Nights of Harlem Granite

Sometimes characters I create feel more like me than I do.  Pure distilled parts of myself that don’t get ovations in the day to day world filled with the dents of my mind.   One of my favorites is Charley Who Horse, the trumpet player from Harlem in my play Whorapy, sort of the bartender of the speakeasy and when I need advice on something, sometimes I go back and read what he says. It sounds a bit vain, but sometimes when I get muddled by the maelstroms of the boiling blood in my veins, I go back to something I wrote to put my feet back on Earth or at least under my knees.  Sometime at the beginning of Act II he tells Madeline, the madame
“Don’t know. Colors and music’s all I see!
Don’t know much ‘bout no strategies!
I’m here but I ain’t, here but I ain’t,
that’s how I gotta be in this world.”

One thing is for certain no matter what happens in life from this point on and I have no idea what the hell that will be, but that’s a quote I live by. I trust my writing as more of a topography of my soul and the world and others in my life than what my brain tells me sometimes.  It’s honoring the Real. And on night like this, where every emotional condition seems to have a megaphone strapped to its lips, the night asks that I show up alone.  Last week I had a screaming session with the Universe, to express some what I feel are glaring deficiencies in the cosmic pruning of my life. It’s been a hard three years. Starting on an air mattress in Fall 2009 and ending a few days ago.  I feel slowly drilled into and I guess it’s necessary to enhance and unify my life and soul. Some nights you’re tied to the bumper and some you’re behind the wheel/Some nights the Guardians of the Mist tell you how to feel/The wicked servants burning from the shadows of the train/passing through the station to light that crooked path again…life’s a spinning circle.

My show is next Thursday. And that’s the beginning. After that, I eat and sleep and shave performance and acting.

 

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One thought

  1. I don’t think it’s vanity to go back to your work and find yourself for a bit of grounding. You know you’re in that work, in some way, little pieces of you left on the page and all. I get that. All the best with your show on Thursday 🙂

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