Day 48 – Using my voice

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Day 48 - Well, all this writing is helping me to find and use my voice.  I hope.  I have sent an article in for publication today and will send another in soon.  Then I will work on one more big (for me) writing piece, and in 52 days I’ll be back at work.

 

How will I maintain this practice of dialogue when I get back to work?  How will I keep reading and thinking about the difficult stuff?  I just will! 

 

Over the weekend, I went to see the musical A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson. The musical is about a Black, gay theater writer working on a musical about a Black, gay theater writer, which the writer in an article in the Playbill describes as “emotionally autobiographical.” The all-Black, queer cast is fantastic – and there is something about the paradox of seeing a show that is done night after night, yet for you, is singular and exciting.  Each live performance a one-time only event. 

 

The Playbill cites Jason Veasey, one of the performers, as saying, “On the other side of specificity is universality.” I love the loops within loops that this show reminds me of – I’m not a young, gay, Black man who writes musicals, and yet the structure and content of the show spoke to me again and again of my own insecurities, conflicts, challenges, inner monologues, and history. 

 

It reminded me to be playful in my writing, and to blur the lines between art, self/other exploration, scholarship, and becoming. 

 

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