I spent today at Crystal Bridges, the famed museum in the middle of Nowhere (Bentonville), Arkansas, for day two of the Arkansas New Play Festival put on by Theater Squared in Fayetteville. Three plays were on the schedule today, but I skipped the first one (which will be repeated next weekend) in favor of sleeping an additional three hours. Last night I really thought about pushing myself, getting up earlier, giving into FOMO (fear of missing out). But then I thought, Screw that. I’m taking care of me and my body.

Good choice, Marcus, good choice.

The first play I saw this afternoon was Among the Western Dinka by Russell Leigh Sharman, a tale of redemption about a college professor who loves jazz music and is losing his job due to his poor choices. (He was passing certain students so they could keep their scholarships). At one point he told his daughter (or maybe it was her new boyfriend), “I know you don’t know what you’re doing–nobody does.” This became a thing later in the play. Another character asked the professor, “What ARE you going to do?” Making an obvious reference to jazz music, the professor said, “I don’t know–I’ll improvise.”

I think this is a good reminder, that no one really knows what they’re up to down here. Like, we can plan all we want, act as if we’re in control, but–as the homos say–Bitch, please. At some point, someone calls with bad news, we get stuck in traffic, or we eat something that upsets our stomach. In other words, nothing goes according to script because there is no script. Getting back to music, life isn’t a predetermined symphony, at least not from where we stand. Rather, like the professor alluded, life is an improvisation, something we make up as we go along.

Life changes, we change. We change, life changes. It’s this constant back and forth. You know, jazz.

The second play I saw this afternoon was Staging The Daffy Dame by Anne García-Romero and was about several actors getting ready for, or staging, a play called (you guessed it) The Daffy Dame. At this point in the day, I was having trouble focusing on the larger plot, but I did get hung up on a particular exchange early in the show. A nervous actress said, “Insecurity is ugly.” A friend responded, “Insecurity–is human.” I guess we all forget this. We think we have to be constantly confident and strong, brave every minute. And yet isn’t it normal, isn’t it human, to be one moment filled with inner fortitude, the next teeming with trepidation?

All day I’ve been listening to “The Leader of the Band” by Dan Fogelberg. It’s a beautiful tribute by a son to his father, and there’s a line that tears me apart every time I hear it. Referring to his father, the son says, “His heart was known to none.” Think about it–devastating. I can only imagine someone who keeps their heart closed is someone who is afraid, someone who thinks they have to know what they’re doing all the time, someone who hides their emotions because “insecurity is ugly.” I used to be someone like this. It’s no way to live. I’d read self-help and religious books that told me how I should act or feel and would stuff down anything that didn’t match up, even those things that were true for me. But here’s the thing–you can’t stuff down the truth–it always comes up. So now I think, What’s my honest experience as a human being? And if the answer is that I feel lost, insecure, worried, or frightened, then that’s what I say (and I probably say it on the internet). In my experience, this is how you make your heart known–stating the simple truth. This is how you set yourself free.