14. if love is a red dress (hang me in rags) - acoustic demo version

I'm writing whilst I wait for my pasta to be ready. I'm not entirely sure it's a vegetarian pasta. Sometimes in Denmark they just slip meat into unexpected places. So I'm suspicious. We have a deadline soon. I'm very disconnected to everything. I do all this reading and writing and formulating and then I have a break where I don't look at my work. When I come back to it I can't quite believe that it's my work at all. It sounds clever, it has knowledge that I've already forgotten. I almost feel sad for the person who has read all these books and boiled it up into this thing in front of me - somewhat impressed. It's really a feeling of looking at yourself from the outside, like these dreams where you can't move or something like that, and it actually means you're dead. But anyway I'm not dead it's just a weird numb sensation. Very disconnected from things. Also when I come back to all my ideas and interests I can feel restless, it's like they're all sitting inactive in a room I just leaved locked for these periods. But I'm also reevaluating what it means to act, valuing some ideas that will never leave their pages, maybe they will never even come into my writing. I've always made work and then written about it or vice versa, so it's also just a confusing time whereby maybe I can write my work. But then I also come back to action that has meaning, some ideas need to be acted upon, to make change, to inspire further action, to become art. I feel a pressure to write generically so we can be on the same page, but isn't the beauty of it that we're not? I've had a few rejections, I've been let down by some people, I've also rekindled some old things so it kind of balances out. I'm about to teach at an audition and I am nervous, nervous to be faced by the sad reality of how many people are out of work, by how fickle the casting process often is, how minute the variables effecting who gets it and who doesn't are. How many of us are just improvising our way through and not really knowing anything. I started using my new typewriter which is using electricity - it's very fancy, and the words come out crystal clear, it even has some kind of tippex built in so you can erase mistakes. I'm very unnatural on a typewriter, I type on it like my grandma types on her smartphone - there's probably an irony there. But I fall in love with these simple things that are difficult, I get to feel weak, I have to slow down. I'm doing a lot of things that are rushed right now, I'm trying to put band aids on tiny cracks before things shatter, it's always a fragile state - rushing - I don't know that much good comes from it. Or I have to work so much prior to the things itself to account for the oncoming rush, so it's not really a rush at all - it's the same amount of work as it would always be. I'm resisting the urge to go back and edit as I type, to transition nicely between my thoughts and to guide more clearly where my head is at. I won't do it for now. We have a deadline. I'm feeling disconnected. I'm in a fake state of rushed-ness. I'm enjoying the sun - it makes my polaroids clearer. It turns my boring Scandinavian apartment orange sometimes. I end with some questions, maybe to hope for conversation or just to ask someone other than myself some things. How are you doing? Are you holding on to anything too tight? Are you neglecting to hold on elsewhere? What are you doing to recover from rejection? How do you feel in control of anything when someone else always dishes out the money? How do you write about huge things like love and death? How do you make peace with the ignorance enveloped in your own taste? How do you know when something is finished? Where do you go when you miss it?

photo one - actor nathan lane in a scene from the broadway musical "wind in the willows." (new york), martha swope

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'If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags) - Acoustic Demo Version'  - Pulp Fiction (Music From The Motion Picture), Maria McKee, Track 14