Musings on Time and Place
Sometimes I really miss Minneapolis. It's that certain lazy, midwestern guitar, more tinny sounding and with it's own mute agression that gets me. It's the sweet smell of spring mud and cigarette smoke mixed with the feeling of driving around with the windows open. Even that little bite of cold that reminds me summer is a fleeting experience that is best to enjoy rather than squander with complaints about the humidity. Of course, when I am in Minneapolis I find myself missing hot Brooklyn asphalt and the ever-present smell of garbage and urine that, on a good day, mixes with the sublime sent of blooming honeysuckle on the corner of Clinton and 4th.
Perhaps it isn't really Minneapolis that I am missing, but a piece of me that I have buried under layers of regret and confusion. Maybe I just miss feeling really young. You know, that kind of young where you could yell "Wahoo!" without being ironic. I am most likely confusing time and place.
I've never been cool, but I had always harbored the secret hope that one day I would be. One day I would turn heads and everyone would laugh at my jokes and people would want to be me. Maybe I would want to be me! Nothing has slaughtered my fragile sense of self more than moving to New York where being a little corn-fed white girl makes me positively boring or worse..."cute". After seven years I still feel like the wide-eyed country rube. My clothes aren't very chic, I'm still 20 lbs heavier than I'd like to be, I only speak English and enough restaurant French and Dora the Explorer Spanish to be completely useless in conversation with the well travelled party-goers that I've run into over the years. I'm 30. I'm a mom. Some people can make that look very exciting, but I just feel well worn. I feel a little bit like that neglected yet dependable white t-shirt in the bottom of your drawer that you break out on laundry days. Good enough to wear, but not nice enough to wear to dinner.
Now, when I look at the last four years, I've done quite a bit. I've done more than some of the biggest talkers that I know. Indulge me for a moment...
I have written and re-written a stageplay, produced it twice, directed it once, written two screenplays, produced and appeared in one of those screenplays (in addition to providing craft service, set design, costumes, casting, make-up, hair, and locations...), produced and directed another off-off Broadway production, created and taught a pre-school curriculum for a cooperative playgroup, posed nude (not for the playgroup!), created (and will be offering this fall) a class and performance series for actor/writers, and dabbled in coaching all while staying home to raise my son. Of the people I know who talk a good game (most being single/ childless) what I have come up with in product far exceeds their boasting. However, I defer to their bluster everytime. It's a skill I've never mastered. I guess I was raised to believe that promoting yourself was rude. Heaven help me if I was to be intentionally rude!
Maybe I feel these gymnastic feats of scheduling and sheer know-how would have been more appreciated in Minnesota. Here everyone writes a book everytime they sneeze. It's such an insufferably expressive culture here! It's hard to even talk to people in case you accidentally plagerize a witty comment from a previous conversation without properly acknowledging its source. Intellectual property is so important here. Possibily because it is the only property anyone can actually afford to own. Of course, the only time I've ever had an idea actually stolen (and stolen poorly, I might add) from me was in Minneapolis. Perhaps them country rubes ain't so dumb after all?
Well, regardless of where my career is or isn't going, I do find myself wishing I could be back tagging along with Joe Scrimshaw (if you are in Minneapolis, go see anything he does- honestly you won't regret it), going to The Artist's Quarter for organ night on Tuesdays with Tom, walking around the lakes and wondering if my car will start. I could have built something very comfortable for myself there, and I would have had free babysitters. But I didn't belong there. I would have been very comfortable riding coattails and I doubt I would have struck out on my own as I am about to this fall.
Is that the nostalgia? Fear of doing something all by myself? Time to grow up.
Yuck.
Perhaps it isn't really Minneapolis that I am missing, but a piece of me that I have buried under layers of regret and confusion. Maybe I just miss feeling really young. You know, that kind of young where you could yell "Wahoo!" without being ironic. I am most likely confusing time and place.
I've never been cool, but I had always harbored the secret hope that one day I would be. One day I would turn heads and everyone would laugh at my jokes and people would want to be me. Maybe I would want to be me! Nothing has slaughtered my fragile sense of self more than moving to New York where being a little corn-fed white girl makes me positively boring or worse..."cute". After seven years I still feel like the wide-eyed country rube. My clothes aren't very chic, I'm still 20 lbs heavier than I'd like to be, I only speak English and enough restaurant French and Dora the Explorer Spanish to be completely useless in conversation with the well travelled party-goers that I've run into over the years. I'm 30. I'm a mom. Some people can make that look very exciting, but I just feel well worn. I feel a little bit like that neglected yet dependable white t-shirt in the bottom of your drawer that you break out on laundry days. Good enough to wear, but not nice enough to wear to dinner.
Now, when I look at the last four years, I've done quite a bit. I've done more than some of the biggest talkers that I know. Indulge me for a moment...
I have written and re-written a stageplay, produced it twice, directed it once, written two screenplays, produced and appeared in one of those screenplays (in addition to providing craft service, set design, costumes, casting, make-up, hair, and locations...), produced and directed another off-off Broadway production, created and taught a pre-school curriculum for a cooperative playgroup, posed nude (not for the playgroup!), created (and will be offering this fall) a class and performance series for actor/writers, and dabbled in coaching all while staying home to raise my son. Of the people I know who talk a good game (most being single/ childless) what I have come up with in product far exceeds their boasting. However, I defer to their bluster everytime. It's a skill I've never mastered. I guess I was raised to believe that promoting yourself was rude. Heaven help me if I was to be intentionally rude!
Maybe I feel these gymnastic feats of scheduling and sheer know-how would have been more appreciated in Minnesota. Here everyone writes a book everytime they sneeze. It's such an insufferably expressive culture here! It's hard to even talk to people in case you accidentally plagerize a witty comment from a previous conversation without properly acknowledging its source. Intellectual property is so important here. Possibily because it is the only property anyone can actually afford to own. Of course, the only time I've ever had an idea actually stolen (and stolen poorly, I might add) from me was in Minneapolis. Perhaps them country rubes ain't so dumb after all?
Well, regardless of where my career is or isn't going, I do find myself wishing I could be back tagging along with Joe Scrimshaw (if you are in Minneapolis, go see anything he does- honestly you won't regret it), going to The Artist's Quarter for organ night on Tuesdays with Tom, walking around the lakes and wondering if my car will start. I could have built something very comfortable for myself there, and I would have had free babysitters. But I didn't belong there. I would have been very comfortable riding coattails and I doubt I would have struck out on my own as I am about to this fall.
Is that the nostalgia? Fear of doing something all by myself? Time to grow up.
Yuck.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 1:19 AM
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