In February, 2003.

DIARY

Highs and lows, but mostly I remember this as being a good time. I was in Chicago. After several hundred job applications I found myself back at Advanced Personel, this time with the Department of Neurological Surgery. I was tired of temping, but I liked my coworkers and fellow temps (Emily who had mutual friends from the Michigan Renaissance Festival, Lola and Evelyn, who communed with me musically and kept me on my toes with their anecdotes, our shares experiences in Humboldt Park, and Brandon, who actually told me about Electronic Music before Sam had deeply permeated the stuff).

Also to the point, this was a nascient and promising period for the Nocturnal. While the downturns in the Nocturnal eventually turned me off to theater (not without regret, but nevertheless for going on three years now) it has some illuminatory moments for me, and as I look back on that month, I think a lot of them served to predict Gothic Funk.

A major part of this was my living situation. In terms of poverty (if not happiness) the previous several months had probably been the most dire circumstances of my life. I'd depleted my (very) modest savings, was paying on student loans... I'd spent the summer on an inflatable mattress in the Crawfords' basement, all autumn couch surfing across the South Side while applying to jobs everywhere from Bank One to Wendy's, and after a much-needed commission for directing a Play Production workshop for Wanderlust, I'd lived at home for two months... in Flushing Township... without friends or car... my parents were both gone during the day. It was a somewhat pointless exercise.

Then January, I landed in a sweet sublet (to be described another time) supplied by Talia for the quarter, and moved in with Matt Tievsky and a girl named Alicia. In those germinal months for the Nocturnal, before our first major production, we threw fundraiser parties. Early on, they were none too ambitious... we'd play poker and drink rum in the living room: Matt, Mark, Jess, Sean, the Jamesons, and whoever else we could drag into the deal. Later on, we'd drop $200 on alcohol, call the whole neighborhood over, and rake in a daunting $300 (meaning $100 profit). It was probably the biggest take in a single night for the Nocturnal ever. Mark bartended, Matt and I managed music. People came over by the dozens. Sometimes, they even danced. The scav hunt judges would congregate on the enclosed tenement porch. A yellow light flashed overhead. There was bad freestyle rap. Miraculously, nothing got broken.

We threw a Mardi Gras party that year as well. I remember; Sam came down for a visit, and I piled into a car with him and Libby and other Marquette kids (don't remember who...) and we drove down to 118th and Michigan. Toured Roseland. Toured Pullman. It was finger-joint creaking cold, and so we puffed up the air in the car as hot as it would go and played Moma. In March, I'd be going through my final preparations for conversion, and starting to work on All Is Fair In Sex And War. It wasn't a bad year, that year.

What were you doing in February, 2003?

END OF POST.