On Audiences
This was my final reading from book tour (edited for reading purposes as it was written in my iPhone notes app to be read aloud) I miss you + I miss tour!
One summer I worked in St. Louis, Missouri at a summer stock theatre. I was 19 and that was my life then — creating, making something come to life on stage and nothing made me feel so alive. I was unsure anything else ever would. I knew, at the least, that my peace was in my ability to create. To build a story out of the pattern on the wallpaper or the way you looked right at me. Observations turned into art and art turned to observations, and so on… and so forth. And I maintain this to be true.
My boss didn’t have time for small talk. I would get to his office 30 minutes before he arrived every day and straighten up. Then I’d make his coffee and wait with a pen and a pad of paper for him to give me the day’s todo list.
One day he was chatty and I thought he was the coolest person on earth so I savored the small talk.
‘You know what I think is the best part about the theatre?’ He said.
I shook my head because I didn’t know.
‘When an audience sits together—at a performance, a concert, breathing rates sync up, followed by heart rate and excitement. When we come to the theatre as strangers, our heartbeats sync up.’
And that’s all I needed to hear to know I would be in love with the audience for the rest of my life. He doesn’t know I folded his words into my pocket like a receipt you need to save, and I’ve never let them go.
The next time you go see a movie at an AMC theatre. The next time you go to the touring musical passing through your town. The next time you have an urge to go to a concert or stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers in a huge crowd and sing a bunch of lyrics you all have memorized—you can look to your left and look to your right and you can know that your heart beat is in sync with that person next to you. Even if you’ve never met them. Even though there’s a very real chance you’ll never see them again. Even if you think you’d hate them or know you do.
Thousands of hearts finding their way to a rhythm like a very carefully constructed million piece band.
There are very few things, I’ve heard of, more intimate and more beautiful than that. Whenever it gets a little tough, I’ll think about that.
Badum. Badum. Badum.
It was hot that summer, the one in St. Louis. Every day it would be 110 degrees and we’d be outside at rehearsal under the whir of ceiling fans, which, occasionally decapitated a bird if one happened to make the unfortunate journey from the comfort of the trees to the terrace where rehearsal took place. We’d have a tiny bird funeral and then we’d be back to tap dancing and singing and piano playing. That’s show biz baby. And the show must go on.
Maybe, I often thought, sitting there, a scribe for my boss, who emoted with each beat of the ensemble, this was about more than the show. Maybe this was true for life too. It’ll go on. It’ll all go on. Even when we feel our worst, even when we curse being here. Not because it’s easy. Not because it makes sense. Because it has no choice but to go on. The show and this life and you and me.
On my 20th birthday I stood backstage at 6:57 PM next to a famous Broadway actress. I held her water bottle and the dog she’d take on stage for her first entrance. Then she’d wow the audience, meet me off stage left, hand me the dog, take a sip of water—and then she’d sink into the performance, so deeply, so fully, it was like nothing existed but her and I, the darkened sky, and hundreds of people looking up at her, all of their hearts beating in tandem. That summer was unlike any creative experience I’ve ever had. I was apart of something so magical, even if I was the person getting coffees for the important people. Even if I was taking the dogs out to pee in between scenes. I’d become the walls of that place, like so many who came before me. I left myself there, I sometimes think. And I’m OK with that. I’ve never escaped before in the way I did when I spent that summer getting coffees for the people who called the shots.
Standing backstage, a feeling of euphoria filling me like fresh air, tingling my toes, I wondered what I was meant to do with my life—how I’d ever replicate such bliss. Then, I asked myself what I missed. And I missed the drama club. I missed clamping my hands on the shoulders of my cast mates, deep in a pre-show huddle. I missed locking eyes with Jake backstage between cues. And the way I felt each time I slipped off my costume and became myself again. But I didn’t miss performing. I didn’t miss acting.
I missed community. I missed the wonderful feeling it was to entertain. To teach someone something. To have someone disagree or go home and talk about what they’d seen with one another for hours and hours. I missed being a tiny part in the play, a small character in the huge story. I missed the way my imagination would bubble over like a pot of boiling water, forgotten about—and I’d race to find a piece of paper to catch it. I missed having, creating and being—apart of an audience. I could never feel lonely, never feel alone, if that one fact was true: I was in an audience. I had created an audience. And that meant I was apart of something.
Life has no dress rehearsal, and this is one way it does not imitate art. I wrote a 300 page book and had countless opportunities to draft and redraft and mix and change and review. I memorized a 90 minute show for my book tour, unique and different for 13 perfect cities and I practiced it endlessly before the time came for the curtain to rise. Even an improv group strategizes before they get up on stage to make things up. But there is no sitzprobe, no run through, no dress rehearsal for life—it is simply the somewhat cruel, often harsh reality that this is the show—and we are not pretending, we are real, and much like the show, we must go on too.
I wish I could write a script for life the way I can a play, and I wish I could stop worrying and I wish I could fix everything but unfortunately all three of these wishes won’t ever come true. I want to be in control of everything and there is very little I can really grasp, really maneuver. This isn’t a video game. This isn’t a musical. This is just you and me, different as we are, sitting on our perspective chairs or couches or subway seats, reading something I wrote in my phone notes side by side.
And since there is so little that I truly know, and so little that is truly fact, I want to instead focus on what I do know — as the show goes on around us, as we sink into our own performance, as we play ourselves. That is what it means to me to be in control—to understand that most of it is up to the fates and the winds, so I should focus on my reaction, focus on my little lessons, focus on my own little scripture that I jot down as I fuck up and unlearn and relearn and live.
What I do know:
You look good. It is boring and tired to make lists of the things you find wrong about yourself. You are not too anything — too tall, too big, too loud, too much, too quiet— you are just enough. You are an overflowing cup. There’s no such thing as too much of something so very good. Let yourself be.
The best way to someone’s heart is opening up your own.
We all need to eat more fiber and drink more water. Trust me.
Being yourself means accepting all that has been, all that is, all that will be—and making the most of those few truths.
Liking yourself means leading a life you enjoy, not one you believe someone else would enjoy, not one you believe you should enjoy. A life you enjoy.
Sometimes retail therapy really does work.
Who you are is infinitely in style. Being different is a badge of honor. Gender is a construct, being gay is not a sin, being a woman is not less than. When you open up a door that has forever been locked for someone like you, stand at that door and hold it open for everyone else. There is no freedom until we are all free. There is no justice until we all taste it.
It is never, ever too late. To say I am sorry. To say I love you. To try again. To start over.
All you HAVE to do is be kind to yourself and others, try your best and work hard on the things you’d like to work hard on. Everything else is a suggestion other people came up with about how to live.
You do not always need to achieve something to pop a bottle of champagne and celebrate. Getting out of bed is enough some days.
You get to define success for yourself. You get to define failure for yourself.
There are an infinite amount of possibilities to love and be loved waiting for you. You just need to be ready and willing to go find them.
You are not out of their league. They are not out of yours. You’re either meant to learn something from one another, or you aren’t.
Stretching, actually is, unfortunately, very good for you.
Begging them to stay—begging them to love you—is a waste of your own time. Because you are not a maybe.
When someone tells you who they are… believe them.
Guilt is reserved for when we do something wrong, with consequences. Guilt is not for setting boundaries, guilt is not for gentle honestly, guilt is not for the times where you look out for yourself.
Sometimes goals cap your potential—so allow the sky to be the first place you aim for, but know the universe is vast and expansive.
A life raft is a female friend.
When you are good at something, you’re allowed to say it. You are allowed to be good at something and know it. You should say so.
The people who love you the most are going to celebrate you for choosing your own version of happiness, even if and when their version would’ve looked differently.
We are not what we accomplish, we are not our job, we are not our trauma. We are ourselves, we are one another, we are what we will make and where we will go.
Sometimes you really do just need to go out and get some ice cream and take a deep breath. Remind yourself of the sweetness life has to offer.
It is an incredible privilege to be able to feed ourselves—emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually, until we are full.
Journaling for 5 minutes a day can help to clear your mind.
Nothing and everything is ‘on trend’ and ‘in style’. Wear whatever the hell you want.
You deserve to be loved in the way you love others. You deserve to feel love in the way you feel when you love others. You deserve love.
Your most favorite book is a book someone else abandoned. We cannot force each other to have the same tastes and preferences—we should be intrigued by the way we differ from our neighbors and our lovers and even our best friends.
You deserve to have breakfast. Even if you didn’t go on a run this morning. Even if you don’t have one planned. You don’t earn breakfast. It is something you deserve no matter what.
Art is the most integral, important, life affirming, necessary way we can express ourselves. If you make art, you are an artist.
There is only one pair of your eyes and only one set of your fingerprints. All of us, and therefore none of us, are special.
Red wine *can* stain, if you don’t know how to get it out properly.
Nothing is guaranteed, so really try your best to have a good fucking time.
Go where you’re wanted. Be patient. Be kind—first to yourself, then to everyone else. Be the hero you’ve been hoping would save you. Get in your car, hit the gas and go.
The show won’t just go on, it has no choice but to. And you will go on too.
I have had the privilege to be apart of so many audiences throughout my life. I have had the even larger privilege to create them. I’ve sat in audiences and sobbed. I’ve sat in audiences and I’ve felt laughter peel me out of my seat. I’ve sat in audiences and held the hand of whoever was next to me. I’ve sat in audiences and felt my mind bend and expand and change. I’ve sat in audiences and felt ruined, affirmed and impassioned. Being in an audience means to go on a journey together, for long enough that our hearts are all beating as one.
When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I used to say I wanted to be a writer. Being a writer just means that you write, so in many ways, I always was one. What has changed is that I have readers. They—you—are the gift that keeps on giving. I have this audience of flesh and blood, dreams and wonder and inspiration. The audience, an audience, this audience makes me full and whole. And I can’t wait to pull us into another darkened room, for all of our hearts to beat together again soon.
An extreme delay on reading this one, but my god was it worth it