Short Spells: Fab Fest, Inner Peace, Movies, Museums, Music, Fate

One fun thing about a being a “freelance writer” is that you have lots more time to do lots of fun things. But the downside is you might go without a week without ever really looking at your computer, and you can’t tell the 24 amazing people that follow your blog all the really cool stuff you did.

So here are the Short Spells:

Monday: HX Gay Nightlife Awards

The 59thStreetBridge got us magically invited to HX magazine’s gay nightlife awards at the Chelsea Clearview Cinemas. There’s no better way to celebrate a new freelance status than at an open bar with gay men. By 8pm, you can be buzzed, and feel safe walking around a room and talking to all the strange men you want. The conversation consists of “You’re gorgeous!” “No, sweetie, you are gorgeous!” “But I love your style” “No, honey, I love your style!” By 10pm, I was at a gay bar watching musical theater on a big screen and got inspired to go outside and call my mom to tell her that she was gorgeous, too. Her response: “That’s very sweet, but you’re drunk. Now go back to your party.”

Tuesday: Summer Solstice at Shri Yoga

You can do all the Yoga in the world, but you’ll never find real inner peace until you’ve done yoga to the music of a live electronic/rock/classical band, Live Footage, and then nourished your soul post-practice with white wine. The practice was all about following your own inner authority. Mine clearly leans straight from downward facing dog into fermented grapes and electric cellos.

Wednesday: Dr. Strangelove

I had actually never seen this movie before. And while I primarily I renewed my MoMA membership so I could assert my independence by seeing movies alone and brag about it on my blog, I also renewed it so I could see old classics on the big screen. (with or without a companion.) It was…obviously…great. I was most struck by how it took satire to a whole new level of absurdity. The social commentary was so understated, and while the writing seemed to be largely centered on its comedic elements, the characters were entirely grounded, rounded and fleshed out. My favorite line was: “You can’t fight in the War Room.” Whenever I’m in the War Room, I like to crack jokes or talk about yoga. Then I can save my crying for odd moments during funny movies….

Thursday: Michael, My Mommy and Mexican Food

Thursday was my mother’s birthday. I’ve bought her earrings almost every year, and this year, I bought her earrings, too. I felt like that wasn’t enough, so I arranged for Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson to die, so that her birthday would be forever embedded in the minds of the American people. Sadly, her boyfriend, who is in charge of important news shows at ABC, couldn’t make dinner at Rosa Mexicano. So it was just me, my mom, my brother, eating guacamole, drinking margeritas and saying innappropriate things. Afterwards, we crashed the ABC news room, where I got to see about 200 TVs, each playing a different Michael Jackson song as the editors prepared for an all-nighter.

Friday: James Ensor/Blonde Redhead/Thriller

1) The afternoon: James Ensor at MoMA. You must see it. EOM.

“This exhibition presents approximately 120 works, examining Ensor’s contribution to modernity, his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing. Examples of Ensor’s paintings, prints, and drawings are installed in an overlapping network of themes and images to produce a complete picture of this daring, experiential body of work.”

2) Later: All week I had been very excited see Blonde Redhead at Prospect Park, mostly just to prove that I know who Blonde Redhead is. However, on the night of the show, a terrible rainstorm came to commemorate Michael Jackson’s death. My roommates decided that instead of seeing the concert, they would learn all the dance moves to Thriller. FML! Not only that, but they were kind of mad that I refused to learn all the dance moves to Thriller with them. So when the rain stopped and the sky looked gorgeous, I fled the house. I started out chasing weird cloud formations, but somehow ended up at the edge of Prospect Park. I figured that I could walk in and for at least a little while, pretend that I was enroute to meeting someone. I kept walking further and further when finally someone yelled, “RB!” It was someone I literally hadn’t seen since college, but she, and other people I hadn’t seen since college, were going to the show. They invited me to go along, proving that 90 percent of life really is showing up. The show was not too crowded, the acoustics were remarkably good, and the purple fog lighting on stage gave the whole scene a rhyme of the ancient mariner effect.

Later, at the “After Blonde Redhead Party,” I was zen enough to feel very proud of my roommates as they performed Thriller for the whole group.

But this performance should not be confused with the Michael Jackson Party on the L-Train that I learned about through the author of the blog, The Streets Where We Live.

***
1:30 am, Saturday:

Only at the very tail end of things did I have a moment of weakness. And a friend said these very kind things to me: “I read every word you ever wrote. I learned about the places you wanted me to visit. I saved money when you told me to save money. I love your writing. But it was only a small part of who you are. And you’re still all the things you always were.”

To let her know how much her words had deeply touched me, I took a brave sniffle and replied, “Wow. I can’t believe you actually saved money.”

Free Michael Jackson

Perhaps you like Thriller, Beat It, or I Want You Back. Personally, I’ve always liked “Will You Be There?” because, I love Free Willy, spent most of my childhood feeling like a bit of an outsider and being obsessed with whales and I happen to love a few really bad songs.

In fact, my taste in music is something that has always been a subject of sensitivity, (see above: spent childhood as outsider.) My first memory of Michael Jackson was when I was 5 years old, and two girls in Kindergarten asked me who I wanted for President. At the time, my parents listened to mostly David Bowie, Gang of Four, the Smiths and a tape of kid songs about animals they bought for us at the Audubon Society.

I felt distinctly that I had no idea about the tastes of children my own age. Wanting desperately to be liked, and having no idea who I wanted for President, I thought of the coolest, most popular person I knew of.

“Michael Jackson!” I replied enthusiastically. The girls looked at me critically. “He’s not a choice.” Annoyed pause. “Do you want George Bush or Michael Dukakis?” PoliticsFAIL, InsecurityWIN.

Turns out, however, that Michael Jackson might have been plagued by some insecurity as well. (how many nose jobs does it take to get to self-hatred?) Also, reports of his final weeks on earth describe an incredibly frail, underweight man. People.com says that a fan who got to meet him said that he looked on the verge of death, although he was “surrounded by people she deemed too frightened to say anything.”

Her prediction turned out to be correct–he died of a sudden heart failure. And there has been some buzz on the Internet about whether Michael Jackson was anorexic and/or addicted a number of painkilling drugs that were really unsafe. It all adds up. Sudden heart failure is the number one cause of death for long-time anorexics in their 40s and 50s, never mind his “daily cocktail” of medication. And stress about something big, like his upcoming 10 comeback shows, is the kind of thing that would make things take a sudden turn for the worst. (If you’re 5’10” and weigh 100 pounds, you’re not en-route to a comeback.)

So…long story short, I was chilling in my kitchen, listening to the Free Willy theme song and searching the Web for something revolutionary to say about Michael Jackson (but secretly plotting a way to connect my lack of musical hipness to my self-conscious hope that you will read my “unconventional” review of The National concert at the Electric Factory) when I stumbled upon that information.

I felt kind of bad for judging him all these years. Jackson may have done some incredibly messed up things, but he must have lived a life filled with incredible pressure, and probably the belief that he would only be loved if he worked really hard to earn it. And that fear, not really knowing the answer to: “Will You Be There?” caused him to turn on himself. (see above: nose jobs)

I really hadn’t been that sad at all him before. But all of the sudden, I started to feel really sorry for him. I was thinking about poor Michael, thinking about the words to the song, thinking about how amazing it is when that whale jumps over the breakwater, thinking, God, maybe I should have been a marine biologist after all…when the storm came. Literally, it came right through my window and blew everything off the table and the wind was howling and it was saying, “You tried to be cool by going to the Blonde Redhead concert in Prospect Park but the concert is going to get rained out and Michael Jackson is here in spirit!” Or something.

Either way: RIP Michael. I still think you’d make a better president than George Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Take Me Now or Lose Me Forever, Or: What We Can Learn from Nora Roberts

In which, as promised, I explain to everyone how to monetize content…

You know how it is with the New Yorker. You want to believe you that care about everything in there. Reading all those “reporter at large” pieces and epic sagas of golf and small town shop owners or intricate foreign policy plans makes you feel brilliant! But sometimes, you really just want to read the cartoons. Or the fiction. Or the poetry, so you can observe how 4 out of 5 times, you wrote something better by accident during your last IM conversation. Some days (Saturday, June 20), you cannot read another article about the economy. The timing is just bad. Personally, on Saturday June 20, I decided: F the economy! I’m reading this profile of Nora Roberts, Romance writer extraordinaire.

I’ve never read a Nora Roberts book, or any romance novel, for that matter. But apparently, this Nora person is the only writer left in America who is making profits as though Lehman Brothers still exists. I’m sure there are people who could argue that Romance novels are only a few steps above pornography, so it’s not surprising that they still earn money. But the reality is, romance novels are in fact still books, thus still representative of the book business, and also still require some measure of adeptness in writing.

In Roberts’ case, her writing is actually what make her heaving chests and smoldering kisses stand-out: she is the leader of the pack because her readers love her voice, her wit, and her unconventional angle, Lauren Collins writes. She strays just far enough from the standard formula to foster a bond with her readers: She gives them a way to identify, and a niche they feel is their own.

But that’s not all. In addition to writing books, she goes online and hangs out in Nora Roberts chat rooms to seal the deal. Collins notes that “Roberts mastered viral marketing early.” She plugged herself in chat rooms, and will answer questions about her favorite kind of fish and who takes pictures at family gatherings. By being so available, Roberts has created a scenario where “her readers crave her attention more than she craves theirs.” In a phrase, that kind of relationship is the end goal of every company, brand, and certainly every Web site: Your audience needs you.

The linchpin of this whole scenario is that Roberts’ readers need her because she makes them feel important by listening to them and by being completely, bluntly and saucily herself. Readers think: Here is a real live very special, very honest, very famous person who has taken the time to listen to me and to grace my personal interests with her consideration.

As far as I’m concerned, that dynamic is the key to success for any company operating on the Internet today, and a cornerstone of a successful digital media strategy. You start with an attractive product, but you win devotees by convincing them that they are intrinsic to the current operation and projected developments of that product.

And now for the part where I tie it all in to Yoga….

Tonight at Shri Yoga, the studio where I began my practice over 5 years ago when I was in college, had a summer solstice that also served as a goodbye party for the beautiful Tribeca studio that sadly will no longer be its home. The theme of the class was finding and obeying inner authority. Most of us are constantly turning to the outside to make decisions or find out if we’re doing the right thing. However, this often leads us to lapse into a state of self-doubt, and ultimately, we forget how to lead ourselves.

What was interesting about this practice was that there were probably over 50 people in the studio, all congregated for the same reason, in the same space. And we were constantly reminded that we were there because we part of the Shri community. But to signify this inner authority, we did 11 minutes of sun salutations at our own pace, accompanied by live music from the Brooklyn band Live Footage. (” TOPU LYO .5 String Electric Cello/FX .. + .. MIKE THIES . Drums/Keys .. =.. Live Loops and Electro-acoustic madness!”)

First of all, that 11 minute section of practice was phenomenal, eye-opening and more distinctively expressive than any other experience I’ve had in yoga. But second of all, it got me thinking about the Internet. I realized that what makes a Web site or product really stellar is the ability to be a community hub where every user is asserting his own inner authority. This is actually harder than it seems. Even tonight’s experience took 5 years, two teachers, a lot of inner peace and an electric cello.

And of course, it required capitalizing immediately on a receptive audience. Web users really are saying “take me now or lose me forever.” A company needs to identify the qualities that make their target audience distinct, and very quickly convince them that those qualities will be best appreciated on its Web site. Basically, if you can create a space on the Web where everyone feels contained, protected and connected while simultaneously finding ways to be empowered, individualized and creative, then you’ve got yourself the Web equivalent of the world’s hottest romance novel. Or you work for Google.

10 Reasons It’s Great to Be Laid Off

As noted in the “How to Survive a Layoff” Feature, when you are laid off, your blog is your “calling card.” (says the Scobleizer). You’re supposed to use it to “demonstrate the skills you have.” But I’ve also heard that you’re allowed to take a few days after your layoff to re-group. So starting tomorrow, I will be a “freelance writer/social media professional.” I will write a post in which I reveal to the world my ideas about monetizing content. I will not mention the word lay-off again. I will take a hiatus from discussing “anxiety.” But this post is like the blog’s Bachelor party, a post in which we do things like take shots, go to strip clubs and engage in overly self-deprecating, slightly disparaging humor.

10 Reasons It’s Great to Be Laid Off

10. You can immediately apprentice yourself to your old Yoga teacher, who will begin your first class at her studio by saying, “A life without obligation is a life of truth.”

9. You can ask your roommates important questions you’ve been putting off, such as, “How do you turn on our T.V?”

8. You can slow down your anxiety attacks. Previously, anxiety attacks were high pressure situations in which you had to cram all the anxiety you wanted into an alloted period before you began the anxiety-provoking task. Post lay-off, you’ll have the freedom to take your anxiety attacks at a leisurely pace, possible demoting them to the status of “continuous, low-grade episodes of unease.”

7. You can give in to your inner insomniac. After all, what do you really have to go to bed for, anyway?

6. You can make statements such as, “my goals for the week are to find a place that will give me free highlights,” and no one will correct you to say that is only one goal, not “goals” plural.

5. It’s predicted that by the end of 2009, two million people will totally copy you by getting laid-off themselves, and imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

4. You can realize that not just work, but also relationships are important. You can react by demanding, late in evening after your lay-off, that your ex-Sig Oth take you back. When he refuses and sends you packing on the G-train, you can meet an extremely wise person named Frank while crying over your fate. You have so much fun blogging about it that you determine the Internet is better than people, after all.

3. Realizing that all the beer and tickets to sporting events in the world will not help you win your ex-Sig-Oth back, your father will generously stand up and do something even better. He will call you from the Apple store to say, “You want Red, so it gives money to breast cancer, right?” And even when you snap back, “Not breast cancer! Aids in Africa!” he will still get a you a new Nano.

2. You can expand your mind at parties by thinking of questions to ask people other than, “What do you do?” Through trial and error, you can discover that, “Is that shirt from American Apparel?” actually yields fruitful conversation, but, “does your face always get that red when you drink?” does not.

1. You can stare at the computer for as long as you need to after realizing that you can only think of 9, not 10 reasons why it’s great to be laid-off. After all, good things come to those who wait.

No Ipod, No Job, No Boyfriend, No Problem!

I’ve was thinking yesterday about carrots, real and metaphorical.

I was first of all thinking of how when I get stressed out and upset, my response is to fixate my diet around carrots. I realize this is not totally normal. And I was thinking, “why do I do this?”

I realized that although my carrot-addiction is a real and tangible thing, it is also symbolic of all the other “carrots” in my life. Namely: like a horse with blinders, if you put a carrot in front of me, I will follow it compulsively, not caring that it’s always dangling two feet in front of me, only caring that there is some carrot, and I can become completely myopic and obsessive over it.

For example, I realized that I had become unhealthily obsessed with my destroyed iPod. Everyday since I wrecked it, I have been getting more and more devastated that I don’t have an iPod. And yet, I don’t buy a new one, I just obsess. Carrot!

I realized that I was also obsessed with work. Yesterday marked my 7,000 Stumble on Stumble Upon. Aside from the fact that my account may now be worth money, I have spent more time on Stumble Upon than the average human. I see it in my sleep. It occurred to me that was..well…kind of weird. Carrot!

I also realized that I was a little bit obsessed with….Well, let’s just say that for the past month or so I’ve been “channeling Orsino,” as I like to call it. (If you don’t get that reference, SweetSearch can help: enter “orsino twelfth night“. If you’re too riveted by this fantastic blog entry to click anything, think: unrequited.) Carrot!

So anyway, there I was, thinking about how I am chasing all these carrots, and wondering what to do about it, and then…I got laid-off. (see title: no job) There’s not much to say about that, except that I tried very hard to make a lot of jokes about it, because I really feel that I am getting close to being the Most Sarcastic Person on earth, and I would not want to wreck it by showing emotion in a situation like this.

But, as they, say Alcohol Happens. Several hours later, I was toasted, and had spent most of the evening trying to provide yogic wisdom to my co-workers. (see my stellar feature on Survivor Guilt.) I was 2 glasses of sangria, one baby nalgene bottle of white wine and two vodka sodas READY to chasing that other carrot…aka “If music be the food of love–play on!”

Well, to make a long story short: that carrot didn’t work out either, and if you crack jokes about a serious subject for too many hours in a row, you will cry really really really hard at the end of it. You will board the G train in a fit of rage and self-pity, and you will think: it is 1 thirty am. It’s the Goddamn G-train. And you will put your face in your hands, and you will have at it! And for most of the ride, everyone will ignore you.

I’ve said many times that my favorite thing about New York is that you can cry in public and no one will bother you to ask what’s wrong. Some people think this is a sign that I’m a really depressed person. Others have taken inspiration from this, and given themselves permission to cry in public. Either way, I didn’t really believe that anyone on the train even heard me.

But suddenly, just after Bedford-Nostram, I heard someone ask, “Miss, are you alright?” I looked up to see a sympathetic young man in a shiny black doo-rag leaning towards me from a few seats away. I looked up, stunned.

“Oh! Me? Of course, yeah, I’m just being really melodramatic here. Sorry,” I blathered. He smiled.
“It’s ok.”
“Yeah…it’s just I got laid off, my ex-boyfriend totally rejected me and well…it’s sort of a case of one bad thing at work, one broken-heart and one too many vodka sodas.”

He laughed. I was totally back!

“I know I’m overreacting,” I went on. “I am just really really drunk.” (note to readers: normally I would not advise advertising this on the G-train at 2am.) I interrupted myself suddenly, “You know what’s weird, I always tell people that the best thing about New York is no one will ask you why you’re crying. I can’t believe you asked!”

He looked at me quizzically. “I mean, Miss, we’re the only two people on this car. If I just sat here while you were crying, don’t you think that’d be a little messed up?”

I didn’t know what to say. But he went on, “Listen. I think it’s going to be ok. You’ve obviously put a lot energy into these things…”

“Yes! I’ve been following like a carrot! I mean a horse! A horse with blinders!”

“Ok! So you’ve been focusing on a lot of other people. This is fine. You lost the job, you lost the boyfriend, and there’s nothing left to focus on but you. So just take some time to focus on yourself. It’s going to be a good thing. You can figure out what you really want.”

I kid you not. That is what he said. We got to Fulton. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’m probably never going to see you again, but my name is RB.” I put out my hand to shake his.

“Nice to meet you, RB. I’m Frank.”

Frank! I may not be employed as a writer anymore, but that cannot stop me from loving words and wordplay. I could not believe this strangely situated, wise stranger would also be named, “Frank.”

I skipped off the train. I was walking home in a decent mood, until it occurred to me that I’d really like to hear some music. Frank had not said anything about being happy without an iPod. So I’m getting a new one today. Chomp!

Required Reading:
Twelth Night
How to Survive A Layoff

Is Letter-Writing Lost?

The Internet can be a road to a knowledge, or a whirlwind tour of highway rest stops.

As I mentioned previously, the Internet can be a bountiful source of information. It can also provide a plethora of information. As we learned back in early days of guide writing, if you say “You can find a plethora of sites..” what you’re actually saying is, “you can find way too freaking many sites…” or “If you look at the Internet too much, you could end up severely ADD, barely able to string together two paragraphs, or listen to anyone for more than two minutes.”

This week, the damage that the Internet could be doing to our brains and ability to relate is a hot topic on the semantic web. The New York Times asked whether social media sites were wrecking friendships. My co-worker, Liz Colville, pursued that matter in greater detail in her column, Backslash, asking “Is Digital Technology Wrecking Our Relationships?” One of the topics she explored was whether our ability to communicate through writing was suffering, due to ubiquitous nature of “written” communication. Shortly thereafter, I did a piece for findingDulcinea investigating whether, when it came to today’s Web savvy students, the Internet was, “A Boon to Writing, or The Beginning of the End.”

Essentially, everyone is writing a lot more, but taking less responsibility and lowering the standards of conventional quality. In her piece, Liz mentioned letter-writing as something we simply don’t do anymore, but is a loss. Personally, I’ve always loved letter-writing, probably because I have a slight preoccupation with pens. But I also have to come to recognize it’s important for your brain.

Re-dedicating myself to writing by hand is something I’ve done since reading “Script and Scribble” and it’s had a very positive result. My thinking has changed quite a bit. To that end, I wrote a letter last week. A long letter. By hand. It was sort of a reaction to some of comments I got after my Mary Stuart mistake post. Apparently, everyone has anxiety attacks whenever they send an email. Gross! I decided to see if there was a way to avoid it.

As it turned out, I felt that letter writing did not produce the same kind of anxiety. In fact, I wrote this letter, sealed it up and held onto it to four days. I didn’t re-read it. I didn’t change anything. I did some thinking about what I thought it said, but I couldn’t totally remember, so I couldn’t really worry about it.

Then I delivered my letter. Still no anxiety, but I had a lingering feeling that I had not made my point. “Was it rambly?” A friend asked. “Yes it was,” I assured him. “You have to be clear,” he told me.

Three days later, I decided, “I know how to make a point! I know how to be clear! GCHAT!” I wrote one sentence. I got the empty reply, “Ok.”

I felt really triumphant. Surely “Ok” meant I had been clear, made my point, won. Whether I actually accomplished anything is up for debate. But that tiny little box in that controlled, anonymous little world made me feel successful.

But what about my letter? Was it really all a waste of ink? Definitely not. I didn’t understand it all until I was in yoga class doing a balancing pose and my teacher explained, “you’re not supposed to be still. You’re supposed to rocking. Swaying doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re in the pose.”

And then I realized: A letter is the swaying. It is a snapshot of you when you are in the metaphorical pose. A letter is in real time. It takes real time to write, real time to read, and once you’ve written it, it exists as a testimony to the minutes, hours or days of your life that you have spent in a frame of mind. It is a truthful leg of your path, not a refined, reworked, retouched version of what you’d like to be thinking or saying, or some place you can pretend you are going.

So: Write more letters. And remember that it is the swaying, not the balancing that reveals your direction and focus.

(how many characters was that last bit…?)

360 Degrees of the Crisis in Iran

[click to read: Iranian Elections Spur Protests, Violence and Confusion About the Future]

Yesterday, someone’s Facebook status was, “obsessed with following the crisis in Iran.” Personally, I’m obsessed with cinnamon apple herbal tea, converse sneakers and other people’s away message. But I feel like “obsessed” with Iran is a little too…I don’t know: Web 2.0?

I recognize that I’m being nitpicky over a semantic issue. (and pretentious. yes, I recognize that, too.) If you’re reading every news story that pops up about the protests there, you are indeed “obsessed” and probably highly knowledgeable. But through my rigorous training over the past 2.5 years at findingDulcinea, any mention of an important topic without a link strikes me as lacking in some way. In a 2008 piece, “Why I Blog” Andrew Sullivan says blogging is indeed “superficial.” We only get depth when we get hyperlink.

I agree. We sacrifice a great deal by surrendering all communication to the Web. But the hidden benefit is that while our interaction, reflection and refinement is patchy, our ability to transfer hard facts is essentially limitless. But sometimes I get the feeling that the hype around current events issues is a little bit superficial.

Or maybe I’m just projecting. Either way, I knew that I wanted more information about Iran. I wanted a textured picture. Background information. Profiles of key players. Differnent viewpoints. So I did the research. The result is what I hoped would be a totally comprehensive picture of Iran, but I’ll only advertise it as “A deeper look at Iran” or “13 Awesome Articles About Iran In One Place.” Read it and decide!

Kim Gordon: Middle-Aged Riot

Kim Gordon has done two great things. 1) Started a clothing line. 2) Helped me to see my lack of identity or direction as good thing.

Below, a video interview with Kim on Style.com.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/8558003001?isVid=1&publisherID=1568114478

What’s great is that she says she doesn’t think of herself as a person with a great sense of style, or as musician. Yes, that’s right. Nobody puts Kim Gordon in a box. I began to see my lack of identity as a good thing. Perhaps I, too, could do many things, deny that I specialize in area, and still be successful enough to get written up in Stereogum when I’m middle-aged.

In fact, I was feeling really great about my identity crisis until I felt so great I decided I wanted to hear “Teenage Riot.” Now, when the iPod got destroyed, someone asked me if I lost any music.

“I think the just the Supremes song, ‘I hear a symphony‘ I stole off the ex-Sig Oth-no longer-Good Friend’s roommate‘s computer,” I’d thought out loud. “Guess I won’t be hearing any more symphonies. But I think we knew that already.” Alas, it turned out that entirety of “Daydream Nation” had also been swiped from aforementioned roommate, and only existed on the drowned, baked, burnt iPod.

There’s only so much identity crisis one person can take, so…. I think it’s time to buy a new iPod.

Mary Stuart, The Tony Awards and Coping With Anxiety

Any Broadway fans or people who were really bored on Sunday night might remember that in the televised broadcast of the Tony Awards, when the time to announce the Best Actress in A Play, the camera/announcer accidentally swapped the names of leading ladies of Mary Stuart, Harriet Walters (Elizabeth) and Janet McTeer (Mary Stuart) when the camera focused on each of the women.

The problem is, I reviewed Mary Stuart (for popmatters.com) and have an incredible amount of self-doubt. At first I couldn’t breath. Then I shouted: “Oh my god. No! My life is over! I switched their names! I wrote an entire review and got their names wrong.”
“You never would have done that,” my friends assured me.
“But I would! I totally would. I did. I know I did. I remember.”
I was paralyzed. When I stopped being frozen in panic, I sprinted to my host’s laptop and began frantically searching for my review. But before I could call it up, the beautiful and talented Marcia Gay Harden came on and graciously informed the crowd that the announcer and camera man, not I, had made the terrible error.

I always really liked Marcia Gay Harden. I even thought she was great in Mona Lisa Smile. But at that moment, I wanted to marry her and have her all babies…However that would work….I don’t know.

Regardless, one thing to be learned from this situation is that no matter how many times you rehearse the Tonys, you can still mess up. (I’ve heard that they had 3 practice runs.) To that end, my host assured me that it was way more embarrassing for those people than it would have been for me. But I still felt a little strange that I had so little faith in my own work that I actually believed I would have done something like that. I’d written the review with playbill in hand–how stupid did I really think I was? And while in some situations doubt is useful (like if you’re trying to pretend Secretariat won’t win the Triple Crown so that betting is more exciting for the last race.) But living on a day to day basis with potent doubt about your ability to do simple tasks is not helping anybody’s odds.

Still, all writers and editors make mistakes. And while sometimes mistakes just don’t get caught, the more we make a habit of going through a systematic, pragmatic, checklist of proofreading and fact checking, the less likely we are to make them, thus less likely to doubt our own work. And the less we doubt, the less anxious we’ll get next time we have to something check. Reducing anxiety is good because if we’re already flustered, we’ll never catch obvious mistakes.

Of course, I personally have anxiety attacks every time I send an email, because I imagine that I have made an error, accidentally forwarded something embarrassing, or written something terrible about the person I’m emailing and accidentally included it , or am CCing the wrong person…the list goes on, and it indicates that I have probably far to travel to the Land of No Doubt. (no pun…)

But I haven’t taken a vacation in a while, so it’s probably about time to make the journey. Plus, Next To Normal collected a number of awards, so even if I never achieve faith and serentity, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that total and complete neurosis is the new black.

10 Reasons to Lie to Yourself (or What Can We Learn From Patti Blago?)

Last night, Patti Blagojevich debuted on the reality TV show, “I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of here.” She had to replace her husband because the judges in charge of his fraud case said he was just too guilty to be allowed out of the country. He swears to God that he’s innocent and acted shocked when he was denied the right to go on the show. She insists that she never wanted this, but is doing it because she is a mother and needs to save her children from poverty. (She’s only acting maternal to deflect all those comparisons to Lady Macbeth, right?)

Between the two of them, Mr. and Mrs. Blago sound so ridiculous, there is just no way they actually believe the bull they are spewing out into the world, right? Or maybe they are really good at lying to themselves. Maybe lying to yourself is actually a great idea. After all, don’t we all secretly want to be on reality tv?

10 Reasons to Lie to Yourself

10) When you have to lie to other people, you won’t have to think quickly, because you’ll already be prepared. “Oh sorry, I can’t go. I’m going to go home and clean my room/write my novel/talk to one of my ‘friends!'”

9) If some rude New Yorker at some rude New York party has the audacity to ask you what you “do” before he asks your name or whether your drink needs refreshing, you can answer: “I’m a fabricator” and you will a) not be lying and b) prevent them from asking more questions because they won’t want to admit they don’t know what you mean.

8) When other people confront you with the “truth” and ask you to “face reality,” you will be better equipped to shoot down their crazy notions (if you have successfully convinced yourself of the lies you are telling yourself)

7) If other people lie to you, you can yell, “Ha! Tell me something I don’t know!”

6) You can help make strides in sex education. Well…if you are Bill Clinton and you really convince yourself that you didn’t have S-E-X with Monica Lewinsky, and then you testify that you didn’t, and then people find out the truth and they call you a liar, but the end result is that people start teaching high schoolers to be careful because you-know-whats are S-E-X too, THEN (and only then) you can help make strides in sex education by lying to yourself.

5) If you drown and bake your iPod, rendering it totally useless, and you find yourself bored on crowded subways and long walks, you can entertain yourself by telling yourself lies.

4) You’ll keep your brain state out of pain states! My yoga teacher yesterday told us that the state of your brain when you are experiencing uncertainty or the unknown is identical to the state it’s in when you’re in pain. In situations like these, the phrases, “No worries!” and “Everything is completely and totally fine” work better than Advil, 6 out of 5 times.

3) It will help you to be more patient. Just keep telling yourself it will all work out on its own without any investment of time, energy or thought from you. All you you need to do is sit back and wait for the recession to end in Sept 2009. Or December 2009. Or..whenever, either way, it will all be ok, as long as you don’t make any personal effort to fix it.

2) You’ll seem more educated in social situations: “Yeah, I totally know that book/movie/article/politician you’re talking about. That was the one with the characters, the ambiguous plot and the scandal that kind of was but wasn’t and the woman who might have been a man, but wasn’t. Or wait, was she? That’s so weird that I forgot! MemoryFAIL! Haha!“

1) You’re the only one you can really trust. Other people might say they’re lying to you, but they might not be telling the truth. If you really want to be 110% sure that you’re being lied to, you’ll just have to do it yourself.