24 Sycamores

We all have our day jobs. I work at a bra company in DUMBO.

No, really.

I kind of love it. It’s unique, flexible, and a chill working environment. I am the token male outside of the boss, which is kind of funny. It’s even pretty convenient from my place on the Upper East Side via the F train. But as with any job in New York, I’m starting to wonder about the commute/hours/pay ratio.

As I rode in today to pick up a measly $12/hr for 4 hours of work (because I didn’t get out of bed early enough, and have to leave early to get to a show up at Columbia on a Saturday), I was thinking, “Is this worth it?”

And then something happened.

I finished my Dunkin coffee and flipped to an article in the New Yorker on Nicholas Hytner and the National Theatre in London (VERY New York-y, I know…thanks for noticing). All of a sudden the caffeine hit, and connections started happening:

Inspirational words from this Artistic Director at the top of his game mingled with revelations I had experienced from a Playbill article on young directors in NYC; My Symposium for Young Producers idea which I have not as-of-yet been able to get off the ground due to scheduling; My apparent lack of purpose after my last show ended and my primary support system (girlfriend, roommate, and surrogate sis from Grad School) left New York for other things ; An article I was reading last night entitled, “Please, Don’t Start A Theater Company.”

New ideas, consolidation and development of already percolating ideas, inspirations, and decisions all came tumbling out as my F train entered the York station and I got headed out to work. Back to the mind-numbing data entry.

I had discussed with my project manager yesterday the possibility of working from home. However, I’m starting to think that the commute is one of the most important parts of my day as an artist in limbo.

I’m sure I’ve just discovered what real New Yorkers have always known: a subway ride can be an escape, a nap, a tension-free (or filled) moment to zone out with your own tunes blaring— or, it can surprise you as one of the most imaginatively fertile moments of an otherwise creatively absent day. I believe this incubation period is vital to the development of any artist. It’s helping me cultivate a creative preparedness that clarifies my artistic center and will hopefully allow me to leap when an opportunity pops up.

Looks like bras in DUMBO it is for awhile longer.

I saw this string of children in traffic before getting on the 79 crosstown bus on the West Side:

I, then, slightly hung over and lost in thought, began to read from the playbill in my pocket. I read the article about young directors on Broadway and had a small epiphany (which is not important to explain at this juncture).

But it got me thinking about Macro/Micro— or interior/exterior, and introversion/extroversion. We are all constantly catching the stories of those around us. Little glimmers into their lives before they —or we— move on. An exterior look at their interior life. A glimpse.

But my bus epiphany made me think of the inside-out, as opposed to outside-in.

Encapsulated in each of those life glimpses is an entire existence with life-or-death implications. Somewhere between entering the Park on 79th and leaving it on the East Side certain circumstances connected and slightly shifted my perspective; perhaps only for those few minutes in the Park, but I believe it has altered the course of my life. Decisions I make from that point on will be ever-so-slightly redirected at first, and then lead to other slightly redirected decisions, building upon each other until, eventually, I will look back at my life and be able to trace a whole path back to that moment that gave me an entirely different journey than I might have had. And there will be a handful other such defining moments. And a million other little detailing ones.

I think this is at the heart of how we live.

I think it also connects Chekhov’s plays to his prose. Within the Micro of each character, or situation, or story, or scene, there is one of these brief 79th street bus moments that has Macro implications. For that individual, though they may or may not know it, their entire life is hinging on a decision made in that tiny glimpse— something said, or left unsaid. A minute recalibration of direction that puts the ship millions of miles off course decades later in their life.

In this way, our mortality is present in every moment. Not because the clock is ticking, but because of the reverberations in our futures caused by seemingly insignificant moments in the present.

Well, there’s that.