I feel so incredibly lavishly spoiled to say that phrase, so I’m just gonna say it again…
“… On a break, from learning lines… ”
…Isn’t that divine? Isn’t it a lusciously brain-gasmically delightful collection of words forming this ultimate pampered-spoiling sense of artistic security, dipped in a tantalizing chocolate coating of savoring yet-to-comeness?
… It has been so long since I’ve viewed this part of the theater process as “fun” or even a part of the artistic process…because it was always about getting the hell out of the book, so I could “start to really get to work.” Like, all of these years of working back-to-back-to-back on projects, I was just totally taking advantage of the fact that there was this one distasteful part to BE “gotten out of the way,” so I could do the other “real” stuff. But, after theatrically being unseasonably dry since basically February…it’s like your first taste of wine after two weeks of antibiotics for a terrible cold you just can’t fucking kick, (going on round three. Not that I’m bitter.)
… THIS SHIT IS MAGNIFICENT! Learning lines is suddenly like the best damn aperitif* EVER!
(*Note: due to my total inability to spell in English, never mind French, my phone autocorrect just suggested that line-learning is like the best damn “apartheid” ever…which I’m pretty sure it isn’t even remotely, so: I win this round, autocorrect. You’re drunk. Go home.)
… Anyway, the point is: I have a job again, thus a sense of purpose reinstilled*. (not “reinstalled,” autocorrect. I said: Go. Home.) I’ve got a character I am responsible for. Which exists in a literary context whom I am charged to bring to life in corporeal form. On a stage. And speak words. Which I am now learning in her specific sentence structure. So I can pretend it is my own. Which is a real grown-up job that people can get paid to do on this planet. And I am one of them, again. So: “hellz, yeah, and hallelujah!”
(Sigh. Cough-cough-cough. Sigh.)
… I just got worked up on fake theoretical paper while type-yelling, and it still made me cough.
… I am so damn tired of this fucking cold.
It’s the third version of it that I’ve had this summer, forcing me to everything from sleeping sitting up for days on end (which my neck-kink-from-hell is totally still yelling about), to not tasting food for weeks at a time (pretty sure I’ve pulled an “Ab-Fab” and have eaten potpourri “chips” a few times while streaming “Reign” at 2 am while not sleeping, and never even noticed), as well as totally admittingly wearing Always pads for at least a week before my actual period, so when I coughed so hard that both ends leaked a little, no horrified small child in the cereal aisle would point at me and loudly tattle, “Mommy, that diseased lady just peed her pants!” requiring a messy human biohazard clean-up, in aisle four.
… In short: this ongoing cluster-cold has totally humiliated me into a diaper-wearing, bronchial-honking, codeine-addicted, hunchbacked, snot-monster.
.. And yeah, I just totally wrote about it, to take my own power back. So, suck it, viral-infection-from-hell! I’ll own all the shit* (*autocorrect :”you mean shot? “) you throw at me, and still get a job where they trust me to inhabit*(*autocorrect:” you mean habitat? “) a fake person when I can’t even bodily take care of the real one I’ve been entrusted with! So fuck* (*autocorrect:” You mean duck? “) you!
… And also: autocorrect? It’s like…you don’t even know me.
~D