They say who you are

Is who you are when you're alone

But I don't feel anything.

I'm like a stone in rushing water,

Unmovable, slowly wearing down

And when I feel a chink in my armor

I pick it at, pulling it back

To reveal the layers hidden beneath,

So many layers, so many faces,

A paste-on smile for each day

And they pile up around me

But I keep on digging

Through the faces of a girl my parents want to see,

Through strange and foreign words my friends want to hear,

Thoughts tumbling onto the ground

Implanted by a society that screams for diversity

Yet dresses us all the same.

And the pile's so high I can't breathe

But I need to know the person hiding underneath it all

Because I don't know her anymore,

Just who she's suppossed to be.

Am I even there?

How can I know people

When I don't even know myself,

If I don't know if my thoughts are truly mine or someone else?

Why can I deal with other peoples' problems

But never my own?

How can I listen so well

But never hear myself over the sound of silence filling my head?

How do others feel so much,

Driven by the whim of emotion,

Yet my days pass in blurs of nothingness,

Dirty puddles in the cracks of broken asphalt.

You don't understand--

Who I think I am and who I am,

They're not the same

And I don't know which is which.

The girl buried under all these layers,

Too scared to live and too scared to die

Is not the same as the girl in the mirror.

Applause for the band merged to clapping in time while they continued to play: accordion, fiddle, flute, guitar, bodhrán. To my eye, not a one of the 3,900 moved, though the actors’ final bow had long passed. We all needed it; we needed to hear more, clap more, pull together more.

Come From Away shows the part of the September 11 story that took place in Canada. While the nation fearfully awaited updates, and a friend and I wandered my closed upstate campus dazed, 38 planes carrying 6,700 people redirected to Gander, Newfoundland, doubling the population of a town that unhesitatingly provided all the support and comfort it could. Scars from that day remain fresh. All who were alive and aware lost something on 9/11; many, obviously, lost much. Watching that musical, we relived the moment when we heard and the aftermath, connecting others’ stories with our own experiences. Quiet tears in the dark. Catharsis.

“Catharsis” is my favorite word because it’s a beautiful concept, goal, and experience: “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.” Aristotle believed it the purpose of tragedy. Having sought catharsis in many a theater, I believe the Greek dude nailed it, though catharsis is not solely the domain of tragedy, or even solely of theatre.

My wife and I greatly value live performance. We devote a not-inconsiderable portion of our disposable income toward it. We don’t do beach vacations, and we beat on cell phones and cars till they are antiquated scrap, but we see some damn fine shows. My reasons are not just aesthetic or diversionary; I chase catharsis. And I want it live.

Come From Away led me to reflect on my live performance experiences– theatrical, musical, and otherwise. In a streaming world with infinite content available at a click, why is live performance so much more satisfying, so much more likely to yield what I need?

Part of the power comes from the intense choreography to yield a single moment in the moment – there are no retakes. This is doubly true of fire. Metallica fans love the anti-war epic “One,” and I am no exception. The intro and early verses are acoustic; the choruses foreshadow impending ferocity, and when chorus fades to bridge and unaccompanied bass drum rolls vibrate in your chest, you know it’s coming. “Roar” fits the emotional impact of the guitar strikes, but it’s the wrong word because a roar is guttural and muddy. As with all Metallica’s truly great songs, those notes in the “One” bridge explode with absolute precision, and on the World Magnetic tour, absolutely precise pillars of flame punctuated them. I felt the heat twenty rows back. Each pillar burst at the exact instant the guitar began, vanished when it ceased, then burst forth in a different hue for the next guitar phrase with the same meticulous wrath, over and over while the amplifiers and crowd shook the arena. Wildness, power and anger perfectly tamed, controlled and timed for release by the crew to mirror the art of the band I had followed since adolescence uprooted me. Together, they had harnessed and released it all, and so could I.

Even when a headliner stands alone onstage, a score of people must simultaneously channel their efforts to fashion that moment. There’s a scene in The Dresser when the aging, declining actor cries out Lear onstage (blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!) but we watch the behind-the-scenes action: a stagehand turning a crank to produce thunder for the storm. But this is London, 1940—blaring air raid sirens overwhelm everything except the bombs that shake the theatre. All the while, the pitiful backstage god makes his tiny thunder because the show must go on and that is his part. It’s a transcendent scene that both lionizes and trivializes the stagehand, a dramatization of the faithful unseen. Applauding at performance’s end, we clap for those forgotten ones, too, which lends a poignancy to live performances. We dream of being stars; we are the stagehands and the roadies, toiling even as the performers take their bows. Their efforts create the grandeur of the enterprise.

Needless to say, we also clap for the excellence that the performers ever-so-briefly share with us. Ingrid Fliter gave the greatest piano performance I’ve ever heard, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Rochester Philharmonic. Her fingers trickled over the keys with impossible grace. I like classical music, studied it a little. The truth remains that I will never feel Chopin the way Ingrid Fliter felt it as she swayed behind that Steinway. But as the air-soluble notes tinctured my breath, I caught a whiff of her Chopin, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t the piece itself, which I’d heard via recording dozens of times. Just like I’d heard the crazy guitar sounds in Rage Against the Machine songs before I watched Tom Morello play, or like I’d listened to the 50s standard “Up on the Roof” many times before hearing Sutton Foster sing it. I didn’t know it could sound like that—I didn’t know it could be that. Many could reach proficiency with pianos or guitars or vocals; few do, and an infinitesimal fraction of those achieve brilliance. When we attend their performances, we witness artists scraping against the human limits of invention and beauty.

So we clap. We clap largely to acknowledge the artist, but we also clap so that we can confirm what we just witnessed. It’s the audiovisual equivalent of answering the question, “Did you see that?” We did, we saw it together, we applaud it together. Standing ovations are cool, but it seems to me that at the professional level they are also common. The rare thing, the special thing, is the spontaneous standing ovation, the ovation when you all spring to your feet immediately because none of you can bear to wait.

My freshman year of college, my honors program offered a trip to attend a Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra performance for $15. Alfred University was perfect for me and I love it, but it’s in a village with one stoplight, and damn did I need that trip. I knew relatively little about classical music at the time, but, you know, Beethoven’s cool. A friend pointed out that number nine was the one Kubrick used in A Clockwork Orange, so we made repeated jokes about “listening to a bit of the old Ludwig van.” And when I flipped through my program, I realized that it was the “Ode to Joy” symphony. I had never heard its original context, but I knew the tune from church.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony begins solemnly, pensively. Bright spots appear in the first movement, but they never last, and each development section seems to further fragment the themes. With around a minute to go, the strings start to churn, their crescendo choking the light. Following that morose conclusion, bracing violin slashes and timpani open the second movement. The music rushes along, troubled, then gradually gives way to a more playful section, but the darkness returns more powerfully than ever. The violins shriek; the timpani pounds. The struggle persists throughout the movement. The third movement offers us tranquility that builds into grandeur, and then…

It’s important to note that throughout the whole symphony, which has now gone on for 40 minutes, there have been something like a hundred people sitting in still silence at the rear of the stage, doing nothing. I figured out they were a chorus, and when I caught my breath between movements, I would wonder when they were going to do something. There were also four solo vocalists who were a big enough deal to be individually announced in the program, but who had also not stirred from their chairs.

All the singers sit unmoving even when the fourth movement begins with a quick recap of what came before, but with all the dark stuff weakened and subsumed within the deepest of the strings. At last, we hear the famous “Ode to Joy” theme from the cellos and double basses. It’s soft. The violins grab the baton, and when the winds subsequently take it, it’s arrived—almost. Amid a bright flurry from the strings, the four vocalists and the chorus stand on cue. One last time, the darkness returns, rushed and fearful, but the strings close off the pain. Tentatively, the horns and violins try out the “Ode to Joy” theme, halfway: four quiet notes rising, no resolution. Incomplete, twice. The third repetition lightly swells through that fourth note and then, in an instant, full symphony and full choir combine to set everything free.

I don’t know quite how to describe it, except to say that it’s joy. Not the cheap, bullshit happiness of that obnoxious Pharrell song, but actual, real, light-from-the-darkness joy celebrating our continuing existence. We—musicians, vocalists, audience, conductor—have been on this odyssey together for more than an hour. When we leap up immediately after the finale, we’re not merely applauding the performers or even Beethoven. We’re applauding and affirming life itself, en masse. For those minutes, nothing matters beyond the simplest of facts: we live.

Live performances yield catharsis because they require, condensed within a very short time, dedicated effort from unsung heroes, brilliant artists, and audiences themselves. Recordings might represent that distilled moment, but they cannot ever reproduce that unified, spontaneous rush. Everything given to us that we might witness together, clap together, feel together.

In 2017, researchers at University College London found that as audiences watch live theatrical performances, their heartbeats synchronize.

Sounds about right to me.

You don’t understand…

That there are moments where I hope this person’s reactions to me aren’t surface feelings. As much as I want to feel the breeze of numbness to cope with my sensitive nature and to protect my heart from another fracture, I crave the warmth of something deeper, meaningful. I crave chaos wrapped in shrouds of mystery and soulful connections.

…But fear takes over.

…I want to run.

…I want to fight whatever this is.

…I want this person to say, “Nah, I don’t want this. You’re too much of a flight risk. Too wild like an untamed Mustang, always ready to run. I can’t risk it.”

There are moments when I silently break in front of everyone and no knows sees it. (no one sees my face distort in pain). No one hears it. (no one hears the willow tree that falls to the earth).

There are moments where I internally scream as I fight a battle within myself to not be who I was back then. Back when I pretended not to care when attachment settled in like salt settling in a glass full of water.

…But instinct takes over

…I want to confess

…I don’t want to fight whatever this is.

…I want this person to say, “I’m keeping you. Simple as that. Your running doesn’t scare me. It just tells me that you feel this, too. I got you. Because this feels right. I will risk it.”

There are moments like this that my heart is heavier than normal. My eyes water with possibilities and my conscience mimes its way through the unknown as I continue this journey of self-discovery.

I am no one.

I am everyone.

Yes, I'm a real person.

Yes, we are real people.

I am one single entity

existing in an infinite amount of lives

across multiple realities

all in one single area of space.

My stories are true.

My stories are fantasy.

Why can't a myth be true?

Why can't truth be in a lie?

All of my stories are true

because I write only in myths.

All of my stories are lies,

because I must tell the truth.

Which truth?

My truth?

Your truth?

THE truth?

I am not the inner machinations of a single entity.

I am many people whose stories must be told.

To tell the truth.

THE truth.

I am

MAN

WOMAN

CHILD

BEAST

ALIEN

FRIEND

FOE

HERO

VILLAIN

I am everyone.

I am no one.

01) Why would anyone think, that from conception to birth, a human is not a human, but is another species, that only becomes human at birth?

02) Why would anyone think that by raising taxes on goods and services corporations offer, these same corporations will not just raise the price of the good and services they offer? Why does anyone think this tax increase helps poor people pay for goods and services?

03) Why would anyone think that raising the minimum wage will lower unemployment? Doesn't the increased labor cost only result in less labor to pay?

04) Why would anyone think raising the income tax will result in increased government revenue? If this theory is true, then why is the income tax not already at 100%? Could it be that once the income tax gets to a point that it is no longer worth going to work, people will stop going to work?

05) Why would anyone want to impeach a US President for asking a foreign country to do a little work for the (hardworking taxpayer) money it gets from the US? No one gives me $400 million dollars without strings attached.

06) Why would anyone want to impeach a US President for asking a foreign country to go back to investigating what a previous US Vice-President bragged about, on video, publically available EVERYWHERE on the internet? Is the discovery of the crime now a crime and the actual crime is no longer a crime?

07) Why would anyone protest capitalism at a Starbucks, using an I-Phone, wearing a North-Face coat, and then drive home in a Benz?

08) Why would anyone order a T-Shirt from Amazon that reads "There are 57 Genders" and then have to choose between men's and women's sizes?

09) Why is the word abbreviation so long?

10) Why would anyone believe Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide? All of the memes indicate otherwise.

.

I stepped on broken glass

but it’s your feet that started to bleed

should have been more careful, to not cause you pain

maybe you thought I was made of iron that I stepped on those shards

but your color glass does not hurt me, it never has

the sun always reflecting in it

bringing an eighth color rainbow just on the edge of the spectrum

the pain does not touch the souls of my feet

it twists and bends in my lungs . as I inhale the dust from your broken breaths

your reflections are beautiful to me

and I can’t look away

so much that at times I forget to stop, and instead just walk slowly to you

not seeing the things I might have done wrong

stubborn, my dear . blind to the truths

stuck in my matter, shielding myself from the good that you bring

unwise, I know

yet often , I need a second breath to really take you in, all of you

I stumble in the dark

and finally make my eyes open, when I thought they were open all of this time

I frown at such revelation, constantly in awe

shaking my head at my own unawareness

each portal was unlocked, but I was closed

afraid of the things that you were giving me, or too uncertain to really believe

to grasp those tiny pieces, to embrace them the way they deserved

was... listen to that word intently

read it, touch it, taste it

I’m moving forward now, with better knowledge of what builds your world

a world that is now a part of my own

deep breaths, focused stare, listen please

at times I am blind with you, yet I see you with my heart

every time that my eyes fail me, and my mind objects

I see you

always touching the broken color glass

but never letting go

.

I have always felt just on the verge of understanding, hands outstetched to the stars above, fingertips a breath away from brushing the constellations, yet so far away.

Everything spins past at a dizzying pace, people and places, all voices lost to the wind. I can remember hot summer nights and cigarette smoke, but never faces. I remember high heels clicking against the gymnasium floor in time with the music, but never the song.

I often feel that I exist entirely in memory, drifting back and forth within the unconcious mind like a dreamer, like a parasite. My body goes through the motions. When I hover before the bathroom sink brushing my teeth, blank stare fixated on the smeared surface of the mirror, images of the past superimpose themselves over reality. She stands at my side again. Swearing she loves me, spewing hot breath and empty promises like smoke.

I stand long enough to miss the bus before I realize I'm still dreaming and spit out the toothpaste. The icy water bites in the aftermath of mint, and now I see myself trying adult toothpaste for the first time, sputtering and scrunching up my nose against the burn as my father smiles. Stepping outside, I push the memory away.

The drive is drowned out in music and daydream, and much of the day follows suit. I spend hours wading through hypothetical situations and fictional worlds, pushing reality aside until I choke on it. Nothing is interesting enough to hold my attention for long.

When will I feel something real again? Will I ever?

Bad days are spent sprawled across the cold tile of my bedroom floor, unseeing eyes trained on the popcorn ceiling. I puzzle through years worth of mistakes, failed relationships, details missed in the moment. Maybe if I would have tried harder. Maybe if I could have been a better daughter, a better person, a better friend.

I smile through the burn of unshed tears, because at least that feels like something real. When they fall, searing hot against my cheeks, I think back to all those nights curled up in the dark, terror coursing through every inch of me like a virus, like something infectious and foreign. It trembles through my tiny fingers like an earthquake.

Sometimes, a flicker of light will catch my eye. I'll find a bird perched on the windowsill, or familliar faces caught in the golden light, or warm hands wrapped around my own. Becoming lost in the tumble of regret and the need to understand is easy, but I find myself eager to push through and smile at the little things, to draw myself back.

Maybe I will never reach the constellations, but I can always choose to enjoy the view.

You see the smile I bear across my face

You neglect to see the pain

Because it's hidden

In it's own space

I try to explain

Words simply do not do

I feel ashamed

So I try to pretend for you

You acknowledge my feelings

But do not understand the extent

You expect it to pass

Becoming a historic event

You think it's a phase

One I will simply outgrow

You neglect to see I am broken

So to you, I am putting on a show

You remind me of our blessings

I know these to be true

It saddens me to feel the weight

Of how this also affects you

I am the culprit

This is the greatest of wars

I know I am to blame

For these, the muddiest of shores

I want to find it

The joy I once possessed

Just the energy of the thought, though

Compels me to rest

It is not just a darkness

It is a lack there of

No energy

No hope

And sadly, little room for love

My passions are gone

My personality depleted

My old spirit

Left in its grave, defeated

I want you to understand

But I fear this even more

That sympathizing with me

Will also leave you at the devils door

Instead, I will hide

Under lock and key

I will unlock the door and leave

Only when I know I am ready

For now I will stay

I think I need to feel

Until my strength

Is eventually revealed

This is a lesson

One I wish to not repeat

I must first sit and embrass my depression

Before I can stand on my own two feet

i want to sleep

but i can’t sleep a wink

do i need a shrink?

thinking in thoughts and lines

i need to take some time

off

i need to find an escape

a vacation

i need to find a way

to look away

i’m a castaway

stuck in the sea of my own thoughts

i’m on a dilapidated piece of wood

i’m on an iceberg in the middle of a flood

of thoughts

i’ve failed

now i’m drowning

in words

in thoughts

in letters

in colors

all mixing

i’m missing

the point of this madness

the end and beginning

is deliberately ditching me

i’m in the middle of nowhere

stuck

somewhere

out there

in there

my own brain

i can’t control

my feelings are all distraught

i’m caught in a knot

i’ve ought

to figure out that help is naught

i bought

myself into this mess

i’m a mess

in distress

call the ambulance

call the doctor

i need

to be looked after

because left alone

i’m like a dog

a stray

lost and wandering,

wondering

wanting

needing

some sort of help but receiving

none; nothing

because i’m nothing

i’m nothing

i’m nothing

n o t h i n g.

i need to stop thinking.

A positive test

Put her positivity to rest

Tears, more tears.

Daily, “What do I do?”

No answer will ever be best.

Face soaked in tears

Nauseous from a baby

Nauseous from the fear

I’ll hold her hair and stay right here

She’s scared

She’s worried

“Why me?”

“Why now?”

“My family will kill me.”

“The father will hit me.”

“I used multiple methods.”

“I only had sex once.”

“I’m homeless.”

“I swear I was safe.”

Pregnancy won’t discriminate.

Mifeprostine.

The first pill.

There’s no going back.

Maybe she hesitates

Maybe she forces herself not to think.

She places the pill in her mouth.

She swallows.

Misoprostol.

The second pill.

She’s ready for the nausea and pain.

Hours later, it’s began.

Her undwear soaked in blood clots and stains.

The pregnancy tissue passes.

She sees it.

She cries.

Girls and women

Any age, any income

Atheist or a belief in heaven

All face a difficult decision

No one does it easily