Trying Twenties

One of the dreams of theatre types is to be bi-coastal. It ensures you are missing nothing in either of the two greatest cities in this country.

Since setting this up a couple of years ago, we are enjoying and profiting from living mainly in Los Angeles with a little studio apartment in Queens.

However.

I lived in New York City from twenty-two through thirty-one years old. The age when most schizophrenics go crazy. It was such a trying time. I looked great. But I cried a lot. Facing so much failure, so much poverty, enduring career confusion, waiting tables, living through horrendous relationship breakups and practicing roller skating for weeks in Central Park so I could try out for Starlight Express only to be cut in the first round.

Emotional memories are often sense based. Smell is the strongest. Sight is right up there. I see all these east coast plants and walk on these east coast streets and smell all this east coast summer garbage and I get sad. Almost like I picked up where I left off when I left here for good.

When I moved to California, I drove across the country in my Geo Prizm (which I still have), crying to Rickie Lee Jones songs from Flying Cowboys (especially the song Away from the Sky)-- just sobbing out all the years of failure, knowing, knowing that things would be better in California.

And for the most part, they have been.

I guess it's good to face your twenties. They are the years where you are making up for all that you weren't in your childhood. But then, you can't really make up for anything so it all comes crashing down.

If a city can remind me of that, fine.

Another thing-- there are fewer creatives bustling through the streets of Manhattan. This is a current reason to be sad. But not my problem.