The Long Road Out

I saw Hadestown when it opened off Broadway…was it Playwrights Horizon?  I don’t remember but I had a subscription.  By the end of Act 1, my ex and I agreed…”this one is going somewhere.”    Hades’ bass.  Knowing that we all live in the underworld and seeing it illustrated beautifully before us.  The New Orleans swing band.    I believe it was 2016.  The show closed…and then reappeared, improved…on Broadway.   I just watched the 2026 filming of the London production of Hadestown.  Film and theater at the level of Nicolas Nickelby .   Top tier. What a cast…what extraordinary production values…the muses, Persephone down in her cups shaking it.  Even the tenor is interesting!   Why do we build the wall?  For freedom…   Why do we hurt each other?  Because we keep our heads down and forget our names. ...

There’s a single reason---   First, if he backs down and admits that he can’t keep February 2 and February 3 straight—and that he does shoddy research—and that he doesn’t know dogshit about basketball—think how little impact it would have.  It would be a funny forgotten moment and the whole world wouldn’t witness him making an asshole out of himself.  (Why do we pay senators a salary—they don’t do anything except pull the lever they’re told to pull.)   But no—he can’t back down.  Toxic masculinity on display.  Here’s why:  If he backed down from calling Smith a villain and dirtbag, Trump would cut him off.  Leave him dangling.  No invites to Mar a Lago.  Exposure of all his dirty laundry.   Schmitt is a terrified tool.  Not a villain or a dirtbag (his favorite vocabulary words, apparently).  Schmitt is a victim of bullying.   Schmitt is a fledgling narcis...

Familiar bile after interactions with you. You blaming others for your mistakes. You claiming your truth doesn’t smell of rot. You claiming what you want is best for others who know you disdain them and wouldn’t lift a finger. You don’t exist for us, except as an untalented boring and endlessly looping nightmare. As someone easily forgotten when you stop throwing loud temper tantrums and sucking air and nutrients out of every room. You whose diagnosis requires multiple daily pills to replace your destroyed friend or foe biology and to stay alive. You whose are so certain it hurts. You whose lookalike and genetically matching father has never been wrong. To this day. In you. You who also never successfully practiced law or any other profession. You who can’t read the room. Any room. Even rooms where you’re lonely and afraid. You who hurt yourself doing psychedelics yet commits the malpractice of coaching others—passing on the risk and ignorance and danger. Ho...

I’ve awoken at 3 or 4 the last few mornings. Sad because my friend is down with her college roommates for a reunion weekend, and I was hoping to catch up a little. Instead I’m awake petting my cats and dealing with my enemy—the first in my life but she’s a pretty miserable personality and not interested in my needs, to put it as gently as I can. Never was, never is. There’s a new documentary out on narcissists and the damage they do. A friend told me it repeats the research I studied a few years ago to understand why someone like my ex, or Trump, could exhibit sociopathic disregard for others. Sane pattern in these two and in millions of others. Reading about Trump or hearing from my ex makes me sick to my stomach. I think recording these sleepless moments releases some of the disgust and anger and shame. Writing isn’t as effective at healing as I wish, though. The trauma, PTSD and pain caused by narcissists is real and documented. There are thousands of support gro...

…while your workmates and friends moved to better jobs and never invited you along. …while first timers attended your workshops and plays and readings, and never came back. …while you backstabbed whoever wasn’t in the room, primarily me. …while you fabricated truthes to cover your dishonesty. This began the first week I knew you—“I told you I was married.” No such thing, Ms Narcissus. …while you were afraid to confront those who should have helped you or ask those who could have helped for aid. …while you belittled your parents. …while my parents refused to stay under your roof. …while our two cats both died on your watch, after kidnapping. …while you bounced checks. …while you lost job after job after job.

This from Ellie Mystal and The Nation.  I love and thank you for speaking the wretched truth.  This newsletter is going to hit your inbox on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which means you’re no doubt being flooded with remembrances and retrospectives. And regrets. The country’s response to the worst terror attack in our history was to launch a global war of hysteria that consisted of rage-bombing two countries, destabilizing an entire region, and seeding a police state that has now been fully weaponized by an authoritarian regime against its own citizens. Moreover, every post-9/11 mistake we’ve made has been understood  as a mistake  in real time—not by all, or even most, people in this country, but by enough that nobody can credibly claim to have been unaware of the dangers. But the majority of Americans were always going to want to respond to violence with more, overwhelming violence. The majority of people were always going to be willing to ...