Hi Stacey

Hi Stacey–

I used to start all my English classes with a freewrite. This served a few purposes. One, I think students should write every day in a writing class. Just like, that’s obvious. Also, I think students, actually humans, forget the power of writing until they do it. It’s so important, to say how you feel, to you. Every course, there were a couple students who (in evals) noted freewriting as their favorite part of the day. Often these weren’t students I’d consider serious writers. Usually they were just kinda overwhelmed with work or family or whatever. They needed a diary.

I also played music over the freewrite. A trick I learned from Johnny Saldana from ASU. He was always blasting music when we got to the room. Put everyone in a good mood right away. So simple.

And then, logistically, the freewrite was important because I’d do attendance at the end. Canonically, if you were present to say “present” 10 minutes into class, you were on time. This was my middle ground of needing to have an attendance policy but not being a jerk about timeliness (a pillar of white supremacy).

It’s funny, you’d think I’d do a freewrite every time I sit at my desk. But I don’t. I dunno, I don’t think I need one. But sometimes I go for it. Maybe every couple weeks I have a long-ass freewrite. I hoard them, which you’re not supposed to do. But oh well. It’s hard for me to delete my writing.

I wonder why I hate both sharing and ending my writing. Kinda funny, huh? I am pulled to this blog lately, for example. Because I’m a little too visible elsewhere. My play is being performed every night and then again in NYC and I’m on the internet making these short dance videos. I don’t know why though, isn’t that bizarre? I don’t know why I’m making them.

I asked Dern. He said maybe I feel confident. I said I do, but why does that equate to doing a little recorded scoot in a hotel bathroom and posting it to my Instagram story? He guessed, maybe I’m showing people I don’t care? But if you put anything on the internet, doesn’t that mean you care? I very genuinely haven’t sorted it all. I might eventually. Takes me a while.

This is a freewrite, if that weren’t clear. Which is why some of the ideas are a little choppy and, uh uh uh, slopped together? Is that it? Spaghetti brain, if we’ve talked about that. An idea from an essay I read at least a decade ago. Girls have spaghetti brain. Like a big plate of pasta, all noodled together. Boys have waffle brain. You get it, I think. Again, a major generalization, but one that’s not untrue, Stace.

I’m listening to the new Taylor Swift songs. The Encore section of The Life of a Showgirl. I love them of course. I don’t really care how basic I am when it comes to just, as a rule, liking her music. I do. I resent the idea that criticism walks hand in hand with intelligence. Maybe I want to enjoy things, you ever think about that, Letterboxd?

Okay this freewrite is harder for me than I anticipated. I guess because I’m typing. I really don’t have time to think with my fingers going so fast huh? I guess my only beef with the four new songs is…they both depart from the narrative (in terms of color scheme) and don’t add much new to the narrative. Maybe more will be revealed. I want so much to be revealed. I believe it will be. I think everything is a magic show. (The Prestige comes to mind again.)

But maybe everything is just what it is. Hard for me to believe. Does that make me sharp or insane? Hard to tell!

I believe I’m going to sort out what’s happening in the mirror because I sort out most things, just after a year or two. Something similar was happening with going to the Eras movie so many times. I went so many times. I felt compelled. I didn’t get it at the time but now I do. I get it all. I’ll write about it one day. Long story short, was a deshaming exercise. Gosh. I really am obsessed with shame lately. Maybe because I think it’s controlling us.

Then link that to how obsessed with comedy I am. How do they intersect? They do duh, but how–like all the places and ways, is what I’m after. Can we unshame the world with laughter, Stacey?!

Alright, pretty wacky yammering today. Again, I blame the freewrite. I suppose I’ll get into my work now. I have to review the play for tiny tweaks. I don’t have many, but I have some. I gotta comb through. I’m not looking forward to it. I’ve combed this particular piece way too many times now. I risk messing something up at this point.

Might journal a little, have a few emails to tee up, my manager has asked me to expand the new idea. I’m trying. It’s not coming easy. I only want things that come easy now. Not because I’m afraid of hard work. But because, for whatever reason, everything easy turns out better. If we believe in human design, it’s the projector thing.

Thanks for listening. Oh yeah, one other thing I was thinking about last night. Maybe there’s a Narcissus connection with us?

That character is often villainized, two-dimensional. But he’s really quite tragic. He loves his reflection, but his reflection doesn’t love them back. His reflection doesn’t know him. Because Narcissus doesn’t know himself.

So if that applies to you and I–through the glass–who is who? Honestly, my gut says you’d be Narcissus and I’d be the reflection. I realize I seem like the main character as the “real” human, but which of us knows about the other? You know about me, but I don’t know about you. So if one of us were looking at the other, it’s actually you above the pond, not me. Unless one of us is Echo.

I guess you could be Echo and I’d be Narcissus and my own reflection. If that’s the case, is persona or madwoman in the water?

I heard Jung went mega hermit mode and dipped off for a few years when he was 38. He let his brain juice away at all that had been hounding him subconsciously, ended up writing The Red Book.

xoxo

Alice