And then there are moments …

rare moments .. when it still strikes me as … miraculous … that I was able to go on, and not just go on but to create something out of that mess. To write it down – but not just in a diary, or private scribbling – but in a way that made it almost immediately apparent that it needed to be shared.

And so I have.

And so the specific has become universal. People respond to that piece from out of their own lives. It’s about my life. I wrote it. But people have very personal responses to it … it brings up their own memories, thoughts, feelings … That’s not WHY I wrote it, but that’s what has happened. And I created that. I’m still kind of … amazed. Like … I don’t know, it’s my life – most of you out there don’t know me – I can only speak from what it’s like inside my head, and … there were times when I thought I would literally never … Well. I still don’t think about it too much – it’s really not good to dwell on it. But … that I have taken that experience – so searingly vivid, an experience that pretty much burned me up like a torch – something that I was sad about for YEARS – and turned it INTO something … into art … is truly amazing. To me. This is not something I take for granted. I’m not bragging, either. I am just kind of proud, and humble … and still … rather surprised that I have been able to do such a thing.

I didn’t set out to do this, when I wrote that thing in one sitting at 3 am one awful white night of the soul. I set out to explain myself to myself and to put myself in order and to try to find some goddamn peace. I found the FACTS to be peaceful. I needed peace. I was in agony. So no – I didn’t sit down, thinking: “Hm. I should create a show out of this horrible experience! Let me MAKE IT INTO SOMETHING.” But here I am … performing the damn thing. Left and right. Willy nilly. Arms akimbo. No, just kidding. I just like the word “akimbo”.

He (the guy it’s about) is the first one who read the piece. People who don’t know me personally (but who have seen me do the piece, or who have read it) are surprised when I’ve told them that. I can see why if all you know about it is the piece itself, you’d be surprised. That there would be any contact and that he could actually READ THAT!! Like, literally: people’s jaws have dropped when I have said casually, “Yeah, he was actually the first one I sent it too.” People gape at me. “What did he say???”

Their context is limited. They know what I tell them. Which is just the piece itself. Which is purposefully ambiguous. It was hard to choose what to leave out – but I knew it needed to be really bare-bones. Anyway – there is a sweetness to people’s (strangers who have seen the piece) concern for me … and also the discombobbled looks on their faces when they hear that “he” has read it. hahaha

I know the piece ends on a sad note – and he has his own sad note – but the rest of the piece is so FUNNY and I wanted it to be such an acknoweldgement of him and how funny he is, and how lovable I find him – that I figured: You know what? This’ll be weird. But I want him to read it. I don’t feel right about sending this out to magazines and performing it if he hasn’t read it. It’s just not my game. That’s not what this is about for me. 74 Facts is not about blame or anger or bitterness. When the tide rolls back, leaving a space of calm in its wake … all that is left is love. Well, maybe a couple twinges of regret and sadness. But mainly: it’s about love. And if someone I loved wrote a piece like that about me I know I’d sure as hell want to read it.

So I sent it to him. With a sort of cringingly gentle note: “Uhm … I wrote this about you … don’t be scared … it’s not bad … It’s actually really funny … uhm … til the end … but you know the end … ”

Something along those lines. I didn’t want him to think I had written a piece with his NAME as the title – Like: SO AND SO, AND WHY HE’S AN ASSWIPE. I mean, no. I could see why that would be a fear, though – so I just cringingly wrote a letter and sent it off.

Five days later my phone rings. It is one o’clock in the morning. We never speak. We never call each other. I don’t even know his number. I pick up the phone and I hear GUFFAWS of laughter. He is driving. It is late at night. And he is GUFFAWING. “I read it … hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha The midgets! Oh my God … the fucking Titanic thing … hahahahahahahahaha”

And then we spent the rest of the conversation just laughing about all of our goofy moments. I know it’s hard to believe, but that’s what happened.

He didn’t IGNORE the ending. We spoke about that a little bit … but for the main conversation, we just reminisced and howled with laughter about all of the silly memories I had brought up. The lack of midgets in the world “these days”, his anger at backwards baseball caps, the Riverdance mania … He was crying with laughter.

I couldn’t sleep that night I was so exhilarated. I felt as though I were weightless. The love was intense. But it was without pain now. Because it was expressed – and we could SHARE it. We could laugh and laugh and laugh at what goofballs we had been, and how funny those old times were … and I didn’t hang up the phone and curl up into an agonized ball of regret. I hung up the phone, still laughing.

This astonishes me to this day.

I became my own healer. That’s what happened. And it was through art, sure – it was through getting the shattered pieces in order so that I could write it all DOWN … but it was also through sharing it. With him, and with everybody.

I’ve never known anything like it.

One of my great acting teachers had a really cool thing to say about “sublimation” that I’ve never forgotten. His name was Doug Moston [actually, side note: that’s a pretty cool link – he died recently and his students somehow found that post and started posting their memories of him – I finally had to close the post because of F*&%ING SPAMMERS … but still – it became a kind of gathering-place for people who missed him – I got a ton of email, it was just really really cool – SO glad I wrote that piece]

Anyway, he said that he thought “sublimation” was very under-rated. He was a big fan of it. Now this so goes against the grain of our “talk it out” culture – that everything should be talked about, nothing should be sublimated, sublimation is BAD … it equals: repression.

So I was very curious as to his thoughts on this. He said, “Here’s what I mean by sublimation. You take your pain – and you make it sublime.”

I’m not sitting here and telling you my work is sublime. I certainly FEEL sublime when I’m doing the piece – it’s an intensely joyful experience to do it – but that’s not the same thing. Moston was hinting at something much much deeper, I think. The true meaning of the word “sublime”.

I don’t even want to name it. It should remain mysterious.

I will say this … it has something to do with the fact that when “he” called me after reading it – a piece that basically explains his broken heart and mine – he was literally howling with laughter over the phone. What??? And it has something to do with the fact that we both just laughed our way through that conversation – going line by line through my piece … reminiscing, snorting with laughter, guffawing, interrupting each other, gushing, moving on … We had never spoken about ANY of that stuff. Everything had ended so sadly. But there I was – handing him back all of his COMEDY to him on a plate. It has something to do with that. It surprises people who only know the story as I told it in that piece. But this happened also. It is sublime.

It’s love, really. Love without needs or demands. It sucks, on some level, of course. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Every time I do the piece it’s just another opportunity to express that guffawing laughter over the phone, to share that bright comical spirit with others. The last time I did it, a small hunched-over man who had to be almost 80 came up to me afterwards. He had a hearing aid in, he walked with a cane, and he had big bushy eyebrows. He touched my arm and said, in a thick New York accent, “I feel like I want to know that guy!” Tears filled my eyes as I thanked him.

My specifics. Become universal. How on earth has that happened?

Ahhhh. And that is why I do this. That is why I do this.

I was writhing in psychic agony as I wrote that piece. That’s not an exaggeration. I was writhing at my desk. The fact that the piece came out so funny is just another example of … the terrible complex beauty of sublimation.

I don’t know how to end this. I just know I’ve been wanting to talk about that piece. I hesitate to say too much, for many reasons.

I guess I’m just proud of it. Proud of my creation and what I’m doing with it.