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.

SHOWMANCE! The Scottsboro-mance: The Scottsboro Boys

In recent memory, it would be hard to recreate the palpable on-(and off)-stage chemistry, the extraordinary effervescence, and the striking, penetrative emotional bond of the entire creative ensemble of The Scottsboro Boys, and it is this, that leads us to introduce a Showmace that includes not a pair, but an especially tight group. 

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you:

The SCOTTSBORO-MACE. 

BEGINNINGS

In 2002, Susan Stroman first met with Thompson, Kander, and Ebb. 

“I'd collaborated with Kander and Ebb before (on And the World Goes Round, Steel Pier, and Flora, the Red Menace among others), and we all wanted to work together again,” says Stroman. They started from scratch, all sharing the desire to tell a true story, one based entirely in fact. “In the theatre, most worlds are fantastical. We wanted to do something true." With that, the team went about researching the great American trials—one was the trial of a group known simply as ‘The Scottsboro Boys.’”

As Douglas O. Linder says in his book The Trials of "The Scottsboro Boys,”

“No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged [crime supposedly committed] by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931.”

The Scottsboro Boys ordeal lasted over two decades, and served as a catalyst for a host of civil issues, all still chillingly relevant today. 

“Kander and Ebb do shows about ordinary people in extraordinary situations" Stroman continues, “It very quickly became evident—this was the right project.”

Stroman, Thompson, Kander and Ebb met once every week or two developing the project, until, sadly and suddenly in 2004, Fred Ebb passed away.  The project went on the shelf. But four years later, compelled by the nature of the work they had done, Kander called and wanted to look at it again. They started back at it. 

A reading with actors was arranged by Doug Abel at The Vineyard Theatre. 

Then it moved to The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. 

And then on to Broadway. 

THE CAST

Casting was a tall order— the creative team had to assemble a group young men with a very specific, highly developed, and wide range of abilities. The young men had to play many parts— not merely the individual The Scottsboro Boys themselves, but also the minstrels, the female accusers, the defense lawyers, prosecutors, guards, and judges. 

“They truly got to stretch their chops” Stroman confirmed. 

It was an triple threat tour de force for everyone involved.  

But what you cannot always measure in an audition room is the heart of each individual, nor can one predict the manner in which a company will weave itself together.

“It is something you always hope for—” Stroman says when asked if the team consciously attempted to create so tight an ensemble, “you try to pick a company that will get along! But sometimes—and this can’t be helped—people have one foot out the door. Everybody was ‘in it’ at The Scottsboro Boys; every last person was present, feeling it in the moment.”

The cast had their “roles” within the group, too,

“Many times a leader comes out of the company, only had it a couple times in my life. There I had it—Colman Domingo really became a father figure who gathered them together. And we were fortunate to have John Cullum leading the company” she says of the actor who celebrated his 50^th year on Broadway during the run of the show, “he’s a wonderful actor for a director who challenged me to think and make decisions, you could tell the boys learned from him.”

REHEARSAL

"I think that when you read about The Scottsboro Boys, you only ever hear of the group, of their alleged crime, but you didn't know the boys.That company put gave those boys an individuality they were never afforded in life." 

In rehearsal the Susan Stroman says she was inspired by them, 

“As a director I can only give them a venue to tell this important story. They bring their own experiences and history and apply it, that is something I can’t teach them.”

Because the story was told predominantly with simple chairs that the actors build into the train, the prison cell, the courtroom, etc., the cast takes complete charge of the story telling and depend on one another to do so. To an audience it appears they end up taking over the show.  As the story unravels, the boys confront John Cullum’s character [of The Interlocutor], tipping their chairs over and walking off in defiance. 

Stroman describes that day as a 'defining moment' of this ensemble.

“The day that happened was very emotional, it had a historic feel to it.”

UP AND RUNNING

“I felt so proud to hand the show over to them on opening night,” Stroman muses, “I have never been involved in a company that was so invested in telling the story. I knew they would treat it with care and respect.”  They were not so much  ‘taking a chance together,’ they were extending themselves, “It was like being in a big pool together, sometimes swimming, sometimes keeping one another afloat,  but always fueled by our passion for the show.”

They were doing something that hadn’t been done before,  “Of all the shows we’ve ever done the most fulfilling emotionally. The entire time we were working we felt alive.”

FINALLY

At the end of every day, the team was so drained by the story, everyone had to connect—they couldn’t leave 

the building without connecting with someone physically or verbally in a lovely positive way, it became something necessary for them to do.

"But what was most extraordinary…" adds Stroman thoughtfully, "…When stage management would call places, some one—usually Christian Dante White—would start to sing. Gospel, Broadway, whatever it was each guy would hook on in harmony, singing along as they descended the stairs, and by the time they got to bottom they finished singing backstage in great harmony and joy! All to bring them together to start the evening. Then they would put their hands together and 'remember The Scottsboro Boys…'"

After what the real-life people, as well as this extraordinary piece, company and creative team gave us— how could any of us ever forget?

SHOWMANCE! - An Introduction

Well hello there Playbill and London Still readers, remember me? I'm Al(exandra) Silber (you might know my on-stage self from Hello Again, Master Class, or London's Carousel) and I'm baaaaaaack... (after such a fun stint taking you through the ins and outs of MTC's Master Class last summer, how could I resist a return?)

This time, I come bearing new kinds of gifts! No, smart kid in the back, not frankincense and myrrh, but a new kind of peak inside the lives of those in the theatre. In a world where artists make instantaneous, inexplicably close friendships, romances and collaborations that last a lifetime... I bring you...

[*drumroll*]

SHOWMANCE.

[*!*:::pyrotechnics:::*!*]

 Hear me out: people in the theatre bond in a very unique and meaningful way-- which is, frankly, ineffable. And while one can't always describe the hows or the whys of these magical happenings, one certainly can agree that they most certainly do happen. They deserve to be explored! Not all "Showmances" are focused on Broadway lovebirds; Showmance casts a wider net, featuring various kinds of friendships and bonds that tie theatre folk together.  This could include strong friendships made during a show or in training, family connections or especially tight ensembles.

Showmance is a [fun--yes, amusing--yes, colorful--yesyesyes, but also a very fresh] way to document some of Broadway's best, across generations and styles and ages and talents. It is an unconventional structure for something important: a  new way of chronicling the ever-changing world of theatre Itself.

If you are reading this, then welcome: you are at the forefront!
Join me, and allow Broadway to Showmance you...

The Adventures of Sophie and Sharon: Part 10, A Sophie and Sharon Valentine

Sophie and Sharon prove that all you need is love. Happy Valentine's Day one and all!

Love, Loss and What I [*actually*] Wore

In honor of my current project, I give you a special post about my own experiences of love, loss and what I did indeed, actually wear.

*

My father liked to declare things to be "a celebration." Today is a celebration because it arrived. We are here. We are together. Today is an adventure. Let's celebrate. He took such tremendous joy in the act of living life. 

The day my father actually died is full of a great deal of mystery. So much happens, it is hard to stay present, while you simultaneously cannot get away from recognizing that you are in the middle of a memory.

When I heard JNF's young voice on the phone through the closed door speak the pronouncement to the police, I remember being grateful that the news was unwittingly shared with me in so private a manner.

My reaction surprised me-- I gathered myself and walked very calmly upstairs to my bedroom (next to the room where my father lay behind his closed bedroom door), opened my closet, ripped off the checkered pajamas and teal wool sweater from my boarding school share box, and immediately pulled on a long dress of pure, white silk. It was elegant, functional, and

I wanted to be ready to act. I somehow knew that I would always remember what I wore that day, and wanted those memories to be filled with beauty.  And hope.

I remember so clearly, wanting to be armed in white.

Similarly, on the day of the funeral, somewhere inside me I did not so much decide, but recognize that
I would not be wearing black. This, I thought, is not going to be a funeral at all, it is going to be a celebration, (and a concert and a recital and a reunion) and I am going to get glam goddammit. I would've dared anyone to stop me that day because I was feeling juuuuust feisty enough to start hurting feelings.

My hand graced my Senior “MORP” dress— hot pink sassiness. Too much, I thought. I don’t want the good folks at The Mystery Temple to be put off.

Vintage A-line Donna Reed statement? No, too “Hi Honey I’m home and by the way my Dad is dead.”

Then there it was.
My hand graced the lightest pastel iridescent green ball gown you have ever seen. It was modest and elegant, dancing on the cusp of child and fully-fledged woman, just as I was, and made of raw silk.

This was the one.

Heels.
A matching jacket in case The Mystery Temple is mysteriously cold.
The same pearls my Father bought me for my High School graduation just four months ago.

I walk into the hallway to make my way out and down the stairs when I meet my mother coming out of her room. She was dressed in a glorious lavender ball gown of her own. She looked as beautiful, and as certain as I felt.

    “It’s a celebration” she said.

We hadn’t talked about it.

It just was.

The Jehovah’s Witness

A Memoir.

Late October, 2001

[At rise: Al is at home sometime during Week 1 of The Aftermath. The doorbell rings. It is getting colder as October churns onward, leaves are falling and nights are drawing in. Alone, in pajamas and glasses she cannot remember changing in or out of. She answers it and her stomach flinches: THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. But it is.]

Al: Hi.
Jehovah’s Witness: Good morning!
Al: [under her breath] Not really— [though not really caring who hears her…]
JW: —Have you heard of Jesus Christ?
Al: [thinks and answers carefully] …I’ve… read his book.
JW: [looking Al up and down, assessing her age, he looks about him, confused.] Wait: why aren’t you in school?
Al: My dad is dead.
JW: [unfazed] But you are a teenager.
Al: In college.
JW: Then why aren’t you in college?
Al: I’m taking some time off.
JW: Why?
Al: Because my Dad is dead.

[Al wants to say "No, asshole, I'm at home because I just hate responsibility that much," but she doesn’t. She awkward pauses with this evangelist and let’s it stew. Then—]

JW: Would you like to see your father again?
Al: [She hates him] Is this a joke?
JW: No! [Joyfully] You can see your father again if you give your soul over to Jesus Christ! Here, see the drawing in this pamphlet?

Not in the mood, Sir...

[Pause. Al inspects the pamphlet: it is the kind of drawing you see in cheap children’s magazines at the Pediatrician’s office—children running towards the elderly in a perfect, sunny, Dr. Seuss-like field of bliss.]

Al: Um, you need to go.

[Ignoring her]

JW: May I come in?

[Having lost the will to live anyway she shrugs her shoulders and says]

Al: ... Sure.

[The JW does the WHOLE speech. He stands up, he acts stuff out. He is impassioned and expressive and oddly, sort of beautiful without being the kind of desperate one might expect. But Al just sits there--cross-legged and perched in the center of the sofa in her week-old clothes, numb, no will of her own to stop it, hoping this will soon be over. Finally, it ends.]

JW: So, do you have any questions?
Al: Yes. [For a second she considers asking him if he’d like to hear a ‘Knock Knock’ joke, but thinks better of it. These are not the people you start ‘Knock Knock’ jokes with…] Does it feel good?
JW: [taken aback] I’m sorry?
Al: To have done the whole speech?
JW: What do you mean?
Al: You must not ever be able to get the whole thing out; so many people slam doors in your faces. I mean you are…well, you are like the original telemarketers. Does it feel good to have done the whole Thing?

[He stares at Al. There is a part of him that can see he cannot hide from her— a person so raw they are incapable of judgment either passed or received and he looks, for an instant, uneasy. But this quickly fades as he sees the humor and truth in her question. This man is her neighbor and there is a part of him that is so gentle and well meaning it breaks her heart. He smiles and all his theatricality wanes.]

JW: It does, you know.
Al: What?
JW: Feel good.
Al: Good.
JW: Thank you.
Al: Thank you.


[They smile at one another]

…But now you probably should go.
JW: Okay.

[He will always have his friends at the Kingdom Hall...]

...I mean...I mean: wow...

Don't threaten my love of Murder, She Wrote. I will cut you.

I recently received a letter from a new friend. He is in "the biz" but I did not know that, and our paths had never crossed in real life until Christmas Eve, when they crossed at the holiday party of a mutual friend. And, to be specific, by "real life" I mean the very strange thing that happens when you are an actor, where conversations go like this:

Him: Hi, I'm M, nice to meet you.
Al: Hi I'm Al.
Him: Hi.

[four minutes of totally "Muggle" type conversation occurs--about LA, the holidays, and 90s television {including a reference to Lady Aberline from Mister Rodgers}, followed by--]

Him [cont]: Oh yes, I saw you.
Al: "Saw" me?
Him: On SVU. Yes.
Al: How?
Him: ...I...watch... television.
Al: Right.
Him: You were great.
Al: Thank you.

Him: I mean I've seen you in other theatre things... like Hello Again [the hostess of this holiday party was also in Hello Again]...and you know, Master Class.
Al: Right. [it dawns on me, taking me by surprise, once again, as it always does, that a lot of people see an actor--a lot more people than an actor will ever see...think on THAT...]
Him: Anyway!

And then we proceeded to dissect the ENTIRE CANON OF 80s and 90s pop culture for the next two hours.

Recently I received the following email from him:

Al Silbs.  Happy 2012. 
I have to tell you – and I don’t want you to be overwhelmed… I don’t want things to get awkward or anything… but… in the near-month since our meeting, I have definitely found myself watching Murder, She Wrote and…  I mean.  Al.  I just don’t know.  It really doesn’t live up to my childhood memories.  Like, in my mind it was just MacGyver except with Cora Hoover Hooper.  But.  It’s REALLY not.  And they’re all in Maine!  I’m just a little conflicted.  I mean, I was able to watch all 7 seasons of Family Ties recently – and it totally lived up to my warm sense-memories.  But, Murder, She Wrote?  I’m not as sure.  

Maybe I just caught some clunker episodes?  But …I feel like you might dispute the notion that there are clunker episodes to begin with.  So, I’m not sure.

I think you might be alarmed by my festival of underlining in the previous paragraphs.  It’s a work-habit, but then I started thinking – this is a chick who pays attention to syntax and details, I have to keep it consistent.  So now it looks like I’m e-mailing you a term paper.

How are you?  How’s Astoria?
M

[**crickets**]

JB reflects my *exact* emotions to this email

"How are you?"
"How's Astoria?"
Is this man OUT OF HIS MIND? How can he flippantly ask HOW I AM when he has attacked my love of Jessica Fletcher so profoundly? [mouth sputters!] Pah pah pah! Does he think I will forgive him?! Does he think he can flatter me so simply because it is evident that he follows me on "The Twitter" closely enough to know that I am choking my blog readers with English lessons as well as unnaturally re-interested in Murder She Wrote enough to record it every day onto my DVR and watch it obsessively because Jessica Fletcher is a friend who never lets you down?! [waves her arms and stomps around in Lucy Van Pelt-style fury.]

I needed a moment.
So I took it.
I did breathing exercises and I got a grip.
Then I responded.
Thus:

Whoa.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoooa. (I hope you could hear that the last "whoa" section was sung to the first few lines of "She Loves Me"....)

I don't know what to say.

I mean. What do I address first?

The fact you opened with Al Silbs?

Your consistency with the underlining?

Or...
The "term paper" you wrote?

And SPEAKING OF "WROTE"....

Who. Do. You. THINK. You. Are?

Look.
MSW is not good. And it is not just "Family Ties and Next Gen are not good but really just dated but heartwarming nonetheless" WAY.
It is actually pretty bad.

...M? Jessica is SO disappointed in you...

I will throw 80-90s TV a bone: there was totally a "style" of prime-time drama that was akin to the comparison of "people once, in recent memory, dressed up to travel on an airplane and now they wear their pajamas." (Thank you Reading Rainbow, thank you Marina Serkis and Gates MacFadden, thank you the entire cast of Diagnosis Murder for reminding us that this is ACTING...and by the way please send this memo to David Caruso because he clearly did *not* get that memo....)

But I firmly (!!!) believe MSW falls under the category of "so bad it's good" in a car crash way, as well as "entertaining purely because of nostalgia" way. It is entertainment that falls in the Venn Diagram of CSI: Miami with Magnum PI. Yay-- someone was eaten by an alligator in the Everglades but the short shorts and mustache makes it all palatable. Plus the frozen face of Angela Lansbury at the end as the credits roll fills me with Pavlovian glee.

There is a word for this kind of entertainment in England-- camp. It is CAMP. It is light, fluffy, virtuously clunky, terrible television that goes down as smooth as doughnuts for dinner-- delicious, too sweet, and you are hungry five minutes later.

The End.

[Angela Lansbury freeze frame]

*

Basically, this is the message I want to send: do not threaten my love of Murder She Wrote. I will, and I truly mean it, I will cut you.

Ex Libris

You all know about my blind, manic, intense passion for books. You are familiar with my desire to take you to school and get all blah blah blah about second person narrative and rant endlessly about the importance of a book cover, of the order of the Narnia novels, and what books to indulge in at what time of year.

I read.
I read a lot.
And I write.
And I love on books.... hard. I eat them. I am, as Anne Fadiman would say, a carnal lover of books-- taking them into the bath, marking the margins, breaking the spines, loving the body of my books as hard and fast as I love the soul which is their words.

But you know what else I do?
I sing.
So... why not combine these passions and write an all new cabaret show?
Why not bring it to the fanciest and swankiest nightclub in New York City?
Why not sing an entire show based on my love of books, writing, reading, letters, book inscriptions, libraries, librarians, basically--bibliophillic ECSTASY... my very favo(u)rite thing.

And (!!!) why not invite my dear friend Anthony Andrews to join me (in an indulgence or two based upon the books of TH White and George Bernard Shaw perhaps...)? It is going to be a veritable feast of words and music.

Join us.
Do.

Words for Interlochen Center for the Arts

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the grey, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless an pale. And then – the glory – so that cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

"And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

"And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer-blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

"And this I believe: that the free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. That is what I am and what I am about. I can understand what a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed we are lost."

- John Steinbeck, Chapter 13, East of Eden

In My Life: Los Angeles

 

pacific ocean, los angeles, california

2009

There's nothing quite like a *real* book...

Where memories go...

Have you ever wondered where memories go?

Do you suppose memories are stored in a kind of great Library? Like the ones of antiquity, and a comprehensive card catalog (filled with time-worn cards all dog-eared, fingered, and browned with age) notates the time, and place and subject of each encounter, vision, smell and feeling in alphabetical, or chronological, or other kind of order of significance. And as you collect more and more memories, the aisles and rows of books all magically lengthen! They expand alongside our experiences and nothing, not even our less than impressive lunches, or boring school lectures, or the scent of a stranger’s perfume, goes uncatalogued. Prim librarians with pinched mouths shush you as you run up and down a long unexplored aisle, children you recognize guide you to sections of the place you thought were long destroyed. These guides often sit you down and insist you pour and pour over the pages of newly rediscovered volumes, or point the way toward your favorite titles, reminding you (harshly or gently) that you may have your favorites, but there are millions of unexplored volumes, not to mention a world beyond the library itself, begging to be explored.

From the time I was little, I have always clutched fiercely onto ordinary moments. If I shut my eyes tightly and memorized every detail, I could paint and re-paint the moment with white-knuckle accuracy, then will myself to remember, over and over again. Writing it down felt like cheating, so I would stare and think and contemplate and document with my mind alone as I stored more and more details away, terrified that even one might escape me.


Would I remember the way I wept on my first day of school at El Rodeo School (in First Grade) when Tara Pascal denied it was the first day of Fall and called me a liar? Would I recall how I cried because I didn’t know anyone at my new school, and because my Mom had told me it was the first day of Fall, and I felt so alone? Or how Mrs. Divine held me and told me it was indeed, the first day of fall, and that everything was going to be alright?

Would I remember the taste of a Flintstone's push-up ice cream? the way the card board would get soggy, the way my heart sank when I reached the bottom?

Or  recall being disheartened every time that girl Rebecca beat everyone else to the gold shoes in the dress-up box in pre-school? 

How about the exact way mom’s eyes changed in the light? 

Or the way my skin stuck to my Dad’s black leather work chair as I spun round and round accompanied by the beats of his vintage IBM typewriter?


What of all those seemingly forgettable everyday moments?
The thought of losing even one iota, one single shredded oddment, one miniscule scintilla, petrified eight-year-old me.
No matter how unremarkable they were,
even then
    I wanted them.
I wanted them all.
I still do.


But would they be there in twenty years? Would the bookmarks of my discarded volumes remain in their place, right where I had left them? Or, like all natural things would I return to find them turned to dust? Disintegrated by time and neglect? Might I return to the Great Memory Library to find that entire sections had been destroyed by a fire, or ravaged in a flood, or sold off to another city to pay for modern repairs? 

I have been told that I have a photographic memory. But nearly thirty years of life on I have really only ever managed to hold onto what feels like a few measly scraps...


Neuroscientists say every memory is actually the memory of a memory, and every time we remember the same memory, it gets distorted slightly over and over again until at some unnameable point, all we are left with is the skeleton of truth draped in the fabrics of our imagination.

The Great Memory Library