Friends, I have
a story for you today. It is set in New York city, circa 2002. I am fresh out
of college, editing 9-to-5 for a nonprofit that barely covers my rent and
bills. But I am also an aspiring novelist. And, more importantly, I am 22.
Recap: I am 22, broke, and living in New York city. This is a recipe for one of
two things: a rags-to-riches story or enormous, unfathomable debt.
(In my case, it
was a bit of both, but that’s another story.)
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| Wifeys, circa 2008ish. |
The story I am
telling you today is the rags-to-riches one. It’s about how my dear, dear friend Laura (a.k.a. Wife and now Auntie Wife) loved, supported, and believed in me and my writing and would read
every thing I ever wrote (even the shitty poems) and first call it brilliance,
then provide detailed, thoughtful critique. It’s about the cafes we’ve sat in
over the years “working on our writing,” which produced some pages but quite
often also produced great Facebook updates and ridiculous Photoshopping of each
other’s faces. And it’s about how she
would buy me brunches I couldn’t afford, crowning herself a Patroness of the
Arts for feeding a starving artist.
Fast-forward to Los
Angeles, 2013. I am no longer fresh, period, and I am still working for the
same nonprofit, which now covers rent, bills, and some brunches. I no longer
call myself aspiring, I say I am a writer, but I allow this to fluctuate like
seasons, like rainfall, kind of like the nap schedule of my nine-month-old. And
I am almost 33.
Some of my best
friends in the world are still in New York, among them Laura. Laura is now the
Associate Artistic Director of a wild downtown theater company called Little Lord, which makes pastiche from and collages and larks and interpretive dances
its way through classic theater, gender, race, sexuality … you name it, they’ve
got a stranger, smarter, sexier way of looking at it than anyone else.
Little Lord is
in the LAST FIFTEEN DAYS of raising funds to put on their new show: Pocahontas,
and or America (read about the project-in-progress on LL's blog). With their track record as indication, this show will be
enlightening and fun, hilarious and sobering—plus music! And dance! And snacks!! In their own words, “Part historical pageant, part roadside attraction, Little
Lord corrupts over 400 years of fact and fiction to grant America the founding
myth we all deserve.”
Doesn’t that sound like something that deserves funding? I thought so, and because I'm in LA and the show is in NY, I can’t even go!
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| Laura: making braids cool years before Katniss Everdeen did. |
Please help Pocahontas get herstory rewritten.
Donate now.
1 comment:
You're so back in your groove.
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