no. 7

“I remember damage. Then escape. Then adrift in a stranger’s galaxy for a long, long time. But I’m safe now.”

Apr 28, 2023

from the after/hours archive: Lucky [March 7, 2022]

I've seen the analytics; most of y'all read this letter over the weekend anyway, and maybe didn't miss the Friday missive, but living between a non-stop week + the naps required after was this persistent sense that I was letting you down. That I was dropping the ball. That I could do better and be more consistent.

This is just the tip of a digression called, “Am I Doing This Right?”

Like, I spellcheck every week, I do. I read as I write, and I re-read a dozen times, and then I spellcheck, and still there are typos. It haunts me, a little.

That certainty that I will always miss something or drop a ball or miss the mark is why I’ve avoided some of the questions here. Or, I’ve delayed answering. I’m absolutely going to miss something, or sound too dogmatic, or simplistic. In general, this is why all advice is a ton of crap.

Pithy commentary only makes sense on the other side; in advance, it rings as trite.

Be Yourself.

Sleep When The Baby Sleeps.

The Only Way Out Is Through.

I could punch somebody.

In fact, when I was pregnant, I almost did.

A woman told me I’d remember these days fondly years from now and I swear I almost blacked out from rage. I could feel my insides shouting what makes you think I’m not fond of this right now, MFer?! but she was like 81 and we were in Walgreens and that’s actually a pretty dramatic response to what is not unhelpful so much as unsolicited. I remember being like, “contented people don’t rage-attack kindly grandmothers in checkout lines, Adrienne.”

That’s the thing of advice: so often it’s given without warning or asking; its simplicity stinks of misunderstanding or dismissal, and only the giver feels all that much better. To exchange advice in reciprocity, that is to give what is requested and to receive what was needed, is to practice a kind of time travel to a place neither has ever known. Advice is nostalgic; its receipt idealistic.

How do we act now as if we are becoming our tomorrows, as if we lived yesterday with only some regrets? How do we hold + reckon with all this mournful hope?

I had a theatre mentor remind me when attempting to convince me out of postpartum hiding and onto a production that, “our kids are gonna need therapy anyway," and I continue to find it oddly comforting.

I’ve been thinking about light’s return and the brief balance of her dance with dark. It occurs to me that perhaps we don’t acknowledge how brief their total reciprocity. Twice a year, like something out of Benjamin Button, light + dark meet in the middle; yet, every other day, they are out-of-synch. The whole of the year, save 48 fleeting hours, is outta whack. I’m not great at math (it’s the joke that keeps giving…) but that’s most of the time.

Most of the time, things are imbalanced.

I gotta tell you: that pretty much squares with my lived reality & so what’s this push to find the illusive ‘balance’? Y’all, people are out here scorching the earth like Thanos and I don’t know if people saw that series but he’s the bad guy. Humanity and its agents (that’s us!) aren’t meant to be rigid.

The natural world tells of disorder.

Are we allowing the same for ourselves? Are we holding space for the truth that balance is the rarity? Are we making peace with the learning that our constant is chaos? Are we ready to love from there?

Auntie Toni says this is precisely the time when artists go to work, which means that actually yes, we are the ones built for this moment, and actually yes our rage + overwhelm are information directing our efforts + yes we take the risk to fill this place with more love which sometimes looks like a future generation.

Q: ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHO'S WANTING TO BECOME A MOTHER.

as told by a solo-mama-artist weekend in New York City.

In recent weeks, we’ve spoken of returning, and of cycles, and of age, and of resolution. I can’t remember if I talked here about the magic lesson in NOW, NOW’s free monthly class, so stop me if you’ve heard this, but I have a strong pull towards sevens even though 1s and 4s are what I see most. On the train home from New York, I could feel the cells in my body regenerating; I could hear the siren call. It’s been seven years since I became a mother and I knew, keenly, that what began on The Mountain last August had taken root:

I’m, like, a woman.

Inside me, I have reached a tipping point where I am more woman than child and I didn’t know it until just outside Baltimore, but holy shit is the rest of me in for a ride!

[Before we go further, it’s important to say that motherhood isn’t what called me into womanhood. Because of time + gravity, I would have become a woman someday regardless; that motherhood was my initiation means nothing for anyone else. We’re all learning the same lessons. You’ll learn yours your way. Gross. Fucking advice! I already hate this letter. Every other sentence is a Hallmark card and I want to cry a little – this advice paradox is gonna cut me deep, but I’m bound and determined to answer each and every question, so let’s all just take a deep breath and lean into the clichés, shall we?]

There are glimpses in which we possess ourselves and somewhere just outside of Baltimore, I touched one. It was like a pupil dilating, and I doubt language’s capacity to explain what it is to become conscious of a planted-ness within yourself, just as I doubt my qualifications to speak on this week’s topic, but I figure I gotta let this epiphanic energy run its course.

Without further adieu, and in no particular order..

Take in the scenery. The Northeast Regional runs on diesel in the state of Virginia, its first or last leg depending on which way you’re headed. In Washington, D.C., they switch to an electric engine and you’ll begin to pick up whatever time you’ve lost. It’s usually about a half hour behind schedule getting in D.C. from here because it runs behind the Crescent winding its way from New Orleans, and that train is always an hour late.

Whatever convenience air travel creates, it isolates and makes narrow the destination.

I like the time train travel takes. I watch the cities and their electric wires and strewn litter and tiny crosswalks and stairstep rooftsteps become blurred horizontal strips across the window, like an abstract painting of a nation. I listen to the phone conversations: a blonde marijuana lobbyist in her 50s reviewing the client’s portfolio, eyeballing ‘roughly 40 pounds’ to her listening assistant, her darting eyes glancing about before whispering the estimated street value; the fiance whose betrothed came in from Boston and saved him a seat as they headed off for a co-bachelor/ette fiesta; the Philly-bound grandparents cooing over newborn FaceTimes. I buy slightly bitter train coffee and doctor it up with too much sweetener and a little too much cream and feel its warmth through the paper cup perilously shaking in my hands, and together, me + my coffee + the lovebirds in aisle 3 + the lobbyist’s red pantsuit + the surprisingly handsome conductor + the ancient rails + the hopeful hearts, we make our way.

We needn’t get everywhere so fast. To discover a world takes time; might as well enjoy the sights as you go.

Talk to strangers. Manny prefers working the night shift because it’s better to just get his school work done during the day. He remembers faces better than names, but the masks make it hard to notice returning guests. He keeps an extra charger in the drawer at the check-in desk just in case.

Lionel’s parents immigrated about a decade ago, but he’s been driving a cab for 37 years. He thinks Wall Street is the most challenging neighborhood; some of the streets only keep their names for a block. He’s aiming for an even 38, but he’s moving to Fort Lauderdale at the end of the year. He put two children through college and all he wants is the beach.

Jude has only worked at Balthazar since last March, but he likes it when people think he’s been there awhile. It makes him feel older than his 23 years which is a help considering he looks 15. He never lets a flute go empty and gently applauds when you finish the bottle. We both agree that, unless its a dairy thing, whole milk is just better.

Jessi only works at Zara for the discount, which applies to any of her purchases, but cannot be exchanged even for very interesting and cool new friends she makes in the dressing room. Despite that, she does not mince words in her outfit critiques because one time a lady tried to return a dress and blamed her because she said it looked good. Jessi don’t play bullshit with white ladies no more.

Nadia’s first book was a memoir picked up by Simon & Schuster which should’ve been amazing, but after eighteen months and five editors, she was defeated. She was so lucky to land with her current agent and is happy to connect to chat about Black womanhood + publishing.

& there was the sex worker in the Meatpacking District who told jokes using a hairbrush microphone (and takes CashApp if you don’t have cash!) + the couple behind me at Lincoln Center who feel like the world really is opening again now that opera is back + the student tour group who asked for directions to the L + the man across my aisle visiting his mother in Roanoke who kicked off his shoes to reveal hot pink socks.

These people who fill our days are not insignificant. They are loved by someone and have light in their eyes if we’d dare to see it. They are hurting and reaching and wondering, but they want to believe that we can love each other here. Get comfortable talking to strangers, for they are the shining jewels of our collective world, and worthy of being seen.

Dress up for no reason. I’ve been accused of being overdressed. Less of an accusation than an observation, really. While the anonymity of the city allows for escape, I will admit that I want to be seen. Or, I’m certain they’re looking anyway. So I like to give a bit of a show.

Town Hall is just a couple blocks from The Knickerbocker Hotel where the after-party bartenders poured Veuve casually and Seth Meyers took selfie after selfie with fanning attendees. In a shadowed corner, the youngest of the fellows posed together, celebrating, and tasting their first gin + tonics.

The flowy skirt of my dress skimmed my ankles as I delicately navigated the dense crowd, but my pearl-adorned cape scored compliments at every turn. It became the conversation starter with Cathy Park Hong whose Minor Feelings was a shining star of my reads last year. It got early, easy compliments from an agent who asked for my full manuscript and maybe my first born, Idk, I blacked out. Then Molly + Katie + Daniel + Dantiel loved it enough to demand my after-after-party attendance.

By 5am, when I and all my blessed glasses of water sunk into bed…

It is a good day to adorn yourself in celebration of nothing other than feeling beautiful.

It’s a good day to stand in the power of being noticed and not shying away.

It’s a good day too stand in all your glory and own a room.

That doesn’t have to mean party dresses, if that’s not your thing. But goddamn, whatever is your thing, flaunt it. You’ll never regret giving it your most, and you can't even imagine who will notice.

Let it take the time it takes. I practiced my pitch on the train. I knew it sounded heady and academic, but I can’t be what I’m not.

It’s an episodic speculative memoir in verse.

Even saying it aloud made me want to puke.. and yet.. I wrote the whole way up. I am deep into revisions of the first episode – about 50 pages – and I could feel myself smoothing and smoothing. It isn’t easy to see when rewriting and editing; I wish words were more like clay, and I could see clearly, move around their three-dimensional shape. I want to see the scraped clay on the floor, but it’s just a long digital list of revised versions, minute-by-minute.

The Angel of Bethesda sits somewhere between Columbus Circle, some little amphitheatre, and my dreams. A central feature of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, she was constructed by a lesbian artist whose brother drew the original Central Park plans; this matters because she looks like a woman would. Her upper arms are thick, in proportion with her body, but unlike so many statuesque portrayals that leave women more Kardashian’d than anything else. Though entirely human-seeming, as if carved in someone’s likeness, she is a mystery, and I am certain folks flock for the icon status, mostly.

It’s a thing: to become iconic. I think, should it befall me, to stand like a pillar of strength and beauty and importance, that I would like it to come as its come to the Angel – imperceptibly, over much time.

I like so much that she is nothing more or less than herself.

I like so much that I am allowing this book + me to be what we are.

Iconic, grandiose, ridiculous, intellectualized, overly specific, award-winning; these will remain subjective and elusive labels. I & the Angel will concern ourselves with staying the course of *being.*

In the meantime, here are notes for an award Imma win one day:

I must begin from my place of origin which is both immediate and ancient; thank you to my mother for uniting these forces in the form of Black women’s artistry. fundamental to my soul are the stories, machinations, imaginations, and witness of Black girls + women whose creations and voices you centered at all moments. thank you to my mother, through whom I know my ancestors.

& to those ancestors, by blood + gift + selection; thank you to the child in you that etched your name across the margins of the pages I so tenderly caress. in libraries + theatres + in darkness, beneath projectors + in kitchens + memories, I have held your words and work like a jewel. thank you to the artists both grand and domestic who make beautiful this place.

& to a girl named Pearl, whose sharp wit, immeasurable magnetism, and tender spirit have weaponized my dreams. through mothering you, I unearth an increasingly ferocious and unstoppable me. thank you for making for refining me into this impossibly delicious force.

& to those who believe, beyond doubt or industry or perpetual erasure, that a championed story is a liberated soul, may we keep open + tender as we bear forward our simple work:

Write it down, mend a heart (maybe your own) and maybe this horrific, gorgeous world a little, too.

(C’mon! That’s pretty good, right?)

There's something about this city.

Trust yourself. In March 2020, I was directing a production of Sweat; it was postponed and then postponed and then canceled and then rescheduled and then postponed and then I told them to fuck off. It’s no one’s fault, but when it’s done, it’s done. The playwright, Lynn Nottage, is objectively brilliant, with two Pulitzer’s to prove it, and her research work as a writer is bar none. She isn’t my favorite. I don’t love favorites, but she isn’t mine, ‘cause I like to keep it more experimental than maybe I let on.. but her play Intimate Apparel was Viola Davis’ Broadway debut and my thesis performance in undergrad. My last culturally delicious bite was her new opera adaptation of that play at Lincoln Center.

I fucking love the theatre. I love the breath and the blackness. I love that you must bring your body to the place and surrender to the world they construct around you. I love that we pretend we can’t see each other and I love when we break the fourth wall and acknowledge one another. I love the lights and costumes and the movement of the sets. I love that we perform for one another. I love that we pretend like we aren’t always performing for one another. I love that we act like we aren’t acting, always. I love the grandeur and the clash of the people and the proximity to strangers and the way folks don’t know what to do with my mmmmmms and *gasps* and open tears. I love that I’m so often someone’s first theatre-loving friend. I love theatre kids.

My daughter tries hard to pretend she’s not a theatre kid; she also gives impromptu performances in any room she enters.

Jackie Sibblies Drury doesn’t pretend. When I risked fangirling at Monday night’s after-party, I referenced her acceptance speech by introducing myself as a fellow theatre kid. I told her Fairview was one of the most monumental pieces of theatre I have read in the last five years. We compared lists of favorites: plays, playwrights, oh shit! moments, and best evers. We gushed about my upcoming tickets and she told me she was jealous; “no one does it like Nottage and it’s basically annoying.”

There is no preparatory speech I can offer. There is no roadmap and everything I know about mothering, I know my own way about my own people; your thing is gonna be its own, distinct, precious, gross, hilarious, unfathomable thing. Like all your quirks, like all your interests, like all your awkwardness and hilarity and preciousness and singular creative spark, your mothering will be your own. You will fill it with the things that make you you, and you must revel in that.

See the world with a child’s eyes. Imagine it was fresh and wild and wondrous like that. Imagine you never knew a thing. Imagine this is what you woke up inside. Imagine you looked about with first eyes at those who hold you, truly, and nourish you, truly, and built a life with them. Imagine the fear and the awe and the confusion and the hope and anticipation and the doubt.

We are never so distant from that. We are only ever one conflict, one war, one virus, one viral video, one generation, one role away from uncertainty.

h o m e / w o r k

Discussion about this post