All the ink is dry in all the reviews for our show, which just seems to take this sizable monkey off my back, and let me settle in to do the work without outward distraction.
…Reviews aren’t supposed to matter, and some shows I don’t read them on purpose, because I’ve got a bigger plateful than other times, and need to be focused on “my show with my team” vs what other people are flinging at it. It’s difficult, because artists want feedback. But sometimes that feedback gets in the way, and just in case…I chose not to follow that yellow brick road, this time around.
…Course you can’t really get away from it anyway. Other people talk about it, drop you notes…you can’t do a show in a social bubble. So what I do know, is that whether people are “feeling” the content and amount of work they personally have to do to keep up with watching a Stoppard: consensus is — we are doing ours to help them out at it. So: that’s success. Not everything is for everyone, but the fear of en-mass walk-outs and angry refund demands, is over now.
…Now I just getta work and play, with the team. Which is pretty outstanding.
…And pretty essential. This week, especially.
When the world loses an entertainer, an artist, it immediately knee-jerks to its polar relationship with them. That one song, that painting, that movie, that concert. Because ART MATTERS, TO EVERYONE, even when they don’t realize it a lot of the time. It becomes like this crazy few days or weeks of manic memory bumps, and articles, and YouTube tribute videos…an explosion of new DVD, MP3 and CD sales.
When the Artistic world loses an entertainer, an Artist, we immediately knee-jerk to devastation. Because it isn’t about that one song or film or concert. It is about the loss of “family.” They we’re our teachers, our collaborative companions in countless instances, because of what they inspired, and wrote about and expressed when laymens words couldn’t scratch the surface. They made us want to be and do what we are. They were our freakin heroes, paved the way for us, encouraged us, showed us limitless options of looking at the ordinary and seeing the extraordinary.
…We lost two big ones. Within 4 days.
Too much, too soon.
The tributes keep coming (as they should), and everyone mourns them in their own way. Sometimes it’s hysterical blubbering, sometimes a silent pictorial tribute, sometimes it’s about festing their work, reminding oneself of what a gift we’ve been left behind. I’m more the latter style, but I understand why people can take it to the extreme.
Art is so incredibly personal and builds a relationship like nothing else, between one stranger and another. What was meant by it in the creation might not be how it is received, but that is kind of the magical thing about it. Your interpretation is purely yours. It’s as private as you want it to be, and builds relationships based on that. It’s why we have favorite singers and writers and actors. Because somehow, though we’ve never met, they get us, and where we are at, and can show it better than we can even put into articulate sentences.
…And because of that, the loss of every artist means the loss of this matchless person who you should never be ashamed to mourn, tear up over, get pissed off, about. Guess what? Their job on this earth was to make you feel something, think something, consider something, that you never could have, with anyone else. That intimacy can’t be bought and sold in tickets…that, is personal.
It’s personal.
It’s family.
It’s a hero.
It hurts.
They went too soon, but dammit, the job they did while here…
Rest in peace dear Sirs.
…And, “thank you. From all the Family.”
~D
