Fallout

After all, tomorrow is another day.


I now leave for Lyon in 4 and a half weeks, or 34 days. I will be gone June 2 through July 30. Wow. That's a long time. I haven't been that far "from home" for that long since I moved to NYC from Baton Rouge. I am so entirely excited.


In the meantime: fallout. That horrible sinking non-feeling state of uselessness and empty immediacy after the end of a major project, which strikes no later than two or three hours after the show. Literally, hours. A slow withdrawal from those around you. An incapacity to partake in celebration, save for your small internal celebration, which mainly is a stepping back to look at friends and events that are not, could not have been, and will not be, and finding oneself mildly content to have that knowledge, if not with the knowledge itself. And a thankfulness for that which actually is -- a thankfulness that that "is" is enough, that that "is" is all there is, and what a joy.


A deep and personal exhaustion lacking clean clothes and cash, and it raining all day.


Then a slow return. A slow, hard slog of self- and general acquittal that makes new work possible, then new day inevitable, and the new moment excruciating and beautiful and really, awfully new. Did I earn it? Does it matter? It doesn't stop. Time may stop for no man, but time does stop for art. But not for long.


This infuriates me: Dumb As We Wanna Be.


It isn't earned. It is deserved, but we continue to aspire toward earning.