But, in a larger sense,
Is everything about leaving?
Doors that swing out before we declare victory, the story starting its bloody song in medias res—The borders of the one you’re telling the people gathered in this darkened auditorium, at this show, one night only and tonight is opening and closing night: possibility to witness your scene if you choose to dance or sing in response to the call:
The call from that place that is never in the direction of the audience.
return the call again and again and meet it there, meet it there meet it there again and again until the conversation drops off the schedule, the moment your spotlight dims, stay in it til it kicks you off, then as you’re being forcibly hooked and carried offstage, go. Give them this grace as you yield your microphone.
Only then.
Not until then.
stage directions,
your theatrical progeny
is birthed by you
—whether you have been hiding or true—
Either way, this grows up to be your legacy—
The one that is here tonight
Already through makeup and wardrobe
and waiting in the wings, shoes laced by the dreams you believed—
this is a relay but you don’t come back here to this stage forever
this is indeed your scene
and it’s your only scene
His is next;
soon his is now.
exeunt
There is no safety and there is only confusion in hiding places
Satan befriended is no less the devil.
Knowing without path
Go that way—go and do not ask anyone anything
Every advice even at its purest is
Misaligned with your truth.
No one can tell you where your lamps must be installed.
Trust the blueprint within and
Pin on your own
Cartographer credential.
Hello. My name is
No curtain call either: we just exit stage right
And That’s What You Leave.
Whatever you’ve done here. On this stage, in this dark room, while this crew has trained your light and it’s on, it’s on,
this dance in this brilliant gold gorgeous terrifying unbelievable never-again
only now and never again
this one:
Is all you will have done
On the day you move out to Emily’s country.
I have been living my life as if this moment were
Not even dress rehearsal
Just embarrassing red sweatpants and stretched-out shirt rehearsal
Sloppy, almost confusedly consciously unthinking, can afford a little blindness No
This stage today is the
Only stage you get.
And nothing is rehearsal and everything is live music and you never get a single second take.
You are the director.
No one outside is going to fill out a damn permission slip for you to be bold brilliant beautiful only you.
No one but only you
Only you and only
Tonight
Curtain rising:
Feel for the knowing and Go
Trust that every other crew position is filled by brilliant people, and direct yourself on the stage. Be your own director while you have this stage.
“What you leave with us”
(Do what you will)
And the whole thing, the big idea, the horror, the possibility of brilliance or beauty or love:
What you leave behind
All and nothing besides this all that you have
Shared
Of you
Here
When you depart—
What waves have you initiated, perpetuated, where and how have you steered your vessel in the
Ripples in the lake of this world
What will remain?
What will you
Leave behind
When you
Leave?
This is all
Live Theatre
Don’t start with guardrails start with freedom
Otherwise you’ll box your timid ass in before you start and then you’ll wonder why you’re thwarted and asphyxiating
Caged isn’t life and it isn’t love and it isn’t freedom and it ain’t why we’re here not you not me nobody is here to hide.
Nobody is here
to hide
No one has come into this world to hide from it
(What would be the point? What a fool must God be, then?)
What do you disallow yourself to suspect, slyly, and smile and enjoy it?
Try anything.
Don’t recycle old accepted tired safe shit because you’re scared of your own strange ideas.
What you haven’t ever heard before outside
Is the voice of God inside you.
The order is:
Infinite dance studio high ceilings and walls of windows
Starting there yes only that’s the only place
and then
The improv the drop catch the pirouette that falls off axis and falls and rises and rises and breathes and yes and exhales
“Would have”
Is not a thing I’m willing to concede on any front today.
All that is ever yours is the song only you can hear, and will you sing it?
We are waiting
Everybody’s waiting to hear you sing
The song only you can hear.
Share. That’s all you can leave.
There is no ownership outside of creation.
A storyteller is not somebody with a loud voice
The loudest voice
Or the shiniest polish
All the humanness buffed out
The embarrassments and mistakes and the falls onto the stage, edited, cut—
No.
It’s the rough edges that splinter in a crisis
And catch your index finger
And make it swell for days
And the battle it forces on you and the energy of its distraction
Maybe leaving a scar: now you are
Able to speak about the change
Who were you before you looked out at the crowd
And started to wonder who they were
And what they were looking for from
Oh my god,
You—Alone?
Before you got confused about your audience?
Who were you when this theatre was only yours?
Back when you first walked in?
They don’t get you
So just scribe your poetry.
You know precisely
How to
Punctuate.
We are cartographers
Light up the lamps you can and keep reaching and feeling for the
Oh!
Next lamp
Make it beautiful in the tangled doing
And make haste
Do not look up in medias res
En train de faire
Just Nike that shit go directly
You know full well you need no middleman.
To this end:
Truest most beautiful me is this book that a braver woman published fifteen years after uncertain Lauren wrote it and locked it up
Little suspicions about that
Shining in the distance that you know
Is within
Why somebody other than you? Or instead of you?
There’s room for everybody who really means it this time
Finally
You will never have enough
Proof
To scientifically do your life
Correctly.
Life doesn’t live in proof.
For me it lives in the sparkling ether and my dancing feet and this little tiny melody and beat and the promise of the sky
My vision is God’s directive
Believe it
You will receive information and evidence
But nothing will be sealed and certain in time to live it on time
Gotta go on what you got now and draw from what you can’t prove you know
Drop the bag you’ve been carrying every arduous trying hiding mile.
This way is too heavy.
You are a cartographer and you are here to do a messy, beautiful job of illuminating landscapes only you and God have seen
and this is not the one you mean.
Everything is losing and you cannot keep the entirety of anything
And still expect to dance or sing
Or march, or become
Or find
Or remain alive
I am here to forge the path and wave that flag of the impossible
Connector
Unsure? Indeed. Go take your stage
Show us
We are all waiting
We are all waiting
theme and variations 