Have a He(ART)

Wrote this on the train tonight... Enjoy

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Since today I received two separate inquiries about the next entry, I assume that enough time has passed since Grimm opened for me to healthily comment about it.

I’m currently sitting on an E train heading uptown from 14th Street.  It’s a little after ten, and I know as soon as I get home, I’ll probably just scarf whatever Nicole whipped up for dinner (turkey loaf and broccoli, huzzah!) and get ready for bed.  

Tomorrow is almost upon us.  Already, tomorrow begins another day.

But right now, no excuses.  For the next thirty or so minutes, I’m left with no distraction, none at all, to write -- unless you count the music blasting through my headphones or the belligerent homeless man who, God-willing, will make his way into the car at some point. 

I’m traveling home from week two of my fiction workshop.  Tonight, it was my turn to share with the group the draft of a short-story I’d written -- an experience that, while not new to me, still leaves me with feelings of excitement and sheer terror.  There’s a vulnerability that inevitably stems from sharing your art.  Will people like it?  Is it good?  Christ, did anyone notice the typo on page seven? 

(Random subway distraction #1: the train just lurched, causing the ass of an Amazonian woman in pink shorts to graze my face with the danger, severity, and urgency of a fired bullet.)

I suppose it’s fitting I’m leaving a writing workshop to write.  Now for a shameless metaphor: Hurricane Grimm has just about passed.  For months we’d been preparing, battening down the hatches, hammering planks over the windows, and checking to make sure we secured enough double A’s for the flashlights.  But now it’s back to reality.  The (ab)normal stressors of life, neglected for months, now require violent attention.  With September 1st nearly upon us, it’s probably time Olivia, Mike, and I actually find, pay for, and move into a new apartment.  I should probably start looking over the material for that class I’ve been hired to teach...or at least figure out how the parking passes at the campus work.  There’s laundry to be washed, food to be bought, 8-to-5 jobs that require more than just six hours of sleep to get by on. 

(Random subway distraction #2: a Mexican man has just begun playing his guitar and singing a wonderful, little ditty in Spanish.)

Grimm HQ, now neatly packaged.

My life, not so much.

But in the wake of Grimm, clean up is messy.  We’ve had our share of reviews to contend with -- some kinder than others, some written by critics who obviously never realized our show was (gasp!) intended for children, mistaking the economy of the script for a lack in sophistication.  

But this is what I mean about sharing art.  It’s risky.  It’s terrifying.  In a workshop environment, like the one I just came from, people are able to set aside their tastes and appreciate a piece of art as a work in progress, helpfully noting what works, as the piece currently stands, and pointing out what can be improved upon, focused, and revamped for the final product.  I wish more critics remembered this.  

Although we present something as “finished” doesn’t mean it is.  Any art, by nature, is incomplete.  As a writer, I can assure you that I could spend my entire life revising something.  It’s my choice not to.  It’s my choice to click “print” and hand out my fifteen pages to a room full of people I only met a week ago.  

And similarly, it’s a choice to perform draft #8 (seriously, who’s counting anymore?) of a musical for a house full of family, friends, but mostly... total strangers.  

But they’ve asked for it, and they ask for more.  We sold out tickets last Saturday, and came close to selling out multiple other performances.  We remain the top-selling show at our venue.  For our final performance on Wednesday, we’re already up to sixty-something tickets.  That’s sixty-something on the Monday before a show at 2 PM two days later -- a time slot that impelled me to demand the time off from work precisely because it’s so inconvenient.

And so, I say with certitude that the story doesn’t end when Gretel closes the book after the final number.  On Wednesday, we have our final performance of the draft we call Grimm.  Only time will tell how this chapter will end, but we’re idiots to think the book is intended to stay shut forever.