Not What You Signed Up For

A series of related things happened recently:

1. I went to Israel
2. David Bowie died.
3. I got my second tattoo.

While the second two may be clearly related to each other, on the surface they seem to have nothing to do with going to Israel, and all together they still wouldn't appear to have anything to do with making choices about my acting career. And yet, going to Israel helped me become the woman in the picture below, which in turn helped me realize the kind of artist I want to be.

While I was on my birthright trip, I found myself saying to my new friends something I've said occasionally over the last several years - that if I weren't an actor, I would look like such a weirdo - covered in tattoos, with short hair constantly dyed some weird color (purple is first on the list). And I realized, during a conversation about tattoos with a few friends on the trip who had some, that I didn't want to continue pursuing a career where I didn't feel like myself.

David Bowie, my great artistic inspiration, the inspiration to freaks and weirdos and aspiring weirdos of generations, died on January 10, 2016. I found out early in the morning of the 11th, before 9 am Israel time, while America was sleeping. Our group was sitting in a national park while our guide told us about a former military outpost we could see on a mountain in the distance. He pulled out his phone to look up a specific detail, and, upon launching the internet, proclaimed "Oh fuck, David Bowie died." That was how I found out my hero, the Starman, the Thin White Duke, Ziggy Stardust, was gone from this planet. I suppose we were only borrowing him from somewhere else.

On the bus after our hike that morning I was allowed to take over the audio system for a while, and played all of his hits for the regular fans, and then played all of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust for my own sake. The whole group had seen me silently weeping throughout the morning, not having any way of knowing how much Bowie meant to me. And as much as I wished in the moment that I could have locked myself in my room to mourn alone, I'm so grateful now that I was able to process my grief the way that I did - with his music, surrounded by the beautiful landscapes of Israel.

That evening, we went to a hot spring located right along the Galilee, with incredible views of the sea and surrounding mountains. That was where I finally had a chance to relax, with my Squad, and chat about tattoos and mundane things. That was where I told more of my friends there was a freak trapped in this pretty normal-looking, albeit-red-headed, person. And that was when I decided I was going to let myself be me, and look how I want to look, and do what I want to do, and find or create the theatre projects that support that.

We spent a lot of time on the bus the next day, driving from the Golan Heights to Haifa to Jerusalem. During one of the quieter stretches, an idea for a tattoo came to me - not any of the three I already wanted, a new one. As soon as the idea was fully formed in my mind, it felt weird that it wasn't already a part of my skin. The picture that came into my head on Tuesday ended up on my body on Friday, the day after I got back from Israel.

My second tattoo, inked boldly on my chest, is the signifier of my decision to be me, and do "the industry" my way. It may have been a decision that prevents me from getting cast in some roles, working on some projects. But that's okay. I have never felt more like myself than since getting this tattoo. The lightning bolt is of course the most iconic Bowie symbol (though it's always associated with Ziggy Stardust when in fact it's from the album art for Aladdin Sane and was never worn on the Ziggy tour). The black stars symbolize his last album, Blackstar, released on his birthday, two days before his death. And the Hebrew says "ho lo ahuva at lo l'vad," which translates to "Oh no love, you're not alone" - a lyric from Bowie's "Rock n Roll Suicide," my favorite song of his, and translated with the help of several people who have made me feel very "not alone" - Elaun, our tour guide who accidentally broke the news, Jack, our security guard and member of the Squad, and my friend Michael, who I met during the RENT party in 2008 and who has always held a special place in my heart for a number of reasons only he can understand.

Right over my heart, a big red lightning bolt is difficult to hide. I have no intention of hiding it anyway. I'm proud that it's a part of who I am. Deeply connected to Bowie, to Israel, to being a weirdo.

My only other tattoo has, for a year now, slightly more subtly proclaimed my self at its deepest level. The "Hope" tattoo, in the Harry Potter title font, was one I thought about for almost four years rather than four days. But proclaiming my lifelong literal middle name in the typeface of a sixteen-year love affair seemed like a good start to proclaiming who I am on my skin. (This photo happens to also feature a length of blue yarn tied around my wrist, still here two weeks after I left Israel, connecting me to the rest of Bus 486.)

I posted this last picture on facebook because I felt good about my hair the day I took it, but after looking at it more I realized it really summed up me at this moment in time. I subtitled it "Not the granddaughter my grandparents signed up for, but the only one they got." No one expects, when a baby is born, that she is going to grow up to love classic rock and dye her hair bright red and get big tattoos and be a weirdo. But I'm awful proud of the weirdo I've been, and the one I'm growing to be.

Will you stay in our lovers' story

If you stay, you won't be sorry

Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow

So take a chance

On a couple of kooks

Hung up on romancing

-- David Bowie, "Kooks" Hunky Dory

Berlindon 2015 (Part II - Berlin)

On Tuesday morning, Kerry, her friend Matt, and I flew to Berlin for four days. I viewed my time in Berlin as a research trip, and my list of activites I hoped to accomplish strayed very little from the focus of the Wall. Though I found the Jewish Museum and Holocaust memorials very powerful last time around, there was no time to visit them again on this trip.

Tuesday afternoon the three of us did a little exploring of the area around our hostel in Prenzlauerberg, and ended up eating at Cafe Cinema for dinner. Outside we stumbled upon an alley with lots of grafitti and a cool shop of local art with a gallery attached. We spent some time looking around there, and then I departed to walk over to the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht's theatre, to see The Good Person of Szechuan performed in German. (I saw the sign below along the river on my walk.)

Three and a half hours of abstract German theatre in a very warm room on very little sleep.

I didn't stay awake the whole time, I'll admit, but I did get lucky - the lady at the box office asked if I was a student, and I answered honestly and said no. She asked me how much I wanted to pay then, and pointed out the price levels on the seating chart. Nothing exceeded 30 euros, which is pretty close to $30 right now. Imagine regular orchestra tickets to a Broadway show being $30. Right. I picked an area with 10 euro tickets, and she said "I'm gonna say you're a student anyway," and I said "Well I did go to theatre school, so I kinda am always a student," and she said "I thought so" and handed me a ticket. I went upstairs, to where I had pointed on the seating chart, and an usher said a lot of things to me in German. I smiled and nodded. The house wasn't open yet. I sat and waited. Eventually she said "You speak English, not German, don't you, because I said your seat is downstairs," but she was very nice and explained what the "parket" was and where my seat was, and so off I went, to a 30 euro seat that I paid 9 euros for, and I watched three and a half hours of Brecht in German.

Early this year I saw a production of Good Person at The Public starring Taylor Mac and it was life changing, so I was looking forward to this, thinking I knew the play, but the productions were so different that it was nearly impossible to follow. My couple weeks of duolingo German prep left me with a limited vocabulary of about a dozen words, and the only ones I really caught during the show were "wasser" (water) "liebe" (love) "risjt" (rice) and "frau" (woman). But I'm still glad I went; the scenic design was really interesting and the sound design was exciting because it was so different from what I expected. 

Wednesday I began the day with Kerry and Matt; we all slept in, having gotten very little sleep Monday night before our early morning adventure to the airport. We got food at a restauraunt down the street that seemed, to me, to be disguised as a junk shop, with lots of vintage lamps and typewriters and things covering more surfances than were left bare for eating. The three of us sat at a table with a large hole in the middle filled with legos (the reason it had caught Kerry's eye in the first place). It was a korean place, and we had rice bowls with an assortment of vegetables. Quite good and pretty cheap.

After what was essentially lunch, we headed into the city center. I did most of the navigating, both because I was the one of us who had been to Berlin before, and because I'd downloaded a Berlin metro map that came in handy constantly. Last time I visited, it took me four days before I managed to go in the correct direction on the train every time. This time around, I only went the wrong direction once in four days, and that was on a tram, which I never braved on my last visit.

We started our sightseeing at Potsdamer Platz, where I had gotten my passport stamped four years earlier with all the Cold War-era stamps required to pass from West to East or vice versa, and Matt and Kerry got their first taste of the wall - just a few segments with information wedged in between, and a couple of period-dressed guards available for awkward photo ops. Afterwards Matt and Kerry wanted to see Brandenburger Tor and Checkpoint Charlie, which I chose to skip in favor of some David Bowie adventuring.

I hopped on the subway and navigated down to Schöneberg, where Bowie and Iggy Pop lived together in the mid-late 70s while recording at Hansa Tonstudio. There's a company called Music Tours Berlin that does a David Bowie walking tour, but only on Sundays, so I had to just recreate as much of their itinerary as I could on my own. This mostly consisted of wandering the neighborhood and stopping to drink a beer at Cafe Neues Ufer, a favorite haunt of Bowie's when he lived in Berlin. The walls are now covered in photos and posters of Bowie spanning from his Ziggy days to his more recent tours in the late 90s and early 00s. It surely didn't feel like it must have when Bowie went there, but it was still a good place to sit and read Bowie in Berlin for a while and drink a tall Berliner Pilsner and attempt a bit of conversation in German with the bartender. (I knew enough to ask for my beer in German, and say thank you, tell him I didn't smoke when I was offered an ashtray, and understand how much it cost when I paid; that was about it.)

Kerry and Matt and I had planned to meet for dinner, so I met them back at Checkpoint at Charlie, and we headed in search of food, ending up at Cafe Journale, an Italian place where all three of us ended up ordering the same house special, but it turned out to be delicious so that was fine. I ran out a little early to try and catch another show, a musical about the Berlin Wall that was being performed in German with English subtitles at a theatre back in Postdamer Platz. Turned out I couldn't find it though (or so I thought; I went back the next night in another attempt, and found out it wasn't playing for a few days because of a premiere for Bambi or something). So I went back to the hostel and did some reading and planning for my reamaining time in Berlin.

Around eleven I got a text from Kerry telling me where she and Matt were - communication is difficult when you can only reach someone by wifi, which is not as common for free in Europe as it is in America. So though I was ready to be settled in for the night, I went out to join Kerry and Matt at Bar 39 in Kreuzberg, where we spent several hours drinking the cocktail of the week, called a pink elephant, and swapping stories of our days.

I forget what time we got back - sometime around 2 or 3, I think, and by cab, because the metro had shut down for the night, a possibility I had completely forgotten about as a New Yorker. Fortunately getting a cab in the area wasn't hard, and we were back to the hostel in no time, asleep shortly after.

Thursday I had big plans involving the East Side Gallery, record shops that appeared to be nearby on the map, a stop at Curry 36, the best currywurst in Berlin, and then on to the Cold War Berlin walking tour I had booked earlier in the week. Not surprisingly, I got a later start than intended, but headed straight for the East Side Gallery, where I visited all the art I had seen before. Last time this was the most uplifting part of my trip, because it is where artists made something beautiful and expressive out of something terrible and oppressive. For the first part of my walk, however, I was only very depressed, to see all the grafitti that covered and largely destroyed the works that were so clear four years ago, having been restored two years earlier in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Parts of the wall now have a fence around them as restorations are being made again, where first workers get rid of the grafitti and then the artists hopefully come back and touch up their works as needed. It seems painfully ironic to have to put a fence around a wall, now.

Fortunately for me, though, the piece I most remembered from my previous visit had already been restored, though it was still behind a fence. It was the "Curriculum Vitae" section of the wall, which looks like this: 

The roses by each year each represent a life lost in an escape attempt over the wall. (More on the tarot card I'm holding later.)

I spent longer at the East Side Gallery than expected, so I skipped the record stores for the time being and headed over to Curry 36 for lunch. The map I was using seemed to struggle with scale, making the walk I took far longer than I expected and leaving me with less time to eat than anticipated, but I achieved my much-anticipated currywurst mit pommes frites and then rushed back to the train up to Friedrichstraße and a quick walk over to the Brandenburg gate to meet my walking tour.

The Cold War Berlin walking tour was incredibly important research for my play, which takes place in Berlin in the 70s. I've been writing it since shortly after my last visit to Berlin, though I've been stuck on how to move it forward for quite some time. I learned a ton on the four hour walking tour and saw new parts of Berlin and the Wall, and now have a lot more research and work to do to move the play forward in an exciting and complex new direction. The most powerful part of the tour for me was the Berlin Wall memorial, in Mitte, which is several blocks long and consists of many parts. Part of it runs along Bernauer Straße, where a number of escape tunnels were dug, including one about which a documentary was made that I found online a couple years ago. Bernauer Straße has been burned in my brain since I found that documentary on the CNBC website, and now I was standing on it, seeing metal panels in the grass that traced where the tunnels were underground. The memorial includes a viewing platform that looks out on a section of the wall that has been preserved as the Wall was when it fell, so that people can see just what the "death strip" or "no man's land" looked like. I was on the verge of tears for most of this part of the tour.

Another section included a memorial for the people who died trying to escape, and that I was really not prepared for. It's set in part of the former death strip (where a lot of green spaces exist now, since no one could walk there for so long before the Wall was torn down).

I learned on the tour that in the nearby Chapel of Reconciliation, every Tuesday through Friday a short service is given in honoring one of the people named here. So I planned to go to the service on Friday. It felt really important. The Chapel stands near the former site of a church that was situated in the death strip with the wall built around it, until in 1985 "upgrades" to the Wall required the church to be demolished. It was blown up, leaving remnants of foundations and a few building elements that are now preserved nearby.

Our four hour tour ended back at the East Side Gallery, where my day had begun, after which I quickly dashed back off to Potsdamer Platz to make my second failed attempt at the Berlin Wall musical. Annoyed that I had wasted time I could have spent at the record shops near the gallery, I headed back to the hostel to regroup and figure out how to spend my evening.

Fortunately Kerry returned shortly after I did, and we decided to go out together for the night. I closed my eyes and stuck out my finger, and she held up the map, choosing a place we would go explore at random. We hopped on the train and got off in a new neighborhood, though unfortunately it wasn't a great place to find a spot to eat. We did get some nice shots of the TV tower at night though.

Eventually we hopped back on the train up towards our hostel, heading to an Asian restaurant nearby that I had read about on a "hidden Berlin" instagram account. We found it, but ended up going to the Mexican place across the street because it had cheaper cocktails. It turned out to be the right choice as both the cocktails and the food were delicious, plus our server was a friendly guy so it was an all around great experience.

We got back from the restaurant kind of late and I went straight to bed since we had to check out in the morning and I had to be packed and ready to go early so that I could make it to the service at the chapel. I got all my things together and stored them in the hostel's luggage room before heading out for one more day in Berlin, with plans to meet Matt and Kerry back at the hostel around six to travel together to the airport.

My trip back to the chapel included my only wrong turn of the trip, going one stop East on the tram when I meant to go West, but I made it for the service. It was only fifteen minutes long, and in German, but I was able to determine that the rememberance was in honor of Helmut Kliem, who I learned in later research was shot by border patrol when he accidentally drove too close to the Wall. The space was one of the most powerful I have ever been in, and I took some time to light a candle in honor of the lives lost and said a small prayer before heading out to take in more of the memorial.

I continued back to the memorial museum, which we had passed through briefly on the tour the day before. This time I could take as much time as I wanted reading and listening to interviews by people who lived in occupied Berlin. It helped to fill in a picture of what daily life was like in East Berlin, important research for my play, and full of powerful phrases from everyday people.

After spending another hour and a half at a place I'd just been the day before, I walked over to Cafe Nord Sud for lunch, the cheap French place I had fallen in love with on my last visit. Prices had gone up in the four years since my last visit, but the food was still amazing and Jean Claude was still a delight. Before I left I told him I'd been there once before, and thanked him for making such a happy place. He kissed me on both cheeks (he is French, after all) and then hugged me for so long I thought he wanted to marry me or something. 

From Nord Sud I adventured over to the area with all the record shops I had intended to visit the day before. As ever I was betrayed by a map that didn't understand scale, and did a lot more walking than I expected, but it paid off. At Wowsville, I found David Bowie's Low and Iggy Pop's The Idiot, both recorded and/or mixed at Hansa Tonstudios, in Berlin. Buying authentic, vintage records in the city they were made and manufactured in is probably the most hipster thing I've ever done, but for those punks I'm proud of it.

With daylight fast fading I took one more train ride to see Hansa itself, pressing my nose against the glass since you can't actually go into Hansa without a prebooked tour (from the same company that does the Bowie walking tour). Bowie and Iggy both recorded in Hansa Tonstudio 2, a huge room they nicknamed "the hall by the wall" because it had a view of the Berlin Wall from the windows. (I might have been reading the book Bowie in Berlin during the trip.)

It was time to head back to the hostel to meet up with Kerry and Matt, so I got back on the U bahn at Postdamer Platz, only to go one stop and find out our train line wasn't running for a number of stops, up to the one where our hostel was located. It took some creative navigating involving the S bahn, the tram from earlier, and another long walk to get me back to the hostel fifteen minutes late instead of fifteen minutes early. We ended up taking a taxi to the airport since the trains were messed up, had dinner at the airport (German sausage, yay), and then flew back to London and drove back to Kerry's apartment. I'm so grateful for all that I saw and learned during my time in Berlin, and to Kerry for very generously financing my airfare and hostel. She is the queen of cheap travel deals and someone I am very lucky to call my dear friend.

Berlindon 2015 (Part I - London)

 I spent ten days recently on a trip unlike any I've ever taken before, though I went to two places I've previously visited. On Thursday November 5th I flew overnight to London, arriving at 10:30 Friday morning at Heathrow, to spend some time with my friend Kerry and take a trip with her to Berlin.

I've visited Kerry twice before (when I visited London during my time studying abroad in 2011, and again when I toured Europe with my mom in 2012), and she has since come to visit me in New York for New Year's this past year. So I've done London twice, and I've done the touristy things well. A walking tour of all the palaces and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and the parks and whatever. And I've been to the museums, and gone to high tea, and seen westminster abbey. I also went to Berlin in 2011 and did the same kind of sightseeing - walking tour, art museums, etc. - so this trip wasn't about being a tourist.

I traveled to Europe this time with a very specific intent. I came as a theatre artist, seeking inspiration and information. I arrived in London with an agenda focused on seeing theatre that would spark new ideas,  and get me thinking in new ways. In Berlin my plan was to drink up as much information about Cold War Berlin and the Wall as I could. I was determined to use this opportunity to gain as much hands-on experience as possible about what life was like during the years the Wall was in place, to serve as research for my play that I've been writing since the last time I visited four years ago.

During my first few days in London, I flooded my senses and my brain with images: Mötley's show, for aesthetics and energy; Roosevelvis by The Team - my former directing teacher's theatre company - for melding disparate ideas and creating an intellectual piece; La Soiree for atmosphere and spectacle; Belarus Free Theatre's Trash Cuisine - at a secret location that included drinks and food and a post-show discussion - for making politically active, socially-oriented work that matters; and All on Her Own/Harlequinnade - a double bill from Kenneth Branagh's new theatre company - for classic theatre, well-trained acting, and strong story telling.

The Mötley Crüe show was chronicled in my previous post, so all I'll say is I am never bored at their shows, and it always makes me wonder how I can energize a theatre audience the way they get me going time after time after time. 

The next day, having fully overcome my jet lag by staying up all day Friday (despite getting to London at 5:30 am New York time), I went to meet Brandi for lunch near Sloane Square, where we were seeing Roosevelvis. We spent an hour catching up on life (she's living back in Baltimore, where she's from), and then went to the Royal Court Theatre for a show starring two women playing Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis, the latter of whom was our TA for our directing class. Roosevelvis premiered in New York, and though I had very much wanted to see it, I had unfortunately missed it back home, so I was grateful to catch it, randomly, in London. It was, as with any TEAM show, a very intellectual piece with an eclectic mix of influences. I really enjoyed the mix of time periods and timelines, something I'm figuring out how to deal with in my own play at the moment. 

That evening I went to La Soiree, taking place in a tent set up on the bank of the Thames, near the London Eye and therefore walking distance from Kerry's apartment. La Soiree happened to be another show I had missed in New York, despite it playing in a theatre a block away from Fuerza Bruta where I work. The show is, I imagine, a bit like if Cirque du Soleil and Fuerza had a baby (which is funny, because I describe Fuerza as Cirque mixed with a rave). It mixes circus acts with a party atmosphere, and has a 10pm late show (like Fuerza sometimes does), which is what I went to. I bought my ticket that day on today tix, and when I got there, was upgraded from "boardwalk" to "ringside" I guess because I was alone and they wanted to fill in the front seats. No complaints on my part, I got a good seat for about half price. It was a really stunning show that did an excellent job of establishing atmosphere/energy, and expectations of audience behavior/involvement. Every performer was attractive and talented and unique, and somehow in the second act a segment about bubbles broke my heart.

Sunday, there were no cheap tickets for anything I couldn't or hadn't seen in New York (Kinky Boots, Lion King, In the Heights) so I had a lazy morning at Kerry's apartment and then went to the Tate Modern for a couple hours. The Tate has been under construction every time I've been there, seemingly preparing for an expansion that is supposed to open next June. In the meantime, however, they seem to have a lot of space with relatively not a whole lot of art in it. So after sitting by the Thames for a while watching a man create giant bubbles for the delight of passing children, I headed back to Kerry's before going to the theatre for the evening.

Sunday night was my big adventure. I had booked a ticket to Trash Cuisine, a show being performed by the Belarus Free Theatre in association with The Young Vic, part of two weeks of performances in celebration of the company's tenth anniversary. It wasn't at The Young Vic, however. True to how BFT shows are performed in Belarus, where the company is banned, the show was taking place at a secret underground location. Without a phone number to have them text the meeting point to, I asked about it at the box office (right by Kerry's) and was given an intersection to be at by 6:20 at night. It took two trains and a bus to get there, to a residential corner with a church, where a crowd of people was gathered. We were then led in groups of twenty or so down the road and around a corner into a warehouse that had been set up for the show. Inside there was music, and projections of propaganda, and we were given a token for a free drink, and then were free to sit where we wished for the show. BFT is banned in Belarus because the country is a dictatorship and BFT does work that focuses on social activism and political issues, so they have to put on their performances in secret and advise their audiences to bring their passports in case of a KGB raid, which happens fairly regularly. Trash Cuisine is a show about capital punishment, particularly the death penalty. It was very powerful, and hard to put into words. The performance was live streamed around the world from the Young Vic website, and an underground audience in Belarus watched via Skype.

After the show we were given beet root soup, traditionally Belarussian, and then took part in a post-show discussion, which took the form of an Englishman who is now a lawyer in America reenacting a death penalty case he tried in Louisianna, where he defended a couple both accused of placing their newborn baby in the freezer where it died. The jury was made up of twelve audience members, who had all stated they would be willing to sentence someone to the death penalty. It was fascinating (if a bit uncomfortable) to be a part of the discussion in a country that banned capital punishment over fifty years ago as someone from a country that still has the death penalty. The lawyer-man led us through the case, presenting information in pieces as he'd gotten it, periodically asking the audience to vote on who they thought was guilty, and asking the jury members if they would convict anyone. Ultimately, in the case, the lawyer got both parents off; neither was convicted. The whole experience got me thinking about what a vehicle theatre can be to get people talking about social issues that can be hard to talk about.

Monday I headed out of London to St Neots, sort of near Cambridge to see Shannon, my very first friend ever. We met when we were babies and we're best friends growing up until Shannon moved away in middle school. We hadn't seen each other in over ten years, and she had two adorable children now, Wyatt, who's three, and Eden, who's not yet one. They met me at the train station and we went to lunch where Shannon and I caught each other up on our lives and our families, and then we went back to the house where I was Wyatt's new favorite playmate for a few hours. Apparently after they dropped me off at the train station Wyatt cried for about twenty minutes because he was sad I was leaving. Bless his little heart. <3

I had to get back to the city though, to get tickets to All on Her Own/Harlequinnade, a one-act double bill by Kenneth Branagh's new theatre company. I'd had a lot of trouble trying to get tickets on the today tix app, but ended up with a £15 partial view seat anyway. The first play was a one woman performance by Zoë Wanamaker, who I know as Madam Hooch from the Harry Potter films. She was incredible. The second play was about a theatre company attempting to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, with Branagh playing an aging actor who is definitely too old to play Romeo. It was really well done, and refreshing to see something light, not so dense, but still Shakespeare-influenced. And it was exciting to get to see Sir Gilderoy Lockhart in person. :)

That was my first four days in London. Jam-packed and inspiring, and just the first part of my trip. More to come as we left the next day for Berlin.

My History With Hedwig

This is a letter to Michael Mayer, the director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway. Hopefully it will be in his hands on Tuesday, opening night.

April 20, 2014

Dear Mr. Mayer,

My name is Lindsay Hope Simon. If you don't have time to read my novel below (though I hope you do), the moral of the story is HEDWIG is the most important show that's ever come into my life, which happened a decade ago, and thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my soul for putting it on Broadway like this. I have never in my life looked forward to something more than I looked forward to this production of HEDWIG, and it fulfilled my every wish, hope, and expectation.

This story begins on August 7, 2004. And I beg you to stay with me, because where it ultimately leads is to sitting in row H of the Belasco Theatre on April 19, 2014.

2004: I see RENT for the first time, and my subsequent obsession with my first Broadway experience leads me to HEDWIG (because of JCM's nod to it in the film). I spend most of high school very confused about gender because of my love of Angel and Hedwig and my newfound desire to be a drag queen, which I tell no one about. That's something I've never quite resolved. ANYWAY.

2005: Falling in love with HEDWIG leads me to write a paper about Plato's Symposium as a sophomore in high school. My teachers aren't expecting that.

2007: Theatre, my love of RENT in particular, and my affinity for New York cause me to apply early decision to NYU. I never consider anywhere else, and get accepted and placed in Playwrights, at my own request.

Fall 2008: I arrive in New York just before the closing of RENT, in time to see it for a ninth and tenth time in its last week. Incoming Tisch kids are each given a ticket to Spring Awakening. I see it with a friend who knows someone in the cast; I end up backstage at a Broadway show within a week of living in New York. Around Halloween I go to a not-quite-authorized one-night performance of HEDWIG at the Highline Ballroom.

Spring 2010: Second semester of second year I direct a piece of HEDWIG for my directing class (the scene including Origin of Love). I desperately want to do the whole thing, but I still haven't managed it. Spring of 2010 is when rumors first start flying that JCM is bringing HEDWIG to Broadway. (I've been waiting for this production for four years.)

April 2010: I meet you at a moderated discussion with Bob Vorlicky at Tisch. CAP girls ask about Spring Awakening, PHTS kids ask obnoxious but intelligent questions about collaboration. I ask you after about working with Michael Krass. You diplomatically don't say much.

July 2010: I see American Idiot for the first time. I listen to the soundtrack nonstop for the next six months.

October 2010: I see American Idiot for the third time with a talkback when BJA is in it for the first time.

November 2010: I go to a panel that Kevin Adams is a part of. I make sure to ask him a question (because no one else is and I want him to see me) and I talk to him afterwards. We meet up once for dinner a couple weeks later and I ask a million lighting questions. I subsequently see everything he works on (having already seen Hair and Next to Normal).

January 2011: A friend and I spend 36 hours in Boston to see American Idiot twice, the eighth and ninth time I'm seeing the show.

April 2011: I write a paper for Bob's gay and lesbian theatre class (my third class with him) about Hedwig and authentic performance beyond gender and genre.

May 2012: You speak at Tisch salute. It's an incredible speech, an extremely satisfying blend of inspiring and being honest about the faults of the institution that we love and hate and the cruel mistress of a business we're trying to be a part of. I record the whole thing for Bob, by now a dear friend, who can’t make it.

June 2013: Announcement of HEDWIG coming to Broadway with NPH directed by you and lit by Kevin. I start freaking out immediately.

October 2013: I attend an early screening of Broadway Idiot. And remember my love for rock musicals and your and Kevin’s work.

February 2014: I start working for an amazing woman who is part of the production team for the tony awards and a sometimes Broadway producer. I make sure she knows I have never been so excited about a show as I am about HEDWIG.

April 2014: She has press seats to HEDWIG. She takes me.

That was about 24 hours ago. I still barely have words for my feelings about the production. The themes of this show, of love, why and how we love, that search for wholeness, have echoed through my life for the last decade since I first met HEDWIG in 2004. The idea of duality, but that somehow duality is not synonymous with binary, is one I can never escape. I have seen these themes arise in my life, in projects I've worked on, and in everything I'm inspired to create theatrically, including a magical-realism play I'm writing about Berlin in the 1970s.

I was nervous, because the combination of you plus Kevin plus Neil doing this show put my expectations higher than anything. It seemed impossible that you could live up to what I needed this show to be, based on my love of it and all three of your individual bodies of work. (I'd never seen Neil live before yesterday, since he hasn’t been on Broadway in the almost-ten years since I started seeing shows, but I've loved HIMYM from the beginning, and Dr. Horrible, and followed his LGBT advocacy.)

I left the theatre speechless in the best possible way. The show had all the heart that it should, and it takes a lot of heart for one person to fill up that big of a space. It didn't feel lost, or small, or like it was trying to be something it wasn't. I think it's delightfully updated for today. I think using the Hurt Locker and being able to throw a mention of 9/11 into the show is brilliant. 9/11 is, in many ways a contemporary parallel. "Where were you when?" I went to Berlin in 2011 and became obsessed with history that is still present. Hedwig's history is still present on her body, and she has to come to terms with that.

I read something amazing Neil said in the interview with Out magazine last month. He said that there was a moment in his mid-20s where he came to the conclusion that he would always be alone, but that it wasn't a sad realization, just a fact as far as he was concerned. And I realized I kind of feel the same way, and my love of Hedwig to an extent come out of the idea of how love is ancient and beyond our control and all we can do is love those who come into our path, whether they love us or not. We only control how we deal with not being loved. Love has to be selfless because it's bigger than the self, it's the bit of the universe in you reaching out to a bit of the universe in someone else. Hedwig understands that and eventually gets through the pain of it to a point of acceptance. Loving deeply means hurting deeply and then letting go.

About a month ago I saw a video for the show in which you called HEDWIG universal. And I think you're totally right though plenty of people (my boss included) would disagree. It brought tears to my eyes to hear you say that; it gave me faith that the show wasn't just going to be an NPH spectacle machine. Watching the show yesterday (it's taken me an entire day to find actual words to articulate myself instead of just flailing) I was reminded of everything I love about Hedwig, the combination of aggression and vulnerability, heart and strength. It's what I'm working on myself in a new piece I'm currently calling "Stardust and Iron," about what people are made of. This show is that - ancient and cosmic and strong. I managed to behave myself pretty well, I only let out one "oh yes" out loud when the back wall opened up into the wall of lights. Everything was so smart. The evolution of the set, the lights (duh), the modernization of the script for the time and location. Midnight Radio was perfect. I cried.

I've seen a lot of bad theatre lately. And ever since I started theatre school I've said there's something to be learned from bad theatre too. But I've been reaching a point of stagnation in my own work, and frustration with the bad work I've been seeing, so I cannot tell you how inspiring, energizing, refreshing, fulfilling, and rewarding it was to see this yesterday and feel like theatre can do important things and tell important stories and broadway can take risks and be loud and not fit neatly in a box.

So in the end all I can say is thank you. My story is my thank you, because I have to believe that what we all want most as artists is to touch the lives of others, and hopefully affirm a belief in something bigger than ourselves (whatever we call it). Art is bigger than us. This production didn't change my life. HEDWIG's presence has affected my life for the last decade. This incarnation wasn't going to change any of that. But it affirmed the beliefs and values I've cultivated as I've grown up, and that's something really valuable to a 24-year-old artist hoping that what she's doing matters, or will someday. So thank you. I could talk about this show forever. I'm sure Bob and I will talk after Tuesday. And I'll be back again soon.

Rage, love, glitter, and glam,
Lindsay Hope Simon

The Ravenclaw Common Room

January 19, 2013:

I was pretty sure I'd posted something since New Year's, but clearly I was wrong. Things, unsurprisingly, got busy. Starting New Year's Eve I worked 11 straight days at Potter, then my roommate Anna arrived and there was Ikea shopping to be done and then Ikea furniture to be built and more trips to Kmart and decorating and being excited and still going to work all the time.

Things are really coming along here! Our kitchen is furnished with a nifty expandable table that Anna and I constructed all on our own and real wooden (not plastic) chairs. The living room has become a little separate area with a loveseat we got for free from a friend of Anna's, and a blue and bronze (Ravenclaw) rug, and a coffee table and TV stand. Gifts from my mom arrived, some pots and pans and a toaster, so our kitchen is starting to be functional. Soon after its arrival the couch was draped in Anna's blanket that portray's Sirius's flight on Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban. I found blue curtains to match the rug, so the living room/kitchen is well decked out in blue and bronze, with a Ravenclaw banner between the windows.

My room now has a bed, dresser, and desk, constructed by myself and my friend Joe, whose screwdriver has saved all of our Ikea purchases from being half-finished piles of particleboard and screws. Having furniture is pretty exciting after over 2 weeks of just me and an air mattress. I'm actually pretty impressed with how well we pulled things together in such a short span of time. I will say, we did have the Ravenclaw banner and the Prisoner of Azkaban blanket before we had a kitchen garbage can, so we all know where our priorities lie. Anna and I have never pretended to be anything else though, and that is why we are perfect roommates. Well, that and we're both super neat.

---

Well that never got posted either. January was a month full of moving, shopping (for the apartment), furniture building, and work.

February was full of work. And a visit from my mom! In her short time here she got to visit two of my workplaces - the Harry Potter exhibition and Fuerza Bruta, making her the only member of my family so far who has seen the show. We also spent a day doing the Broadway thing, catching performances of The Other Place starring Laurie Metcalf (of Roseanne and Steppenwolf) and The Heiress, with several famous people including David Strathairn, Jessica Chastain, and Dan Stevens, plus my favorite, Judith Ivey. Both productions were really well done and not things I would have sought out on my own, so go Mom. (Admittedly, we did try for rush tickets to Once and took a stab at lotto for Book of Mormon but it's what we actually saw that counts, right?) We also spent a day in New Jersey with family during the "big snowstorm" (read: regular snowstorm) that hit that first weekend in February, but Mom made it home okay after a couple canceled flights the same day. (I went back into the city to work.)

Also in February: the Phelps twins (who play the Weasley twins) came to Discovery. I didn't meet them; I was miserable for four days. The end.

Aside from Potter and Fuerza, I'm still teaching Sunday school, a constant joy, chalenge, and learning experience as I navigate working with a boisterous group of 6-10 kids ages 3 and 4. They are always a surprise, and perhaps sometimes I expect too much of them or am ambitions in our activities, but it's always worth a shot. I think people underestimate how astute and intelligent young kids really are, just because their vocabulary isn't as developed yet.

And, beyond Sunday school, I get to continue with another passion, stage combat. Twice a week I assist with the classes at NYU, where my teacher and fight master is training kids this semester in unarmed combat as well as rapier and dagger. I learn a lot just from watching the students learn, and even more when I get up to help them adjust mistakes. They ask questions that make me think more and watch better, and become more aware of those same things in myself so that I'm getting better all the time, even if I don't so much as throw a punch in class. Soon I'll also get to take a single sword class, testing in my fourth weapon with the Society of American Fight Directors in May. (I might recertify in RnD just to try and recommend, because I'm a stubborn perfectionist and I love RnD.)

Life is pretty good right now. Busy, the way I like it. There is a little bit of a gaping hole looming in late April, after the Potter exhibit closes and my almost-full-time job disappears completely, leaving me with "only" three part-time jobs, but I know something will come up. I'm pursuing some possible lighting gigs at the moment, working on a play (still, God, help me), and maybe, you know, I'll just take a couple weeks to relax a little before finding something for the summer. Who knows. What should be, will be.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon/machine/enterprise/commercial entity/community/business thing that is Harry Potter a lot since I've been working at the exhibit, and I have tons of thoughts about it all now that I'm involved from this new perspective, but that is a post for another day. Perhaps Friday, when I actually have a day off, before I head to free nights at MoMa (which I haven't visited in nearly 3 years) and then Fuerza. (So when I say a day off, I mean the day time. Not, like, the whole day.)

Nox.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

Oh hi!


I don't know why that picture is so big.

Last we met, I was just telling you I was still alive after the hurricane. The hurricane was nothing to me, what followed in the next six weeks was the whirlwind of my life and why I've been so absent on the blog front. Let's see how succinctly I can do this.

October 29: Hurricane. MTA shut down.
October 30: MTA still shut down.
October 31: Halloween? Busses running, tried to take the bus to work, ended up walking because NYC cannot function without the subway. Worked all day. Took a cab home.

Began working 24/7 at Harry Potter, since Fuerza Bruta (at 15th street) didn't have power. As a result of working 24/7 at Harry Potter, I became the inventory/product manager. Welcome to a full time job.

So picture November: 40+ hours a week at Harry Potter, 10+ hours a week at Fuerza Bruta, 15+ hours a week stage managing a show at NYU, church (Sunday school) on Sundays, and stage combat (assisting with unarmed and learning broadsword) on Thursdays.

Still I will say this, now that it is mid-December and the show I stage managed is over and as of today stage combat is finished for the semester: real life still isn't as taxing as theatre school was.

Life is awesome. I have jobs I (mostly) love, the show went really well, the cast gave me roses. I passed my skills proficiency test in broadsword so that I'm certified in three weapons making me an actor-combatant. I going on dates! Now that less than 100% of my friends are theatre people, I'm meeting non-gay men, it's crazy. I went ice skating yesterday. :) And the biggest best news of all: ANNA AND I GOT AN APARTMENT! AND IT'S SO PRETTY, LOOK!

Exposed brick, pretty kitchen, an ELEVATOR!

Guys, Harry Potter paradise is about to be a reality. Get ready.

Tuesday I go to Florida, for a vacation, where I won't have to do homework, like a real vacation! I get to see my parents and my brother and my grandma and be in the sun and warm weather. Yay! And then I'll be in NYC for NYE for the first time ever, and sometime between Christmas and New Years, I'll move into the beautiful apartment!

I'm so happy. :) Hope you all have a lovely holiday season.

Hartford, Rock City (Again, I Know)

I have to talk about glam rock again. Because I saw Mötley Crüe. Again.

Most of you probably know - or maybe you don't, it was very last minute - that I went to see the final stop of THE TOUR in Hartford last Sunday (the 23rd, not the 30th). I didn't talk about it a ton because I wasn't sure I was going until I bought my bus tickets at 9:30 that morning.

Here's what happened, and I promise this is all leading somewhere philosophical, not just to another concert play-by-play, although there will be some of that, too. This one was special. Anyway. I don't think I ever mentioned this on the blog in the context of the last Crüe show I was at, but this guy, Tom Zutaut, went to my high school. Yes, my little high school back in Park Forest, some 35 or so years before I did. I discovered this while reading Mötley's 2001 autobiography The Dirt in the summer of 2011 because Tom Zutaut was the A&R (I have never known what that means) man for Elektra records in the 80s and signed the band to their first record deal in 1982 when he was about my age. Being the thorough fan that I am, I looked him up, found him on facebook, and just asked if he really indeed went to my high school. (He hadn't said the name, just the town and state, but there's only ever been one high school in my town.) He responded, friend requested me, and we got to chatting over the next several months.

Fast forward to this summer. I intended to see The Tour while I was home, on September 7th. However tickets were crazy expensive (just a lawn seat - meaning a space on the grass - cost about $45). I just couldn't afford it. My plan was to win tickets. I entered every contest. I analyzed the tweets and habits of Tommy Lee, the drummer, because he was hiding tickets in every city they stopped in, which usually included VIP passes meaning a trip backstage to meet the band. I didn't win any contests, so on September 7th, my mom and I went on a stakeout of the venue, waiting for Tommy Lee to tweet his first "Crüe Clüe" to find the passes. But none came, nor was there an explanation of why he suddenly didn't hide them (although I later deduced it was because of the weather, which was his excuse at a later stop on the tour).

So no tickets for me, no Crüe/KISS extravaganza. I was more than a little disappointed, although kudos to my mom for sticking out for hours with me to help me try to go to the show. I figured I could always try again at one of the later stops in the NYC area - they weren't playing in the city at all but had shows near Newark, on Long Island, and in Hartford, Connecticut. You see where this is going. Or do you?

Re-enter Tom Zutaut. I texted him as we were driving away from the venue, saying how disappointed I was about not going to the show. He said he could call and get me tickets, my mom could come too if she wanted. I said thanks, but we were almost home, and the show had already started, so it felt too late. Then he mentioned he would probably be at the shows in Boston and Hartford and I could go to one of those if I wanted, since I had said I'd be back in New York soon.

I said I could get to Hartford (2 1/2 hours by bus). He said he'd get back to me after he'd made his travel plans. Two weeks went by. He ended up being stuck in Kansas City for work. But he said he'd call in a ticket for me if I was going to go. I got very skeptical (I always had been a little bit; I've still never actually met this guy), having that feeling that I think every girl my age in my generation has, being wary of nice men we meet on the internet. But something told me to say yes. So I did. That was Saturday night.

Sunday morning, I bought the bus tickets. I went to church, taught Sunday school, met up with a friend who printed the bus tickets at NYU for me, and then went to Port Authority to head to Hartford. I got there, made my way to the theatre, and went to will call. My ticket wasn't at a regular window. I was redirected to the VIP Guest Services Guest List window. I had a free ticket and a wristband for a photo with KISS. My roundtrip bus cost me the price of a lawn seat, and now I was in row N of the lower pavilion with a ticket to meet KISS and, soon, an all access backstage pass that is now my prized possession. (This is all also thanks to Doc McGhee, the former manager of Mötley, Tom's friend, and now manager for KISS. Imagine that guy's life. And he also went to high school near me.)

What I originally wanted to talk about though was glam rock itself. The music, the stage show, the aesthetic, the attitude. KISS was a pioneer in their form. No one has done quite what they've done, become a franchise and a brand the way they have. Gene Simmons I believe is a businessman before he is a musician or an artist. He might even say that himself. I read his autobiography (also written in 2001), Kiss and Make-Up this summer while I was home, and he's certainly proud of his head for business and refers to KISS as a business. He wants to be rich, he wants to be successful, he wants KISS to be influential not just in a musical sense but in a cultural sense. And as early as the mid- to late-seventies KISS was creating stage shows like no one had ever seen before. The pyro, Gene's fire breathing during "Firehouse," Paul Stanley flying out over the audience, raising platforms, pyrotechnics, moving lights, moving trusses full of lights, projections, etc. That technology has continued to develop into the current century - next year will be KISS' 40th anniversary as a band, if you ignore the fact that two of the original members, though still alive, were kicked out of the band long ago. (You'd never know it though if you didn't do your research; Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer adopted the make-up and personas of Peter Criss and Ace Frehley respectively.)

Similarly, hugely influenced by KISS themselves, Mötley Crüe has pushed the boundaries of the live rock show in artistic ways. (That was the most academic sounding transition sentence I have written in a long time. Wow.) I still think, having now seen The New York Dolls, Poison, Steel Panther, Def Leppard, and KISS, that Mötley puts on the best live show out there. This time things were a little different from the last two times I saw them (the second being kind of a European leg of the summer tour, I think, at least concept-wise). The stage show was new, the set list was a bit different. There was a countdown clock projected on the screen, with a deafening ticking noise that built palpable anticipation (all the more impressive when you then saw how unenthusiastic so much of the crowd was). They opened with a huge processional of hooded figures that came through the audience with banners. The show itself had tons of pyro, fire, power washers spraying the audience with water, Nikki Sixx's guitar shooting fire, Tommy Lee's 360 drum coaster of course, lasers (which were, admittedly, kinda lame), and constant, relentless, media, which, though perhaps the newest technology in many ways, is kind of the least interesting part of their design.

My point (and I do have one) is this. Nothing gets my heart pounding, gives me a rush, gets me so fully involved and passionate about what is happening on stage as these rock concerts. And yes, I like the music, and yes I've read all their books and know weird things about them I have no reason to know, and I follow these people on twitter even though I still think twitter is stupid and I only got an account in the first place because Nikki Sixx tweeted during their show when I first saw them in St. Louis in June of 2011. But the shows, the full-on design of these theatrical events, of the lighting and the costumes and the sets to combine with the music, is unlike anything I've seen anywhere. I get a little bit of that feeling from American Idiot on Broadway. But that was a rock musical and the lights were designed by Kevin Adams who does a lot of rock musicals and lights them like mini-rock shows.

There is this feeling when all the senses line up as part of the same experience. It's loud, and bright, and hot, and fast (is tempo a feeling? I think so...), and gritty, and powerful. I think I have said before that I love glam rock for being 100% what it is. For not apologizing for the make-up, the big hair even now, the sexuality, the desire for more than the mundane. And in so many ways this is all over-analyzing, because as many of the artists of the 80s will say outright, glam rock wasn't about some deeper message, or the expression of rage or oppression. It was in a sense a rebellion to be sure, but mostly it was just a bunch of guys singing about what they liked - sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

I just wonder why more theatre - or really any theatre - doesn't give me that same feeling. Is there more of a narrative and therefore more of an emotional journey in a play or a musical? Arguably, yes, of course. That's theoretically the point. And sure, I go see plays and have a lot of feelings, and sometimes they're very good, and provoke a lot of thoughts, too. But I just... I just want that rock show feeling more. It's never mattered to me that a domestic beer costs $11 at a concert, because I don't need it. I go to these shows by myself and have more fun than practically anywhere or anytime else, even when I'm with people.

How do you make that happen for theatre? It's a communal experience. But so is a rock concert, actually. In Hartford I was in this section with a bunch of other people who had KISS VIP wristbands and during Mötley's set they were all just standing around. I am obviously a bigger fan of the Crüe than KISS, so I was having a great time, baffling all the middle-aged men around me, who never understand what a 20something girl is doing at an 80s rock concert, especially, I think, without a middle-aged man as my escort. Anyway there were these two other women, probably in their late thirties, a couple rows in front of me, who were the only other people in the vicinity who also seemed to actually be having a good time during the set. They caught my eye occasionally when turning to the side or something and we would acknowledge each other, part of an unspoken clan, the Crüe crew, the people who were actually engaging with the monstrous stage action while everyone else stood around and drank. There was also the community walking to the theatre, as people who had parked far away walked too, and various people complimented each other on their band t-shirts, cars blasted KISS out their windows, it was very communal. Kind of a massive tailgating parade, as it were, on the way to the arena. So the communal aspect isn't it.

Is it subtlety? Maybe it's subtlety. There is absolutely nothing subtle about a rock show. Both bands played their one new single from their upcoming albums on this tour along with the classics from decades ago - KISS' is entitled "Hell or Halleluja," Mötley's, simply, "Sex." Like I said. Not subtle. The chorus includes the line "It's all about the sex," which was the not-really-unspoken moral of most of their other songs, but now they've really literally just said it.

I don't know. It's something I seriously think about a lot. It matters to me, that feeling, rock music, theatre, how to blend them when I don't actually know a damn thing about writing music or music theory. But figuring it out is becoming my conscious self-education now that I'm out of school.

I still think I was born 25 years too late.

BEST. THING. EVER.

Mötley has my artistic heart.

There's me, and there's everybody else.

Thank you for this, KISS.

The "I Just Got Out of Theatre School and Don't Understand Free Time" Guide to Avoiding Boredom

And what does a recently-graduated, barely-employed, almost-resident of New York City do with herself? (Anybody who knows me keeps asking me what on earth I'm doing with myself all day.) Thusly I present to you:

The "I Just Got Out of Theatre School and Don't Understand Free Time" Guide to Avoiding Boredom

1. First of all don't you dare be bored in NYC. People are only bored if they're boring. Don't be boring.
2. When was the last time you read Harry Potter? It wasn't recently enough. (I read the whole series every June, NO SHAME.)
3. Go see FREE outdoor theatre. The New York Times kindly posted this article with a list of tons of free theatre to see this summer. You could see a show or two a week all summer without paying a dime. I'm personally looking forward to the Pearl Jam Hamlet that will hopefully be a spectacular disaster.
4. Write a play! Try it. It's a great thing to do by yourself. David Bowie just showed up in my play. I think he's the fairy godmother.
5. Try to "tan" in a park. Lots of parks. Read Harry Potter in the park. There are so many parks. New parts of the High Line are open! Go there! I did, today!
6. Make funny pandora stations. I found out that if I just add Motley Crue to my David Bowie station, pandora will basically play all of the music I would normally listen to, which maybe defeats the purpose of listening to pandora.
7. Remember that play you're writing? Does it require research? Probably! I'm obsessed with Cold War Berlin so my play is set in Berlin in 1975. I'm pretty sure reading Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell: The Dangerous Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed counts as research since Bowie was in Berlin then and he's in my play. But I'm reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, too.
8. Learn a new language! I'm learning French for free using Duo Lingo. I'm also keeping up my Spanish skills that way. Woo. Too bad they haven't taught me how to say "I am learning French" in French. Um... Estoy aprendiendo francais! Culture.
9. Jump on any random money-making opportunity, such as being one of approximately three women working at a gay pride party attended by no less than 1,000 gay men and a few women. (Yes, I did that. It was hilarious.)
10. You still haven't gotten hooked on Mad Men and Breaking Bad yet? Get on that. They're on netflix. Yes, fine, you can rewatch all of Weeds first. The new season does start July 1...
11. Write in a blog a lot. Oh and make a list of the things you do so you can feel accomplished and share it with other people.

That covers most of it... Plus working sometimes, hanging out with friends sometimes, talking to my family sometimes. And, you know, reestablishing my credit cards and bank account nonsense. Having access to cash is nice. Depositing checks is nice.

Oh and obsessively checking the weather to strategically open and close my windows in my non-air-conditioned apartment. You didn't like that mid-90s high-humidity last week? Yeah try doing it without air conditioning. Uh huh.

Gonna go back to Prisoner of Azkaban now. :)