The Persistence of Memory

…not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone.

Watching a recent episode of The Librarians — yes, I know, not exactly Game of Thrones but completely sensible for GenX, as it is the lovechild of The Goonies and Indiana Jones with a nod to English and Ancient History buffs — I was struck by a similarity between drama directors and The Librarians. Aside from the “obvious” (our brilliance, four dimensional mind-mapping abilities, Navy Seal ninja skills) and aside from our magic-adjacent talents, and forgetting our long standing bonds with John Larroquette, Noah Wylie, and Rebecca Romijn, here is what we actually do have in common:

We voluntarily hurl ourselves into the emotional and physical adventure demanded by each play, called to action by a siren heard only by those with our “curse.” As we cycle through the journey, we find ourselves hanging by a thread of uncertainty, dangling over the abyss of failure. We have moments where everyone doubts our cast-mates, the material, the DIRECTOR, and mostly, ourselves. Yet, somehow, at the last moment and to fresh shock of all, we slay! 

The euphoria!

Then, stasis.

The stasis is soooo boring.

So we begin another episode. As if we have collective amnesia about the stress, heartache, annoyance, time commitment, and all that other stuff baked into community theater. 

What is the point of human memory if it can’t teach us to stay in our safety zones? 

Right now, I’m posing that question not just to the Internet, but to the back of an auditorium chair, rescued from the garbage heap. You see, it had spent decades in auditorium currently undergoing a massive renovation. It’s been gifted to me by a former student who knew that this oddly timed Coronavirus renovation meant the demolition of the space in the high school where I worked for sixteen years. It was a demolition that, despite my title of “Director of Dramatic Arts” for said high school, came as a total surprise. 

This was my home away from home. This was my “library.” A place where magic existed, a space in the middle of chaos made out of even more chaos, but somehow, time was non-linear, not traditionally regimented. Time expanded and contracted; it was a composition of musical bars, rehearsal hours, months, then days, then minutes counted to curtain time. Time was an inexplicable artifice. The discovery of a script page from years past, a glittery shard, a costume tossed under an old prop, are brain trippy transports to times long gone.

The stillness of the empty space where I built sets, the only sound a staple gun and my own footsteps, gradually transmuted into a zoetic, animated carnival of activity. There were great moments with filled to capacity blockbuster musicals, and smaller moments with quietly falling tears. For those who cycled through, the creative collaboration, the problem solving (How do we support a 50 pound castle with paperback books? How do we hang colorful paper bag lanterns 50 feet above our heads? How do we make it rain?), the knowledge that through vision and teamwork the seemingly impossible was always possible, are lessons stored in a margin, like a treasured pocket-watch, taken out when needed. 

The Persistence of Memory, as depicted by Salvador Dali, a fan favorite for sure, has drama kid vibes. Yeah, it’s theatrical and quixotic, but also still and retrospective. The mountains in the back are thought to be Catalonian cliffs of northern Spain, culled from Dali’s childhood, that time in life that imprints and can be summoned to the present in a millisecond. The curious, the odd, the fascinating, all invite the audience to break that fourth wall and interpret the art themselves, becoming a part of its very being. Like eyelashes on a silhouette, there is much to which we must impart our own meaning. It challenges the rational world, as do dreams, but anchors itself in stillness. How drama kid is that????

And here is where it all ties together:

This auditorium demolition is déjà vu. It is not my first unexpected demolition — oh no — not in the least. My house burned down in 2003, leaving a toasted shell awaiting permission from the Town to “remove.” This excruciatingly slow process took months. Once, I tore away the police tape, and with a flashlight, through breaths of smoky air, I entered what had been my home, praying the splintered floorboards would not give out beneath my feet. 

Here I encountered IRL three of the most surreal things ever:

1. Bags of popped microwave popcorn in the pantry.
2. My son’s uneaten Barney bowl of baked cereal, 1/2 Cocoa Pebbles, 1/2 Fruity Pebbles, perfectly aligned in half moons as he had designed them every morning.
3. The kitchen clock, melted at 7:50, drooping on the scarred wall. 

“Please tell me when you are going to demolish the house,” was my repeated request to the contractor. I hoped to rummage through the remains looking for, actually, anything. Any memento would do. 

When my husband called to tell me that the house had been demolished and cleared, I rushed over to find an empty lot. 

——–

In that empty lot, a new house stands, the one I am typing from this very moment. My kids grew up here. Time marched on. And I know that memories are always superseded by progress. The new school auditorium will undoubtedly offer scores of drama kids those unimaginable, surreal, magical experiences that will shape who they are, as they provide a refuge from the rational culture beyond its doors. And as for souvenirs from my past productions? They’re a part of who I am, and who every student with whom I worked is, too. But let’s not linger too long –

Look –

A new day has begun.