I haven’t written a solid piece in over a month. I broke an oath to myself. I thought creativity would be a bit like inertia. I thought the theatre would inspire me more. Creativity feeds creativity, right?
But I’ve learned something. Imagine if creativity lived inside a cookie jar. You take a cookie from the cookie jar. If there’s a lid on it or left untouched, you’re desperate to eat all the cookies. But for the last month and a half, I’ve been eating a jar full of cookies every day and night in the rehearsal room and on the stage. All my cookies are going towards the play. And when I get home, I’m stuffed from cookies and I have no room left to make dinner. So, here are a few excerpts from my time here in Brooklyn. They are the crumbs at the bottom of the cookie jar, but sometimes the crumbs are tastiest part.
0 Comments
Donna is a caretaker for Jewish families in Brooklyn. She’s from Jamaica.
We were standing on the platform waiting for the subway when a woman’s loud phone conversation bled onto our side of the platform. We looked at each other and gave that all knowing look about the subway people who make the platform their living room. We chuckled. "Ah New York." She said. "I sort of like it. I’m nosy so I get to hear everyone’s business." She sniffed me out immediately. Y"ou’re not from here I see." She told me I live by all the Jamaicans. "How do you perfect fried plantains? Mine always come out starchy." "It’s in the ripeness of the plantain. Let it ripen on the counter. Let it cook to a golden brown. Don’t burn it." The train came. Our conversation continued from the platform to our seats. The local creepy man came to our cart. Mid conversation, without skipping a breath, she said "Don’t look at him." But it seemed like the more we ignored him, the more it provoked him. He started raising his voice trying to get our attention. He caused a row, calling us a witch, then another man came to our defense. He started screaming and hollaring to the local pervert. He got him off the train. The whole cart, that was moments ago silent, became a vent session about the local creep who goes from cart to cart harassing women. "My family’s from Iran." She said “you are Jewish though?” "How do you know I am Jewish? People don’t usually guess that." "I’m a caretaker for the Jewish elderly, I can see." This city can be lonely. Everyone’s in each other’s personal space and yet, we can be so far from each other. It's moments like these. With the loud platform talkers and the local pervs that bring people together collectively. And when you least expect it, there is safety and there is comfort. In Jamaican mothers who care for the Jewish elderly and teach you how to perfect your plantains. It’s these little bids of humanity that make me think, connection is in between a platform and a train ride away. My ex-boyfriend once told me I had the essence of a bird. He was right.
We’ve been in rehearsal for three weeks now and I feel my body relaxing. Can feel the air move through me. Walk with a fluidity. Work with my socks. Took me by surprise. Sometimes you don’t realize you’re holding tension until it’s gone. You hold yourself a little tighter when you’re in a new place with new faces. But 6 hours in a rehearsal room, 6 days a week. You get to know a people. You get to know a space. And God is it lovely when white walls and a Marley floor start to feel a bit like home. People in general are a bit like birds. I think good plays are also like birds. A good play requires synchrony. In mind set. In tone and nuance. Once you’ve reached that, you can find complete freedom and specificity in your choices. Insert fitting cliche: The sky’s the limit. We move as individuals but to serve the collective unit—the play. And when we do it aligned, it becomes a beautiful thing, flocking in near-perfect unity. My new favorite spot is the ledge on the window sill. It’s my nook to do the private quiet work. I love perching up against it. The cold glass pressed up against my back and the radiator to warm my feet. I want to note this. I don’t want to forget what it felt like to be a stranger. To be foreign. And I want to remember what it felt like to find ease. To perch like a bird. On a window sill. And then move with the flock when called “Lights Up.” Stories of Brooklyn Sunday, January 23rd, 2022 I’m gonna confess a dirty little secret. Don’t tell anyone, okay? The word starts with v and it rhymes with masturbation.
It’s a bit like a high. With it, the highs are high, and without it, it’s low. You quietly hope it’ll always be there but it’s an unreliable fix. We started our first week of rehearsals. Everyone is brilliant. And generous. I’m learning so much. It’s a masterclass in acting and creating. And yet. There’s a discomfort when you’re being challenged. It beats on your self image and nourishes your mind. Your ego fights to preserve itself. It hasn’t yet caught up to what you’re becoming. It’s a bit like outgrowing your favorite pair of shoes. It’s tattered, the laces are dirt, and it aches at your toes, but it feels disrespectful to throw them away. These favorite shoes that have held you and taken you so far. I call this growing pains. That’s how I know I’ve arrived somewhere good. Validation Twice as good when it comes from others and not nearly as satisfysing when it comes from myself. Stories of Brooklyn Friday January 7, 2022 New Years is a bit like a light switch.
We hope we can flick it off and on and poof. The greatest version of you stands in front of you. What do you see? Does she do pilates 3x a week and read manifestation books? I remember my first one was in 2016. I resolved to pass my AP Lit Exam and to become the graduation speaker. Which of those do you think came true? I’ll tell you it wasn’t the one I could study for. I went back and looked at all my resolutions from then till now and was shocked by how many had stayed the same. It’s not like I remembered. I simply wrote what I felt I needed that year-- To exercise, read more, book a film. Write my screenplay, publish my poems. Spend time with family. Be nicer to my brother. But here is the one that stood out the most: “Positive thinking. Not doubting myself or trying to justify my dreams.” (2018) “don’t fear/dwell on the future.” (2018) “Take up your space.” (2019) “Manifest.” (2018) “manifest.” (2020) “listen to my inner voice. Be less anxious.” (2021) “believe in your self with all the courage and willpower you can muster.” (2022) I look at that and I feel that I am all those things I seek to be. Filled with self belief and deeply assured that I’ll achieve said dreams. And yet, I write them. Because I also feel, entirely not. The interpersonal work always seems to be the hardest. Funnily enough, it’s the ones we can’t entirely control that are often the ones that come true. The cosmic irony of life. You can tell yourself you’ll write your bloody screenplay every God damn year, but you’ll end up booking the Off-Broadway play. Because it all happens in its own time, doesn’t it? Because although we’d certainly like it to be, it’s almost never as easy as flipping a light switch. Also—hello from Brooklyn. Stories of Brooklyn Saturday, January 1st, 2021 We paint pictures of people. We’re our own Picasso, painting cubist abstract faces of those sitting in front of us. That’s why muses often become lovers. The artist paints and molds and shapes the muse into his liking. How could you not fall in love with your own creation? I once texted a boy who lived across the sea. We texted for a month after I left. He was a romantic. Then one day, we picked up the phone and greeted each other with our names. He pronounced mine wrong. Although he forgot my name, I didn’t forget his. But I did forget how he sounded like. Curt. Brisk. Rough like a brush. Broke my illusion of him really. When I went through my break up last year, my mom’s friend told me that when we break up with someone, we’re not just grieving the loss of that person. We’re also grieving the loss of our hopes and dreams for and with that person; our dreams of a fairy tale future, our hopes of what they could have been. I mean, isn’t that why we all hold on just a little longer? Hoping they’ll fit into the image we’ve created for them? When I looked down, my hands were smeared with paint. Yet he was of an entirely different color. In that instance I learned two things:
And that, was a rude awakening. My Last Relationship Taught Me Tuesday, December 28th, 2021 Graphic Design by Saehee Jong
My last relationship taught me how to be a good listener. And by that I mean, he empowered me to listen to the quiet voice stirring in me, even when it went against his. He was kind that way.
He advocated for the frightened voice in me. And for that, he was a good listener. Never talked down to me. Never yelled. Not defensive. And in his way, he extinguished the fire out from under me. Boy could I get hot. Boy could I scream. And boy could I scream him into a corner and feel so awful about it. I’d scream and singed hot flames would erupt out of my mouth. I hated that I did that to him. It only happened two or three times. It’d happen when I’d feel neglected. Unheard. I thought if I screamed louder, I’d get my point across. Reverberate in his veins… it’d do the opposite... When I was a sophomore in college, my voice teacher asked me why I spoke with a shallow breath, rapid in speech like I was running out of time. I had never noticed that about myself. I told her with a question mark?—discovering why in that very moment—that I came from a big family. Shabbat dinners around the huge oval table with the aunts, cousins, grandparents, etc. were spent playing vocal musical chairs— the conversation hurriedly being passed person to person. When it’d arrive to me, or rather, when I found a place to take it, I’d speak loud and fast—taking quick shallow breaths in between—just before someone moved to the next chair and took everyone’s focus with it. But when I, the brushfire, simmered back to a candle flame, he’d come out from the corner. He knew exactly how to extinguish me. His temperament was calm like that. Earth like. But when I, the tornado, would hush into a tiny dust devil…he would peer through the curtains, step out from the safety of his home, look out on the porch and see a frightened girl, running dirt circles around herself on the driveway. My last relationship taught me how to fight. And to do it with compassion. My Last Relationship Taught Me Thursday December 24th, 2021 I’m losing faith.
For all my life I’ve wanted to be an actress. But lately I’ve fallen astray: By the bureaucracy of an industry. There’s the art and then there’s business. I don’t know if I’m much good at the business… Subtle power plays with people meant to help you. Gate keepers. Those who influence you into believing what is good and bad art. The constant inconsistency. The happenstance of it all. Mediocre scripts with expensive funding to produce cheap entertainment. I’m not supposed to turn down those auditions because their “stepping stones”, I tell myself. Because the world isn’t wrapped in a cummerbund that says “Ava’s hopes and dreams” written across it. But God, the artifice of it all. The disempowerment of it all. My parents are immigrants and we are Persian. Persian + immigrant means you succeed. You don’t survive. You thrive. You reach the highest degree of excellence. These are the stories we tell ourselves. The self inflicted narrative of who we are. I want that for myself. I’d be a liar if I told you I didn’t have an ego or the blood of high ambition searing through my veins. Who doesn’t want an award in their hand and an article to tell you you’re worth something. But what’s the price? I was in Madrid a few days ago. My friend, Maddie and I, wanted to watch a flamenco show. I looked out the window and saw a theater across the street from our Airbnb. I looked up its name. It just so happened that a show was starting in an hour. A lick of fate. It was spectacular. It’s one of few times where I can use that word and mean it with every syllable. It was spectacle but without pretense. Power without machismo. Men danced with their hips and stroked their own bodies and flipped their hair, while women stomped and widened their legs and led with their chests. It was a display of feminine and masculine and yet it was genderless. The rules of the world didn’t apply on that stage. It felt like they had been picked up from the party in their living room and dropped onto a stage to invite us all up. In theater we have something called the liminal space--the space in between. What separates audience from performer. Here though, there wasn’t one. I felt at any moment any one of us could have gone on stage. (Which, people did. I’ll tell you more about that in a second.) They had each and every one of us in the palm of their hand. My friend sent me an article the other day that talks about two forms of time: Kairos and Chrono America and China= Chrono Spain, South of Italy, & Greece= Kairos Chrono appeals to clocks and calendars. Kairos however, is an intuitive kind of time. Kids are the best at it. They play and when they don’t feel like it anymore, they move on. The Chrono mother is the one who reminds his son to get up from the dirt and get ready for school. With Kairos, things change when they are ready...So they danced longer if they wanted to. So others joined in if they felt compelled. After the flamenco dancer had finished a 10 minute routine, the guitarists rose and clapped for her. The rest followed. So, they were generous with one another. At the end, the toddler son of one of the flamenco dancers came up on stage. He clapped in time, as he’d seen his daddy do many times before. Another man from the audience came on stage and they put a mic in his hand. Stripped of status and ego. Maybe they won’t get paid much. Maybe they won’t be on big billboards across Sunset Blvd. People won’t know their names. They won’t have international glory. (Or maybe they will, who knows anything.) But they looked fulfilled. Unburdened by a value system and industry that vomits in your ear “Chrono. Chrono. Chrono.” I’ll never forget the flamenco dancer who danced with such power and seduction that she could have killed with a kiss. I’ll never forget the guitarist who dragged a chair center stage and played us a lullaby so moving that people in the audience called out Ole. Ole. Ole. Ole. Ole. Stories of Madrid Friday, December 24th, 2021 He is one of the greatest human beings you’ll ever meet. I hope you have the privilege of knowing him one day. Something in me says you will. As much as this collection is about what my relationship taught me, it’s also a love letter. A love letter to him. But also, a love letter to love itself.
And although we couldn't be, we learned a lot of lessons from each other. A lesson in love and loss. And for that I will always aways be grateful. Let’s begin. I really miss my mom. And home. The sinking feeling began yesterday. I don’t know what changed.
Perhaps it got colder. Perhaps the novelty wore off. I want to go find safety in the arms of my friends. To sleep in my bed. Eat my mom’s food. Hear Oliver-my dog-barking in the background while my dad and I cozy on the couch. I’m writing this from Kensington Palace doing Afternoon Tea. They’re playing Christmas songs on the piano. When I was in choir in high school our choir teacher, Mr. Tuttle, taught us a whole repertoire of Christmas carols for us to sing around the community during the holidays. Right now they’re playing In the Bleak Mid Winter. I wish I could turn around and see Mr.Tuttle conducting us. I wonder if you’re conducting an angel choir. Maybe it’s you playing the piano. Maybe you’re saying hello to me through the frosty wind made moan. I’m really lucky for the time I’ve spent here. The people I’ve met, the love I’ve found in my solitude, the change in tempo. I’ll be in New York in a few weeks to work on my first Off-Broadway play. I’ll be staying in Brooklyn. Perhaps there’ll be a Stories of Brooklyn (hehe) Until then-- Stories of Notting Hill Friday December 3rd, 2021 |
About this PageHello friends! Here's my page on all things writing. From my short stories to my poems on people, places, and life itself.
|