Too Much To Think About At One Time.

I'm sitting here on my bed waiting to leave for the theatre, and I'm thinking of how much different my life is now than when I began this play nine months ago. I'm thinking about how I felt like I didn't have any friends at school, how I felt like my life was a complete failure, and how I honestly thought about dropping out, coming home, and working at U.S. Pole until something better came along. I'm thinking about how stupid I was, how I cared about things that didn't even matter, and how I wrote this play out of nothing but raw emotions and severe depression. It's amazing to think of how much of that - of me - is present in these characters, and how much of that emotional nonsense runs through the dialogue. I'm not saying that makes it bad, but this is definitely a play about feelings and thoughts, not about actions at all, which makes sense since I wasn't doing anything when I wrote it.

I'm thinking about the chair in our hotel room in San Francisco, and how I sat in it until one or two in the morning in the pitch black, the only light coming from my screen, and finished the last four or five scenes of the play while my family slept and I tried to shake the memory of the Color Purple tour that I'd just seen.

I'm thinking about taking this picture as soon as I'd finished the play, the headphones still in my ears from transcribing the Cole Porter lyrics from the Anything Goes revival recording.

I'm thinking about the people who are going to come and see this play. I'm thinking about the reactions they'll have to the language, to the kiss, and to the end. I'm thinking about old women covering their ears, either to avoid hearing another "fuck" or to protect what little hearing they have left from the "loud" music. I'm thinking about how some (read: most) people won't understand it, and how we're not trying to tell you What It Means, or What to Think. I'm thinking of this summer, of all the things that have happened, and how some of the words that I say in this play, or that other people say, mean so much more to me now than I ever thought they could.