A Mixed Bag

I just returned from Minneapolis, where I was doing a five-show run of The Big Secret for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Taking a show on the road is always an emotional thing. You are away from home, doing something you have put a lot of work into. If you do the kind of shows I do, you are also doing something you have put a lot of yourself—your history, your self-image, your writing, your pride—into. You are far away from friends and loved ones and your daily routine. Sometimes you aren’t even in the time zone you are used to. All of this can make for a potent mix of emotion and dislocation, along with excitement and the inspiration of meeting new audiences and other artists. Basically, it primes you to be a child’s chemistry set of all the human stress and pleasure hormones that some precocious child genius has thrown out a window, down a mountain, into a raging river, and over a waterfall. And that’s when a festival is going well.

This one was more of a mixed bag. I got a lot of praise for the show. The producers of the Fringe and my fellow artists had nothing but good things to say, and I—or at least my show—had won the admiration of a couple of die-hard and influential Fringe patrons. All of them said they were talking my show up to anyone who would listen. They also heaped praise in the audience review section of my official show page. But in spite of that, other artists and producers seemed to be the bulk of my audience for the first three shows. Granted, I was an out-of-town artist, and out-of-town artists always have a steeper climb to put butts in seats. But I’ve done the Minnesota Fringe three times before. Also, it was a really strong festival, full of people doing creative shows—many of which struck the perfect balance of being both substantive and an escape from the current, very fraught moment. My show is very much of the current moment, and at some point, I began to feel like every time a review called it “important,” I lost a prospective ticket buyer.

Then it turned around. For the last two shows, I had decent houses, and then I won a Golden Lanyard award at the closing night ceremonies.

Then I had to leave my new friends and go home so I could get on a plane the next day.

Then I discovered I had lost the expensive eyeglasses Cyndi had bought me as a gift. When I found out, the adrenaline hit my drunken brain so hard that I didn’t sleep the entire night.

But I had a late flight out. I could go back to the venue, where they almost certainly were, and retrieve them before heading to the airport.

They weren’t at the venue, which the day before had been full of artists, audience, Fringe staff, and volunteers, but was now completely empty—as if the whole two weeks of shows, drinking, performing, and carousing had never happened.

But the bar where I’d had dinner opened early for lunch! Not there.

Nor at the venue that hosted the awards ceremony.

Then it was time to go to the airport and wait for my 6 p.m. flight that would get me into LaGuardia at midnight. Then I looked at my ticket and realized I wasn’t flying to LaGuardia but to Newark, and I would be landing at 12:30. Then they asked for volunteers to take a voucher and fly out the next day, with a hotel and a free meal, and I would arrive the next day well-slept and at a decent time. Then someone didn’t show up for the flight, and they didn’t need me to hold over after all. I got home at 2:30 a.m. I did not sleep on the plane.

Human chemistry—window, mountain, river, waterfall. But somehow, I never exploded. In fact, the entire time I was there (or at least until the last day), the insomnia that plagues me at home went away, as did the joint pain that has been nagging me at night. For all the high-setting blendered emotions and stress and uncertainty about audiences—and the drinking every night—I was rested. I felt fit. I felt like I lost a little weight, and my skin seemed clearer and less leathery.

I talked to my friend Kenny from the airport—I had plenty of time to kill, after all—and he asked me why I felt so much better doing this emotionally taxing thing than I did at home. I thought about it and decided it was two things. First, the stress of doing a show is met by doing the show. Unlike worrying about your job’s future, rent, politics—when you’re performing, you know what you need to do: you need to do the show. However many people show up, you still have to do it. There are no confusing and possibly pointless decisions to make.

The other part was that I was doing what I am supposed to be doing. I am a performer and a storyteller, and I was doing those things—not trying to drum up corporate work. Don’t get me wrong, I love running a corporate workshop. That is also a form of performing and being on stage. But the beating-the-bushes and hustling for work, that is not a natural fit. Neither is worrying about what will happen if I don’t succeed. It’s the balm of being in your native habitat. You know you fit. And so much of the stress that drives us to distraction and the ragged edge of a breakdown has to do with not being where you fit—of being a gear that rubs and nicks against the rest of the machine you find yourself a part of.

I need to arrange my future so that I am spending more time in the place where I fit.