Saturday night we went to see Twelfth Night at the Barnsdall. It was glorious. A free performance, outside, on the lawn, looking over the whole city. The crowd was intimate--filled with practically homeless old people, Silverlake hipsters, and people like us who dared to bring small children because it was FREE!!! I could remember almost nothing about the play from high school--except that I loved it, and it featured cross-dressing twins who reveal their true identities at the end to great comic effect. On the way over Jonathan, who retains all factual information forever, said all he remembered was that it took place in the Kingdom of Ilaria. Hey, that's me!
It turns out it is actually the kingdom of Illyria. But it sounded just like me. "The characters who inhabit the land of Illyria are not creatures who do things by halves. Rather, they are the sorts of people who are given to obsession, addiction, flights of fancy, love beyond reason--delusional romantics, one and all. If the moon is the seat of insanity (as the term lunatic suggests), Illyria is a place where it shines full night after night.
O glory be, it's me.
The play summary concludes with this:
"As the play ends, however, we may find ourselves left questioning whether we are better off when we wake from our fantasies, or if they are the very things that allow us to bear the rest of our lives in all their mundanity and wonder."
O this could be a quote about Hollywood. To live here, in this city where anyone with an outsize dream aspires to be, is both the most uplifting and depressing thing there is. Every restaurant and coffee shop is full of aspiring actors, directors, writers and businessmen. It is heaven. It is inspiring to see people shooting for the stars, and daring to DO it. But then it seems every older person in a sad, dingy apartment is a failed actor/director/writer who never quite made it, and now lives this semi-pathetic life performing at children's birthday parties, and alluding proudly to a shaving commercial they made in the Seventies. Is that not hell on earth?
Which is better? I know which one I am.
December 10
8 years ago
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