The 5th of July by Lanford Wilson

I just listened to The 5th of July, Mr. Wilson's play on a book on tape. ( I have been doing a lot of this to curb the road rage in the car.) Sarah Hagan plays Shirley Talley and her voice is so full of youth, outrageous conviction, and the cries of being misunderstood and less than adored.
But honestly, it was difficult to listen to. I think most of the strain was from the actors' performances. But it's true that often plays are much better when heard aloud, rather than read from the page.
I can't wholly fault the actors though- something in the writing wasn't right. There was a lot of overlapped talking. And I can visualize it on the page of the script: two columns, side by side, with each characters rant or excited proclamations, sharing the same amount of stage time. And this technique can be very powerful or simply turn the audience off. It turned me off. It felt like the characters weren't listening to each other, but just wanted to be heard.
And something else about the performance irked me. The characters, in the way they were written, didn't give a shit about themselves or how their words came out. A lot of the time they used hurtful or miscalculated language, and often very spontaneous outbursts, with a lot of backtracking the divulged information. It kept happening. And perhaps these people were really like this. But I wished for some sort of transformation to occur; I wanted these people to gain awareness and consideration for each other.

$$

Money is all-consuming these days. It's my main stress, worry, obsession. And I can't seem to wrestle it down and get a handle on it to say, "Back off! You are not important in the grand scheme of things....I only think you are!"
A wise man recently told me, "You are not how much money you have. Do you decide what to think or how you feel about people based on their wealth?"
"No!" I promptly answered.
"Then why does it matter if you need to lean on people a little bit right now? Maybe you'll be the bread winner some day. And maybe not. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter Julie."
I started to cry.
"What really matters is at the end of the day, you crawl into bed, and you get next to each other, and you both share about your day, and you have your conversations from your pillows, and you are there with each other. That is what matters. Everyone wants this, searches for this. I have friends who are billionaires and they are miserable because they are missing this."
I cried more. And nodded even though we were speaking over the phone.
"That's all that matters sweetie."
"I guess I am really lucky then. Because I have that. You have that. We're really fortunate, aren't we?"
"Yes, we really are."

rant, tear, cry, rant

Mid week and I've got a few things on the horizon and a dump truck of rocks following behind me.

I've been listening to Sidney Poitier's Measure of a Man and there is a section where he describes his mother's work on Cat Island. She would drag rocks of all weights--10 lbs, 20 lbs, 50 lbs-- and stack them into a ceiling-high pile. Once she was finished with her mountain of a pile, she would take a hammer and crush these rocks until she had gravel. Then after months of crushing and breaking these stones, men in trucks would come and barter for her pile, then shovel it onto their truck and drive away.

Mr. Poitier made my pile feel very light and small. My plight is fierce though.

I am an extremely hard worker, but I often mis-focus my goal. Or at least it feels that way. I have had to build other things first, my nest, my home, my love, before I could focus head on. But still I have trouble zooming in to capture what my heart desires most. I turn my head to look at jobs & income & how to keep earning. And I turn my head to the other side and I see radio & books & music. I cannot fit myself into a one-trade-suit.
And I've always been this way. I could never just be satiated with plays, I had to involve myself with WMPG. And I had to write for the literary magazine. And I had to learn to surf. And I had to paint and draw. I thought about going to school for visual art, until I realized I cannot be solitary for too long, and so I sauntered into an acting conservatory in Boston.
I get so mad at myself for navigating in a loopy, zig-zagged way. I seem to unconsciously know how to feed myself artistically, which is to sample a little bit of everything, and still discover I don't know how to book-bind, or explain what gouache is in a competent way, or sail a 420 like I used to. So I have trouble with that question: What do you do best above all other things? Well, I can do a lot of things pretty well, but I don't know if I have a best...yet.