BROADWAY GLAMOR UNAWARES

Back in NYC. Hell’s Kitchen. The capital of nearly being hit by motorized bikes and shit smears on the sidewalk. Clothing suddenly abandoned in piles as though someone jumped right out of them and ran down the poo-smeared street in the nude. Maybe they did? A carriage driver running a red light with a horse. What the fuck!? Don’t do that to that poor horse! I hope those things become illegal…

I’m back at the wheel of the Broadway musical machine. It’s like working in a poetry factory at the moment. Im patching up and re-arranging songs to fit new ideas and concepts requested and juried by my co-team of beloved creatives. Writing poetry in this way is a thrill, but strangely, also fills me with profound ache. It makes me so very lonely. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this sort of thing, so forgive me, I’m talking to you about it here. I feel like I am in mourning somehow. I’m sure my anxiety isn’t helping, but I can’t stop, I love words so very much. I love the job of building a crossword puzzle that is also a riddle and must rhyme in places. It breaks my fucking heart. The beauty of words; read, spoken, or sung; I’m grafted into, and drafting off of their circulatory systems. I live attached at the base of their tall, architectural shadows.

Even the scene of the generic space I am working in is somehow a little surreal and oddly beautiful. Despite the fluorescent lighting in work studios with thick black curtains over the dance mirrors, and AC cranked to “sore throat cold” I’m in a little cozy haven all by myself today, just writing. I’m surprised to open the door a few hours in and bump into a young woman sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Sorry!” she says abruptly. “No, I’M sorry!” I counter, “I didn’t know you were there.” I look up and see at least a hundred young people, all dancers, stretching and talking and emanating a hopeful joy into the vast hallways and foyer. I didn’t hear them all come in. I was thinking too loudly I guess? They are like a bloom of mushrooms that turned our bland studio complex into a humid little human forest. It’s magnificent, and I am so glad to see them. 

Back in the writing room I stick my over-sharp pencil up into my hair and pace a little. I walk to the huge plate glass window to look out onto the street two floors below. There are so many little worlds happening simultaneously in New York, which is perhaps my favorite thing about it; it’s a huge living diorama. I focus in on a man in the cab of a black truck with a construction logo on the side. To my astonishment I realize he is doing the New York Times crossword while driving. The complete analog version of being on your phone while operating a vehicle. I’m a tiny bit less lonely. 

Dragging home to my hotel I begin to recognize the terrain from months ago when I was last working in Hell’s Kitchen. Familiar graffiti and building facades nod “Hello.” The sharp contrast of one of the most pampered and exquisite rose bushes right next to a tangled, freshly-shat pair of pants and boxer briefs gives me minor sensory whiplash. All I can do is go home and eat the peanut M&M’s out of the minibar. I will regret this for a couple different reasons, but I let myself off the hook for the moment. 

Thank you for being here with me. I hope if you are feeling lonely like I am this makes you feel a little less so. XO

Tender advice from a stranger.