My Human Interactions

...is the tittle of this b-side Harvey Danger song that I downloaded and listened to obesessively when I first started working on Angels, and I really had no idea how applicable it would be.

...Pray to the God that you don't quite believe in to bless this fleeting moment...

Angels was... a mess, and thrilling, like any good relationship. I could go on ad nauseam about how it was a learning experience, etc, and how it was like a real-time professional show and how long has it been since I did something like that? And explain my faults, and my triumphs, and how the TD and the director couldn't agree on the last few cues and that caught me in the crossfires but I held my own, and amaze you with stories about how my lighting guy showed up a half hour before showtime and I nearly killed him... but if you spent any time hanging out with me for any length of time you've heard it. Over, done.

What's not done are my anxiety dreams about the whole thing. Throughout tech I had dreams every night--- doing the show and the lights fail (actually happened), I show up and the show is cancelled (actually happened), endless faceless people screaming at me (actually happened), being unable to read and therefore unable to read my cues (not this one, thank God)--- and to be fair, 95% of my dreams are anxiety dreams anyway, but... the show ended two weeks ago. You would think my brain would get a hold of this. No, my brain still is carrying that torch, trotting my subconcious out onstage to deal with some calamity or other.

But really I loved it. It was so brief, and such a compacted experience-- boom, it's over. I miss it, in a way, even though I'm happy to have a life back. At the same time it was hard, it was anxiety inducing, and more than once I thought, "I can't do this." I felt like a fraud, like a failure, like a scared little girl. I felt like the only one with her shit not together, and I am not used to that.

And then I think: this is a job. It is work. Just because I love it, just because I'm good at it, doesn't mean it won't kick my ass. Doesn't mean it won't kill me. This has been so easy up until now, and now... it's real. It's not high school anymore, it's not 'lets just do the show and go to Denny's'. This is hard, and sometimes not fun, just like any good relationship. I just have to... you know, Knuckledown. I have to keep going back, keep getting it to kick my ass, and find new and exciting ways to kick back. That will keep me alive, keep me sane.

If I thought that you could see me, I'd be too anxious to perform. But tonight I am not working on my human interact6ions anymore.