Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Ugh.

Funny story.  I was sitting on my couch reading I Am Malala, crying.  Sitting on my couch, in my climate-controlled, well-lit, safe, two bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, after eating a giant plate of food I made on my gas stove (for which I didn't have to go buy gas somewhere in town), with my perfect child sleeping in his room, where he would likely sleep through the night, which he has done pretty much every night for the last year, reading a book about a girl who got shot three times just for wanting to get an education.  Oh, but I wasn't crying out of guilt over my privilege.  I wasn't crying out of compassion.  I wasn't crying at my inability to right all the wrongs in the world.  Basically I was crying because I'm not on "New Girl".

I TOLD YOU THIS WASN'T GOING TO BE PRETTY.

Back in September, when I was in Brooklyn, I read a great story in The Sun called "Three".  It's about going with what life brings and wondering how you ever lived without things you initially didn't even know you wanted.  The family in the story lives in a rural part of the country, near woods and rivers.  Their Thanksgivings are filled with friends, and laughing children, and wild-caught game.  A place where it's cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  Where it's gloriously green in spring and the leaves turn orange and yellow and brown in the fall.  I'm assuming.  He doesn't mention where they are exactly, but in my mind it was somewhere with four seasons.  At any rate, I suddenly had an image of standing at the kitchen sink, looking out at Monty playing in the backyard and I wanted that more than anything.  The next few days were filled with images like that.  Screened-in porches, fireflies, local farms, hot cider.  Hot cider, guys.  I was fantasizing about hot cider.

When I left grad school after one semester it was to go back in to acting.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I left the grad school I was at, I would say if you asked, because I didn't think their curriculum was grounded in concepts of social justice and equality.  My classmates giggled when our instructor recounted the time a patient wet himself during group therapy.  They were young.  They spoke of their potential private practices where they could treat the worried well and whenever the issue of internships with truly sick populations came up they all got squirmy and uncomfortable.  And this is me being super judgey.  The truth is, what my classmates thought or did shouldn't have had any bearing on my education.  If I had really wanted to, I could have seen past them, and stuck with it.  But also?  The program was hard.  And I was terrified of it.  I was working at a different school in their graduate program where it is extremely difficult to not pass.  I watched idiots go through the whole program and graduate (we can only hope they didn't pass their licensing exams.) doing work that would not have sufficed at my high school.  But the school I was going to had actual letter grades and real tests and students were actually held accountable for proving they were learning what was being taught and I was straight up scared of it.  It may not be clear, yet, but I have an overwhelming fear of failure that I've carried around like a God damned prize my whole life. 

I dropped out of that grad school with the intention of switching to the one I was working for and coasting through, but in the middle of the application process I decided to go back to acting.  In retrospect anything that school could have thrown at me would have been easier than a life of maintaining a living as an actor.  And so now I'm having these images of a rural life and I know that getting there as an actor would be a sysiphean task I'm not sure I want to undertake.  I want to actually spend time with my son.  I don't want to have to be constantly worrying about my next job in order to maintain a lifestyle.  And I'm not talking about living like a king.

So, I Googled the best social work programs in the country and narrow the list down to a half dozen or so in cities I could imagine living in, did a little research and narrowed that list down to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  Raleigh has been voted best city in which to raise a family this year, there is a large performing arts community, the cost of living is extremely low, and there are four distinct seasons (though God only knows what the climate will be like in ten years...).   Yes, there are cons, but you people are always yelling at me to "BE MORE POSITIVE!"  And by "you people" I mean the voices in my head.

I booked a flight to Raleigh for the first week in November so as to scout the area for potential neighborhoods to move to in January.  The next day I get a call about the possibility of a gig in NYC.  On the Broadway.  You get it?  I booked a flight to do preliminary moving research to RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA so I can go back to becoming A THERAPIST and THE NEXT DAY I get a call about possibly returning to Broadway after 15 years.  Which is great, right?  But after more than 20 years at this I've learned not to get excited until I'm moving into my dressing room (not, like, MOVING IN, like I have a heroin problem and I've been kicked out of my home so I'm "moving in" to my dressing room.  Just, you know, putting my stuff in there and setting it up...  I don't do heroin.)  So, my initial reaction is like, "Great, now I have to put everything on hold again."  Well, my initial reaction is like, "Nifty!  Broadway!"  and then I'm like, "Great now I have to put everything on hold again."

A few days later I'm on my couch reading "I Am Malala" and crying because I'm not on TV.  I'm fully aware of how gross and icky all of this is, even while it's happening, which only makes things worse.  Nothing like feeling shitty and then feeling shitty for feeling shitty.  So, I did something I've literally never done before.  I got on my knees and I "prayed".  I was like, "Well, nothing else is working..."  And I say "prayed" in quotes, because I still don't understand the concept of a Higher Power.  I don't even know if I believe in one.  So, I was "praying" to my "Higher Power" just asking to be made aware of the "plan".  If that's a thing.  And it became painfully obvious that I have a vice-like grip on my need for control.  Which, good thing I chose show business!  Nice and stable.  Lots of control.  So, I need to, like, "let go" of my need for control and "trust" that "God" has a "plan" for me.  Which makes me just feel like a dandelion seed blowing along in the wind.  That sounds nice and relaxing, right?  Like, I just get to float along on the breeze, in the sunshine.  Wherever I land is where I land.  What a nightmare.

In the middle of all this I blurt out, "I want to live in Los Angeles and I want to be on T.V."  So, there it is, I guess.  I asked for knowledge of the plan for me and then said the plan out loud without thinking.  So, it's settled, right?  I stay in Los Angeles and "be on T.V."  But that puts us right back where we were at the beginning.  I don't know if it's realistic to pursue this path when I want to stand at my kitchen sink and watch Monty play in the backyard.  Those two goals seem at odds.  If I want to make enough money so we can live where we want and have a backyard does that mean I'm ever actually home or am I constantly out chasing the next job?  And really, this issue is more dire than "I want to watch Monty play in the backyard".  It's actually about making any kind of living and having health insurance and being able to send Monty to a good school. 

I don't want to be a dandelion seed.  I want to be an ant that has a very clear job.  Go to the potato chip, nibble off a piece, bring it back to the... farm?  Repeat.  But then, at the end of the day and on weekends I want to be able to go to my nice home in a rural part of the ant country, where my ant family is happily living.  And maybe we have a nice garden.

I'm going to go ahead and post this blog now because I've been worrying over it for a couple weeks and I want it off my mind.  But I'm not happy with it because it's whiney and so navel-gazing it hurts. So, forgive me and please stick with me.



Sunday, October 12, 2014

False Alarm

A few months ago I made a grand announcement that Kurt and Monty and I were pulling up stakes and moving back to NYC.  Kurt had been let go from his job of 15 years (he signed a confidentiality document so I can't bad mouth them, much as I'd like to) and we had been thinking about it anyway.  The plan was that Kurt would go there for a couple weeks, pound the pavement, secure a job, and we would pack up and move.

Turns out the whole economy sucking and people not being able to find work thing is completely real!  Especially for someone who was employed in a low-tech position for 15 years.  Loyalty doesn't count for much these days. 

Plan B was for me to go to NYC for a month and lay the ground work in my industry for a move back.  I was supposed to go for the month of September, but I was up for a part on a TV show that shot there in Mid-August and my agent told me the sooner I got there the better.  So Monty and I went in Mid-August.  New York City in August.

My parents' house is a death trap.  It's a miracle I survived there at all growing up.  There are three winding wooden staircases, one with a wrought iron banister thingy.  Monty's favorite thing to do, it turns out, is climb stairs.  He especially likes the part where the staircase curves and the stairs get SUPER narrow.

It was an awful trip.  Not because of the stairs.  Navigating the city with a stroller is rough especially since most of the shitty hipsters that have infested it don't seem to understand the concept of helping women with strollers up and down subway steps.  It's like they moved there with the cliched idea that New Yorkers are rude and they want to be authentic, so they just pass you by in their skinny jeans and scarves and stupid mustaches while you struggle up the steps with a stroller, a toddler, and accoutrement. Also, my skin was FLIPPING the fuck out.  I had taken the awesome advice of oil cleansing.  Oil cleansing.  Oil cleansing is where you literally rub OIL into your skin as a way to clean it.  You CLEAN your FACE with OIL.  Is that clear?  Good, because my face certainly wasn't.  The two women I know who oil cleanse have beautiful skin.  The thing is, they have beautiful skin.  So, they're starting out at a major advantage.  They haven't been dealing with acne since they were 12.  At one point in this adventure I was rubbing oil into my skin at night and rubbing apple cider vinegar into my face in the morning.  So, to be clear, I was cleaning my face with salad dressing.  I kept telling myself my skin was purging and I had to stick with it.  All the websites I was looking at were telling me to keep treating my face like an arugula salad for at least eight weeks until my skin had purged all the gross stuff out and then I would look like Charlize Theron.  By week six I looked like Hoggle.


Also, it's not like you use canola oil from the 99 cent store.  Everything has to be organic and cold-pressed and you have to use a combination of different oils depending on your skin type (and good luck figuring out the right combination and ratio for your skin).  By the end I was using a combination of castor, jojoba, argon, tamanu, and tea tree oils.  Next time you're at Whole Foods take a look at how much a tiny container of organic, cold-pressed tamanu oil is...
 
I suppose walking around looking like a troll would have been okay if I had felt like I was home.  New York doesn't feel like home anymore.  Honestly, it feels like a luxury mall filled with Starbucks, cupcake shops, and T-Mobile stores.  And Park Slope is lovely, don't get me wrong, I grew up there, but $2500 for a studio??  Come on, guys.  It's not THAT lovely.  You have to really love New York in order to make a life there and I just don't.  The deep irony is I know that if I moved back to NYC it wouldn't take too terribly long to start working fairly steadily and cobble together some kind of a living.  I could probably be comfortable financially, so at least that part of the puzzle would be in place.  But it's the getting to that point that I can't hack.  I can't deal with the snow and sleet and wet pants on the subway and the heat and pee smell everywhere and the jam-packed subways and the subway stairs and the prospect of having to live all the way out in Bed-Stuy.  I don't have it in me.  Plus, to be honest, I resent the fact that I've been priced out of my own neighborhood. 

On top of all that, I had two life-changing fights with my parents, which, as regrettable as they were (and they were), helped me to understand some things about myself that need changing.

In the meantime, back at home, Kurt was going through his own shit and coming to terms with some life stuff he hadn't wanted to look at for a really long time.  His language was changing.  His priorities were shifting.  He realized that getting a job similar to the one he had just left, one that largely meant catering to people with a lot of money, no real concept of self-reliance, and a real concept of self-entitlement was going to crush his soul.  Further than he'd felt his soul crushed already.  In the five years that I've known him I've watched him lose more and more interest in his "work".  I've seen him go in day after day, NEVER taking a sick day and hardly ever taking vacation days, working with people who were rude and unappreciative.  His skills vastly outweighed his duties.  By the end he just seemed beat down and defeated.  He felt like he was letting us down.  More importantly, he was letting himself down.  He devalued himself.  At the end of the day, getting shit-canned from that place was a huge blessing (but don't tell them that).

We found ourselves kind of laid out bare by it all.  Home is no longer home for me.  Los Angeles, as much as we love it, has just become a place with great weather where we happen to live.  I haven't had an audition since the one (ONE) I went on in NYC (for a one page co-star).  We're both on unemployment and we have a child.  And, for some dumb reason, we insist on feeding him organic, healthy foods.  A recent trip to Whole Foods cost us $250.  Two weeks later we were out of almost everything.  My parents have very generously sent us a Whole Foods gift card to keep Monty in kale and bananas, but that's not a viable life-plan.  We can't just keep going this way, hoping something will change and that our parents' generosity will continue eternally.  My agent tells me to get a survival job, but we're not talking about waiting tables while I cross my fingers and hope to get an audition.  If it were just me, that would be fine.  But I have a child.  That shit won't fly anymore.  Plus, I've never waited tables, but I can guarantee you I wouldn't last a day.  Could you imagine me waiting on you?

I do love acting.  And I know I'm good at it.  But the sad truth is making a career out of acting doesn't have too much to do with talent.  There are a lot of factors that go into having a successful career, and I, for various reasons both in and out of my own control, have not been able to attract enough of the factors to me at once in order to make a solid go of it.  Success does not guarantee future success.  

I don't feel sorry for myself.  My story isn't tragic.  It's pretty mundane, actually.  Most actors who have been doing it for more than five years will have a similar story.  It's okay.  It's the life I chose.  It's just not working anymore.

As it stands now we're contemplating a major move.  We've realized that if things need to change we have to change them.  We can't wait around anymore for something to magically be different.  We have to think about Monty and what kind of life we want for him.  We have to show him how to make a healthy life for himself by making one for ourselves.  It's looking like that life doesn't exist for us in Los Angeles or New York.  Which means we have options.  We can go anywhere.  This is both exhilarating and utterly terrifying.  But nothing is permanent.  Right?  RIGHT???

I realize this reads like a diary entry.  I'm just trying to fulfill my promise to be honest and share this journey.  This is where my journey is today.  

Join me tomorrow when I discuss coffee enemas, kale shampoo, and sun-staring. 

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Who's misundertanding?

Here's a great piece by Leighton Meester about the interpretations and misinterpretations of Curly's wife in Of Mice and Men.  This is for the people who accused me of not understanding Steinbeck's work when I took Brantely to task for his use of the phrase "she was asking for it".  Enjoy!!


Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Daisy and Jordan Drive Around Town

Hey, guys!  Fun story:  One of my favorite people, Jordan Kai Burnett and are doing a podcast!  It's called "Daisy and Jordan Drive Around Town" and that's also what it is....  Basically every time we take a drive together we have a GREAT time and we decided to share the joy with the world!  ISN'T THAT AWESOME????

Here's the thing: For now I'm recording these episodes on my phone and editing them with a software I'm totally unfamiliar with.  I have no idea how to do cross fades or fade outs despite much looking around.  So, it's not the best sound quality, but it's definitely audible and totally listen-to-able.  We think.

Enjoy!!


Tuesday, September 30, 2014

YOU DON'T NEED TO YELL (I'm sitting right here)

I have to admit another reason I haven't been blogging so much is that frankly I feel like there's opinion overload going on and I have a lot of ambivalence about contributing to it.  98% of the time when I read something online my honest reaction is "So what?"  It seems like EVERYONE needs to weigh in on everything and the truth is, USUALLY their grasp of the facts of what their weighing in on is tenuous to say the least.  There is an awful lot of gut reaction opining with little evidence of any critical thinking or even just junior high school level reasoning.  Remember back then when we were taught to write response essays in which we were encouraged to lay out FACTS supporting our opinion?  If you do, no one else seems to.

Don't get me started on click bait videos.  But now that I mention it...  UGH.  My Facebook feed is flooded with videos claiming I "won't believe what happens next" or that the person is "left speechless" or "crying" their "eyes out".  And most of the time it's only mildly interesting. I have ALWAYS believed what happened next.  It's the "Upworthy Who Cried Wolf".  You've run out of chances, Upworthy.  And there may be that one amazing video that's posted that I won't bother to look at now because I just don't trust you anymore.

The video of the developmentally challenged guy wearing a bear suit and hugging people on the street?  The description claims no one would have hugged him if he wasn't wearing the bear suit.  Yes.  Correct.  No one would have hugged that guy if he hadn't been wearing that bear suit.  But not because he's developmentally challenged.  No one would have hugged him because we don't hug strangers for no reason.  Ever.  It doesn't matter your level of mental development (unless you are LITERALLY a child), if you come up to me and try to hug me I will knee you in the crotch.  I don't know you.  Get out of my personal space.  That video does NOTHING but wastes two minutes of our lives.

That Ted Talk from the kid with Progeria telling us to seize the day?  Listen kid, I'm sorry you have that awful disease.  That truly sucks.  But here's the thing: You are going to die in your mid-twenties tops (which he acknowledges in the talk, so don't get your feather's ruffled.).  You don't have to worry about paying rent, feeding yourself, shouldering a crippling amount of student loan debt, saving for retirement, or, really anything.  Do you really think you're in a position to tell other people how to live their lives?  Any video with a terminally ill person telling me to seize the day is USELESS to me.  All it does is make me feel guilty that I'm not "living every moment to the fullest" or stopping to smell every rose that I see.  I CAN'T do that because I have to assume that I'm going to live another, what? 50 years? and I don't want to saddle my son with my debt.  I'd like for him to eat and have a roof over his head and that means I have to work.  And sometimes that means I have to do things I really don't like doing.  And your video telling me life is precious just makes those times when I have to do things I don't like doing so that I can, you know, live my life, even worse.

The video of the woman beating the shit out of her daughter for sexting (or whatever)?  Nope.  Never needed to see that.  I already know people are awful.  I'm already trying to make choices in my life to combat that at both micro and macro levels.  Watching a psychotic person beat the daylights out of a child does nothing for me but make me almost too upset to continue on with my day.  Are there REALLY people out there that don't know that shit is going on?  And if they don't, really, how is seeing a video like that going to change it?

Also?  Comments like, "Obama is taking down this country single-handedly."  I mean.  It's just dumb.  On so many levels.  And yes, I can just ignore it, but it just seems to be going on everywhere.  It seems like everywhere I go people are yelling stupid shit in my face.  I stopped listening to the news in February.  I just couldn't take it anymore.  I made the mistake of turning it on one evening a couple months ago and the first thing I heard was a story about some women in India getting raped and hung in trees.  Nope.

I don't want to be another person yelling.  On the other hand, there are things to yell about.  (I saw a shirt in a thrift shop from a pro-choice rally in 1994 with the words "We will never go back!"  IN NINETEEN NINETY FOUR.  And here was are 20 years later and womens' rights are being rolled back at an astonishing rate all over the country (You can read up on some of that here).  We STILL get paid 78 cents to every dollar a man gets paid for the same work.  And it's even worse for women of color.)  It's just that a lot of the yelling is about stuff that is truly unimportant or just plain incorrect.  And I'm telling you, guys, it's going to make us all stupider.



It's too loud.  And I have some ambivalence about adding to the din.  So, yes, that has contributed to my silence.  But, whatever.  If you want to hear my opinion, great.  If not, great.  I'll just be over here in this corner telling my stories.  I'm going to try not to make you stupider.

Here is something to counteract my frustration:





That's for tonight.  I am beat.  It turns out I vowed to start blogging more often at the same exact time I have to learn a song and two plays!  Hahahahaha.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Urgent Reader Pole

But serious question.  I need to know if I can pull off this haircut?

Here's me now:


Please try to look past my stunning beauty and be objective.



Friday, September 26, 2014

Hello Again

Okay, kids.  Here it is.  I never promised you a rose garden, but I did promise you a blog and I have been remiss in my duties.  This is my attempt at an explanation.  As per usual, I use adult language.

Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that this will be deeply me-focused and therefore, ultimately largely unimportant in the vast scheme of things.  If you want to read something truly important go here or here or here.  In the words of 12 step programs everywhere, I am going to share my experience, strength, and hope in an attempt to a) be understood, b) shed light on depression (as I experience it), and c) (hopefully) reach at least one person who might be experiencing similar things so that they perhaps feel less alone in the world.

My blog has fallen by the wayside because I spent the last year in a very dark place.  There wasn't light enough to share what was going on with others.

There is a growing awareness of depression.  There are lots of brave souls out their sharing their experiences.  This will just be one more voice.

About a year ago I started off on the path through the woods of depression.  The pregnancy/post pregnancy bliss was wearing off.  I was exhausted.  My breast milk supply was dropping because of the alarming rate at which I was losing weight.  I was starting to break out.  Kurt was working full time and Monty was crying full time.  I was not auditioning.  My only prospect for work was a show that I was 100% responsible for writing and producing.  I was overwhelmed.  In mid-November, shortly after my 34th birthday, I had a major panic attack and ended up on the floor of my apartment gasping for breath.  

When I was 14 I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.  I suffer from chemical depression.  This is not news to anyone who has read more than one of my blogs, frankly.  Chemical depression means I have a chemical imbalance in my brain that, when left unchecked, can lead to all manners of depression, from mild anxiety to DEFCON 5-type meltdowns.  I was hospitalized in 1997 after a massive panic attack (I thought the bed was going to swallow me) and a subsequent severe depressive episode (I couldn't leave the house and spent hours unknotting a ball of yarn.).  I have been on medication on and off since then, but mostly on since off means relapses and who has time for that?

So, my brains don't work right.  That much is settled. 

You know those commercials for anti-depressant medications that are either cutely animated or live-action with people who can't get out of bed to walk their dogs, or play catch with their kids, or read on the porch (??)?  I mean, sure, no one wants to see a commercial about someone who hasn't showered in a week and is lying face down on their kitchen floor staring at a carving knife trying to determine exactly how much blood their loved-one(s) would have to clean up.  Or maybe one with a person curled up in a fetal position in the shower with just a voiceover of her thoughts racing out of control but all culminating in her ending up dead in a gutter somewhere (I should totally direct commercials, by the way.).  THAT'S depression.  Or that's my depression.  When the only thing keeping you from killing yourself is the guilt you feel at the clean up job you would leave behind (which, by the way, at least is something).  When the overwhelming voice in your head is one that continually reminds you of all your failures no matter how trivial and that wants you to know you are the worst.  That's my depression.  When you sleep for 20 hours at a time.  When you are absolutely positive that you can not remember any time in your life in which you were truly happy. When you are sure that anything you do will fail.  When you have convinced yourself that your successes have all been undeserved or just outright mistakes.  When you feel bad for your child for having the rotten luck of getting you as a parent.

That's my depression.

When I am properly balanced I know that voice is wrong.  I know my successes were deserved.  I know I have talent and can succeed (and have succeeded! And am succeeding!).  I know I won't end up in the gutter, penniless and alone.  But, my depression is very strong.  It's tenacious.  It really likes being around.  And the fight against it is constant.  Constant.  Every day for me is a battle against a voice in my head suggesting that driving off Mulholland Dr. would be a peaceful way to go (and scenic, besides!).  And it is a very lonely fight.  Because no matter how many of us share our experiences, or how often you go to therapy or whatever, depression is a solitary fight.  You can work hard to surround yourself with supportive people, but at the end of the day (or, really, first thing in the morning, at lunch, around dinner, and at the end of the day), it's you, alone in your own head trying to rationalize with a part of your brain that is completely irrational.

This has been a loooooong fight.  This particular episode has been about a year long, but it's been an uphill battle since I was 13.  I have gotten in my own way more times than I can count.  I have let that voice echo unkind words I've heard from unkind people (or read on message boards, which, just can we take a little detour for a second?  What the fuck is wrong with you people who say mean shit about other people on message boards?  Seriously?  Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?  Do you REALLY need your shitty opinion to be "heard"?  Is it that important to you to cut someone else down?  Does it make you feel better??  At least at the end of MY day I don't have to deal with the guilt of having said mean, hurtful and damaging things about other people who are really just doing the best they can.  Just THINK for TEN SECONDS the next time you want to post some shithead comment on someone's work.  Ten seconds.  "How would it feel to read this about me?"  "How would I like to hear a total stranger say I'm ugly?"  "What makes my opinion important?"  "How does it contribute to the world to be mean?")  (Wow, I feel a little better.)  I have let those voices become a cacophony at times.  I have made major choices about my career and life because of those voices. 

In 2003 I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in TV and film, but also to escape a community I felt less and less entitled (or interested) to be a part of (Musical Theater).  In 2007 I quit the business for my own sanity and joined the real world.  By then I had spent what was left of the money I had earned as a kid.  I have never been good with finances and have not saved a penny (Boohoohoo.  This factors in later, I promise.)  In 2011 I re-entered the business.  A year later I was pregnant. 


Monty is 100% the best thing that has ever happened to me.  I never wanted children and I can't imagine my life without him.  Monty FORCES me to be in the moment.  All that is ever happening is what is happening right now.  There is nothing else.  And, no offense?  But I LEGIT got the best one.  I mean, I'm sure yours is great.  But, church: Monty is the best one.  PLUS, Monty wipes the slate clean.  When I am not too far down the rabbit hole of despair, I can remember that every "mistake" or "bad choice" I made in my life ultimately led me to Monty.  So, I am forced to forgive myself.

But you know how they say you can't get anything done with a new baby around?  Turns out?  Totally accurate.  The only way I can imagine all those "mommy bloggers" are getting their content out is with regular childcare.  Remember the part where I said I spent all my money and didn't save anything?  It so happens that living in L.A. on one income is hard.  Regular childcare was not something we could work into our budget.  I spent the first five months of Monty's life with him pretty much 24/7.  There was no time for blogging.  

And then there was the depression.  And the thing about social media is you're supposed to project an air of success so that people want to work with you or whatever.  So, when you're depressed you don't feel like you can share much of anything.  So, you stop writing pretty much all together and then you're out of practice.  I'm sure you can see where that snowball goes.

But I'm standing at the other end of the woods.  I can see the light and I'm almost there.  I can feel the depression clinging to my heels making it difficult for me to get to that open, sunny field just over there.  Difficult but not impossible.  So, I'm working on it.  I'm working hard, you guys.  I'm working harder than I ever have before.  I owe it Monty.  My mother was angry a lot when I was growing up.  And then she died.  I don't want that for my son.  I want him to think of me laughing, and singing, and dancing.  So, I'm trying to get there.  I owe it to myself.  I can't carry around this burden anymore.

I never promised you a rose garden, but I did promise you a blog and I have been remiss in my duties.  I'm going to make an effort to share this process.  Sometimes it's going to look messy.  Sometimes it's going to be dark.  And sometimes it will be filled with joy and awesomeness.  If you want a traditional "Mommy Blog", there are thousands to choose from.  Some are great!  Some are... not great!  If you want suggestions on healthy meals for your 2-year-old, or great ways to make popsicle art, or 10 Tips on Taming That Tantrum, you will have to go elsewhere.  This is the Mommy Blog about a mother who is FIRST a woman and then a mother, partner, sister, daughter, friend, actor, writer, singer, story-teller, bitcher, moaner, laugher, Al-Anoner, procrastinator, food-lover, ardent pro-choicer, motherless daughter, currently acne-ridden, person who suffers from depression, survivor.  This is about that person, living her life, and sharing it with people who are interested.  I'm going to do my damnedest to share this process with you.

You ready?


*************


If you or someone you know is suffering from depression reach out.  Call someone.  Ask for help.  Call Crisis Call Center.  Most cities and towns have clinics that offer free or very low cost counseling.  Call information for numbers.  DO NOT let money be a barrier in getting help.  You DO have options and there is hope.  I swear there is hope. 

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Guess Who's Back. *hint: Me.

Okay, kids, I know I've been M.I.A. for a while and super sporadic before that.  There's a post in the works explaining that.  But, for now, here's a track from One For My Baby.  Arranged and played by the incomparable, Brandon James Gwinn and sung by yours truly.  I wish we had recorded more while I was in NYC, but alas, this is all we have for now.  If you'd like more feel free to fund a full album....

D






Friday, May 2, 2014

Morty Shits the Bed

On Wednesday I guest judged a singing competition at a bar in Greenwich Village.  It was the finals so there were only five contestants left.  There were three sets in which each contestant sang one number. 

There was one kid (anyone under 27 is a kid as far as I'm concerned), let's call him "Mort" (because it's one of the ugliest male names I can think of.  No offense to anyone named Mort.  I'm sure you're a great guy.), who I recognized but couldn't place.  For his second song, Mort wore a shirt with the top few buttons undone and I could see the word "ego" etched across his chest in cursive.  I suddenly remembered where I had seen him before.

When he finished his song, which was, by the way, a poor choice for his vocal type, I said, "Mort, I saw you yesterday at Shetler Studios."  This didn't seem to ring any bells in Mort's wind tunnel of a head.  "I was coming down a winding staircase carrying my son in his stroller and you were coming up the stairs and you seemed real annoyed by me."  He gave me a look of stunned protest.  "No, no," I said. "I get it.  Strollers are annoying.  Anyway, Mort, this song was the wrong choice for your vocal type.  You have a more conversational sound that would suit musical theater songs.  No one can sing everything.  It's not a big deal.  You just want to pick the right material."  He looked a bit struck.  I added that he had a nice voice, which was a lie, just to soften the blow to his "ego".  The tattoo probably read, "I don't know why I joined a singing competition if my ego is this fragile."

When the third round came around the emcee announced that Mort was having a coughing fit and needed some time to recover.  After two more singers went by the emcee announced that poor Mort's coughing fit had not abated and he was withdrawing from the competition.

Apparently the coughing fit was bad enough to make Mort drop out of a competition with a $1000 prize, but not bad enough to send him home or make drinking more vodka/cranberries impossible.  I saw him at the bar twice after the show and both times when he saw me he began coughing dramatically,  heaving his shoulders up and down like some silent film star in a movie about tuberculosis.  Yes, we get it.  You're "having a coughing fit."

I'll admit I felt momentarily bad for scaring someone right out of a competition.  But two things allayed my guilt.

1)  Mort had no chance of winning the competition.  He was a mediocre singer at best.  Honestly, he looked miserable on stage and it was hard to understand why he was putting himself through something so apparently unpleasant.

2)  Fuckin' asshole not only didn't offer to help me get my stroller down a flight of winding, marble stairs, this motherfucker rolled his eyes and SIGHED when he realized that moving aside at the bend in the staircase, forcing me to blindly navigate the narrow part of the steps with a 20 pound child in a 14 pound stroller, wasn't going to work and so he had to (SIGH) walk back down the ten steps and wait for me to get down.

To bad for him the fucking Breeder he was so rude to was vastly more talented and professional then he and was going to be judging him in a singing competition the next night.

Oops.

I'm sure I don't have to explain that the reason you dont roll your eyes, sigh, and stand uselessly aside when someone clearly needs help is because human beings shouldn't behave that way.  It has nothing to do with who that person might be and whether they may be in a position to help you out someday.  You help people in need because it's the right thing to do.

Besides, you never know, if you don't help them they just might publicly shame you into dropping out of a singing competition.

I hope you really needed that money, Mort.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Ben Brantley is asking for it.


In his review of Of Mice And Men in Wednesday, April 16th's edition of The New York Times, Ben Brantley says Curley's wife, portrayed by Leighton Meister, "provides no evidence" of being either "slatternly" or "provocative" which, "[G]iven the grim events that eventually befall her character... may have been a conscious choice. We don’t want to be left thinking, 'Well, she was asking for it.'"

Mr. Brantley, I am a woman of average looks.  I'm no model.  I'll never be cast in a Carl's Jr. ad.  I am quite short, and, I think it's safe to say, I'm something of a tomboy.  Some might even characterize my appearance, on occasion, as slatternly.  However, since the age of 13 I have been faced with the unendingly exhausting task of thwarting unwanted attention and advances from strangers and friends, alike.  I am in no way alone in this experience.  Nearly every woman I know has a story of being harassed, followed, threatened, frightened or raped.  In 100% of these cases these women, however they may have been dressed, whatever state of sobriety or inebriation they were in, whether they were "slatternly" or well-groomed, were not "asking for it".

When I was 14 a strange man touched my thigh on a crowded subway and then spit at me when I slapped his hand away.  That same year a man poured his beer on my head on a subway when I wouldn't let him touch my face (an incident, I might point out, in which no one on the train came to my aid).  That same year on a subway a man exposed himself and masturbated while staring at me.  That same year I was forced to perform a sexual act on a stranger out of fear that if I didn't, something much worse would happen to me.  Then there was the time a man followed me down a subway platform, holding the hand of his very young son and then called me an "ugly bitch" when I asked him to stop following me.  And the time I woke up in a strange man's bed after having been drugged (he acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary).  These are just a handful of examples. 

In each of these circumstances I was wearing long pants and t-shirts, but this is an insignificant fact.  Mr. Brantley, if I had been wearing a short skirt, or had my cleavage exposed, if I looked "slatternly", would I have been asking for these experiences? 

Perhaps you don't know what it's like to have to think about your safety every time you get dressed in the morning.  "Is this suit going to attract unwanted attention?", "Will this tie make someone follow me?", "Do these shoes give off the wrong message?"  These kinds of considerations are what I (and most women I know) have to factor in every day.  Do you have to worry about your sexual safety every time you leave your house?  I do.

When we talk about a "culture of rape" in this country, we are referring to a culture in which, "She was asking for it" is a common, acceptable defense for criminal behavior.  The only time a woman is "asking for it" is when she is literally asking for it.  As in, "Let's have sex", or, "Will you have sex with me", or, "I'd like to have sex with you", or some variation thereof, either explicitly or implicitly with another consenting adult with whom sexual contact has been mutually agreed to by both parties.  "Rape culture" is a culture in which an educated, prolific theater critic would assume that anyone would ever think "she was asking for it".

Furthermore, Mr. Brantley, I'm confused.  What, exactly is Curley's wife asking for?  (Spoiler alert)  Is she asking to have her neck broken?  If Ms. Meister's portrayal were more slatternly and provocative, would we really be left thinking she was asking to be murdered?  What she does ask for is for Lennie to stroke her hair.  That's it.  This is not an invitation for intercourse.  And frankly, even if she says, "Let's have intercourse," once she becomes frightened of Lennie's strength, she has the right to ask him to stop without anyone telling her she was "asking for it".  Perhaps Ms. Shapiro made the choice she made with Curley's wife specifically to avoid this kind of ignorant and dangerous line of thinking.  If so, it's a sad day for art.

As a member of the media and someone who has a public forum, I hope, in the future, you will consider what such a statement says about what is and isn't acceptable in our culture.  I won't go so far as to suggest the paper let you go.  Though, frankly, you are kind of asking for it.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Help! (I need somebody)

I am so excited to announce the national tour of my latest show, "One For My Baby".  

http://igg.me/at/DaisyEaganTour/x/578170
Photo by Kennan Miller.  Hair and makeup by Catherine


What happens when a brash, cynical, inappropriate former child star finds out she's pregnant with a kid she never planned on? She becomes a brash, cynical, inappropriate mother. Tony Award winner, Daisy Eagan, uses edgy humor and some of her favorite songs to tell the story of going from Broadway Baby to Hollywood Mama. (Adult content. May not be appropriate for children or the faint of heart.)

No longer the little girl that captured the hearts of Broadway audiences with her Tony Award winning performance as Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, Daisy is back on stage as an opinionated woman, mother and performer using her experiences as her script to engage audiences with “One for My Baby”.
Show highlights include “One for My Baby”, “What’ll I Do” and “Like Someone In Love”. 
San Francisco at Society Cabaret:  Friday and Saturday, March 28th and 29th
Los Angeles at Rockwell Table & Stage: Monday, April 21st
New York at 54 Below: Sunday, May 4th


Please help us raise the funds for the show! 

Remember, without your help, all those animals in that Sarah Mclachlan ad will die....
Any amount helps!! 



Wednesday, January 29, 2014

8 Minutes

I want to try to explain my absence on this blog.  I KNOW I KNOW that I should be posting at least twice a week.  Here's a BRIEF explanation as to my silence (brief because I have 8... 7 minutes before I have to get Monty up from his nap, walk the dogs real quick, load Monty into the car and head to UCLA for a language study before coming back home, getting him ready for bed, getting myself ready for my gig tonight and then going to said gig.):

Somewhere around Monty's 6th month birthday I was hit with a massive relapse of depression.  I had been riding so high all throughout my pregnancy and for Monty's first few months.  A combination of exhaustion, stress and chemical imbalance caused my mood to plummet HARD.  I have had several severe panic attacks and have almost ended up in the hospital.  Don't worry.  I'm fine.  It's just an obnoxious disease that I have that I sometimes forget to manage properly.

So that's one.

I haven't worked in a while, so we only have one income right now and that does not leave a lot for child care.  All those other mom blogs you read?  They have regular child care.  Or their kids are in daycare or school.  There's no way they're taking care of the children alone during the weekdays and getting a shit ton of content written.

So that's two.

I have been writing my new show since September.   By "writing" I mean having a bunch of anxiety about it, searching for songs online, listening to a ton of music and writing and re-writing the opening a dozen times.  Incidentally, the opening is going to AMAZING.

There's three.

I am telling a story at Public School on the 11th and now have to work on that piece as well.  Since I'm sharing the bill with actual comedy people, I'm feeling SLIGHTLY pressured to, you know, not suck.

There's four.

Since Christmas, probably 80% of the time when he's awake Monty is happy ONLY if he's sitting in my lap.  Being near my lap, or right in front of my lap is not sufficient.  He needs to be IN my lap.  And he's not a little baby anymore.  He's a giant bruiser who wants to put everything in his mouth, most especially whatever it is I am holding and/or focusing on at the moment.  He doesn't even want to do anything once he's in my lap besides stand on me and either bite my collar bone or make fart sounds on my shoulder with his mouth.  I KNOW that some day I will long for the days when he wanted to cuddle in my lap, but when it's all day every day, that shit gets old FAST.  Plus, biting is not the same as cuddling.

There's five.

I have one free night this week... correction: I HAD one free night this week and I ended up having to spend three hours putting myself on tape for three different projects.  I am NOT complaining.  I am JAZZED to be auditioning.  But it takes time.

That's six.

By the time Kurt gets home from work at about 6:45 my brain is mushed and the only thing rolling around in it are the god damned tinkly songs that come out of Monty's various devil toys.  Until bedtime at which point my brain goes on full power and I have to take a Xanax just to get to sleep.  Techinically THAT'S the time I should get up and write, right?  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck you.

That's seven.


Also, this.  I mean, come on.

Please forgive any typos and my shitty attitude.  I'm now running ten minutes late.