A beginning of an end

Preparing for goodbyes and embodying the spirit of a strawberry with fresh cream

I just finished the final day of our Shakespeare and Chekhov workshop. I played Katharine, from Taming of the Shrew, opposite my friend David’s Petruccio. It went really, really, well. If you don’t know the play, I’d highly recommend this overview and this podcast. But for now, just know that I’m not above tooting my horn and saying I play a mean Katharine and she’s one of my favorite roles to play. 

Earlier in the week, Philippe said I looked like a strawberry. I went home and cried for this comment and many others, because I knew when he said I looked like a strawberry, he meant physically, I really, looked like a strawberry. A moldy strawberry I believe were his words, but I may have blocked out the specifics as a form of self preservation. We reworked the scene, and today after presenting it, he asked, “is she a strawberry, or a strawberry with fresh cream?” And for some reason, it was different. Today I didn’t look like a strawberry, today I had the spirit of strawberry with fresh cream, and who wouldn’t want to be described as that?

All my classmates are at the bar celebrating, but I came home to reply to some emails, drink some water, and “take a minute” if you will. I have three weeks left of school here. My “beginning of the end” feelings have started and I feel I’m perpetually on the brink of tears with all of these impending goodbyes. Goodbyes to the people and the friendship, but also to my life here. The pressure to have a “good end” - to squeeze in every last coffee date with every friend I want to, to “make the most” of every moment, to stay out late and rally no matter how tired I am. I first came to this program last August for a two week workshop, and now I’m almost to the end of the year program. I left home with a baby niece who will now have a baby brother by the time I go back.

I’m finding the balance of focusing on the what’s next and the what’s now. Coming here gave me something to dream about, to plan for, to anticipate. Life’s so much different when you know you have something beautiful coming. Sometimes to be in the now, you have to have a little of the next. You have to know just the right amount. 

I’ve been revisiting excerpts from my first solo show, “Nobody’s Really Helped Me” as I’m working on my next one. I wrote this excerpt in February of 2018 for the program notes of its premiere which also served as my graduation recital from California Institute of the Arts. I was on the brink of a big end then, too, graduating from college and feeling on a cliff of unknowns. I hope you feel some joy today.

All my love,

Lanessa

“Nobody’s Really Helped Me” program notes, written February 05, 2018:

“I remember when I was a kid, driving in the car with my mom and saying something that made her laugh, and then I started laughing because she was laughing. 

The kind of laugh that hits you in the pit of your stomach, that you feel in your abs, where you feel you can’t gasp enough breath before indulging in another one. 

The kind of laugh that gives you wrinkles at the corner of your mouth and at the sides of your eyes from smiling. Sometimes there’s laughter that happens when you don’t feel like crying. 

The kind of laugh you do when there’s an uncomfortable silence, so you fill it with something comfortable. Sometimes there’s laughing that feels like swimming up to the surface to take a break from the pains. 

Laughter is what connects us and brings us together. It is addictive and contagious and communal. 

We laugh in pitches we can’t speak in, I think because there aren’t words in any language to convey joy or express happiness or alleviate pain, or help us process hurting, in the way that laughter does. 

In that car ride with my mom, I remember saying, “mom, I love to make people laugh.”

And it seems that, whenever I lack direction, I must come back to the purest version of who I am and what I hope to give, and that is the hope that I will bring you joy. I want to bring you happiness. 

I want to give you that relief that feels like flipping your pillow over to the cooler side on a hot night’s sleep. The kind of moment that feels like when you stay at the table at the restaurant for an extra minute after you pay. The kind of moment that feels like when you hug someone and let go, but they hold on for one more breath. I want to bring you moments of peace, of light, of laughter. 

This show is a lot of me. Sometimes (all the time) it’s hard to want to use who we are to help people think, feel, and laugh. But, I know myself best and this is me giving her to you, hoping she can help you feel something beautiful.”

-Lanessa Long, February 2018