Diary Entry 2

Maybe I’ll start keeping a journal. What a novel idea! Why not. My memory is bad. Whole decades slip past and leave almost no residue. I couldn’t tell you, with any confidence, what I was doing in 2016 as opposed to 2018. It’s all one long fog. Maybe it’s cause 2017 was the year my mom died and I didn’t much want to remember a life without her. Maybe that’s intentional. I don’t especially like remembering things. I like forgetting. If David Hume is right that the self is just a bundle of impressions loosely strung together, mine feels like a bundle with no narrative thread. I start psychoanalysis next week. Maybe that will help me make sense of things. The past doesn’t so much persist as flicker and go out. I’m the opposite of someone like Marilu Henner, cataloging every day of her life. I can’t even reliably recall what I had for breakfast yesterday.

Today I’ve been invited to review a play, Hillsdale. I’ve seen it before, so I’m not going in blind. I also re-read the script. At this point it reads to me as a period piece, which is strange given how recent it is. I first saw it at BCTR, though I think the original staging was at Sovereign House. The play deals with masculinity, stasis, that stunted feeling that your best days were your college years and everything since has been a kind of extended coda. The characters feel like products of that post-pandemic lag into adulthood, as if time stopped and then restarted incorrectly. Similarly to how I, a millennial, felt graduating in ‘08 right as the financial markets crashed. I remember MAGA flags draped across the set when I saw Hilldsdale last. I don’t know if that will still be the case tonight. Truthfully I don’t know what I’m going to say, but say something I will.

This is about the fifth time recently I’ve been asked to review a play, which I find slightly absurd. I don’t think of myself as a particularly perceptive critic. See above re memory. But I am excited to have a task. Entering a play with a mission changes the experience completely. You watch differently, more aggressively, like you’re trying to catch it in the act of meaning something. I’ll also take notes but try to be suubtle about it.

The weather was nice this morning. I had an easy commute.

Reading through a few Substack notes, I could feel the alcohol in them. It’s a distinct signature. I’m glad I don’t drink anymore. When I drank and did drugs I often barely recognized my own writing the next day. This might sound obvious but it’s worth stating: most of the time you are not as clever as you think you are when you’re drunk.

I’ve been thinking about ethics. I try to live as a good person and fail constantly. It’s not even dramatic failure, just steady, low-grade inconsistency. Still, there are a few rules I follow without exception, usually without articulating them. When those are broken, for me, there’s no repair. Which is probably unfair. I know that. But I also don’t think everything needs to be negotiated into language. Some things feel self-evident, and when they’re not shared, it’s less a disagreement than a sign you’re not built for each other.

I slept with the window closed last night. Felt snug. Woke up feeling good.