Refilling the Well

Oh, WordPress. It’s discouraging when you eat my drafts.

The Husband keeps suggesting that I draft in another program. He’s smart like that. I have yet to take his advice. Oh, well.

I intended to write a post about my trip to NYC. Because it was amazing.

I was going to write about the amazing people I met when I got into random conversations with strangers. This after a conversation on how difficult that skill is to develop in a big city like New York. In some ways, it makes me appreciate living in a small town.

My grandmother still cackles to tell the story of how, when I was three or four, I was scandalized by the fact that she talked to a stranger. We were in line at the grocery store. (I was an unfortunately serious child, and painfully shy.)

So glad I’ve outgrown that and have now developed “talking to strangers” as a skill. People are fascinating, and I love to hear their stories.

And even before fantastic conversations with strangers, my friend took me to see Sleep No More. I know; it’s been playing since 2011, but I’d never heard of it. One of the many drawbacks to living in rural Maine.

Imagine Macbeth set in the 20s, where the audience isn’t separated from the performance by a stage, but becomes wholly immersed in it, to the point of becoming part of the show. It was beautiful and haunting, set in an old hotel that I half-recognized from nightmares. But the audience was truly the creepiest part.

I would see it again in a heartbeat, and it’s had my brain going ever since, imagining other shows that could be done in a similarly immersive and unsettling style.

In the last week, I’ve been writing more, which is a nice change from the past few months. So the New York trip was awesome and necessary. (But it’s nice to be back home with the Husband.)