Suffering, Groaning, and Dying, Not Far From Paradise Which Is Itself But Another Stonehenge From Hell

Try acting as someone else.

As in real life.

A stage is. That does not mean we have an understanding of the pain, the vacuum of intimacy, any tilting lean toward rage, the thirst to evade our beginnings as more than innocent, our own Greek chorus of lament, our reconciliation with our second selves, our despair and trembling, suffocated nights. Our deaths undone.

I am always told I appropriate identities. The charge means theft.

But I have always assumed names of singular individuals on the planet.

Singular is the operant word.

I am alone. I have done this with health. I have done this through promiscuity. I have done this with addiction. I have done this with AIDS. I have done this through lovers and wives. Not as a gesture. But as trauma to know these people who you will claim are not real.

You are welcome to your version of reality. Not mine. Acting is everyone. Acting is unique. Acting is Dante’s Inferno. Hot in bed. Hot in desire. Hot in memory. Hot in bearing witness. And drenched in the sweat of stage fright. Acting is the burning footage of danger, risk, shattered mythologies, and resolve to make it through the moment.

You, Reader, banished from your birth. You make it a betrayal.

Acting in real life is nuance. Acting in real life is a landscape of cameras, and you are your own photographer, editor, interpretor, director, sound technician, and cowering in a corner. What will save you. You are naked in front of the audience But add to that, you are blind. You are seduced into exile. You are erect, languages, and believable.