We, me, Jen and Routh, went to see Anna Deavere Smith last night in Let me Down Easy at 2nd Stage. There was a bit about a boxer getting knocked out. I had flashbacks to The Knitting Factory many years ago and my own solo performance as a boxer who gets knocked out and does not remember how it happened. This one woman tour-de-force takes on Cancer, Health Care Reform, Life, Death and aging in a 95 minute channeling of 20 individuals. Among them a former Tour-de-France champion battling cancer, a supermodel, a bull rider injured on the job, a TV movie critic dieing of cancer, (even a woman who does one person performances!), all interviewed by Smith who impersonates them verbatim with a skill that lives up to her reputation. Last night at our post show discussion over cocktails in the Film Center Café the question I posed was: “How do we grow old in America now?” For me I can find some great salvation in my work, a reason to live, so I can put this poetry out in hopes that it will inspire others to keep going and face the brutality of our darker natures with luminous offerings of Peace. However, in a culture that seems to value the violent, the young and the beautiful, it seems an up hill battle. The only thing we can do is:
Keep fighting. Thinking of all my loved ones in physical difficulty: Keep fighting. To my loved ones who stand up in front of crowds of people to deliver messages of hope: Keep talking.
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