Every once in a while, a word floats to the surface of my memory, a phrase dredged up from the days when I lived and breathed theatre. Waking up in the winter grey this morning, the word in my head was “dark”: a term for a day when no rehearsal, no performance is scheduled. The stage is quiet, unused, “dark”, save for the solitary ghost light.
Maybe the word came to me because of the weather. We have no snow. The days are still dawning late and setting early, but all is brown and exposed and I’m wishing I was digging in the soil, and I am impatient with the teasing of warm weather that can’t last.
It’s probably something to do with my writing radio silence. I’m watching the squares on the calendar slip into my past without writing anything but incident reports and grocery lists, too burnt out at the end of the day to find extra words for anyone. I feel like an actor waiting for an audition. No, no, like a director, biting her nails, hired, but wondering if the show is ever going to be produced.
And it’s definitely about the perpetual twilight that’s clinging to my mind, the negativity, and — worse — blankness that has taken hold of my spirit once again. I am moving in half light with my ghosts, trying to find the lighting booth so I can throw the switch and start again, show myself clear and sharp. I’ve been here before, I know this stage. Give me a little time and I’ll remember.
It’s dark right now.
But the show must go on.
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