On losing The Game and quitting things in your mind.

A recent episode of Wiretap, one of my favorite podcasts, highlighted something called “The Game” which I’m sure I’ve heard about before, but can’t remember where. The aim of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game, ie, every time you remember you are playing The Game, you lose The Game. Thus because I am writing about The Game that means I am thinking about The Game and have therefore lost The Game. You, dear reader, now know about The Game and are currently thinking about The Game, so you too, have lost The Game. Are we having fun yet?

While on lunch break at work, a bunch of actors/standardized patients were sitting around a table wearing paper gowns talking about how hard it is to be actors. Someone offered that when one gets discouraged with the actor’s lot of failed callbacks and low-paying, sporadic work, the best thing to do is to quit acting in one’s mind. Don’t quit for real, just quit in your mind to take the edge off. If you’ve quit, you’ll seem less desperate, you’ll go out more, you’ll take a trip, you’ll read a book. Then when you come back from your hiatus which you told no one about, you’ll be better, happier, stronger, older and thus more likely to book the job, in theory.

I think I did something similar with my writing this winter. As a rule, I write in my journal or blog when I see something that inspires me or something interesting/funny/story-worthy happens. I write when I have something of value to contribute to this flooded cesspool of people's mindful and mindless musings. Phrases will come to me out of the stratosphere while riding my bike or knitting quietly. This winter, the phrases didn’t come and neither did the impulse to tap the keys of my undergraduate Mac with the smudged screen. I forgot I was a writer (well, a person who writes). If writing was The Game, I was winning.

I think there is a sweet spot to quitting something in your mind. You gotta know when to join back up; you must sense when you are full of things to write about or full of energy and ideas to act or create again. I missed my sweet spot. I forgot I was a writer for so long that I stopped asking the phrases to come, stopped looking for the stories, stopped observing the people around me. I’ve become more interior and self-critical, less generous and content. Certain stories are now past their time and cannot be written. Even writing this feels labored, clunky and a chore. But I writing it.* I’ve lost The Game because I remembered I am a person who writes. No qualifiers, I just write.

Scot in the greenhouse.

The bunnies on Easter morning after the egg hunt.

So what did happen during these last three months? We traveled to Iowa City to perform in The Exit Interview. Those two months proved very fruitful to us. Scot continued to write and refine his plays and cared for Kathy's greenhouse. I knitted and sewed a dress for Stephen’s wedding. We both read a lot (Scot’s favorite read was Building Stories by Chris Ware and mine was Like Life by Lorrie Moore). It’s hard to believe we met almost a year ago at the opening night of Timon of Athens at Chicago Shakespeare. We continue to inspire, delight and confuse each other every day. We saw Scot's daughter Emma dance wonderfully in a modern dance showcase and spoke to her drama class at Toledo School for the Performing Arts about being Chicago actors. I gave up Facebook for Lent. Quitting cold turkey was a great way to reevaluate how I use my time online and on social media. As I write this, I am happy to say that I don't have a Facebook tab open on my browser. Facebook is a sometime food. This past Easter weekend we celebrated with our friends here in Chicago by hosting the traditional brunch. I made a ham using Nina’s wonderful apricot and mustard glaze recipe. We selfishly hoped there would be leftovers for ham sandwiches, ham omelets and ham cookies. Ham is an anytime food. But alas, by the time everyone left Sunday evening, that ham bone was picked cleaned. We saved it for soup.

Beautiful Easter ham.

What has been on my mind the most (and perhaps why I’ve not written) is applying to school again. I’m not ready to go into all that right now, but soon. My blue and yellow sundress under a wool sweater harkens the arrival of spring in Chicago. We are sitting in the Map Room on Armitage Ave, which we thought was a coffee shop and is more a place where men day drink together. This post is a warm-up for a personal statement which I’m on a deadline to write. The blank Pages window beside this one shines white full of possibility and potential, just waiting for me to personally state something on it.

One thing is for sure, I better not tell them what a loser I am cause I think about The Game all the time.


*This is an typo from my first draft left intentionally because (1) it makes me laugh and (2) it shows the depths of depravity my writing has come to. I WRITING IT, DAMN IT!

On playing someone like you. Actually, not the song by Adele.

"Crimes of the Heart" closes next weekend. It's a play I'm performing in Chicago* that I first read when I was in acting school in Minneapolis, set in Mississippi which is sort of like North Carolina where I'm from** and a lot like Louisiana where my father's family lives. With my birthday approaching (I'll be a proud 24 on Wednesday!), I reflect upon who I've become during this last year, my self proclaimed Year of Becoming, and I find I have a lot in common with my character, Meg Magrath, the middle sister with "sad, magic eyes."

Meg is fun, brave and passionate. She moved far away from home to pursue her dream of being an artist. She says what is on her mind, even when she shouldn't. She's got a tough shell, but really needs the chance to cry sometimes. She's afraid of being weak, of being obsolete. She loves her family, bourbon and chocolate. She's had a mental breakdown. She is very young and somehow old.

Men are a sore subject with Meg. She broke one man's heart in a big way, like ran away to California the night his leg was crushed when a roof caved in during a hurricane BIG way. Since that time, she fears caring for anyone. Because if you care, you can get hurt. If you care and you destroy everything, it breaks your heart. It breaks your heart almost as much as being trapped in the wrong relationship, the wrong town, the wrong lifetime does. I am like Meg in this way; I care too.

As Meg, I get one more beautiful night with the man I left. One night to heal the seeping ache of five years spent wondering why. One night to move forward with clear, understanding eyes. One night to forgive myself, the hardest forgiveness of all. Even though Doc doesn't ask Meg to run away with him, she comes in singing the next day triumphant and joyous at the realization that, she "could care about someone... could want someone!" This understanding look in his eyes breaks open her heart.

As Maura,  I haven't met "the one"*** and I still am my own wife, as it were. But after nearly a year "back out there," I'm happy to say that recently my heart has returned. Fear's ally, numbness, has subsided and I am left a full, feeling woman ready and open to the world, and love, if it comes my way.

Of course, I am not like Meg in a few ways. I don't chain smoke and the practice smoking I did really effedup my voice for about a week. Thank you, Anna Pahomova. I don't think my father is a bastard. He's actually really nice. I don't have a thick Southern accent.**** I don't fight like mad with my sisters, an ever growing group***** Except for Alison, but she started it!

So no matter how many Tony's I'm not winning for this production, how many cabinet doors fall off the set, how many times the technical elements surprise us, how many Illinois suburban folk love it, how much money I've spent on gas, how many sweet friends travel across the country to see it, or how many pairs of pantyhose I tear through, I have learned wonderful things about Maura Clement by playing Meg Magrath. And that may not be as good as money in the bank, but it sure beats smoking two packs a day.

The cast of Crimes of the Heart, April 2012

*Okay, it's in St. Charles, so sue me!
** Okay, I moved there when I was 12, my dad was a JAG for the Navy. Just like Harmon Rabb Jr. Okay, not like Harm at all, so sue me!
***Okay, I don't believe in "the one." I just mean someone I'm effin wild about who feels the same way about me.
****Okay, I sorta do, but only when bourbon is involved.
*****Okay, I'm not sayin' nothin.

Chicago Photobooth Pub Crawl

Like every good adventure, it began with a dream. Tina Le, visiting from New York City rolls over in the morning and says to me, “I had a dream that we went to a photobooth and I licked your face.” I responded, “Let’s make it happen.” And so began a beautifully improtu photobooth pub crawl around my neighborhood, Wicker Park. Now, I don’t go out much and I don’t often buy drinks when I do go out. But I am type-A and I do love goals. So let’s say this evening I was a goal oriented drunk... Buy a different drink and take a photo at all the places with photobooths. Our first stop was the famous Reckless Records on Milwaukee Ave, a place I knew Tina would love because of it's wide selection of Jack White 45's. No drinking at Reckless, but Tina did find a record for her collection.

Next stop was my favorite bookshop, Quimby's ($3 a photo, black&white) on North Ave. Best part of Quimby's was the props they had available. Both Tina and I paid homage to our favorite book, Just Kids by Patti Smith, me with the book, her with her Robert Maplethorpe tee. There was also a fan, cause Tina is my geisha, and a rubber shark cause I am a bathtub explorer.

Our journey was destined to because of a serendipitous street art exhibit that was happening under the Damen Blue Line train station. Kiam had hung a mirror in the shape of "I AM" on the brick wall. We wrote what we were on a post-it and then he took this polaroid of us. We wrote, "Maura's best friend" and "Tina's best friend." How sweet.

Tina says this photo looks like she's meeting a celebrity.

A short jaunt down Damen past Division led us to the Rainbo Club ($3, sorta sepia, analog). The bartender proudly declared that their photobooth was one of two analog photobooths in the state and apparently Liz Phair took the cover photo for her album Exit in Guyville there. We drank Old Fashioned's in honor of Don Draper.

We continued down Damen to my favorite place on the adventure, Bar Deville. ($5, sepia, digital) We drank Tina's favorite beverage in the world, hard cider. There is free pool, lots of space, funky upholstered furniture and the feel of a French dive. We upset some gentleman by borrowing the pool equipment for props... and Tina bit my ear.

Our final stop was Beauty Bar on Chicago Ave where the bouncer was kind enough to let us not pay cover to get in to use the photobooth... but tragically...

And so ended a very well documented evening in Chicago.