An Exercise in Writing

Words used to overwhelm. A pang of emotion would tether me to my journal- pages of large cursive were the only way to get to the root of whatever overwhelming sensation was lurking within me; I used to write to understand what I was feeling. Now that this equation is no longer necessary- I am off my meds and mostly sentient- I am struggling to write. Characters come easily, personal anecdotes less so.

What follows are my attempts at material. Now that I’m a nonprofit professional and not often a working actress- my sense of self is fading and my only claim to creativity is this blog, though I keep trying and failing at cohesive writing. I’m getting these out of my system so I can reset and so my youngest sister will feel momentarily satiated. I will leave my writing unedited and raw (aka, bad), and analyze why I discontinued the prose immediately following. I'm hoping this exercise will lead me to some clarity as to how to move forward as a self proclaimed blogger. What follows are 3 attempts at blog posts, followed by a reflection on why they failed. 

Community Theatre is the Answer to America’s Great Divide

When I was an employee at Washington Square Park, I spent the summer cycling through novels in various shady benches while overseeing adult and youth community programming. I was guarding the purses of the the elderly women now encircled in their tai chi lesson and halfway through anna karenina when an old woman interrupted my reading to insert her opinion and expressed her over-the-top surprise to see such a young woman with her nose in a russian classic. As a sidebar, the tendency to be interrupted while reading in public continues to baffle me. I accepted the compliment but knew it was in vain, for I had seen at least three Dostoevsky copies throughout my shift, this is NYU territory, after all. Though she smelled a bit elderly, and not in a kind way, there was something fascinating about her that disobeyed me from employing my usual disengagement techniques. Her grey hair was a shade above translucent and whatsmore she seemed to know upon glimpsing me that I would be the type to stay silently seated with a single cup of red wine for hours as she recalled the Greenwich village of her youth. and she was exactly right. That summer, over a library opening, a stuffy apartment visit, and many encounters on the benches of Washington square park, she told me of her encounters with Frank O’Hara and her marriage to a defected Russian spy…

That is where I left off. I never even got to defending my thesis statement. I was planning on sharing anecdotal evidence of my time backstage at a Manhattan community theatre, where I was giving the pre-show curtain speech. Backstage in that tiny theatre, the cast and crew shuffled about with such urgency and pride as if their production of Cinderella was saving the world. It was marvelous and relatable. Clearly, the story was bogged down by what I thought was a good introductory tale, but now I struggle to remember how I thought the two stories were at all related. 

Here lies lesson 1 in this writing exercise: when I feel compelled to write about something specific, try not to get caught up in envisioning it in its final version. Onto the next failed entry…

The Brutality of the Midwest

“Where are you from?

I’ve got this monologue down pat.

“I was raised in Minneapolis, but I love to claim Queens. My parents had me in New York City then shortly moved to Minneapolis after 9/11. So while my stint as a native New Yorker was diminished by being both only 6 months in length as well as my status as an infant, I was one of those annoying kids throughout school vocally who longed to be a New Yorker and knew it was where I belonged.”

That’s approximately the script I follow when prompted. Rachel Berry, a character who had me signing my name with a star after it on all fourth grade assignments, also provided solace as I played out the archetypal Manhattan bound, American-girl-doll-clad-obnoxious-adolescent female persona. When I ended up in Wisconsin for my first year and a half of college, I besmirched the palatable landscape and the familiar midwestern activities. New York was the goal, and anything that preceded it was made hollow by virtue of unfulfillment. 

A couple weeks back I had a chemically-refueling return back to Minneapolis then to Madison. Now I return home even keeled and level headed. I still have two years until the frontal lobe takes its final form, though it has put in overtime the past six months and has led to significant developmental and psychological improvements. Concepts and changes that would have been debilitating in years prior are all now happening in record time and feel appropriate.

And most recently, I’ve come to realize that I think I may be meant to end up in the Midwest.

This in no way shape or form implies that I am moving any time soon, but now that I have begun to taste NYC, and that taste has grown familiar, I’m learning it may not be my fate. What was exciting at 20 (being in the presence of illicit drugs, navigating the subways without the use of apple maps, or jaw dropping celebrity sightings) is no longer exciting at 23. Tuesday nights I must bake cookies and watch Dancing With the Stars. The city never sleeps, but I certainly like to.

I had prepared myself for strange feelings and general uneasiness during my visit to Madison, Wisconsin this past weekend. My sisters, a freshman and a junior, are enjoying their time at the school that encapsulated so much of my misery that I believed to be paradoxically locational and in perpetuity. My sister, on the phone, told me she often imagines what my freshman year experience must have been like. While she sits on Bascom Hill, surrounded by new friends she has made through classes and a common interest in Marxism, she wonders to herself if I ever did anything similar. I answer with a resounding no. My freshman year, I was making myself throw up, playing candy crush, and consuming a fistful of melatonin at 6 PM. 

I’m also particularly vulnerable to a college setting as I meander the liminal immediate post grad- sans-grad-school-lifestyle. 

Instead of revealing deep seeded turmoil, as I feared may happen, my reunion with the University of Wisconsin solidified my general state of happiness. 

The brutalist architecture was no longer brutal, but charming and fascinating and impossibly ripe for adventure. 

Again, this is where I stopped. I will say, there are a few sentences in here that I still really like, but I quit this one because it felt overly saccharine and juvenile, like I was writing in a style I had already grown out of. I had planned to do an architectural history research paper following the personal introduction, where I would investigate the presence of brutalism in Madison, considering how it emphasizes structure over decoration and how it influences a student body at a collegiate level. I thought it might be interesting to combine the architectural history of specific buildings with modern social commentary. It proved to be too large a task, though now upon revisiting it I do feel compelled to continue. Hopefully, more to come here. 

Lesson 2: avoid scope-induced intimidation. And finally…

AN OPEN LETTER TO LENA DUNHAM

I can name two moments thought my lifetime as a cultural overconsumer when the stars aligned such that I felt like I should go to church, get down on my knees, and start praising god. One was when I was a New York university upperclassman living in a retrospectively upsettingly well priced soho apartment while not eating and foraying into dismal scenes when it was announced a my year of rest and relaxation movie was to be made starring Emma stone. The second was when I learned you were penning a Sam Bankman Fried script for A24…

This one is especially short due to it residing in my iPhone notes app. I will officially commence my campaign to play Caroline Ellison in the Lena Dunham SBF A24 movie now, though this letter was slated to be a more formal announcement. 

Lesson 3: Trying to summarize how important Girls is to me on my notes app letter to Lena Dunham prior to begging for a role in her upcoming film is the wrong order. Lead with the ask, then flatter. 

In conclusion: Lord, please let me play Caroline Ellison. In the words of Ariana Grande: “I love her so much, I am going to take such good care of her.”