reading/books

There was a reading of my play He Asked For It at the Celebration Theatre tonight which was really productive. An awesome group of actors, and a talkback afterwards that was great. I often find talkbacks rambly and unhelpful because you have to wade through a lot of contradictory opinions, but tonight's discussion was really good--there are a few scenes in the play that need some work and I know what I want to do to them now.

I don't usually write about writing stuff on the blog because that's not what the blog's about. But honestly, I don't really know what this blog's supposed to be "about" right now. For its first year, it was all about "new things." Then it was all about Uma's brain. And now...I guess it can just be about whatever I damned want it to be about--but still, I feel like it needs some sort of definition, some sort of mission statement. And I don't know what that is. It'll evolve, it'll find itself. I'm just mentioning the blog's identity crisis as an explanation for my lack of blogging the past month. (Yesterday's long rambly post notwithstanding.)

BUT back to my play reading, the reason I started writing this post in the first place, which I bring up because during the talkback one of the audience members mentioned that he's part of the AIDS Dissident Movement (the play follows several characters who have HIV) and he was wondering why I didn't include that viewpoint in my play. Now, I've heard of AIDS Dissidents, but honestly I didn't know much about them, and I didn't really know what to say to this guy, other than the truth: the Dissident movement has nothing to do with the story I'm telling in this play. But then I came home and did some googling and read more about this so-called movement (the Dissidents basically believe that HIV doesn't cause AIDS) and it totally freaks me out. They're like the Holocaust deniers, except AIDS isn't something that happened sixty years ago. It's happening now, people are still getting infected at alarming rates, it's bigger than we want to admit. We're already too damned complacent about it as it is--we don't need people going around denying the problem. It's scary and dangerous and upsetting.

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After the reading, before the googling, I spent a few hours organizing books in my new apartment, and I cannot begin to express how satisfying I find the simple act of alphabetizing my books.

They've been in storage for two years and every time I open up a new box and pour through its contents I get these waves of excitment, like I'm being reunited with all of these old friends.

(Is that the geekiest thing ever, or what?)