Perhaps one of the greatest moments in cinema occurs in Tim Burton's "Big Top Pee Wee" when at the end of the film, Pee Wee Herman, playing himself, asks his girlfriend Dottie if she wants to leave the big movie premiere detailing the events of the movie we've just watched. It's one of my earliest meta-memories, but that's not what I love about it. What I love is the line he says when Dottie asks why he doesn't want to stick around and see the ending of the film.
"I don't have to see it...I lived it."
While I think that line might be borrowed from another film, it really doesn't matter, because the point I'm trying to make here is that I lived through 2020 and I never need to experience it in any other form ever again.
But I probably will.
If this year has taught me anything, it's that you shouldn't start any think-piece or hot take with "If this year has taught me anything," but if it's taught me two things, it's that you really can't say what you will and won't do in the future, because I have done all sorts of things this year I never would have imagined myself doing until I did them (and sometimes even after I did them).
For example, I watched an entire Ryan Murphy series from start-to-finish and I found myself only mildly hating it and everyone who likes it.
While we're on the subject of hatred--
Hatred might be too strong a word for it, but I strongly dislike so many more people than I did before this pandemic.
And I'm not talking about Republicans I've never met or the general "people" we use when talking about the collective aggravating populace that we aim all our anger at generally so as not to channel it into one person wherein they would probably just explode.
I'm talking about how I have now made it ten months into a pandemic, while running a theater, and I have watched, as people who I'm sure still consider themselves my friends, have not only not checked in to see how I'm doing or how my theater is doing or if there even will be a theater by this time next year, and yet, seem to have all the time in the world to promote the work of theaters they're never going to work or have barely worked with or just want to be associated with because those theaters seem cool and they want to be seen as being cool by association.
Because I only allow myself one of these meandering essays a week, and because I think I've been pretty docile (for me) all throughout these past few months, let me take this opportunity to say to those people--
Fuck right off.
While I hope to be more serene next year and not consumed by anger, I think any reasonable person would forgive me for holding on tight to my very long memory. While I don't plan on confronting every single opportunist that has now made themselves known to me, I will say that I've found something akin to inner peace when I think of some of those people and realize that all their ass-kissing is not going to get them anywhere, and, for that matter, I no longer need to worry about them.
The number of bells I no longer need to answer has gone up exponentially this year, and my gosh, what am I going to do with all this shelf space where I used to keep those noisy-ass bells?
But for the last thing I'll write this year to be so consumed by irritation seems unfortunate and in poor taste, at least for the seven of you who read this, so let's pivot to something more uplifting.
How excited are we that when we're finally all able to hang out again, all our friends who used to flake on us are now going to feel ten times guiltier than they ever did before, because as soon as they text that they're feeling tired, the Ghost of 2020 is going to appear before them and slap them with one of the board games they put back in the closet, hoping never to see it again.
When I tell you that I am going to go to the first concert it is safe for me to go to, I mean the very first concert.
I don't care if it's Baby Shark Live!
I am there.
I am swimming.
I am swimming with sharks.
But going back to anger--
Personally, I am so glad that 2020 was the death of civility. Honesty, to hell with civility. Civility has allowed a lot of bullshit to go unchecked for a long, long time. Maybe because we all don't want every interaction we have with each other to be like something out of a Bravo reunion, but nevertheless, as a child of the reality tv 90's, I am more than happy to stop being polite, and start getting real.
As long as nobody gets real about me.
Like, the minute it becomes about me and my bullshit, I'm just going to deactivate everything and then good luck figuring out what to do next.
We have decided, as a society, that the worst thing we can do to people is make it impossible for them to tweet, while, at the same time, agreeing that Twitter is a nightmare.
By the way, how did we decide that Facebook is bad but Instagram is great? Have you all...seen Instagram lately? It's...Wow, it's so bad. I mean, Facebook is bad, but Instagram is literally designed to give you depression. Facebook might be designed to infuriate you, but I'd rather be mad than depressed. Mad will give you a hole in the wall, depression will give you a week where you convince yourself you're going to shower as soon as you're done learning chess because The Queen's Gambit made it look so easy.
I promise I will not be very good at chess by this time next year, but I will play it once a day, because routines are now my religion. I am Desmond from Lost punching in those numbers in the bunker over and over again, knowing deep down it's pointless, and not caring, because what the hell else am I going to do?
Poor Desmond.
He didn't even have Hulu.
Am I at all excited for next year?
Sure.
And if I'm not excited, or if I'm scared, it's not because next year might be worse, but because it might just be...more of the same.
I think the drama queen in me could actually weather things getting worse, because if you've ever been through tech week for a musical, you're used to the slow dread of knowing everything will get more horrible before it gets slightly less horrible.
It's the possibility of this becoming a new, true norm that would make the next twelve months seem unbearable.
Even if that's the case, I believe you can adjust to anything, and within that adjustment comes a new form of enjoyment that isn't anywhere near as good as the last form of enjoyment, but luckily, whereas I do have a long memory, my memory for past happiness is shoddy at best. I've found myself this year finding bursts of happiness and thinking--
But I can't be happy, right? It's inappropriate, but also, it just...can't be possible...right?
Right?
I think we just need to make one unreasonable promise to ourselves that seems more manageable than every other unreasonable promise we might make.
Let's promise to chase after and seek and hunt down three moments of solid joy.
Absolute, inexcusable, no-need-to-explain it--
Joy.
That's going to be my goal.
Could I find more than three?
Most likely.
But why set the bar higher than "Bare Minimum" at this point?
If you can tell yourself honestly that you will, no doubt about it, find three moments of joy in 2021 then--
That's something to look forward to, isn't it?
And how interesting is that?
Being able to look forward to something, not knowing what it is, but knowing it's going to be joyful.
Because, for once, the odds are in your favor.
Happy New Year, Everyone.
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