Artist Date 4.2: Trumps Fatigue

August 20, 2016 LesleyPearl2 Comments

tom j steppenwolf I have not waited tables in more than 20 years. Until today.

As expected, not a lot has changed. Waiting tables remains a satisfying exercise in short-term relationships, being sassy and being shiny. Except orders go in via computer now as opposed to directly on the rail.

And my body has something to say about it.

After six-plus hours on the floor, I hurt in all the places I expected to. And some I didn’t.

My shins ache. And although I haven’t eaten in hours, I’m not hungry.

In about 18 hours I leave for Tennessee to visit my mother. I haven’t packed.

And yet, I am flying down Lincoln Avenue in a red and white polka-dot skirt, Fly London Wedges and bubble-gum pink lipstick. My bike lights are on. My heart is full. I feel happy.

Art trumps fatigue. Friendship trumps fatigue. Commitment trumps fatigue.

And so I land here, in a seat at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Artist Date 4.2 (or 120, depending on how you count).

It is the student showcase – the culmination of 10 weeks of classes at the School of the Steppenwolf Theatre. My friend Tom, one of the students, mentioned this a week or so ago. I penciled it in my book and assured him I’d be there.

Tom has built me a dining room table. Installed my air-conditioner. And is also a fan, dare I say devotee, of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

I was never not going to be here.

Even though I thought about it. Even though my shins had other ideas.

One-hundred twenty Artist Dates under my belt and I’m still shocked how every single one shifts me. That the commitment in my calendar means something. My commitment to my blog. To myself. And in this instance, my friend.

That every time I begin, I feel delighted. Joyous. Like my heart might burst. No matter how or what I was feeling 20 minutes earlier.

That it really takes so little to make me happy … other than me treating me. Leaving behind the shoulds and have-tos for a little while.

Like when my aunt whisked me away on a few hours shopping excursion during a lull in the weekend of my brother’s Bar Mitzvah celebration. She thought perhaps a certain 10-year-old with a Dorothy Hamill wedge might enjoy one-on-one attention, and some fancy new duds for middle school – which she had gift-wrapped after we picked them out.

Going on an Artist Date is like that. Like being Aunt Ellie to my 10-year-old self.

Except I’m 46. My shins hurt. And I’ve grown up enough to have space and attention for the person on stage.

I didn’t for my brother. I was only 10.

But I do for Tom.

When the lights go up and the entire ensemble takes a bow, I jump to my feet along with half of the audience. Clapping wildly. Tears streaming down my face.

Pride? Joy? For someone else’s joy? Someone else’s accomplishment? Someone else’s art? Someone else’s heart?

I think Tom sees me – wet-faced and flared nostrils – but really, I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. Because I can see him. All of him.

Because when I care for myself, I can care for and about others.

And unlike waiting tables … that has changed.

Artist Date 97: No Longer Desperate for the Drama

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

A different kind of Pink Flamingos... — A different kind of Pink Flamingos…

My Artist Date blogs tend to write themselves.

I don’t plan it. It just happens.

A flood of memories rushes in. An experience with my ex-husband. A story from my childhood. Some person or situation from my past popping up in full Technicolor like a carnival whack-a-mole.

The experience of the Artist Date — a planned, solo flight of fancy with the express purpose of filling me, my creative coffers — wakes up some dormant element of my history and connects me to myself, to art, the artist and the world around me.

It is both a self-involved deep-sea diving excursion into my own unique story and the recognition of the universal experiences that knit us together in an infinity scarf of humanity.

Until today, watching Desperate Dolls, a play written by my friend’s husband, at the Strawdog Theatre — Artist Date 97.

No story. Only feeling.

Enter three girls trying to make it big in Los Angeles, the sleazy but lovable B-movie director who gives them a shot (along with campy “showbiz” names) and a creepy-powerful, sexually frustrated devil-villain called Captain.

There is a late 60s-early 70s motel room with perfect period attention to detail. And screaming. Lots of it.

I covet Matchbox’s body — flat belly and perfect ass — snugly held in white panties and a matching bra. Pretty Sexy’s Go-Go boots and thick, fluttery false eyelashes. Sunny Jack’s belt buckle and mustache.

The thoughts are random and fleeting, in no way connected to my past. Only Sunny Jack’s grainy girl films — wanna-be starlets rubbing suntan oil between their breasts to bossa nova swing; kicking ass, or more literally, kicking balls of some Snideley Whiplash of a pervert chained to a tree — evoke any sense of the familiar.

A tip of the hat to John Water’s early films. Think Mole McHenry performing a do-it-yourself sex change in Desperate Living, Babs Johnson eating dog poop in the final scene of Pink Flamingos.

It is only later that I think about my friend’s brother turning me on to these films the way my cousins turned me on to pot when I was 12, or my father returning one of them to the video rental store before I had watched it . A liquor salesman with a strong stomach and a good sense of humor, he was horrified after just 10 minutes.

In the moment I am only conscious of my stomach tightening with the uncomfortable knowing of what comes next and wishing I didn’t. Sick anticipation and the inability to turn away.

No story. Only feeling.

My sympathetic nervous system — the “fight or flight” reflex that makes my heart race and the soles of my feet sweat — fully activated.

“I love the idea of exploitation movies. Movies conceived and relying on our basest human emotions and the things that attract us to most art…” writes Anderson Lawfer, Desperate Dolls‘ Hugen Artistic Director. “This is a style that doesn’t get done on stage because of the outrageous violence and sexual situations, but why not? We all love it.”

I used to love it. I chased that sympathetic nervous system hit, rushing toward roller coasters, scary movies, and without really knowing it, crazy drama. I lost my taste for it some years ago when it became clear that real life provided more than enough opportunities to exercise my body’s stress response.

But for one night, I can embrace it — grateful for the reprieve from my mind, from my memory, and the self-inflicted, heart-pounding insanity I once craved.

Artist Date 74: Letting Go of The Ghosts

May 8, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

It is Saturday. My friend Amy has invited me to see the world premiere of Cicada at the GreenHouse Theatre – Artist Date 74. It has been a labor of love – hers and others – for three years. She has asked all of her friends to bring their friends. To spread the word.

I say “yes” to the first part, “no” to the second – honoring my commitment to my weekly solo date. To myself. And write it in my calendar in pen.

But now I want to change my mind. I want to see a boy.

He is young. Younger. He visited my OKCupid profile. I visited his.

He reminds me of Mr. 700 Miles – my last love, my last heartbreak. Right down to the part where he moved home to be with his mother when she was ill. That’s the part that really knocked me out about 700 – his seeming unselfishness and big, shiny heart, which he proudly wore on his sleeve.

It is flawed from the start and I know it. Making contact because he reminds me of someone I used to love. Someone I am trying to let go of and clearly have not entirely because I am still writing about him. Because I am attracted to someone who reminds me of him.

We exchange a few messages. And then we talk. He isn’t 700. But I like his voice and there is something sweet and spiritual inside of him. We talk about gratitude. I tell him I’m sober – something I have consciously not mentioned in my most recent dating forays up until now, for no other reason than it is not yet germane.

We make a date for the following week, based on my schedule. But I want to meet sooner. I think of inviting him to the play with me, reasoning that I sometime go to events with others and still count it as my weekly Artist Date. Even though it isn’t.

But I know this isn’t the answer.

I meet him in the afternoon instead. Prior to the play, when a client cancels. We go for a walk at the lake. I tell him I had thought of inviting him to the play but didn’t – explaining the ritual and commitment of my weekly Artist Date. He says he wouldn’t have gone, he wouldn’t want to get in between me and me. My words, not his.

I had the same experience with 700 in January when I let it slip I would skip my Artist Date to talk with him on the phone for the first time. He said he would feel horrible if I missed the movie I was planning to see and suggested I call him later – which I do.

It is astonishing how quickly I will abandon myself.

——————–

It is a story about holding on. And letting go. About memory. Identity. The stories we repeat.

Conversations with ghosts that allow us to live on with those no longer present. Some haunting and angry. Some decidedly sweet and tender.

I think about my own ghosts. About serendipity – the times 700 has recently “showed up.”

An invitation he sent months ago to download Facebook Messenger pops up on my phone without cause or reason – his name and profile picture announcing the old request.

The license plate frame on the car in front of me, from a car dealership in the town where he lives – a village of only 5,000.

I whisper, “Are you there?” Sometimes I swear I can feel him. I wonder if he is thinking of me in those moments. I like to think so.

It hurts watching Amy, as Lily, struggle to let go of the one she loves best.

It is not a single action, letting go. More a process. A dropping off, bit by bit, until there is nothing left but the shell of what once was, and you don’t even notice until someone asks you about it.

Like when I went to the Facebook page of the Southern Svengali for the first time in months, and saw he was living in Boston. How could I not know? And how is it, I could not care? I was happy for him. For the work he was doing. But I was not affected by it.

——————–

Two days later I cancel my second date with 700 Stand In.

I am overwhelmed. I am working three jobs. Plus writing, dancing, and ostensibly looking for work.

I have not exercised since Sunday. I am again sleeping less than six hours a night. My apartment is a sty.

Something has got to give. The choice is obvious. I choose me.

I let the few other men I have been communicating with know I am on hiatus until June 12 – when my contract work is completed. I give them my email address and I disable my OKCupid account.

I feel sad. Like I have given away a puppy. I forget doing what is right does not always feel good.

I know if I can let go of the attention, and the possibility of romance at least for now – the rest will drop off too. Like it always does. Until I don’t even think of it, think of him, until his name is mentioned. And by then 700 miles is just a measurement of distance between here and there.

Artist Date 52: Exactly Where I Am Supposed To Be

December 17, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

This time last year I was on my knees. Literally.

It was my first holiday season divorced and living back in Chicago, alone. My girlfriend called me out on my obsession with the man I like to call the Southern Svengali — the one I kissed for two nights while in Charleston in late October. She said she could not hear about it, or him, anymore.

My non-relationship was affecting my relationships.

I felt desperate and scared. I called a friend who advised me to get on my knees and ask God to remove my obsession him every day.

I did. But I needed something more.

I remembered the comfort I had found in the structured creativity of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and decided to pull it out again — a hopeful, albeit artsy, roadmap out of myself.

This time, in addition to taking on the weekly reading and writing assignments, I committed to the weekly Artist Date – the weekly hour or so block of time, alone, to fill my creative coffers – and to a weekly blog about it for a year. Fifty-two Artist Dates. Fifty-two blogs.

Thursday is Artist Date 52.

I am sitting in a Starbucks on Michigan Avenue killing time before Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. It is 6 p.m. and I have been downtown since 11. I am tired. I am questioning the wisdom in staying here as opposed to driving home at 2 p.m. when I was finished with my work and returning later.

Until I get the text which lets me know I am exactly where I should me. It is from my friend Matt. He is at a coffee shop around the corner, also killing time, before his couple’s therapy session where he will ask his wife for a divorce.

I tell him where I am. Within moments he is standing over me and then we are hugging each other tightly. Teary.

I remember when he told me that he and his wife were separating, more than a year ago. I still lived in Seattle, but was visiting Chicago – smack dab in the middle of my own divorce.

Matt is appropriately anxious. I reflect back to him how thoughtful he has been through this entire process – never rash. We hold hands and we pray together, in the middle of Starbucks. It doesn’t seem strange.

He leaves. And shortly after, I do too, pulling my wool long-underwear back on over my tights. It is December and the temperatures are already in the teens.

I love Chicago at night. Especially during the holidays. Michigan Avenue twinkles with white lights, and skaters glide around in circles on the tiny patch of ice in Millenium Park.

I walk up “the hill” that is Randolph Street to the Harris Theater. My body has once again adjusted to the flat Midwest and takes note of the incline.

I pick up my ticket at will-call and make a beeline for the bathroom, peeling off my long underwear. Winter in Chicago is a lot of work.

My friend Lori is coming out. We embrace and talk excitedly about her ceramics show. Lori is a genius potter. We met her at Lil Street Art Center, where I was stumbling through a beginners’ class. Lori taught me how to glaze.

She asks if I will come back to Lil Street. I am not certain as I have committed my creative energies to my writing and my dance – at least for now.

She asks if I remember Kevin from the clay studio and reminds me he is a member of Hubbard Street. I do remember. It is one of the reasons I am here.

We part company and I run into a woman I have danced with. She is enrolled in Level three West African Dance. I am in Level two. Later, I see Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The world seems small and I am a citizen of it. Or, at the very least, a citizen of Chicago.

The woman in the seat next to mine is alone. As is the woman next to her. We make easy conversation. She is a Weight Watchers member. I am a Weight Watchers leader. She is looking for a massage therapist. I am a massage therapist. She is a widow. I am a divorcee.

She tells me she lost her husband four years ago, and she tears up. For the second time today I am clear that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Right down to my seat: BB10.

The performance, One Thousand Pieces by Alejandro Cerrudo, is inspired by Marc Chagall’s America Windows – the installation I visit every time I am at the Art Institute, my favorite. I shared it with Matt a few months ago when we met downtown for a member’s-only café re-opening. It was summer and we sat in the courtyard noting who was checking the other out. It seems a long time ago.

One Thousand Pieces, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

It is my first time seeing Hubbard Street Dance. The dancers’ bodies are strong. Gorgeous. Not sinewy, like ballet bodies. I think my legs approximate the same shape as theirs, albeit less toned and I feel at the same time cocky and ashamed admitting this to myself.

The stage is glossed and looks like water. I am looking for Kevin. My eyes occasionally roll back into my head. This almost always happens to me at performances. The lights go down and my sleepy kicks in. Except for last year when I saw Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre – twice.

My seats were good – dress circle one night, main floor the other. My experience was dramatically altered by looking straight at the dancers as opposed to peering down at them. I vowed then I would always buy good seats for dance. These seats are good – the Harris Theatre is small and there are no “bad seats.” But not good enough.

And then it is over.

The performance, but not my Artist Dates. They “work.” Like being on my knees works. Not so much in desperation (although I am certain I will find myself there again many times in this life), but in prayer – the antidote to it. Exactly where I am supposed to be.

Artist Date 46: Why I Am Here

November 2, 2013 LesleyPearl2 Comments

Some Artist Dates are easy alone. Museums. Lectures. Dance performances. Opera. Theatre. Some, like movies, I even prefer that way.

Live music, however, is far more difficult. Even when the audience is children. Perhaps even more so.

And yet, this is the set up for Artist Date 46.

I am parked outside of Schubas. My friend Matt’s band – Future Hits, self-proclaimed Fun (Yet Secretly Educational) Music for Kids, Families and Teachers – is playing this afternoon. It is a Halloween performance and party for children, hosted in collaboration with Whole Foods, The Kite Collective and Adventure Sandwich.

I stand in awe of how Matt puts himself out there. Performing. Recording. Last year, Future Hits cut its first CD, Songs for Learning, funded by KickStarter. This past summer he spent a month in South America, improving his Spanish. An ESL teacher for Chicago Public Schools, he requested, and received, a grant that paid for everything.

But right now I am standing in fear. Rather sitting, in my 13-year-old Honda Civic. I feel anxious about going inside. I don’t have children.

I sometimes feel this way walking into synagogue by myself – which I began doing several years ago.

As fresh meat, I was quickly swarmed and warmly greeted. Peppered with questions. Top on the list: Do you have children?

“No.”

“Oh…”

Pause. Uncomfortable silence. I often feel I have to fill that space. Say something clever or pithy to put us both at ease. I am getting better at just letting that dead air “hang.” Like summer in Charleston. Heavy. Still.

I wonder what they are wondering. If I cannot have children. If I am childless by choice. If I am waiting for the perfect sperm to swim into my life. I am told that this is none of my business.

Mostly, I imagine they wonder what brought me there. It’s a reasonable enough question. And the assumption that I have children is equally reasonable.

Many, perhaps most, join a congregation when their children are of school age. They recognize it as time to do what their parents had done – provide their children with a Jewish education. Sometimes for no other reason than, “this is what we do.”

Perhaps the second most popular reason for joining is the gift of a complimentary one-year membership, given when the Rabbi or Cantor of that congregation marries a couple. (I will have to query my Rabbi to see if I am correct in my speculation.)

I walked into synagogue for my own reasons. Neither recently married nor considering a Jewish education, I am the Jew who converted to Judaism. It’s a long story. One that doesn’t fit neatly into conversation over coffee and pastry after services. But it is mine. And I am assured that I have a place in the congregation.

Nonetheless, it is often still daunting walking through those sacred doors alone.

It is too at Schubas. Even after seeing my friend Joe, smoking outside. He doesn’t have kids either.

I walk in, pay $10, get my hand stamped and say to the bouncer, “Am I the only one here without kids?” “Nah,” he replies. Looking in, I’m not so sure.

The lights are dim and a bunch of little people in costumes are making kites and eating granola. Matt and his band mates are dressed in caveman attire. Think Flintstones.

Our friend Lily is selling CDs. Gene is on the floor with his son, Oscar, making a kite. Jenny is helping her son Seth into his costume.

Matt’s mom, Rhonda, is here. His dad too. I love Rhonda. Our conversations meander from fashion to Transcendental Meditation (which we both practice) – seamlessly. I feel like the universe has conspired for us to meet. We pick up where we left off last time.

Matt is delighted to see me. Grateful for the support. He always is.

I remember the first time I heard him play, at the Beat Kitchen. I arrived early and was standing on the corner outside. When he saw me, he dropped to his knees – on the sidewalk – his hands in prayer. Total gratitude.

This is why I am here – to support my friend. But I forget, falling into a swirling pit of “me.” Self-conscious about my childless-ness. Even though I (mostly) chose not to have any.

And then the music starts and I forget all of that. I forget myself. I have seen Matt perform many times, but this my first time hearing Future Hits. Even though I was a KickStarter supporter, which earned me a button and a CD.

I’m surprised. The music doesn’t feel like kids music. It is pleasing to my ear. It’s not sing-song-y like Barney. Something to be endured. I am delighted watching Emma go from bass to flute to tambourine.

The kids are invited to dance. They do, with joyous abandon. Oblivious to the concept of rhythm. I would like to shake a tail feather myself…but I’m suddenly self-conscious again. So I watch instead. Although I do raise my hand when the band asks if anyone’s birthday is in October.

There is a kite parade for the kids to show off their creations. More music and a dance contest. The winner – dressed as a werewolf – leaves with a Halloween-decorated bag of schwag.

And soon after, I leave too. Holding tightly to the light I see in Oscar’s face. In Seth’s. And the lesson they teach me. Beaming over the simplest things. Costumes. Music. Paper kites. They do not concern themselves with why they are here. Just that they are.

Artist Date 45: The (Sometimes) Kindness of Strangers

October 27, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

This woman is wearing a knit hat, striped in colors of the Rastafarian flag. It was a gift from a woman in Australia, while she was in Australia. A woman who fed this woman lunch and beers but accepted no payment. Her listening to the stories she was regaled with was payment enough.

Plus, she would need it while camping in the outback.

She flew to Australia following the demise of a relationship. Seems it is what she does. Camping in the Outback. Hiking in Wales. Meditating on a mountain outside of Tokyo.

She is standing on a small stage in Rogers Park talking about it. Coming clean, as it were.

Artist Date 45.

My friend Clover will also be reading and performing a piece . It is about her mother. About art school and being a performer. About helping a man across the street who has fallen and everyone around him just keeps moving as if this hasn’t happened and the universe calls upon her to play the part of his angel.

There is a third. Eric. Who will talk about his need to go to a place where his father had been. The father he didn’t know. And then he did. But who he never really knew. And is now dead.

But right now I’m watching Jennifer. I know her name because I looked it up in the program, which is black and white. Folded but not stapled. And reads, “The Kindness of Strangers: A Festival of Storytelling.”

And then, “A 3-week rotating mix of more than 30 storytellers weaving tales of connecting, or not, with strangers.” The words encircled by drawings, like a globe – buildings, a boat and a lighthouse, water.

I want to be this woman with a knit hat and a beer-stained hiking map, marked up by pub patrons who laugh each time she says the word “garbage.” This woman who takes off on serious adventures – by herself – when love goes south. When the re-bound from the break up proves not to be the antidote to her pain. Who is standing on this tiny stage telling her story.

I want to be that brave. To travel alone. Even though I’ve done it – albeit briefly — and my experience is that solo travel is most satisfying when it is connected to purpose. And people. Like my volunteer trips to Rwanda and the South of France.

I want a rebound. Even though it has been suggested I don’t date. Even though I have probably been divorced too long for anything to be called a rebound. And my short-lived dalliances, both emotional and physical, have been painful to the extreme.

Even though my experience of being alone this past year has brought me closer to myself. My craft. My writing. The very thing that might put me on stage.

Clover. Very likely telling a story. Just not on stage.

I am comparing my insides to someones outsides once again. Devaluing my own experience when confronted with someone seemingly doing what I think I’d like to do. What I think I should do.

I well up listening to her. While the details are different, I recognize the story as my own.

I see pieces of my story in Eric’s too. Reconnecting with a parent who was physically absent for so many years. His through desertion. Mine through adoption. Losing them again. And what is left. For him, a ring. For me, a pair of opera glasses and a too-big mink coat, her name embroidered on the inside, hanging in my closet.

But I do not see myself in Clover’s story.

I’m not even looking, let alone comparing. It is not that I am not interested. I am. I am teary, ass-glued-to-the-seat, riveted.

Maybe it is because I know her story. Her stories. She has trusted me with them over the years.

Her mother selling her art work, without her consent, as payment to her therapist. Lying down in the street in downtown Chicago when the light is turned red. A classroom performance piece. The ants that crossed in front of her mattress, on the floor, in the basement of her mother’s friend’s house, in the toniest part of upstate New York.

And I have trusted her with mine. They are less the same. But our feelings, and our responses, match perfectly. This is where we found our “me too’s.”

Like I am just now doing with Jennifer. With Eric. Connecting with strangers – who may or may not become more than that. (Turns out, I have danced with Eric’s girlfriend on and off for years. I’m pretty sure I’ll see both of them again.) The place of beginning.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Theatre