A Chase, A Chasing: Fugue

The Registry opened (and closed) almost a year ago. Since then I haven't been able to write a single word. Somewhere between politics and administration every creative impulse in me died. I used to think four projects ahead. Now, when I think about writing, all I hear is silence.

I paused the Milena Group. I sold the costumes. I Swedish-Death-Cleaned the house. I stopped eating out or going to events. I started a kitchen renovation which slowly extended to the outside of the house and the roof. I lived in a construction zone for months. I thought, this is it. This is how one dies on the inside. I was ready. While waiting to die a slow but elegant death, I patched myself up with quotes from The New Age (still one of my favorite Peter Weller films): "Yes, yes, we are going to die; but what are we going to wear?"

I knew one thing for sure: I was no longer capable of months of rehearsal, two gruesome weeks of tech and dress, finding venues, lighting designers, and large casts...not while also teaching and doing administrative work. But NOT doing theatre seemed equally deadly. I wrote: "I have nothing to say; there's no one I admire, no one I love. I don't have relationships, I have Human Resources. I don't have friends, I have father confessors. And although I eat and sleep uninterrupted, I feel like a refugee in my own life, surviving on the surface of things. The space around me is an obstacle course. No one approaches. A sinister egoism triggered by collective unhappiness distorts the profile of almost everyone I know. My political history repeats itself and I have nowhere to run. The barbarians are no longer at the gates. We are the barbarians."

And then three things happened in rapid succession:
- One of my graduate students, someone I've been meaning to collaborate with for a while, was late for class. She walked in hurriedly, anxious, and sat down in the front row. Then almost immediately she stopped moving. Something about that frantic entrance followed by an almost immediate stillness made a lasting impression.
- Another graduate student, a girl I worked with when she was still an undergrad, walked down the corridor at a slow pace, entered the office, and picked up her mail. She turned to look around and, for a brief moment, stood perfectly still. And in that moment she looked like someone who didn't belong in this century - a Victorian heroine shocked at the crassness of our times.Then she unfroze and walked away.
- The house painter spoke.
Let me rephrase that: I'd heard him speak before since we talked often, (in that entire renovation crew he was the only one I liked), but that evening I paid attention to his voice, and found out he was a blues musician. I listened to his songs.

And then it all came together: the women, their not-belonging, their slow merging into one another, Bergman's Persona, the silence, my inability to write, the distant melody of a waltz, the collective unhappiness, a list of bizarre celebrity suicides, and the man in the background, a disembodied voice making pronouncements about happiness, thriving on the surface of things. "Everyone is everyone." Narrative threads, fragmentary lives, people who could have meant something to one another had they paid attention to the colossal significance of their encounter. A chase, a chasing - a fugue.

Days later, a ten minute staged reading (with the painter's recorded voice in the background), performed at an art gallery - no costumes, no pressure, no lights - convinced me that this was possible, working this small, without the agitation of a big production but with (surprisingly!) the same impact on the audience. And so the flat line turned into a heartbeat. And the ten minute reading is slowly evolving into a performance event I plan to stage exactly like this, in a small art gallery, with a few table lamps and all of us sitting on slightly uncomfortable chairs with our texts in our laps, ready for a significant encounter. I say "all of us" because I am the third woman. The girls and I, and my house painter/musician, and a soundtrack with the music he's composing for us.
Fugue: An Event - happening this spring at an art gallery near you.