the present, a play.
“I’m so bored. Bored and disappointed.”
Last week, I saw "The Present," a Chekhov adaptation written by Andrew Upton and featuring actress Cate Blanchett. She plays the role of Anna, a beautiful but aging widow of a celebrated but passed General. The play takes place in 1980's post-perestroika Russia, a time ripe with cultural and political challenge. Though the play references heavily on the youthful punk spirit of the 1980's (the second half opens up with the Clash's London Calling) and the sweeping political reformations that were taking place, the period builds little into the problems of the main characters. Instead, 1980's Russia serves more as a stylistic backdrop of which we get to see our main characters coil with one another then unravel. What I saw as the heart of the turmoil driving the characters, especially that of Anna, was a very present fear and realization that life had been lived accidentally. Much of life had passed and could pass inconsequentially. Because a lack of serious intention or perceptive insight, life balanced on the brink of having been lived devoid of meaning or authenticity. I'd say this is a fear that deeply resonates with our generation and in part explains why we are obsessed with memorializing every moment we live. Instagram and Facebook allow us to raise up little monuments as proof that we lived and enjoyed every big or mundane moment - we wrenched it for meaning and pleasure to its fullest.
I am approaching a milestone year. The 30. And a lot of my thoughts on nearly everything are painted by this 30 concept though it hasn't taken any shape or form quite just yet. It's not much more than an idea - an idea that I know is approaching quickly into reality. However there has been a mounting excitement to do away with my 20's and sign off so much of the struggles and searches that mark that post-college 20's life, and a growing attraction to drawing and painting this 30's chapter for me and what I want for it to mean. I am looking forward to becoming more settled in my personal understanding of me as a woman not just a girl, and I think that's exciting - I say so, unabashedly.
If there is anything that I learned from "the Present," it would be from that moment when at her 40th birthday celebration, Anna reclines deeply into the back of her chair, exhaustedly exhales, and sighs "I'm so bored. Bored and disappointed." There was a reality in that moment and I understood how the possibility for that kind of encounter with age and life could all-to-together be too easily stumbled upon. To wake up and see your own age, be dissatisfied to recognize that life had just happened to you, and see you'd accidentally lived half your life hurdling from circumstance to circumstance, struggle to different struggle. We can be so caught up in the business of living, our life can seamlessly pass on from moment to moment, day to year, year to decade, without us being actively conscious and alive. So much of my 20's I think had been lived like this and I think it had to take this shape for good reason. I was trying to prioritize my passions alongside my values and desires so that I could draft a feasible blueprint of what my life should look like post-college and begin building. In my mind, I drew draft after draft of what I wanted and hoped for and then worked hard. What I wasn't aware of in those moments was that I forgot to keep feeding my growth and education, to feed the inner machine that churns out and determines what my dreams and passions will be. That thing within us that thinks and absorbs then challenges our current values to pave way for new ones or build upon old ones. There are times for building but in the midst of that, you've got to tear yourself away from your blueprints and your work, and plant in times that feed the machine. I went on autopilot and forgot to continue seeing and watching and reading and writing and thinking and praying, and most importantly, to continue dreaming outside whatever confines my current path may have set and move beyond. Without doing so, I learned that you risk your well-thought out plans to become irrelevant - by the time you reached your goals and your life is up and operating, the heart you longed to house no longer fits its frame and all you're left with is a shell. I've always had a desire within me to embark - I love adventure, and regrettably in the past few years, I forgot about this and buried it under fear, tiredness, and the lie that practical living is always wise living. I need to always feed the inner machine - the spirit.
If there is anything else that "the Present" taught me that night, it's that in art and also I think in life, there's a simple and thin line that tips the scale between horrifying and mesmerizing. There were moments when Cate Blanchett played Anna with so much disgust then charm, pain then beauty. Sometimes she walked straight down that line between two different sensations and you were left mystified. Cate Blanchett reminded me of a beautiful thing - that horror is not always lost to the unredeemed but it can be made alive as arresting and captive. I had the chance to experience some of the most abounding pleasures that come with thoughtful art last week and it was really nice.