I had planned to write about how excited I am about my upcoming play reading at The Road Theatre, a great place that I am beginning a new relationship with. I wanted to investigate my excitement, and how hard it is to let that feeling morph magically into a sense of accomplishment. It doesn’t work that way for me. Excitement about projects-to-come usually turn into an anxious exploration of Everything That Could Go Wrong.
Lately I’ve been very interested in when Enough will be Enough. Meaning, my last play was really successful, this new relationship with The Road is more than usually meaningful because it comes to me through a long time friend with whom I had lost contact, and have now re-connected. I love the feeling of friendships renewed. It makes me feel like we are all in a web of community together, even when we don’t speak for a long time.
All good. Even the dinner table conversations about working hard to be satisfied with where I am now, and not looking into the future for a sense of accomplishment – even with those conversations taking place with friends I have been with for what seems like hundreds of years – I still suffer the “what if” anxieties, and the under coating of “this can’t keep going this well”.
So today I sat down to write about all this, and before I knew it, I was slapped in the face with the news that Philip Seymour Hoffman had died of an overdose of heroin. Mr. Hoffman is the recipient of an Academy Award, three more Academy Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations, and he had the respect of a lot of theatre and film-makers. Not enough?
Or – (to quote the Beatles) “something inside that was always denied for so many years”). And by that I mean a sense of well-being that is seemingly hard to come by if your upbringing does not provide it. Mr. Hoffman had a life partner and three kids. That is hard to swallow. I do not in any way blame him for an addiction to a pernicious drug, I have lost friends before to heroin. I have tried to talk those friends into smoking pot and drinking wine instead of shooting up. They have laughed at me and told me I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. And happily, that is true. But the question is still in my heart and my mind: with all that success, and legitimate success at that – he wasn’t a runway supermodel whose fame and fortune was based on a beauty that will inevitably leave you behind – why take risks like he did?
Mr. Hoffman was a real artist: an accomplished actor with loved ones, wealth, recognition, and seemingly good health. WTF? All of that disappears in one moment -one bad choice – one slip off the wagon.
Back to the rest of us. I have said in many of my blogs that I feel lucky as hell to get to write, and hopefully to write things that people feel affected by.
I am currently working on my play reading, an exciting journey that tells the story of a high school friend who jumped under an MTA train in her first year at Harvard. It is a story I have needed to get out of my soul, to share with others, to try to make sense of.
At the same time, at my “job” I am writing a video documentary about the epidemic of campus sexual assaults. This also means a lot to me since so many young women have no idea the danger they face in our colleges and universities where a staggering 1 in 4 women will be the victim of rape.
I have, for me, the perfect combination of art and activism. I am surrounded by community, and I survived breast cancer (which I got in my early 30’s).
I am determined to find a way to breathe all this in, to find a way to be proud of myself and – contented. And yes, contentment is always short lived by people who make art, because the itch inside to do the next piece of work is not only real, but necessary. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what I have right now. Right?
MY PLAY, “THE STRANGE STORY OF SELENA J” will be read at the Road Theatre on February 17th at 8 pm. It’s FREE. If you want to come, please Google the Road Theatre, the info will go up in about a week.