the angels effect

2004-01-15 - 4:56 p.m.

i just finished watching hbo's angels in america. after nearly a month i finally got the time to watch it. and oh, it was glorious. the whole time that i was watching it my heart felt kind of light and heavy at the same time, like half of it was hanging out of my chest. and at the very end i had tears in my eyes, just because, y'know, the message was good. it was vital and vibrant and what i needed to hear.

i remember reading both part 1 and part 2 years ago for my playwriting class in boston. then our college's theatre performed part 1, and when i saw it, when the pages came alive, it was magnificent. instantly it became one of my favourite plays ever. 'angels in america,' 'a perfect ganesh,' 'amadeus,' and 'the vagina monologues' are my favourite plays, and i was introduced to all but one through the colleges i attended. see, who says a college degree is worthless? finding those plays will always mean something very dear to me, even if they never affect my monetary income.

when 'buffy the vampire slayer' first aired, i remember my friend chad telling me that willow on 'buffy' was his ideal best friend. in the world of plays, i would want to be best friends with prior and belize from 'angels in america' and with the angry vagina woman in 'the vagina monologues.'

and justin kirk, where have you been all my life? that is one beautiful man. i really hope that he's gay in real life. keep the fantasy alive. at any rate, he must be a leo. the two other men that i know of who are that beautiful are both leos. (for the curious, those two other men are jonathon rhys-meyers, and, um, someone i went to wilson with. he knows who he is.)

hbo just kicks so much ass. first they have 'sex and the city,' then they film eve ensler performing 'the vagina monologues,' and now they've done 'angels in america.' i tell you, there aren't too many huge corporations that i endorse, but hbo is doing extraordinarily well. yay hbo.

it's funny how you can feel like your life isn't worth much of anything, floating aimlessly with no huge greater purpose or goals, then you can hear a story in which very little actually happens other than living and dying, and the moral is just to live as best as you can, and suddenly you feel better about your own little aimless life. whatever happens, whatever the end may be, the point is just to live. maybe it's been said a thousand times before, but it needs to be said one thousand times one thousand more, because there are still lots of us who forget all the time.

i mean, i have goals. they used to be very finite goals: visit paris. graduate college. etc. but then i do those things, and they end, and after a while i forget that i accomplished anything at all. or worse, i start to imagine that there are no more worthwhile goals, that it's all downhill from here. but lately i've been pondering a different type of goal, one that involves becoming the person i want to be. sometimes i feel really close, then something little fucks it up and i get discouraged, thinking that i'm a bad person and that i have to start all over again. but that process is also a part of becoming the person that i want to be, dealing with my reactions and processes. it all gets kind of jumbled up when i see what a small sphere it all forms when these things connect.

anyhoo, the point is that life is about life, and about not necessarily changing everything around you (which gets really exhausting) but about working on what you always carry with you. and then there's the whole delicate exchange of accepting some things and struggling and fighting through the brick wall to change those things that can be changed (but most not without a fight). and it's all crazy and jumbled and up in the air but it's all a part of us just doing the best that we can do and living life.

that's the point. that, and that 'angels in america' is a really fuckin' good play.