Judging by the quiet of the street below my window it is two or three in the morning. Orange light from a street lamp and the blue-gray haze of the Brooklyn night throw shadows on the wall across from me.
On approach to Jemaa el-Fnaa, Marrakech
The room is empty, save for the air mattress beneath my back and a somewhat organized heap of clothes on a bed sheet in one corner.
It is late September or early October 2010–I do not recall precisely. My eyes have flown open and my mind is so lucid it is as though I have never known the need for sleep. I have been in this apartment two or three weeks. It is devoid of furniture, the vast majority of my belongings having been sold to fund the national tour in 2009. July ’10 had seen me on a stage in New York City, and August a series of performances in Edinburgh.
Somewhere in there is dinner.
During the modest success of my run at the Fringe, a notion had taken to circling my mind. This notion made regular petitions to my sense of reason. It appealed to my emotions, caressed my ego and stoked the fires of my ambition. And in the total clarity of that wakeful night, every worry, doubt and disbelief gave way to understanding: I would, in fact, journey the globe and tell my tale of America. Upon arriving at this knowledge, I began to giggle.
How absurd, that this outrageous plot should be plausible! What good fortune! What freedom!
And now, more than a year later, that part of the project is finished.
What remains is the difficult task of deciding which parts of it to tell you. Writing and performing this show will be great fun, once this first task is completed.
There are notes galore for me to sort through, photos, memories, observations. Each of these reveal themselves in new shapes and colors as they roll through my mind with the passage of time.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep on the futon. The lights were on and my computer was humming with unfinished edits for the video linked below.
Sea snails.
O! The mind crackles. The mood and the method return. Periods of sleeplessness bring brief but powerful surges of productivity. Tedious tasks are unpacked and completed in one-tenth of the time spent assiduously avoiding them. Inspiration seizes me, holds me in wonder and awe.Ideas and connections arise so quickly I can scarcely keep them inventoried, let alone place them in my work.
There’s no telling what tomorrow brings, only knowing that it comes. We are lucky if we are free to choose our steps as we venture into it. We are fortunate if we are free to change that pace as we see fit.
We may skip down the sidewalk or skulk along the gulley. I myself love life at a run: it’s a fourth-gear, paced-for-distance, total-soul immersion into the world we make our homes on, examining the way we live and the way we love and the things that motivate and move us. (This is part of why I love to live in New York City.)
It is a great joy, a freedom, my privilege, to tell people stories about the world we share.
Sharing these stories is how I express that joy, give thanks for that freedom, and honor the responsibility of that privilege.
I hope that you will join me in celebrating life, in all its ugliness and splendor! That’s the love in City Love Song. It has me steppin’ proud today, ready for tomorrow.
