'Romance Sonambulo' by Federico Garcia Lorca

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

–My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.
My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.
–If it were possible, my boy,
I’d help you fix that trade.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
–My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.
Of iron, if that’s possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.
Don’t you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?
–Your white shirt has grown
thirsty dark brown roses.
Your blood oozes and flees
around the corners of your sash.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
–Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood.
Leaving a trail of teardrops.
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,
green wind, green branches.
The two friends climbed up.
The stiff wind left
in their mouths, a strange taste
of bile, of mint, and of basil
My friend, where is she–tell me–
where is your bitter girl?
How many times she waited for you!
How many times would she wait for you,
cool face, black hair,
on this green balcony!
Over the mouth of the cistern
the gypsy girl was swinging,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
An icicle of moon
holds her up above the water.
The night became intimate
like a little plaza.
Drunken “Guardias Civiles"
were pounding on the door.
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea.
And the horse on the mountain.

Things I have intentionally given up: a List

- Facebook

- expectations

- super late nights

- Gluten

- Most grains

- Letting myself go down that deep, dark spiral…

- Negative self-talk

- Weighing myself. Basically at all.

- Pouring energy into thoughts, relationships, pursuits, and truly anything unworthy of my precious energy and hours on earth in this one glorious life.

- Reading books I “should” (I stick to reading the books I like)

- Worrying

- Grudge-holding

- “Aspirational” clothing

- Comparing myself to others


(and I'm happier for all of it, so so so much happier)

Shakespearean Cocktails: A List

COMEDIES
The Taming of the Shew - The Shrewdriver
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bottom’s Up, Puck’s Fizz
Twelfth Night - What you Will
Merchant of Venice - Quali-Tea of Mercy
Much Ado About Nothing - The Much a Woo Woo

ROMANCES
A Winter's Tale - Exit pursued by a Beer
Cymbeline - Cym-Bellini

HISTORY
Richard III - The Gimme-let

TRADGEDIES
Macbeth - Bloody Mary Queen of Scots
Hamlet - Best Served Cold, Drowned Ophelia, Get thee to a Winery
Othello - Put of the Light Beer, Green-Eyed Monster
King Lear - Serpent’s Tooth 
Titus Andronicus - Bloody Tamora, Speechless
R&J - Juliet’s Emoji-hito 
Anthony & Cleopatra - The Cleopolitan  

Kidspoem/Bairnsangs By Liz Lochhead

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu'ed oan ma pixie an' my pawkies
it wis that bitter
said noo ye'll no starve
gie'd me a wee kiss and a kid-oan skelp oan the bum
and sent me aff across the playground
tae the place Ah'd learn to say

it was January
and a really dismal day
the first day I went to school
so my mother wrapped me up in my
best navy-blue top coat with the red tartan hood,
twirled a scarf around my neck,
pulled on my bobble-hat and mittens
it was so bitterly cold
said now you won't freeze to death
gave me a little kiss and a pretend slap on the bottom
to the place I'd learn to forget to say

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood,
birled a scarf aroon ma neck,
pu'ed oan ma pixie an' ma pawkies
it wis that bitter.

Oh saying it was one thing
but when it came to writing it
in black and white
the way it had to be said
was as if you were posh, grown-up, male, English and dead. 

Another Alexandra

Dear Sasha, 

The cold has truly settled in here in Chicago and we’re looking forward to -17 as a high temp on Wednesday. It is warmer in Vladivostok. Next week it is projected to be -40 and -52 with the windchill. It will be warmer on the surface of Mars. *

 I had a wonderful friend visit this week— a friend made several years (2011?) ago during a one week workshop. Her name is also Alexandra. We fully intended to walk around Millennium park, but then (of course) the weather turned to such frigidity that we decided to keep our activities indoors. That included a great deal of tea-sipping and talking—delving into deeper and deeper depths, like taking steps down a beautifully lit stairwell of intimacy.  It was so soul-resorting to spend quality time with a true friend and almost-sister.  Alexandra is probably the only other woman in my life that truly feels like the relationship one might have with a same-aged family member (much like Arielle, though that is even deeper for Ari and I have shared our entire lives). 

Alexandra has had a difficult year—her life-force of a mother died of early-onset Alzheimer’s in July, and over the years we have shared a beautiful common-knowledge of grief. We both bore witness to our parents dying slowly, but mine was physical while hers was a mental loss. In that vein, her grief was complicated by the fact that the mother she knew and grew up with “died," while her physical body remained and was replaced by a new person who did not know Alexandra at all from day to day. 

There were, effectively, two grieving processes for her to go through. I never knew Joan (her mother) in her titanic stardom of self, and it was heartening to know that over the years I have been of comfort to A as her mother slowly evaporated. By the time her mother did pass, the first grief was already thorough. I was honored to hold her experience both through the lens of my own grief of a parent, with curiosity and respect for its own distinction. 

In October, just before I left for Chicago, I drove up to New Hampshire to sing in her mother’s memorial service.  The weeks leading up to the service I was so mind-squashingly irritated with her. I almost couldn’t think about her without my brain exploding. She had asked me to sing at the memorial—a huge honor—but she had absolutely fallen off the face of the earth and I was at a loss as to how to proceed. I needed practical details to plan getting myself there, getting to Chicago, etc. Dear god Alexandra, my brain raged, I actually know first-hand that grief is crushing but I can’t be there for you if you don’t call me back!  

I tried her friends and boyfriend for help: what was I singing? What town was I going to? Do you realize how far away new Hampshire is? Do you realize how stressed I am trying to move to Chicago for 4 months, in only 4 days? What time was the service? Where? Where would we sleep? What in the actual hell was going on? This event very quickly became a major pain in my ass despite me desperately wanting to be there for her. As the day approached my frustration with her silence and scatter-brainedness mounted and nearly boiled over. I was a record-breaking level of grouchy.  

But, from the moment she and her boyfriend E piled into our rental car, I was transformed. Instantly. Over the course of the 48 hours encompassing the event, I’m wholly proud to say we shared one of the best, most hilarious, and most profound experiences of our adult lives. A treasured memory of laughter and sorrow and fullest humanity. I now own how thoroughly I projected her lack of communication as a lack of regard, and misinterpreted her silence as a lack of gratitude and love. I was wrong. She was, of course, just drowning. 

Alexandra, her boyfriend E (also a dear lovely friend) and I road-tipped up the country to her family’s home in New Hampshire. We sang along to terrible music the entire way. We told stories and laughed from our viscera. We vacillated from that laughter to tears in micro-seconds. We talked about real things. We talked about nothing.  We stopped at a being-renovated diner somewhere in deepest Massachusetts called “Athena 2,” (we never did locate Athena 1), ate gigantic over-priced salads underneath renovation tarps and laughed some more. Later, I helped her write her eulogy. I was her “other family” member and the family offered me a check after the service for my singing (which I, of course, donated to the Alzheimer’s Association). I got to know Alexandra, her family, and above all, her mother in a way I lack the language to express— but I recognize it as a sensation I still long to share with close friends about my father’s life. I bore witness to something deep and fervent and eternal. 

Basically: I was profoundly wrong.  I’m so glad I was wrong.  I learned the lesson thoroughly. I will never be such a grouchy pants again.  I should also mention that Alexandra was in a Broadway show (called “Head Over Heels”) that opened and closed in a matter of weeks, and thus, her highs and lows this year were on the Richter scale of intensity. This was her second week off after the close of the show, and she chose to spend it with me. I was very touched. 

Alexandra arrived on my doorstep last Wednesday on the first stop of what she is terming her “Grief Tour 2019.” All we did was light candles, snuggle Tati and one another, and talk at length about things that truly matter deep into the night. We occasionally ate food, sleep, bathe, and I did take breaks to go to work at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. When we weren’t doing those things, we were having a great deal of fun at Improv Shakespeare and the Art Institute. This visit somehow felt like the closing of the circle of memorial experience in October—like an echo. 

And I, of course, needed her too. I am lonely here and feeling unseen in that deep way that feels so necessary to me. I crave to know others deeply, and also to be known at the same depth—the latter sometimes being challenging for me, as discussed.  When she left there was indeed an Alexandra Socha-shaped hole in my apartment, but what remained was her essence, the fullness of my heart, and a little notebook labeled “SCREENPLAYS ABOUT MY CAT” with a long heartfelt note within it.

“To Alexandra, The only Alexandra I love more than myself.”

 My heart swelled, and off I went to play the fairy queen. 

Coulda-been-ku 20

20.

We met high above 

Chicago. Both in pain. But 

you shared your heartbreak-

-for a collection 

of moments my soul was nude.

You melted my ice.

© Nick Bantock

"To a Child at the Piano" by Alastair Reid

To a Child at the Piano
by Alastair Reid

Play the tune again: but this time
with more regard for the movement at the source of it
and less attention to time. Time falls
curiously in the course of it.

Play the tune again: not watching
your fingering, but forgetting, letting flow
the sound till it surrounds you. Do not count
or even think. Let go.

Play the tune again: but try to be
nobody, nothing, as though the pace
of the sound were your heart beating, as though
the music were your face.

Play the tune again. It should be easier
to think less every time of the notes, of the measure.
It is all an arrangement of silence. Be silent, and then
play it for your pleasure.

Play the tune again; and this time, when it ends,
do not ask me what I think. Feel what is happening
strangely in the room as the sound glooms over
you, me, everything.

Now, play the tune again

FAQ - Part 6

1. You’ve premiered a bunch of new works (such as Arlington at the Vineyard Theater and Love Story at Walnut Street Theatre). What is the best thing about premiering a new theatrical work to an audience?

In my experience, there is absolutely nothing that can compare to being present at the birth of new work. I think the most profound experience I had with that was Arlington by Polly Pen and Victor Lodato— a solo (with a pianist/vocalist played brilliantly by Ben Moss) piece, told in direct-address about a woman waiting for her husband to return from fighting in a war that I debuted at Inner Voices in 2012, that went on to a fully realized production in 2014 at the Vineyard. It was one of the most challenging, confrontational, exhilarating experiences of my life in any arena. To be inside the creative crucible at the birth of a new work that felt so relevant, contemporary and important, crafting it daily with the creators, was the absolute honor of my life.

The world we live in deserves, craves, and needs new stories. Sometimes difficult, sometimes hopeful, stories.



2. Are there some specific works of art that have gotten you through tough times?

©hula seventy

A  real mixed bag here but here we go:

"Kid" Stuff:

• The Magician’s Nephew
• The Secret Garden
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Funny Stuff:

• It’s Called a Breakup Cuz It’s Broken

Deep Stuff:

• The works of Marcus Aurelius
• Far From the Tree
• Braving the Wilderness

I find children’s literature to be particularly soothing in times of crisis—perhaps because when I was a child, my life was in a state of low, sonorous, but constant crisis. I identified with the protagonist children in the stories above because I recognized their conditions—not necessarily the exact conditions, but close. I identified with The Magician’s Nephew because the protagonist wants nothing more than to retrieve a magical apple to make his dying mother well again. I wanted that for my father.
    Similarly,  The Secret Garden’s Mary Lennox saw the power of nature heal her chronically ill cousin back to health.
    By the time my father had passed away I was sharing my days with Harry Potter, who, in The Prisoner of Azkaban, thinks he sees his dead father perform an act of heroism in a time turning spell, only to learn the profound lesson that he did not, in fact, see his father—he saw himself. And Harry this performs the act of heroism because, having seen the image of himself perform the act, he now knows he is capable. That image has never left me.

It’s sardonic, brutal, best-friend-holding-your-shoulders bracing. It’s hilarious, painful and real: It’s Called a Breakup Cuz It’s Broken was given to me like a Holy Bible of how to break up by a friend from college passing through New York after her own horrendous breakup, at the dawn of one of mine. It’s not great deep literature but it’s fantastic. And crucial? It actually helped.



3. How do you feel you've grown artistically since your career began?

Tyne Daly taught me a phrase that her mother (also an actor) taught her:
    “Deeper. Fuller. Richer. Better.”
I think that sums it up as well as anything ever could. It’s my intention, it is my aspiration, it is my devotion.

I give fewer f*cks about the stuff that doesn’t really matter (praise, awards, fame, followers), and a lot more f*cks about the stuff that does (ethics, growth, lessons learned, relationships made, contributions to society at large). It’s less about me and more about how I can serve.


4. Where do you see yourself artistically in 5 years?

I would love to see each of my artistic “arms” lengthening and broadening.

I’d love to be consistently working as an actor and theatrical writer— contributing to the theatre.

I’d love to continue to relinquish my singing baggage and sing with greater ease, less drama, more joy, more clarity, and feel freer inside my technique so that there isn’t a single sound I don’t feel confident making.

I’d love to write more books. I’d love to see my books dramatized for the screen and play an active role in manifesting their creation.

Overall: I intend to continue to create and make works that matter to me personally as well as socially. I want to continue to learn new things and sharpen old knives. I intend to make personal, profound, universal, connective, and relevant work that matters to humanity on any scale.

I intend to keep walking my talk.

©hula seventy

Preview of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' at Chicago Shakespeare

Cast members Melisa Soledad Pereyra, T.R. Knight, Alexandra Silber and Sam Kebede and took time out of rehearsal to share their excitement about the production, and why this production of Shakespeare’s audience favorite “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will have the whole theater laughing and dancing. Performances begin on December 6 in the Courtyard Theater at CST’s home on Navy Pier.

'Poem 1246' by Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.



Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

© Nick Bantock

Questions from Book Tour - Part 6

At the JCC of West Bloomfield, MI - where it all began

1. How would you urge the reader to learn to approach life as you do, in relishing the mundane and the ordinary?

By recognizing that absolutely nothing is mundane or ordinary.

But also:
     Pause.
     Breathe.
     Look in people’s eyes.
     Ask thoughtful questions and really listen to the answers.
     Practice gratitude.



2. As you stress in the book, death is something none of us an avoid. Have many people reached out to you with their own stories?

Absolutely. I think that has been the most overwhelming and rewarding part. Why write a book about grief and your own boring, excessively ordinary life if not to connect to others about theirs; and thus discover that nothing is boring, and no one is ordinary at all.

It is an old maxim, but you get what you give in this one glorious life. By leading with authenticity and vulnerability, by exposing your inner-most soft places (and merely exposing, not flooding or forcing your experience down someone’s unwilling throat!)  we allowing others to behold them, at their own capacity and tempo. Calm exposure invites  one to ask the age old human question: “you too?” And that exercise welcomes people to truly connect with one another.

I am so grateful to all [including you, dear interviewer, whose name I do not have the honor of knowing—I am so truly sorry for your loss—] who have been courageous enough to share their stories with me. It has been the greatest reward of this entire process.



3. Why did you begin the book with the list of things you'd tell your 17-year-old self?

The beginning of each of the five “sections,” as well as the Epilogue begin with a return of the adult Alexandra voice, speaking directly to the reader about events from the present day that are in direct relation to the events of my/her father’s death. They are “echoes” if you will that resonate in the present, informed by the past. After those introductory section chapters, we continue with the narrative of 2001.

First, I chose to speak to my 17-year-old self, because that was the last time I was truly innocent to the events chronicled in the book—the age of my personal “BC,” some of the advice is witty and typical stuff we as adults all realize we were idiots about bak then (“buy Frizz ease”), and some is very weighty (“go on all the walks with him and tell him all the things.”)

Second, it was important to me to create a structure that calmed the reader instantly by establishing that the narrator of this book was Alexandra Silber: contemporary adult who “turned out okay” and maybe a little bit more than “fine.” While, in contrast, the protagonist of this tale is an 18-year-old “Al” who has not yet acquired the perspective and wisdom of the narrator, she is just experiencing the events in real time.

The  “things you'd tell my 17-year-old self” was a clear way to establish that there was going to be an ongoing interchange between Al and Alexandra (if you will) throughout this book, and creates for the reader a subconscious understanding that our protagonist is not yet fully processed, while our narrator, is. Those two “characters” just happen to be the same person—17 years apart.






4. Concerning everyone who helped you through this tragedy, are you still in contact with them? What have been their reactions to the book?

All of them. ‘Grey’ is a hugely successful theatrical designer. ‘Kent’ is changing the world working for a State Senator and just had a baby. Lilly is still my best friend and plays oboe all over the world. I saw her last month at the Metropolitan opera playing Strauss at American Ballet Theater.

They are, all, triumphs of human beings.

Lilly!

Coulda-been-ku 19

19. 

I was impulsive. 

One cannot force love to bloom

in smothered soils.