BACK IN THE SADDLE ON A HORSE WITH NO NAME

During the Shut Down, I wrote on my blog everyday. I would get up, make coffee, go to my desk, and crank out whatever was on my mind. No agenda. No pre-planning of what to write. I’d just go.

It was therapy of sorts.

And a lot of my friends liked it. Said it helped them to know they weren’t the only ones freaking out, over thinking, under thinking, going a bit insane, and all those things that happened to all of us that we really don’t talk enough about but that happened and were real and strange and large.

I am doing it again.

I have meant to start this since the election. The past few months have felt like the end of the movie The Mist. Like everything is fucked and we are making nothing but wrong choices and there are monsters everywhere. Every day, some new horror awaits me on the internet. And it feels like said horrors are planned for maximum effect. Human rights. Woman’s Rights. DEI. Transgender Rights. Elon Musk and the Doge-bags given access to all our information. All of it.

And I have had enough. I don’t know what all there is to do, but I am certain part of it is talking about it, writing about it, speaking what I perceive to be the truth, seeking a better way to live, to interact, to respond.

To not despair and die, figuratively or literally or digitally.

So here I am.

Alive and kicking and howling.

Remember when we howled every night during the Shut Down? How, out of desperation and need, we would all go to our windows or doors around 7 or so and just howl our asses off for a minute or two? It felt so good. So real. Like all of us, all of humanity, was connected for a brief moment. I think on that often.

More and more, I think of the Shut Down. How there were times, especially early on, when I wondered if we had finally done it, and ended ourselves, like some early 1970s Sci-Fi movie starring Charlton Heston, some mad combo of The Omega Man, Soylent Green, and the original (and best) Planet of the Apes. How Lisa and I would take long walks in the early morning through what felt like a deserted Denver, past empty freeways, along silent streets, under a gloriously clean sky, serenaded by birds who seemed quite happy to have the world back. I was the worst of time, it was the best of times.

And I felt completely alive. Frightened, yes. But alive. Aware. In the moment.

I feel a similar way these days. Glimmers of reality pushing through the noise. And I need that reality. So, I have stopped watching the news, which seem to have all been bought and sold by big corporations who do not care about anything but dumbing us all down and selling us useless shit. I took all the social media apps off my phone. I still check both the news and the socials from time to time, but nowhere near like I used to. I’ve started reading all the books I’ve been meaning to read, watching all the movies I missed when there were in the theatres.

I’ve started yet again to live life as I want to.

And I feel better.

I do not know what will happen. No one does. But I am fairly certain that the best thing I can do, that we all can do, is to live fully. If life can’t be lived under bad times, what chance do we have?

Here’s a song. It’s Road to Hell (Reprise) from HadesTown, a show I am directing up at StageDoor right now that I love very much. It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway.

And here’s a photo. It’s from another show at StageDoor. A show that was stolen by the plague. We were about to go into Tech for Sweeney Todd when everything in the world stopped. We couldn’t do our show. So we went into the woods, socially distanced, and did it anyway, best we could.

We sang it anyway.

PS- I am now using Substack as well as this spot. Go here to check it out. And please follow!