Filed under: art, Creative Process, dance, dreams, theatre, writing | Tags: choreographer, Drama Bookshop, friends, future gazing, good news, Mikhail Baryshnikov, playwright, Success Stories
On my way to go see a dance piece, I stopped off at the Drama Bookshop and noticed that they had a collection of plays written by my old friend. I figured I should buy it, since I have a goal to dedicate a shelf, nay, a bookcase, to the work of my friends. Also, I wanted to read the plays. Over the years, we’ve been less in touch so I haven’t managed to see everything or read everything.
In our twenties, we were very close. We talked on the phone many nights a week and we’d go out and wander the streets of New York, finding delicious tidbits to eat. We talked about our ambitions and our hopes. He dreamed of seeing his plays on Broadway and I wanted that dream for him too. It was a time of much angst and sometimes we’d both of us slip into hopelessness. You really have no idea what’s coming. I guess we never do.
Anyway – here we are in 2023 in the new Drama Bookshop and I’m buying a collection of his plays. It’s not the only work of his they have for sale, either. His plays take up about eight inches on the bookshelf. I take the book up to the cashier and she gets instantly excited about it. “I love his plays,” she says. And all I want to do is go back in time to some night when we were on the phone and my friend was so despondent and hopeless and I wish I could be like, “Hey, I’ve just come from the future, where I’m buying a collection of your plays at the Drama Bookshop. The cashier is delighted with my purchase and tells me how much she loves your plays. When I tell her you’re a friend of mine, she acts like I told her I was friends with Beyonce. You don’t know who that is yet because it’s the mid-90s – but trust me, a time traveler from 2023, this cashier is crazy for your work.”
When I left the Drama Bookshop, I went on to the dance show – a little ways down the road. The choreographer is a friend, though one I haven’t seen in at least a decade or two. From the back row of the house for these two world premiere dances, I can see Mikhail Baryshnikov settling in to his seat in the third row. Baryshnikov is here to see my friend’s work! This piece is at Baryshnikov’s art space so it’s highly probable that this is not my friend’s first encounter or interaction with Baryshnikov. It’s possible that this sort of thing has become normal to him. It’s not to me, though. I’m excited for him. Here, too, I want to go back in time and tell this sweet boy I knew decades ago what success awaits the man he will be in the future.
I mean, maybe me time traveling to tell stories about future success would spoil the surprise but I feel like a life in the arts is so full of uncertainty, a lot of us could do with a visit from a more successful future to just let us know that there’s a little bit of hope. And sometimes we could do with a little reminder of our milestones, as we sit in that future that doesn’t feel nearly as successful as it would seem to our younger selves.
We all have friends who have given up. We’ve all considered giving up ourselves. A little visitor from the future with good news would be really so sustaining. If a future me came to tell me a story like one of these, I’d be charged up for a long time.
But, of course, let’s say I did manage to time travel and tell my playwright friend the story of the cashier at the bookshop. Odds are he wouldn’t believe me, or believe I was from the future. But I guess the me back then could have just made something up on one of those days hope was in short supply. I could have claimed to be back with a message from the future and maybe a little faith would sneak in. I could try that now and I wouldn’t even have to get a time machine.
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Filed under: art, Creative Process, dreams, theatre | Tags: bad news, dreams, emotional waves, good news, hope, hope hangover, rejection
I thought I’d sworn off the stuff. I was trying to be level headed about things – you know – not indulge in too much of that magical thinking that my theatrical tribe is wont to rely on.
But when I got that unexpected vote of confidence from an establishment organization, I felt a surge of hope. And my imagination – the one I use to write things and create art with – went a little bit wild. I got drunk on hope. I knew while I was drinking all that hope these last four months that I’d probably pay for it pretty hard later but while I was downing hope, it felt so good.
And when the rejection came, I sobered right up and woke up with a hope hangover.
This is why people will tell you not to get your hopes up. They’re trying to help you avoid a hope hangover – the kind that makes you feel like you were such an idiot to take in all that hope before and swear off hoping in the future.
The hope hangover is no fun. It makes it seem like everything you ever did was a futile waste of time and energy and gives you no fuel for whatever you need to face in the future.
But – just like the hope that came before it – I knew the hope hangover would pass. And this one did. It lasted about 24 hours and then it was over.
I’m not sure, though, that I shouldn’t have let myself get my hopes up at all. The hope hangover is survivable. I think, in a way, we have to allow ourselves a little hope bender sometimes, or else we slide deeper and deeper into a sense of futility. A little dose of hope, followed by a hope hangover is better than no hope at all.
One thing that decades of working in the arts can do is give you a sense of your own artistic patterning, like, what you can expect in situations that were once unfamiliar. For me, I have (more or less) learned to ride the emotional waves of the highs and lows of artistic life.
For example, I remember when I was a kid, doing shows in community theatre. I did a couple of plays and after the third or fourth one, I started to recognize that once the shows were over, I slipped into a bit of a trough emotionally. But I gave it a name – the Post Show Blues – and the next time a show ended, I was prepared for the dip. It wasn’t quite so scary and it didn’t feel permanent the way it had the first few times. It serves me to this day.
This hope hangover thing is a similar useful model for me. It allows me to actually feel my feelings, to enjoy the highs of dreaming, of possibility, to drink the frothy fun of a transformed future. In other words, I can get my hopes up and just know that I’ll wake up from that dream a little hungover.
And luckily, some new good news came in not long after the previous disappointment passed. So I am actually hopeful again at the moment. But fully prepared for the probable hangover.
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