This ended up being my farewell message to the cast and crew of the Red Dirt production of the Laramie Project.
I’m mostly all packed, and completely exhausted. Gonna take a nap before I decide when to leave. Whatever the decision, I’ll be gone soon. It’s been intense and I miss you already.
This is quite a high to come down from, I guess you guys know how to do it. I certainly don’t.
I feel like a naive kid that was pressured into shooting up, developed a taste for it, and then the pusher vanished.
I’m curled up shaking in the corner trying not to vomit every time my body clenches and spasms and shakes. Stinging sweat pouring into my eyes, mixing with tears and snot and need.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive y’all. Putting me through this. Making me care. Making me feel pain and anger and joy.
You!
No, not you, sit down,
I have other plans for you.
They are long, far-ranging,
and complicated.
You!
On your feet,
You’re slipping and you’re slow.
But you’re perceptive,
you pretend not to but
you pay attention,
Like when I answer without rancor
or pretense of moral outrage,
from having judged, and balanced needs
against best probable outcomes,
Direct and honest like instinct.
I saw you get that,
That’s what I fancy about you.
I’m not out to fuck you,
in any sense of the word,
that would be disastrous,
in any sense of the word.
How I manage to stay on my feet durning performances is by clinging to the wall.
I pull myself up, handhold by handhold.
Words crumble and fall around me. I look for a path and follow its logical progression.
It’s scary, but there’s always another word where you need it.
Sometimes you have to make do and grab at the next best, and the next, and hope,
that when you slip,
you can grab another word and ride it to safety.
Myself, then, is a path of words that manifests in performance. Myself is maintained word by word, for as long as there are words.
But what is myself in wordless times? In silence and solitude, I pace and drink coffee and commune with dogs. Myself blindly balances on a single foot and finds that, by strumming or muting invisible lines of tension, pain can be, not averted, but channeled, partially, elsewhere in the void. Myself is a silhouette in a blue sky, tensing and relaxing without words.
This is the perfect song. I know this because I have already spent twenty hours listening to it, and there’s no end in sight.
Cohen’s deadpan delivery is perfect for this kind of engagement, for the long and repeating and always learning more.
Nothing wasted and nothing missed. Nothing longed for or skipped. It’s low key and deliberate. Measured and delivered with the calmness and wisdom of resignation.
