Of course I’m writing because I’m anxious and overwhelmed, trying to maintain any sense of connection to any continuum I’ve known if only for some sanity and identity- but I’ve been in that state since my socially acceptable betrayal in 2013, that’s a going on seven years of imposed and (relatively) solitary confinement without resources or community lead on all y’all who have yet to go two weeks, so as far as the loss as the foundation upon which to build is yanked away with a shrug I more than feel ya, so take my word, it’s yesterday no more and it’s not even a question of it being good or bad news, too much to do, to learn, to teach, to build. There’s still some old work to finish and plenty of new interesting work to begin just to discover how to earn again, for many. With time to practice a musical instrument.
In this socially acceptable over simplification there are two kinds of useful thing; toys and tools.
Growing up being raised by Great Depression era parents connects me faintly to the REAL [post civil war] “before times” which is why I think I believe this; The better toys prepare you to use tools and the better prepared you are to use a tool the more it feels like a toy, maybe then like a part of your body. That’s when mastery produces creativity.
From that point on for me in my primary theatrical craft I pretty much lost interest in toys that didn’t teach me something, though sometimes just for fleeting delight is still enough. The Exploratorium store toys were the best, my leather is naked without my Dizzy Pin.
I’ve long observed that popular toys/games serve no purpose beyond play (while stridently pretending otherwise) and tools in ill prepared hands can wound so this work and play stuff is serious. Frankly, there was a lot of bettering society work to do going undone before this hiatus and its neglect is now adding to the lack of overall preparedness everyone is likely feeling about everyone else on the verge of ?!! We all get to own our passivity contributing to our own and everyone elses unpreparedness anxiety.
We are supposed to mature, it being the nature of living dying beings and it’s perverse to prolong immaturity, just stating the should be obvious.
I hope in this suddenly idle and rudderless time, once some anxiety subsides or is normalized into a new tolerable, that the toys are put down and some tools are picked up and the results shared with prospective collaborators and critics. In one manner or another there is going to be a lot of shared rebuilding to do, the first chance we get. Before that maybe there could be some cooperatively getting prepared. Or I’d be interested in a counter argument because I feel like being a dick and knocking some sense into someone.
Theater Punk 