Welcome to Irving Park, my neighborhood of residence for at least the next few months. It wasn't my first pick, as this station is a good 8-minute drive / 25-minute walk from my apartment. It's the main reason I decided to take my car to Chicago, as much as I wanted to rely solely on mass transit. The truth is, having my car here has been really nice. After unpacking on my first day, I got into that trusty gray Camry to go to Target. My mom and sister had left me a few hours prior, and I was feeling alone, vulnerable, and a bit lost. The minute I started driving, though, this sudden rush of confidence and invincibility surged through me. I felt like Harry did when he took flight on his Firebolt during the First Task: suddenly at ease, because I had this piece of familiarity in an otherwise unfamiliar place. Also, Katie Perry's "Roar" was playing on the radio, and that junk is pure magic. It was my first euphoric moment of "Holy shit, I've finally done it. After all this talk, I'm here. I'm living in Chicago."
I've enjoyed a handful of similar moments since I got here. But those fleeting highs aren't really what I came for. As expected, the last 12 days have brought me face to face, on multiple occasions, with the real objects of my pursuit.
Aloneness
Eating pasta while watching Netflix alone in your twin bed on a Friday night feels slightly more glamorous when you're doing it in Chicago. But I won't pretend this kind of behavior is a consequence of my being new to a city - I pull that kind of shit all the time. What I'm not used to is having entire days to myself. Nowhere to be, no one to see - just me and my own agenda that unravels as my fancy directs it. I don't mind this a bit. I'm a selfish person, you see. Or at least I feel that way, when a person I actually do care about talks to me while I'm reading or something, and my reaction is to wish that I lived in a city where no one knew me so no one would bother me. (At a recent interview I was asked if I'm an introvert or extrovert, and when I answered introvert, the woman assured me there was nothing wrong with that, that her sons were both introverts and they got along fine at their jobs. As though introversion is a mental disorder with which one must find ways to function normally. At the time I was amused by her remark, but now...perhaps she was on to something?)
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| I've unconsciously surrounded myself with strong, somewhat wild female characters who seem to be at ease, and perhaps at their best, when they're alone. |
Discomfort
Breaking down and crying in the middle of a restaurant after your mom and sister, who will be leaving you in Chicago in a few hours' time, ask you about your Thanksgiving plans is uncomfortable. But it's a great way to usher in the thousand more inevitable moments of discomfort to come. Like the one where you get up and move to the other end of the rail car to distance yourself from a screaming toddler AND a muttering old man (they were not traveling together, thankfully). Or the one where you have to read something you wrote to a classroom of fifteen peers and hope to God you get some reaction. Oh, and that other one where the overenthusiastic improv student takes it upon himself to teach you and a couple other rookies how to freestyle rap (too much too soon!).
And then there's just the general discomfort of missing people, and not being sure how long you can keep this up, or what exactly you're after, or if it's possible to go back to what's most familiar merely because it's what's most familiar.
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| This is my living room floor; it won't have any furniture for a while. This is another source of discomfort, as I value aesthetics and coziness. But there's a silver lining here, and those who know me well can probably guess what it is. I gravitate toward the center of these things - they're perfect for practicing your pirouettes and six step. |
In the midst of all this, I'm finding great comfort in riding the el, the raised doughnut selection at Jewel-Osco, and http://seinfeld-episodes.com.
Comedy
It's a novel thing to be around people who take comedy so seriously. In one of my classes, the instructor doesn't really laugh. If he thinks your joke is funny, he'll tell you why it worked. If he doesn't, he'll question the people who laughed at it and then turn to you for an explanation. My other instructor (who looks, sounds, and talks like Steve Martin*) is a bit more gracious with his praise, but asks us questions about the characters we've written as though they're real people whom he genuinely wants to get to know.
Here are a couple bits that intrigued me most during my first few classes. To be clear, this isn't me thinking I'm equipped to give you a lesson in comedy. If I come across as didactic, it's because they taught it that way.
> Satire is the highest form of humor because it carries a subtext that the audience arrives at on their own. The message is always an astute observation or opinion about the human condition or the state of the world. This is different from snark, which is more direct and nasty, and therefor a lower form of humor.
> One rule in writing satire is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." This is why virtually all satirists are left wing. Right-wing doctrine tends to favor the status quo and isn't inclined to correct systemic imbalances and inequalities - which is the opposite of comforting the afflicted.
> One instructor claimed that professional writers don't like to write, they're just compelled to write (an interesting statement, though I don't think the two are mutually exclusive). If you're not at a point where you feel compelled to write, a good exercise is to set a timer for 30 minutes and write continuously for that period of time. Write whatever comes to mind without self-editing, and keep the words flowing, even if they're filler words, like "I don't know what to write." This way you become comfortable churning out garbage, and writing becomes easier. He likened it to milking a cow: if you do it every day for two weeks and then skip a day, the thoughts build up and you're compelled to let them out. What is more, you can begin to guide your thoughts so you're producing workable material.
*may actually be Steve Martin?
Before I moved here, I had read this article about our tendency to imagine ourselves failing, and how when we fail in our imaginations, it's always much more dramatic than it is to fail in real life. I imagined myself failing in the sense that I'd be so unhappy in Chicago that I wouldn't be able to focus on any of the things I came here to do. I imagined myself crying, a lot. Now I know how ridiculous that'd be, given my current life of creative pursuits and scant responsibility. But I couldn't be assured of this in advance, because as I said before, it's tough to enjoy a perspective you haven't yet earned. Still, it's probably worth it to discern when your imagination is encouraging you and, conversely, when it's being a conniving ass.
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| Moment of Comfort: Lincoln Park Farmers Market |
