Life is sure rock and roll, “I never promised you a rose garden” and all that.

I had three events last night and I wanted to be present and happy for them all. The first two were with the Evolutionary Collective on Zoom. A meeting and then assisting at the basic EC course. I made a difference in both.

Dessert was going to be a group of us reading the play Pygmalion at Gregor Samsa. I was so looking forward to being with my friends: Rani, Lola, Harry and Witold. And of course becoming a character or two.

Because of the course, I arrived an-hour-and-a-half late. A sweet oval of playreaders was in the centre of the room. I sat against a wall, eyes closed, feeling the weight of the last three hours and enjoying the music of the spoken word.

I could feel sleep nudging me but it was not yet time. We were together. I wasn’t going to miss this.

At the break between acts, Harry asked me to play Henry Higgins in the next one. He’s the pronunciation and grammatical expert who vows to transform the speech of Eliza Doolittle – a flower girl – into that of a duchess.

As I read, I struggled with fatigue, reading the small font, and twisting to see the book which my neighbour and I held. “Too bad, Bruce. Suck it up.”

I had my moments when I was Henry. Gosh, I love these readings. Hearing my voice turned in a strange way, in awe of others’ voices as they animated their characters.

After the act concluded, a fellow actor said he liked my voice but my Henry Higgins wasn’t “bad” enough. I wasn’t strong enough in that moment to let his comment float away. I was triggered. My mind knew the value of straight feedback but my heart was bleeding.

It took me awhile to get that he was right, that his comments were a gift, not an assault. I smiled inside my head that I had lost mere minutes in the mire, not days.

At another break between acts, someone asked Lola about her ideal man (or something like that). She replied with some version of “I don’t know.”

I mentioned to the group that the next love of my life is named Elise, and I haven’t met her yet. “She lives in Gent and she loves music and dancing.”

We went back to the reading. This time I was Mr. Doolittle, Eliza’s father.

I gave what I had for my character and I loved the long back-and-forth between Eliza and Henry. But no one knew what was happening inside the Mr. Kerr pretending to be the Mr. Doolittle.

Even though I had jovially described my familiar Elise story, now I was flooded with despair. My loneliness ground down deep into my bones. I was lost.

And I stayed in the woe, despite trying to pull myself up. The curtain closed on Pygmalion, a few words were passed between tired humans after midnight, hugs were shared, and off we went into the night, seeking the comfort of our beds.

***

I awoke with a word on my lips … WRITE. And so I am. The sorrow has lifted and I’m glad I wrote about it. I tell folks that I write to reach people, not for me. This morning it’s for both.

On we go