135. THERE WILL BE BIG THINGS
i didn't make any resolutions for this year
i didn’t make any resolutions for this year. i didn’t make an in and out list. i didn’t set a new goodreads goal or plan a bunch of travel or tell everyone i’m going to change my life. i actually forgot i was supposed to do those things.
here’s what i did do. i kissed my boyfriend at midnight. i dug my tap shoes out of the closet. i did a little bit of cleaning, and i’ll do a little more soon. i dreamed that i went to get my hair cut and my nails done and discovered they were both already exactly how i liked them. i tried on a pair of shoes i don’t wear very often and remembered why. i went for a walk. i had a long chat with my aunt. i said yes to getting coffees and seeing shows. i decided to tackle my inbox next week. i bought myself a blue hat. i noticed how my body slows down when the sun sets. i drank champagne with pomegranate seeds. i drank coffee with milk and sugar. i texted my sister. i watered my plants.
there will be big things in 2025. i can feel it in my bones. maybe that’s why i don’t feel such pressure to plan. maybe it’s that i’m still resting, and all that pressure will kick back in on monday. i feel there will be big things, and i don’t feel i need to chase them. i feel like i need to be exactly where i am, awake and present, and let the big things come to me. i need to make sure i am ready, resourced, and well-rested when they arrive. i don’t need to grind or disconnect or beat myself up. i need to let opportunity know where to find me and welcome it in.
reading.
love in the time of cholera by gabriel garcía márquez. almost done.
directing new plays by evan cabnet.
apologia, a brief and piercing book of prose by barry lopez and woodcuts by robin eschner, following one man’s cross-country journey picking up roadkill.
this great 15-minute guide to the “getting things done” system.
how to stop trying to be better.
anya richkind, an excellent playwright, shared an exercise that our shared college theater professor used to offer: around the circle, filling the blanks. as i followed the prompts in anya’s digital version, i remembered how creative that class made me feel. it was one of the first times i felt i could be a generative artist in a theatrical space.
this interview with rory mcgregor, director of tender napalm, which i didn’t catch at theaterlab in nyc. theaterlab is notorious for the giant pole in the center (or really, off-center) of the space, and i enjoyed reading about another director actively grappling with how to make the oddities of a relatively budget-friendly new york theater space into features, rather than bugs.
thinking of making a long-running, annually divided list of things i like.
seeing.
diary of a tap dancer, featuring ayodele casel, at the american repertory theater. my god, i missed tap. this was amazing. there was a sequence in act 2 that made me not want to blink. there was a monologue about her wife that made me start crying in the front row. there was a moment at the very end when she was tapping and spinning and flying and centrifugal force was flinging tears from her face and i just lost it.
conclave. can’t believe twitter didn’t spoil this for me and i’m THRILLED it didn’t. am now consuming all the conclave tweets with abandon. jonny and i also beat out conclave! the musical and i’m pretty sure we’re gonna win a tony for it one day.
foreign correspondent. personally obsessed with the plane crash scene and the character whose last name is canonically all lowercase. the ending is so overtly propagandistic, it’s wild.
ali sent me this excellent instagram archive of ephemera.
“71 photographs that defined the year in arts.”
wow, i loved this little virtual paper snowflake maker. just sweet.
twitter is being flooded with cut scenes from the wicked movie, and i have to say… i wish they hadn’t cut this one. the end of the movie would have hit even harder.
i was introduced to streetcar named desire a la the simpsons: “oh, streetcar!”
ever heard of the artist bob and roberta smith? naomi got his latest book for christmas and i was appreciating his work all over again. (see below.)
my hometown! harvard square! my family! my cats!
hearing.
ever heard of buckingham nicks, the flop album that stevie nicks and lindsay buckingham made before rumours? it’s actually pretty great.
making.
we signed the contract for our performance space for good apples collective’s next show! will be so excited to announce it when the time comes.
locked down a date for our next internal reading of cityscrape. (thought you’d seen the last of that one? as if.)
did a bunch of concerted visual research for road kills, another one of my project’s with sophie; see below.
