Clown and mother
In a moment of… not solitude exactly –more like nobody is asking me to do anything at this particular moment–I open my laptop to write and it’s full of Disney Channel games My Kid uploaded while I was doing something else!
With apologies to Virgina Woolf, author of the 1929 essay “A Room of One’s Own”, a laptop of one’s own is perhaps what is necessary for a woman to write in these times. Apparently I don’t even have that!
Aghhhhhhhh!
I spent so much time with clowns and art this week that when the younger single people sitting at the table in the diner after the late night Clown Lab after Downtown Clown Revue started talking about putting their tapes together to apply for the upcoming Cirque du Soleil auditions I thought I was one of them.
They say there is lots of work. New shows are in development and existing shows need replacement cast. My friends have studio time booked and video cameras ready to complete their applications.
Riding the A train back to Brooklyn I was mentally cataloguing the video I have of myself in performance, what was recorded during the last production and what I might still need. Cirque du Soleil is to circus people what Broadway is to musical comedy triple threats. It is both the summit of all aspirations and the kind of high calibre gig that leads to more work. Who knows, maybe The Husband will be transfered to Las Vegas. Maybe another Cirque show will set up in New York. Maybe I could become attached to something that has a long development process and touring doesn’t become a reality until My Kid is in middle school or high school.
I walk through the door to our apartment. It is nearly 3 am. The lights are on and the TV is blaring because My Kid had fallen asleep in the front room watching the Disney Channel while waiting for me to come home.
She has written a note: “Tonight I was going to go to sleep with mom but she had to do something like see a clown show. So I tried to stay from going to sleep.”
Jeff Raz said the hardest part about touring with Cirque du Soleil was being away from his family.
So…
Never mind.
I am so happy, so relieved, so hopeful. I cried. I have never felt this way about a president. One of our own. Much is being made of the color of his skin and that is an inspiring first. But this is a president of my generation. Someone who was a child in the 1970’s and came of age in the 1980’s and married in the 1990’s Someone whose children, for better or worse, are influenced by the Disney Channel.
Early 2000s recession 2001–2003 22 months
The collapse of the dot-com bubble, the September 11th attacks, and accounting scandals contributed to a relatively mild contraction in the North American economy.
Early 1990s recession 1990–1991 23 months
Industrial production and manufacturing-trade sales decreased in early 1991.
Early 1980s recession 1980–1982 25 months
The Iranian Revolution sharply increased the price of oil around the world in 1979, causing the 1979 energy crisis. This was caused by the new regime in power in Iran, which exported oil at inconsistent intervals and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Tight monetary policy in the United States to control inflation lead to another recession. The changes were made largely because of inflation that was carried over from the previous decade due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis.
1973 Oil Crisis 1973–1975 24 months
A quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC coupled with high government spending due to the Vietnam War lead to stagflation in the United States.
Last night, My Kid was watching “The Wizards of Waverly Place” on the Disney Channel (where the characters are drawn with such a broad brush one has to do a double-take just to register that the show is live action and not a cartoon). The main character and her friend had an encounter with the mean girl who ruled the local high school. Her mission every day was to say things to individual students to make them cry, just because she could. It gave her pleasure. It’s a type and I was reminded of Sarah Palin.
Then, also, this morning, I by myself, also, in fact, was cruisin’ the internet, and also, then I found, on my own studyin’ an article by a reporter who wrote about terrible racist things that Sarah Palin has said:
http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-“racist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean”/
I think I can officially say we are in production. Lorraine and I have sent several e-mails back and forth today about gaps in the outline and which puppets need to be made. That’s kind of cool. On the other hand, I played with my kid in the apartment and it looks worse than it did when we got up this morning. And, I’m not keeping up with putting away as we go along because I keep sneaking away from the pretend car/restaurant/dog run to check my e-mail and think about the piece. At the same time I was trying to be really zen about letting My Kid decide what she wanted to do and being her playmate since as a parent I have noticed that it has been a while since she has engaged with her toys and that imaginative play that is so important that I take studio workshops to do it as an adult. But the “play” that clowns do in the studio bears very little resemblance to my kid pretending to do the things I do which make me crazy when I play with her because I want to be going to the real store and really cleaning and going outside and running real errands. I feel like a hostage in her imaginary car under the table with the dolls in their car seats folding and unfolding the toy stroller again and again. Been there done that, don’t want to pretend today. I feel guilty. But, My Kid is at an age where she will watch the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon for hours on end and then talk like a sarcastic TV tween for the rest of the day. I don’t know which is worse. My Kid is going to be so dissappointed when she gets to high school and her campus doesn’t look like the Getty Museum with latte carts the way it does on Zoey 101. And don’t tell me it won’t happen. I was really traumatized when my first “real” job and life after college weren’t anything like the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
I saw Gypsy on Broadway today!
OK I think I myself was completely warped by playing “Dainty June” in a UM Summer Stock production of Gypsy. My New York stage clown friends frequently try to get me to stop being “ON” in front of an audience and I realize now there was some feeling of sucess in playing that cartoon vaudeville child that still worked at RBBCC and that I still cling to in some clown situations. I went to Clown College there was something about it that worked better than anything else I had ever done…
I’m not “Dainty June” anymore, I’m “Mama Rose” now!
Even last night at Clownlab, an exercise and I started doing a spot-on imitation of Sally Anne Howes as the “Music Box Doll” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang–and I just stopped for no reason–it was just an improv game. We were just supposed to be action figures–whatever that meant–I started out as “Wonder Woman”. Whatever the exercise was meant to be it became a send up of ’70’s toys and movies. It wasn’t like I was auditioning for a play a someone else…
Something about not having permission to be…
This performing thing is complicated…
No wonder my child is not interested…
Patty LuPone was incredible today
Also
Boyd Gaines, who is married to someone I went to high school with, is absolutely charming
I was wondering who the hyper-energetic-girl-I-knew/mare-at-the-starting-gate, has turned into to be married to such a charming man It must be worth a drink or a coffee to find out.
I am aware of their plays. I wanted to see Contact at Lincoln Center, but I had a baby and there was that 9/11 event that constricted movement and enthusiasm. My friend was in The Country Girl and Coram Boy both of which closed before I got around to seening them. I really meant to seee Twelve Angry Men and really really regretted not seeing it after I had to spend two months of my life as a juror on a Brooklyn murder trial.
I have had no contact with her since we first were moving to New York and my sister got her sister to give her e-mail to me and we corresponded about strollers appropriate to the city.
Tonight,
A dinner at Tratoria Spagetto in Greenwich Village between the church and the fountain. I love the “Lady and the Tramp” eating spagettiI aesthetic of the place.
The husband’s former co-worker who moved back to India and lives in Bangalore, his wife and daughter. We have much hope for their classes to exchange letters–“Wow you live in a totally different country, but you have the Disney Channel too!!!! OMG” Also the husbands former boss and socially ept wife–when will we organize joint vacations??? There are posibilities…
I lost or had stolen my cell phone today, had to pay for a new one to keep myself and my life in the same place, a future essay I owe this blog about the evils of sharecropping in cyper-space…
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