt the same if a marketing focus group wanted to know what kind of car I am most likely to buy (I have a thing for the Toyota Matrix.) It mattered to me that it was Young Jean -- whose work I respect like crazy, and who happens to be making a show about precisely what I am also dealing with. (Since her show isn't open yet, I don't want to say too much about it. But if you live in or around NYC, and if you like intelligent, insightful, emotionally vulnerable storytelling and indie rock music, you should go.)

It occurred to me early in the performance that Young Jean is a little young to be facing these intense fears of mortality. I don't think I was facing them at 37, although I was 36 when my father died, so you know what? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that was exactly when the fear started to grip me. But regardless of my experience, what I love about Young Jean's show is the way she pinpoints a series of heart-wrenching experiences in her own life, and with them, she draws us in to her emotional reality, and shows us that she has earned her (slightly young) mid-life crisis cred.

Most people don't get to choose a theme, comb through their lives, and then craft a show that explores the ways their particular experiences tell a story to expound on the theme. But that's what artists get to do, and it's what society relies on artists to do. Young Jean's new cabaret is deceptively simple -- stories and songs about her life -- but I believe is in fact a significant addition to the body of literature that addresses heartbreak, despair, sickness, aging, and death.

I will be going on April 2, if anyone wants to join me, and we can see how much of my feedback gets integrated into the final piece.

Catching up on bad 80's TV

Never Done: Watched Punky Brewster

I missed out on a lot of pop culture from my earnest college (and a bit beyond) years. If it happened between 1983 and 1988, and it wasn't either feminist, whole wheat, or anti-racist, I probably didn't notice it. The me I am now respects the me I was then, but also sort of wishes I had a little more fun. Thank god I found my way to Railroad Square Cinema, which truly saved me from sinking under the weight of my own gravity.

The me I am now has a lot of catching up to do, so every now and then I conjure up the ghost of pop culture's past, and take a little trip. And because I'm obsessed with adoption and fostering in pop culture right now, I thought it only fitting to finally watch Punky Brewster, which aired from 1984 til 1988, and which I never saw. (As you might imagine, I pronouncedly didn't even own a TV during those years.) The thing I found interesting about Punky is that under that terrible acting and laugh track, the show is actually emotionally accurate when it comes to depicting the inner life of an abandoned child. She is afraid (because her mother left her) that she is essentially unlovable, and many plots center around the way she tests her grouchy foster dad George to make sure he really wants her.

Despite the emotional verisimilitude, the show is still pretty much unwatchable, so if you're reading the blog for tips on cool ways to spend your time, I would say YES on the Russian baths, and PASS on the laugh tracks.

Angels in America

Never Done: Saw a stage production of Angels in America (Part 1: Millennium Approaches)

Angels in America was first performed twenty years ago - just after I moved to Portland, but before I was paying attention to theater, aside from what I had done as a kid or the political street theater I had done in college. At the time, I was absorbed in everything that would have made me and Angels a natural fit: didactic left wing activism, getting close for the first time to people with HIV/AIDS, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, my first forays into Jewish community, and although I had come out some years earlier, my first long-term romance with a woman. I wouldn't encounter Angels for another five years, but when I did, I was riveted.

By now I have read Angels in America probably ten times -- perused it even. (OK, this is a total distraction; Ellen Langford just taught me that the word "peruse" means to read or study carefully and at length, not to read quickly, or glance through, as I have always thought.) So I have perused Angels, studied it scene by scene, broken it down, and yes, seen the filmed HBO version. But until now, had never seen it on stage. But my mental images of how it lives on stage have been strong -- I guess from people's stories of the angel breaking through the ceiling of the Walter Kerr theater. After all these years, and all that build up, I guess it was inevitable that the Signature Theater production after the cast change would be a disappointment. First of all, it is almost unbearable to me that after waiting four and a half months to see it, I saw the first performance without Zachary Quinto in the role of Louis. (Adam Driver stepped into the role.) But mostly, it felt .... safe in a way that is out of place with what the characters are living through. I wanted the play to transport me, shake to my core like it did every time I read it -- and even the way the HBO production did. But instead, I felt like I was sitting around with the actors on soft couches, and reading the play aloud together. Which is not a terrible thing. It's a comfortable thing, in fact. But transporting it's not.

I guess it's like when they make The Hobbit into a movie. You have such strong images of Bilbo Baggins and the Shire that anyone else's images might pale in comparison. Or even just match yours in intensity, which might feel like paling, if you had high expectations.

So what's the lesson? Don't read great books ten times? Don't form expectations? Don't go to the theater? I don't think so. I think the message is more that when life gives you a comfortable evening with wonderful actors, pour a cup of tea, lean back on a pillow, and start turning your well-worn pages.

I held the subway doors

Never Done: Held the train doors

It was icy out so it took just a spec longer to get to the subway than usual. That plus all the clocks in the apartment are set for different times, and I was going by the one that read the earliest -- the one I could see from my office -- and when I went into the bedroom to get a sweater, I saw it was already time to go. So when we got to turnstile above the F train, it was just pulling into the station. I tried to swipe Josh in by swiping twice in a row which usually works, but it didn't this time, and so I ran down, and he came through after me, and I got to the platform just as the ding ding was ringing, and the doors started to close, and he was still on the stairs, and I got on, and put my body between the doors, and I held the doors and didn't freak out.

If you grew up where I grew up you would have never told this story. You would have told a story more like this: It was icy out so I put on my ice skates and went ice skating on the pond. I skated for a long time and then I got cold and came home and made hot chocolate.

But really, I have tried to hold the doors before and other passengers had to step in to help me out. Once I left Josh standing on the subway platform because I freaked out and failed. So I'm actually quite proud that I did this, and that nobody got hurt. But here's the thing. The subway announcements all say that holding the doors is bad. That it delays the train for others. So ... from a Mussar framework, did I do the right thing? Was my need to hold the door for Josh justified, given that it could have caused delays for others? I am tempted to say yes, because after all nothing did go wrong, and I did not cause delays for others. But what if I had? What was so important that we couldn't have waited for the next train? The honest truth is nothing. We were going to a show (The Negro Problem at Joe's Pub) and when we got there, we waited outside in line for about 1/2 hour. Granted, we got better seats than we would have if we would have been later, but we still would have gotten in, and we still would have seen a great show.

On the other hand, it's good to overcome our fears, right? And to become more physically daring -- especially women, especially as we get older? And the chances that I was going to break the subway door were really very slim. That reminds me of a story my mom used to tell. When she was in grade school, girls used to lock the bathroom stalls from the inside, and climb out, leaving them locked. They usually did this in teams of two, so one person could be on the lookout for teachers. One time my mom, a socially awkward child who had skipped ahead two grades, so was also two years younger than everyone else, decided to lock a stall and climb out, but she did it alone, and a teacher came in, and the teacher paraded her around the entire school, saying, "This is the student who has been locking the bathroom stalls."

Damn, I'm glad I didn't break the subway door.