From the hills of Idaho to Times Square

Whoa...
What TF just happened?????
A whirlwind has just happened and I managed to land fully intact to tell the story! This is unbelievable. My life sometimes is unbelievable. I hear the voice of my mother in my head and over the phone saying in her Black Italian Jewish South Side voice, "I hope you're writing about this". Even my Pops, over the phone, "you're journaling still?" in his cool collected voice peppered with a little excitement.  "Yes! I am..." if you count jotting about a crazy excursion that I just encountered in a few sentences and abruptly aborting it to get off the train, send a text or scroll aimlessly through IG for no particular reason.
So I just made a cup of coffee, found a cozy nook, a stimulating yet relaxing soundtrack, fed the cat, watered the plants, took out the trash, washed the dishes, and charged my laptop, so I have NO reason to be distracted (hopefully) to TELL the COMPLETE tale of WTF just happened this past month in a nutshell!

SO!
It all began in Red Bank, New Jersey with a small cast of shining Black actors who were the most...shiny and self contained, nuanced and delicately balanced with crazy and calm. I told the story of OoBlaDee, with Ruben Santiago Hudson, written by Regina Taylor about a girl Virginia August from Tuscaloosa who decided that she was going to take her destiny into her OWN damb hands and not wait in a "small room with a ticking clock" for her man to return from War, but to answer the telegram she received to join a traveling all women's jazz band. Playing her sax gives her freedom, it "lifts her into the air". So she hops on a train and the story of her meeting these extraordinary women who, too, have left their individual stories to follow their passion and make music. Throughout the course of their journey from St. Louis to Chicago, Gin Del Sol (thats the new name she gave herself, along with her new identity of being Creole -Momma New Orleans, Daddy Cuban by way of Spain---a Beyonce of the 40's in a sense!) she consorts with the Moon- Mother Time aka Amber Iman, arguing questioning lamenting the way time unfolds, pausing time, escaping yesterday, looking towards tomorrow, never fully present. When her man returns and finds her about to play the solo that will "blow a hole in the sky", she has to choose between finding her voice and stepping into this new life or returning to the life she always knew with the man who she loves but feels trapped with. She chooses her life as a musician...he leaves and gets lynched on the way home. Through the tragedy, she has to make the decision, does she fall apart or keep going? In the end, she keeps going, plays her note as a transformed woman, and "ascends" to a singing bowl.

DEEP RIGHT???!

In the meantime, Allison is figuring out her own DAMB voice in the mix of this process, working with all these seasoned actors and trying to be chill working with this movie Tony winning director, slaying off the demons that whisper to her that she's not enough, and mixing it with her recharging and "Earthing" outside her cast apartment on the grassy hill by the river bank, consorting with the clouds, water, marine birds, groundhogs, lightning bugs, and butterflies, and girlfriend hangs with the cast. It was the perfect balance of Work and Rest. Just a NJ transit ride away from the stinky bustling city. On top of it, figuring out WHERE TF in the city she is going to live after this fairy tale of a project. Why? because I'm always subletting. I haven't had a year lease in years.

Long story short, my dear friend Roberta (Australian by way of South Italy) opens her Williamsburg apartment to me with a room that opens to a terrace and I crash there until I find my Crown Heights sublet, that happens to be across the street from where I used to live before I got Motown tour. (my most luxurious apartment in Brooklyn and shortest sublet). As soon as I returned back to NYC in my Williamsburg pad, I went immediately back to rehearsals for a girl group concert in the gorgeous Sun Valley Idaho, at the same time that my beloved was there for his family reunion, which happened to be in the town next to Sun Valley!! WTH!? So not only do I perform in another gorgeous setting with some amazing performers (Dionne Figgins choreographer, Daniel Watts writer, Mike & Tiffany Evariste and Ashley Blanchett) but I get to see my baby love after months of not seeing him?? Okay God, you're just showing off now!
MEANWHILE...my bank account is slowly dwindling, and threatening to take my joy along with it. (the thorn in the rose bouquet)

After the straight up MAGICAL week of Idaho, performing this DOPE concert, taking names, enjoying the mountains with my boo, and frolicking in the beauty of Mother (Nature), I return to NYC clenching to the joy and peace I had from Idaho. But as the train literally crash landed at LGA (with a hard THUD) all my peace I was holding scattered like marbles all over the plane seat and I was abruptly reminded that I was BACK IN NYC BISH!! Almost immediately I was thrown back into the neurotic hustle of the city, getting into a slight altercation with my taxi driver, and holding back my rage with people who had ZERO spatial awareness as I struggled with my luggage.

That week, my managers lined up 3 auditions and I set up a job interview and prepared for my apartment move. The day of my two auditions and apartment move, the reality of the hustle that I was in crashed down on me. A tidal wave of emotions took over me and I wept and silently hyperventilated on the train ride from audition #1, sobbed on the bus ride from one apartment to the next with my luggage, cried bitterly in the park outside of my second audition, and was numb by the time I completed my second trip from Williamsburg to Crown Heights. Here I am in my thirties, lugging my life on a city bus, and running from one audition to the next, trying to land my next place to live and next gig. All I could think of was my friend's IG posts ("just booked a Broadway show! God is so good! #bookedandblessed" " My third bundle of joy in the oven! #familyfirst" "I said yes"#lastnamescombined2019) WHAT TF MAN! Where is MY victory post? I just wanted a WIN. Just ONE little win, of receiving the keys to an apartment or signing the contract of a new show, or showing an engagement ring...funny enough, to be honest, I think I actually AM low key winning. Even though I don't have any IG posts to tell about it, or the bags under my eyes are deep and I just can't seem to find a selfie that expresses the vibrance of my future and excitement of my present. I am actually DOING the DAMB THING. Even though my bank account isn't at $500,000.00 YET, (Hell, can a sister get $5,000), I still feel like I'm in a magical magnetic place of creating and planting and watering my garden of the quality of life I dream of.

I'm recalibrating my GPS to where my Heart lives. I've lived in my mind for too long. My logic isn't matching with my highest Self right now. I'm returning to living from my heart. As Phil Good mentioned, my Heart Chakra is now my 1st chakra, as my lower 3 have rolled into it. I am learning to operate from there. So of course, after the last callback of the week, I would return to Bryant Park to frolic in the greenery and run into a friend, and then dance like a gypsy barefoot in the grass and find a bunch of hula hoops and jugglers to play with while a New Orleans band plays on stage. I felt so free! I danced like I was naked in my living room in public! I played with hula hoopers and jugglers, made a new friend from Germany, and felt a sense of freedom that I only remember from when I was 6 years old. I carried that feeling on the train back home and for the first time, I felt unconcerned by anything that was outside of me. I was buzzing with the energy of life force- charged by New Orleans music, play, dance and Earth.

At times I feel like life is magical and I am a fairy goddess mischievously playing with the energies around me and bopping from pleasure to pleasure like a bee to pollen. And other times, I have felt like a depressed, defensive hopeless hobo who lives under a bridge, bitterly watching the world pass by me.
But what I have learned is that both are okay...
...hm...not thats not right...
I've found that both or wrong...hmmm no, thats too dualistic.
I don't know how to end this blog...
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FIN