I am over at tumblr. http://sarahrainone.tumblr.com/

I got the message.

Yesterday I had three improv shows (big ups to my UCB 401 class, and my teams Cats in Hardhats and Fat Computer) and one practice (The Other Pilot prepping for our debut this evening). Thanks to the support and general awesomeness of a bunch of brilliant teammates and teachers, poets and geniuses all, I got to be all of the following:

• A fortune teller
• Vladimir the evil circus owner
• A witch doctor who’d prefer to be known as an herbal specialist
• A dairy farm owner with a magical cow and a cursed well
• An unemployed typist who, due to having only 9 fingers, types 72 words a minute instead of the industry standard, 80
• An overzealous tourist who got half-eaten by a lion
• A lion
• Another lion (different set, same hunger for human flesh)
• A pregnant lady who once did heroin with Soundgarden and who now regularly follows Frances Bean's Twitter posts and receives childcare advice from the bestselling author Dr. Mallory whose second rule is “Always wash your hands before you touch your vagina.”
• A lady who would rather do heroin with Tegan and Sara than have a baby
• A priest
• A dude who doesn’t believe in marriage
• A lady who’d prefer not to be known as a husband
• A fetus
• A person who tried to cure his friend’s alcohol addiction by giving him heroin and speeding up rock-bottom
• Half a poker table
• A nurse who believes in romantic comedies a little too much
• The ghost of a talking dog that had just been eaten
• A woman who was upset about her friend tonguing a dog not so much because of the bestiality aspect as because she had not personally been French-kissed in years
• A rich lady who believes money raises the temperature of soup and people 3 degrees Fahrenheit
• Julia Roberts
• An Ice Capades dancer who wore a vomited-in costume for love
• Lucy Ricardo, finally getting to star in Ricky’s show thanks to some vomited-in bongos
• A generic macaroni and cheese brand with delusions of grandeur
• A lackluster parade waver
• A hearse
• A grieving widow
• A magical woodland creature
• A Brown University student who believes the best way to show Cornell who's boss is with glittery posters

And, of course,
• Jesus

As I write this, I'm reminded of that saying which I've heard attributed to a ton of people but mainly Thelonius Monk: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Indeed... and yet I was foolhardy enough to write a book about music so such wisdom is lost on me.

I've never written about improv for realsies, outside of Twitter and Facebook posts, maybe because writing about improv is less like dancing about architecture than it is like telling your friend about that amazing dream you had and realizing half-way through that "chicken" is not a verb or that, in dreamworld, discovering the tiny closet in your tiny New York apartment contains a secret passageway to your childhood bedroom is pretty standard, really. Improv, like dreams, must be seen to be believed.

And yet, I might as well us my first craft, the one that brought me to improv in the first place, if only to dance a little love song to improv. I am head over heels for longform improv comedy, and with the people who do it and love it as much as I do.

Pretty much all my money and free time goes to improv these days. I base nearly all my purchasing decisions on improv (yes to t-shirts and Converses, no to boots with heels). I wear fewer skirts and always carry around a pair of running shorts in case an impromptu practice or show presents itself. Yesterday I blew more dough than I'd like to admit on practice spaces and coaches and cab rides to whisk me from show to show, from Brooklyn to Manhattan to Queens, and back again. It was all worth it.

A few years ago, I was dating a talented musician who, thanks to the unfortunate economics of the music biz, took a hit every time he did a show. I couldn't understand it, because if you lost money doing something you worked so hard on doing, why do it? I mean, I guess I understood it in a small way because I hadn't made any money from my writing yet and I still did it, but there was always this promise that one day I would. There's no such promise for improv--which is why I finally understand why my ex would haul his equipment from dive bar to dive bar, pay the drummer and the sax payer kindly, and leave 40 bucks short with an aching back.

I have faith that it'll pay off in other ways, I guess. I'm not lying when I say I have little desire for fame or riches; perhaps because my parents are teachers, I have always believed doing good work is more important than the compensation you get for said work. Either that or I just know mine is not a face for HD. Basically, I'd just like to write some more books, and if my improv training convinces my publisher I'm not going to freeze up if Liane Hanson or Terry Gross wants to chat sometime: Awesome. The reason I took improv classes in the first place was so that I'd feel more comfortable doing book readings and interviews.

But then a happy accident occurred, one that has nothing to do with writing or marketing or fame or anything like that. I realized that nothing, NOTHING, will every be as satisfying as being part of a team you love, as setting up a team member to be brilliant, as when a team member saves your ass. Writing a good book, hell, a good sentence, feels great, but your audience is so far away, and you're on your own. With an apology to Mick Jagger for the lame wordplay, the thing about satisfaction is that "I" can't get none of it, but together, we can get plenty.

I used to be afraid to talk about my ideas for stories and books for fear others would take them and run but improv has made me realize there are more ideas and characters than stars in the sky. There's no scientific proof of that, but improv has also made me realize you can be wrong as long as you justify your wrongness, and the statement feels true to me, so there you go.

I used to be afraid of mistakes, but now I understand that there are no mistakes, only happy accidents that take you someplace better than if you'd done things the way you were supposed to. You can be imperfect as long as you have partners to call out your mistakes and make something beautiful and strange and wonderful out of them.

I used to be afraid of people but improv has made me embrace them more and worry about my breath less. I used to be afraid of myself, of the anger and sadness and emotion I couldn't make go away no matter how feverishly I wrote or how much yoga I did. I used to believe magic only happened when you took pills with pictures of woodland creatures or lions or fortune tellers on them.

But yesterday I played all those magical peoples and creatures, sometimes more convincingly than other times, and I didn't need anything to help me become them but some friends, a stage, and a suggestion.

My friend Andrew Mendillo introduced me to improv and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and not long after he did, I wrote him a note thanking him because improv saved my life. Would I have died without it? Probably not. But when I think of the people I'd never have met and the fun I'd never have had, I realize that saving a life isn't just about keeping someone breathing, it's about enhancing the quality of each of those breaths.

I could go on and on about the dream that's been the last year and a half of my life, but I sort of blew my load with "Improv saved my life" thing--there's no way to heighten beyond salvation without bringing in ghosts, and I already do that way too much in scenes. But, on second thought, maybe there's one voice from the beyond who should have a say here. Take it away, Del Close.

"When you get the message, hang up the phone."*



*courtesy of Kim Howard Johnson's bio of Del Close, The Funniest One in The Room. Charna Halpern, who founded the iO with Del, shared this bit of wisdom at his memorial service.

News!

New playlist!

Much like Raekwon, on rainy dayz, I sit back and count ways on how to get rich. Also, I make playlists. Check it: http://tinyurl.com/mvb8bn

Reading! Sunday, June 21st at 5 pm

http://www.thecelltheatre.org/?newsitem=2009/05/june-21-karen-heuler-reading-series

Awesome review!

http://www.bookforum.com/review/3880

I want to write about how wrong you are, but then I'd make you right.

Love is Tearing Me Apart... Again

At a party a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about my novel, which goes on-sale today, when he interrupted me.

“Awww,” he said, “You’re in love with your book!”

I was trying to think of a self-deprecating, humble response but the fact was, he was right. I am head-over-fucking-heels.

And in keeping with the book’s title, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Here’s Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh on love:

“Love can be a kind of sickness… What makes us sick is attachment. Although it is a sweet internal formation, this kind of love with attachment is like a drug. It makes us feel wonderful, but once we are addicted, we cannot have peace.”

The strange thing about publishing a book about the kind of heartbreak I felt so frequently in my teens and early twenties now that I’m older and married to a terrific guy is that it’s been a while since I’ve indulged in that kind of selfish, grasping love my characters are experiencing right now, the kind of love that I’ve doomed them to experience over and over again, every time someone opens the book...

Not too long ago, another friend helped me see how sick with love I was over the book. I mean, all the signs were there: I was thinking about it all the time, I was anxious about whether it would work, I was terrified about what would happen to me if it failed.

So we listened to the song that is also the book’s title. And for the first time in weeks I didn’t think about the book’s Amazon ranking, marketing budget, or critical reception. I just thought about all the people who’d helped me write it: my editors, agent, husband, friends, teachers, family, and Ian Curtis and Joy Division who created the saddest, most beautiful song in the world.

I’m anxious and nervous all over again, and I feel as if I can’t do enough for this book. Except, the thing is, the book doesn’t care. The book doesn’t want to be a success. The book doesn’t want anything.

The book isn’t alive. The book isn’t me. The book is just something I did with the help of a lot of other people.

Now if only I could remember that.

Feeling unsustainable

Here's a short story I wrote a while back.

I’m walking around in the museum of knowledge, kinda bored if you want to know the truth, and it occurs to me I must’ve skipped past a few of my favorite exhibits

the out-of-this-world
space adventure,
the dam’s-done-broke-
gushing-rushing log flume,
the hands-over-my-eyes
shouldn’t-peek-but-I-do
funhouse with the witches
and the blood and the goo

Excuse me, I say, walking backwards on the conveyer belt, I want to go back.

You can only go forward in the museum of knowledge, says the woman behind the counter.

But I didn’t start at the beginning, I pleaded. Someone dropped me off midway by mistake, and all you’ve got here is atlases and dinosaur bones and periodic tables.

What’s back there wouldn’t interest you, she said, it’s kids stuff.

Oh, but it would interest me, I said, it’s… it’s important. You know the funhouse back here?

She nods solemnly.

The funhouse is important. I need to remember it.

She nods again, frowning, grave, but I get the sense that she’s going to lift the velvet rope.

It’s my dream, see, she just works here.

***

I’m walking arm-in-arm with sprightly, smiling, wool-capped Kimber Dean. It’s not her, really, but a close approximation, and in this world I’m embracing her, but it’s not Kimber the woman I’m embracing, though I have those dreams too, no, it’s Kimber the activist I’m holding tightly this time, the Kimber who was quoted all the time on all things leftist and labor-related, only after a while there was someone else heading up the coalition on fair trade and I remember what a mutual friend once said about her, how she told him she just plain burnt-out on activism by her junior year and decided to settle into life instead, and it was then that I met her, smiling and smart-assed and hunkered down with a girlfriend that didn’t last long but none of that mattered anyway because Kimber never knew I existed, never knew I cared.

In this world, though, Kimber Dean and I walked arm-in-arm, she could barely keep her eyes open, and she was self-deprecating about her achievements and her appearance, and this was so unlike her, not that I knew what she was like at all, but this was so like me, and I tried to tell her she was beautiful and cool and great, but she just shook her head and told me how tired she was.

And so I told her to sleep, and then I told her I’d carry her, and she fell asleep, and carry her, I did.

She was light at first, and it felt good to lift her up real high above the pavement where the boy had been beaten, above the grassy quad where the kids had camped, and I convinced myself I could carry her all the way home.

But of course I couldn’t.

***

I tell him about the dreams, about the war between the me who was never really a kid and the me who is most certainly already an adult, between the me who cares deeply about the world and the me who wants to not give a fuck, and I say, Even when I was young, I felt like I was old, and even though I know I’m young now I’m still older than I was then, back then when I didn’t realize I was young.

It’s just, I sigh, It’s just… I want Marc Jacobs to dress me. I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me.

While I still have lots of collagen, I add.

And he says, I don’t know why all the pretty girls think they’re not pretty.

That’s not what I’m saying! I say. I know I’m pretty. I just want Marc Jacobs to make me a dress which, you know, makes that clear. And while I’m at it, I want a casio keyboard, and not to care, and… Remember all the people who saw Joy Division play for the first time?

He does.

I want to be part of something like that. I’ve never been part of anything like that. Not the Seattle riots, not New York in the 80s or even New York in the 90s. I never toured with the Dead, or danced in Ibiza, or even saw a Dark Side of the Moon laser light show. I never wrote about the war or protested the Republican National Convention’s descent on New York or threw a brick at Starbucks; I stayed at home and watched it all on the Internet.

Look, I said, I’m not even talking about Woodstock or Four dead in Ohio or Dylan going electric because I wasn’t alive for that stuff so I can’t feel guilty about not being there, but as for the other stuff I’ve got no excuse.

He knows what I’m talking about because he was Christian as a teenager.

I conclude, There’s simply no reason I shouldn’t be friends with M.I.A.

I draw a diagram in the air with my beer.

On the one side, there’s me

And I’m fabulous and political
And Marc Jacobs wants to dress me
And I’m a total fucking rockstar

And on the other side, I’m editing a book on sustainability
And I have a day job
And I’m really responsible.

Do you really want to be a rockstar? He says, knowing I don’t.
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY, I say, knowing I do.

Well, then give it ten years of performing in dive bars. With dirty bathrooms.

This is a dirty trick because he knows I hate dirty bathrooms.

WHERE
IS
MY
AUDIENCE? I roar.

Ah, fame, he says, so elusive.

I don’t want to be FAMOUS! I said, spitting out the word, appalled thoughts of the Britney Spears, American tragedy article still unsettling my mind. I just want a small New York following. Maybe I should start a blog.

You have a blog, he points out, and might I remind you you only wrote two posts?

That doesn’t matter, I say. If a blog lives on the Web and no one links to it, it doesn’t exist at all. Maybe I’ll call my blog “I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me” and someone will link to it and eventually Marc Jacobs will link to it, too

and then it hits me.

I don’t even like Marc Jacobs’ Fall collection, I sigh. I mean I like Marc, don't get me wrong, the shimmery dresses I saw at Bloomingdale's are to die for. But the jackets make even the skinny girls look fat.

I feel fat, I say, and he gets angry and I know he’s going to say something about pretty girls again but only because he misunderstands.

Not fat physically, I say,

Fat… mentally.

Unsustainable? He asks and I know he understands.

Yes, I say, I feel unsustainable.

Because if Marc Jacobs told me he wanted to dress me in the coat
that makes even the skinny girls look fat

(and if he added that it was made in a Sri Lankan sweatshop)

I’d still put it on.

It's ten feet away, the door, and the next door another ten, and the final door forty in all. One door isn't even closed, just there. How some people can move through these doors with such relative ease fills me with such jealousy and curiosity. How do you do it?

There are words for this, I know. I would like to put a word on it, just so I can blame something other than myself. But I do blame myself. I know it's not my fault exactly but it still seems so stupid, so pointless, to be this way.

And anyway it is my fault. There were other versions of me I could have been. I chose this one or at least it feels like I did. I couldn't have always been so scared of the door.

When characters in books move through doors, it feels so fake, so staged. It feels so counter to what I am... which is essentially in this room.

I am essentially in this room.

When characters in books listen to other people, it feels so fake, so staged. I don't listen to other people. I try to listen but I've already made up my mind. I'm already thinking about what to make you listen to next.

Look. I made a real effort to be here, okay? As for you, you must want to be here because I've never heard you talk about the doors or the stairs or the turnstyle or the doors again or sitting there or geting off or the stairs again or going there. I never hear you talk about it. How do you...?

Nevermind.