Quiet

Dear Blog-o-sphere,

I am so sorry to have been a bit quiet recently.
I needed the quiet.
Very much.

Isn't it interesting that in January we are inundated with television, internet and radio advertisements shoving pro-active, energetic new beginnings upon us? Buy this skincare line! Get in shape! Try this diet! That diet! Don't eat carbs! Don't eat meat! Don't eat anything! Find love! Find your ancestors! DO IT NOW!!!

I didn't want to "do it now," I wanted to sit alone in my house and be with myself (and at most, with Jessica Fletcher)... in the quiet.

I needed to think about my life, about life in general. About relationships with others and with myself. I needed to de-fragment the internal computer. Though the work was silent, I worked so hard, and multi-tasked so ferociously, that I made myself sick-- at the height of my internal re-organization I caught walking pneunmonia and was forced to go even deeper in.

Slowly, I am emerging. Slowly, I feel a very heavy veil lifting. But the work is arduous, and frustratingly time-consuming. Depleting.

I will come home from a day of actor-ing and tell myself to do something simple--
     "Boil the water" I say to myself. Out loud, like a crazy person, I respond,
     "Boil water? What am I, a chemist?!"
And I go to Plan B. [Please note: Plan B usually includes a can of black beans...don't you judge me!!]

All of this is to say the following: I have been getting to know myself again, and that didn't leave a great deal of space for sharing myself with others. But I value sharing life, and I value you, dear readers, and I apologize for leaving you so unceremoniously.
I have returned.

*

The other night I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall with Comrade Baker-- a marvelous evening of music which concluded with a performance of Stravinsky's The Firebird delivered by the St. Louis Symphony (passionately conducted by their own David Robertson).

I didn't just cry; I wept. I actually wept, and had to wait for everyone to leave the hall before I could get up and exit myself.

I know this is on the nose, I know that it sounds prosaic to say so, I know that--But music really does have the power to transform. Like winter into spring--the cold earth has not died, it has merely been resting, waiting to be shaken and invigorated by the tilting of the earth ever-closer to the sun. 

Welcome back, spring.
And Al.

Please: watch and hear the whole of this "mythical story of Life, Death and Renewal.".
You won't be sorry.