Oh, something HAS changed…”within me….something is not the same”…..Once a melody haunts
me, it stays with me…Especially when that melody meets the moment, as this tune from WICKED seems to be entwining with my dire thoughts, on this Inauguration Day:
A day when the bright legacy of Rev.Martin Luther King fatefully co-exists with the rancid intentions of our re-run of a President…a deep change has resulted…and that change is within me.
For, I used to think, in fact believe, that I had power.
To sustain a 45-year career in show business, on New York stages, for LA opportunities and in theaters of every size around the country, a young actress, aging into an older, wiser one, had to believe in the power that sustained her. ….that energy, that belief that kept her going from audition to audition, job to job, show-closing to show-closing, one silly TV commercial to the next…because honestly, if the stereotype is to be believed, one never did know when the next job was coming. So often, it was the belief in one’s own power, one’s own magic , (if you will), to keep the career moving, for better or
worse.
And it was more often for the better, which is what enabled me to stay in the profession over four decades. I loved it. Suffered from it. Embraced it. Needed it. Finally, became it. Until I could peacefully let go of it, retire to San Francisco, and write for as many hours a day as I wish.
And yes, sustaining a daily writing practice does take a special sort of power of its own, and I do enjoy that.
But, but….but…..then along came the Days of Trump and the Darkness Trailing Behind Him, and I am sad to report that I now feel pretty damned powerless, and it feels lousy.
The one place I continue to feel a bit of the old “surge” of electricity is at my writing desk. I can believe in my own thoughts and feelings while I sit here and let them appear as words in front of me. Today, I could hardly wait for my first coffee and to start writing, because I woke up with so much to say, so filled with feeling, so scared, so enraged, and yet feeling….so hopeless.
A man like Donald Trump is a vampire. He is surrounded by an aura of darkness and decay because, as I have often written over these past years, Trump is a dead man inside. So, in order to remain upright, he needs the flesh and blood of others’ to sustain him. He feasts on the goodness of all the people around him, and he is so disgusting in the way he smacks his bloody lips and gloats, that I quickly become ill when ever his face appears on the news channels I no longer watch….I used to watch, because i used to think keeping up with the news mattered, but now I realize the 4th Estate is as empty of promise as our political system itself, and that realization drains even more power from my sense of self each day.
I need no further help to feel my power drain away.
I was a child of the ’60’s and demonstrated like a devoted demon against every Viet Nam injustice, every FemLib slight, every bombing of Cambodia. I used to feel our showing up on campus ,skipping class, even dating the head of the Students for a Democratic Society, made a difference…Hell, i slept on the cold floors of more than one Administration Building! But now?
My warm bed assures me, as does my husband’s embrace, that I am only safe within my circle of love and home, in the presence of people who believe as I do: that Evil does exist in the world and that there might be a slight chance we can combat it. But mostly, I do not believe that.
History is a worn out dame that repeats and repeats in my ear: “Don’t you know little fool? You never can win!”….(Good God, I am filled with musical quotes today! Forgive me Cole Porter! …and partner).
This quote I saw this morning speaks for me: “I feel like I’m in Season 5 of my life and the writers are just making ridiculous shit happen to keep it interesting.” That put a smile on my powerless face as I poured my early coffee.
Then, from the ridiculous to the sublime, I read MLK’s words: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is “What are you doing for others”?”, and I felt a spark of something familiar…something kind.
It almost made me forgive my own hopelessness.