Can A Broadway Musical Save Your Life?

Exactly two years ago, last week, I went to New York City for the first time over a long weekend.

Exactly two years ago, last week, I saw my first Broadway show at Studio 54 - Roundabout Theatre Company.

Exactly two years ago, She Loves Me entered my life and I have never stopped being thankful.

...

I should go back to how this trip came about, though. It is important to start at the beginning.

Near the beginning of January 2016, Zachary Levi shared a photo on his Twitter of the poster for She Loves Me. How I knew of Zachary Levi had little to do with his work as an actor. I knew him more for his faith than his acting. 

I researched the musical and became more excited about it, seeing that the cast also included Laura Benanti and Jane Krakowski. I began to hope and pray that I could see this musical. That I should be so lucky to see this musical. It was a musical my mom would also love, and maybe it was an experience we could have together. 

I sat down at the dining room table just a couple days later, and asked my mom if we had any plans in March or April. My parents were waiting to find out if they were moving back out west, and living in Pittsburgh put us within driving distance of New York City. I asked her if she had any plans and she looked at me in the way mothers do and responded, "Not that I am aware of right now. What do you want?"

"There is a musical opening on Broadway called, She Loves Me. It is the musical that was inspired by Shop Around the Corner and led to movies like, You've Got Mail. Zachary Levi is in it, but I think we could have a good time." 

My mom and I talked about it and she told me to keep her posted on when tickets became available. We bought tickets. I researched hotels and we found one a few blocks from Times Square. I requested the days off from my full-time job and my last day at my second job was just one week before our departure. We bought seats on MegaBus to provide us transportation. 

Our time was set. Our trip was planned. We were going to be experiencing New York City together, as a last hurrah before my family left the Mid-Atlantic. My mom and I were both excited. I had not yet been to New York City, despite my 10 year residency in Pittsburgh, and my mom had not been since my little brother marched in the Macy's Parade in 2009. 

...

Flash forward to the things I can tell you happened while we were in New York City. 

On Thursday - we took the bus from Pittsburgh to State College to NYC. We walked from the bus stop past the Fashion Institute and Madison Square Garden to our hotel at 40th and 8th in Midtown.

On Friday - 
I got hit on by a guy dressed like Iron Man in Times Square. I did not take a picture with him.
I bought a Sophia the First dress for the little girl I babysat on a weekly basis at the Disney store. 
My mom told me we had to go to M&M World. I told her we had to go to Rockefeller Center. We did both.
My mom and I bought umbrellas in the MoMA gift shop. I made her go inside Rockefeller and stand in the lobby with me, so I could stare at the ceiling and walls for ten minutes. 
We went to Nintendo World. I bought a Starfox t-shirt. Under the hem it says, "Do a barrel roll." It is still my favorite shirt.
We went to a quilt store my mom wanted to visit. Our hotel was two blocks from The Drama Book Shop and Midtown Comics. I dragged my mother into each. 

On Saturday -
We got up and took a cab down to Dominque Ansel's Bakery for a cronut and pavlova. (My mom bought me a cookbook this year for Christmas on meringue. She wants me to learn to make pavlova for her -- and she confirmed at least one recipe was included before buying me said cookbook.)
We walked to a pencil shop a few blocks away in SoHo. We saw the Flatiron Building by accident.
We took a cab back up to Rockefeller Center. We went to see the windows at Saks 5th Avenue, which had Outlander costumes on display. We went inside and hunted down the bridal salon, because I was going through bridal sales consultant withdrawal. 
We went into St. Patrick's Cathedral, because it was across the street and I am obsessed with church architecture. It was also raining, and provided shelter. 
We walked to the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, and the Chrysler Building. (One of my favorite television shows is White Collar, and I had to see those places.) I stared at the ceiling in Grand Central and declared Chrysler more impressive than Empire State. 
We walked back through Rockefeller Center and had dinner in Times Square.

On Sunday - we took the bus from NYC to State College to Pittsburgh.

On Monday - I had included the extra day off work to recover from traveling. I finally saw a sports medicine doctor, other than my ankle surgeon. Diagnosis - concussion without loss consciousness. 

The fact that I successfully navigated New York City with a concussion I had been battling for a month at that point still amazes me. My head was throbbing almost constantly and we were out of the hotel for hours at a time. I had traveled to London six months before to see Hamlet, and was sick, and now had traipsed a decent portion of New York City with my head feeling like it might split open at any moment. 

This is the part that is important, though. This is what I wrote all of this about, and is proof, I think, that a musical can save your life. 

During the entire performance of She Loves Me, not once did I think about what I thought was only a horrific month long migraine. Not once did I think about work, or what work I would still have when I returned. For the entire performance, I sat in Studio 54 and was a witness to a musical revival that would go on to be nominated for eight Tony Awards. I listened to the orchestra and I heard the actors sing their songs, dance, and I fell completely in love with the story and all the work everyone put into telling it. Without finding my ticket, I do not remember if I went to Friday or Saturday's show, but does it honestly matter? No, I do not think so. I was there and that is what matters.

Did I stay for part of stage door? Yes. Zachary Levi came out and set up speakers on a chair and played us music, since we were standing out in the cold. He signed my ticket and we talked about Broadway and how his first musical, First Date, had been re-staged in Pittsburgh a month prior. And then I was cold and my mom and I caught a cab back to the hotel. She asked if I was sure I was okay leaving, because he was going to go back down the line taking pictures with anyone that wanted one, and I told her I was more than okay. I would have offered to take pictures for other people, because I did not need a picture with Zachary Levi to remember She Loves Me. I was going to remember it. How was I going to forget? I had fallen in love with Broadway and New York City. My mom had created a monster. 

Are the events of that weekend a little out of order from how I noted them above? Most likely. I was concussed after all. (Do not wear flip flops in the rain and wipe out on pavement in a grocery store parking lot in mid-March. It hurts a lot and you can significantly concuss yourself without ever smacking your head off the ground.)

None of that is important in the scheme of things. I can go back and look at the dates on my photographs and pull out a calendar and put it all back in proper order if I ever need to. The point is, I fell in love with She Loves Me, and the entire Broadway experience. I even emailed the theatre, asking where I could send a letter telling the cast how much I loved it and the artistic director emailed me back and told me if I mailed something they would post it where the cast could see it. 

I never wrote and mailed that letter. Vestibular therapy took over, and I forgot about committing that letter to paper, because my brain hurt trying to remember every day things. But that changed nothing. I bought the soundtrack when it came out, and I listened to it all the time. I learned the words to the songs and would sing them in my car or around the house. How could I not? 

Fast forward to November 2016. On Black Friday, I was driving home from post-work errands and star-gazing, when a driver pulled out on the road I was on, to turn left, right in front of me. Even with attempting to swerve there is still that split second acknowledgement where you know your are going to collide. Within fractions of a second the new car I had bought just one month after returning from NYC deployed 8 of its 10 airbags upon impact, and came to rest off the side of the road, in the shrubs in front of railroad tracks...totaled. 

Police called it, improper entrance of a highway, and declared it the other vehicles' fault. Sprained left ankle. Sprained left hand. Severe lower leg contusion. Closed head injury and whiplash from the airbags. I took my first ride in an ambulance that night - I do not recommend it. The emergency room staff would not give me any pain killers or braces until I asked for them. 

In layman's terms, sore and re-concussed. I had only been discharge from physical therapy a month prior, and I was about to do it all over again.

But do you know what happened less than a week later? BroadwayHD broadcasted She Loves Me in theaters. I had seen the show once with a concussion, how would this be any different? I sat in my local theater, after it battled with technical issues, and once again forgot about anything beyond She Loves Me. 

The second time was different, though. I finally got to see Laura Benanti in the lead female role. She had been out sick during the weekend my mom and I were in New York. Her understudy, Laura Shoop, was amazing, but seeing and hearing Laura Benanti perform was brilliant. I may be a soprano when I sing, but I am not a soprano like Laura Benanti.  

One of my great loves has always been listening to music in my car with the windows down and the volume up, but in the wake of the accident, I could no longer do that. Anything higher than volume level 7 out of 38 hurt my ears and my head. I could not listen to Christmas music, because Sleigh Ride had been playing when the accident happened. I could not listen to the radio either, because I no longer felt safe singing in the car. I listened to She Loves Me often throughout December and January. It was the one of the only things that drowned out the recovery process. 

My ankle surgeon told me in an email after the accident, before I was able to get in and see him, to be sure I took time to rest, relax, and heal. I told him I did not know how. Seeing She Loves Me was a step in that direction. It felt like I should not be spending the $20 to see it, but at the same time like I had to. 

The car accident took a lot from me. Even though my injuries were mercifully minor since my car was so new, the accident turned my general anxiety into a full blown anxiety and panic disorder. It has been a year-and-a-half and I am still finding balance between medication regimens and counseling. I am still working to recover financially from losing a brand new car, and I am still learning to accept that a car is just a car. 

Do you want to know what saved my life, though? She Loves Me. I never got to write the cast my letter in April 2016, and maybe it was important that I did not write them then, so I could write these words now (also my handwriting is always in cursive, so it is not a letter they would have been able to read quickly in passing). 

To the cast and crew of She Loves Me, I want to say, "Thank you." Thank you for being my inaugural Broadway show. The weekend I saw your show, the weekend of April 8th and 9th, not only did you push aside the concussion I had, but you also re-wrote my association with April 9th. You took it from the day a student attacked fellow students at my high school alma mater, to the weekend I first got to experience New York City. 

Not only did you do that, but you helped me in the wake of my car accident. I started singing in the car again to She Loves Me, which was no small thing a year ago. I was not sure I would ever sing in the car again, and if I am not singing in the car, I would rarely sing and I absolutely love it. If I had any acting or dancing ability - which I do not - I would dream of Broadway. Instead, since I can only sing, I will sing with you instead. Well, the recorded you. 

She Loves Me introduced me to the Laura Benanti of Broadway and I learned that the woman who I had seen in a couple Law & Order episodes had some pipes. I will forever be jealous of your vocal range, appreciated our back and forth concerning the designer of your wedding gown a little more than a year ago now, and you also gave me a deeper appreciation for your background and talent. I hope I get to see you live on Broadway next time I am there for a show. I am so thankful you took care of yourself during She Loves Me to recover. 

She Loves Me gave me more of you, Zachary Levi, and even my mom told people when we came home how impressed she was with you. She only knew what I had told her, which had more to do with your faith and who you were as a person, and less to do with the acting projects you had been in over the years. I saw how much you care for your fans by being willing to stand out in the cold with us, talk to us, and dance with us. Even though I was not there for the entire time you were outside, we were both impressed. You continue to impress me every day and your social media presence is actually a delight. 

To the other cast and crew members of She Loves Me: Gavin, Jane, Nicholas, Byron, Tom, Peter, Scott Ellis, David Rockwell, and so many others to name right here - it would not be the show I love without you. It would not be half of what I fell in love with without the portrayals you breathed life into, the sets you created, the costumes you designed, and the music you played to accompany those on stage. I suffer an extreme bias that your Tony nominations were set against the likes of Hamilton. 

I guess someone might say that it is ridiculous to put forward that a musical can save your life. Maybe I should credit my faith in God more. Maybe I should credit my family, friends, and the medical professionals that have dealt with my very real aftermath. But, music is a universal language. And I think musicals can be, too. I believe it was a blessing I was able to see She Loves Me on Broadway to begin with, and again in theaters eight months later. How many people can say they get to revisit one of their best experiences at a time when they critically need the positivity of it? 

All of you are my dear friends. I do not know what my life would look like without She Loves Me. How can you ever repay the cast and creative team behind the musical that taught you to sing again, to turn up the volume just a little bit higher, and roll down the windows again for just one song at a time? How do you properly thank them for being the best sort of first time Broadway experience two years after it happened? 

I am not sure if there is a way I can tell you how much I love you all. But maybe, right here, with these words two years late, not written in cursive, or put up in a place where you all might see it, is a place I can start. And maybe one day, I will run into each of you, or get to have an extended conversation with you over coffee or drinks or food, and I can tell you what it will mean then even more than it means right now.


Yours, Dear Friends,
Sheridan Hughes

Even In the Bad

Today is a bad day. 

That is a lie. 

Today is a bad day in a string of many recent bad days.

Even days that might seem like good days are often bad days under the surface.

What do I do to counter bad days? I have "unhealthy coping mechanisms," according to a health quiz offered by my employer. Not all of my coping mechanisms are unhealthy, but merely selecting "alcohol" as one of the many ways I handle stress or anxiety gets me the stamp. The funny thing is, I rarely drink, even when I am stressed, but when I do drink it is usually with friends, and I looked forward to it the most when I am stressed. Mutual stress is usually what enables my friends and I to actively schedule time to meet for drinks. 

I think it is the combination of nursing something for a few hours and knowing that I can be with those people nursing that same drink for those few hours. It is guaranteed social contact, and for an introvert like me, that is probably not too unhealthy. There are not enough dogs in my sphere to love on every day, or enough small children to hug me around my kneecaps. There are drinks, though, and I can spare ten dollars for that here and there. 

But today. Today is a bad day. 

Things feel off and out of sorts. I know an anxiety-panic attack is brewing, and I want to prevent it, or control when it happens, but I know I cannot, which makes it worse. 

I am tired, but not the sleepy kind of tired, although I would love to sleep. I am exhausted physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. It is a weird way to feel consistently. 

I know it is my anxiety and whatever chronic pain I still have skittering around from my car accident. My anxiety likes to make use of the pain channels my car accident created last year, or so I am beginning to deduce. And today, I am in a lot of pain, so today is a bad day. 

My head and neck hurt like they did when I had a concussion and whiplash, and I feel a little like the world is tilting on its axis, or maybe I am. 

My shoulder hurts where my trapezius muscle spasm was. My whole left arm aches and throbs down to my thumb, where I sprained part of my hand. 

My left ankle has traded off different pain feelings today - sometimes it is electric (which I know is nerve pain) and sometimes today it has throbbed and ached. That should be more tendon/ligament, but despite my sprain, avulsion fracture, and mild fraying, it is still objectively stable, so that too has to be a different form of nerve pain or the anxiety. Other times, like last night it is a sharp, stabbing pain only when walking and then it is gone. 

Do you know what I do when days are bad? I like to buy things. This, of course, is not a healthy habit either, for myself or for my budget. 

I do not buy clothes, though. I buy books. I buy music. I hunt for movies. 

My budget is tight, so I have gotten much better. Where once bookstores and places like Best Buy used to be traps, now I scan the upcoming releases and plot out which ones I want and which ones I can live without; which ones I have time to acquire, and which may need to be bought closer to release. 

I sold a lot of my books and movies this summer and fall for things like gas money when my budget was bare, before my second job. Now, I have a different kind of obsession. I pay attention more to what comes out when - whether in theaters or home release - and I weigh my options. 

What has not changed is I still go to the movies alone. I also go to bookstores alone. Even when I am not buying anything, bookstores are still comforting. They feel familiar and their scent remains unchanged. Movie theaters are much the same feeling, but I do not have the same time to spend in them between my two jobs. 

I suppose there was no larger point to writing this piece than to say that, today, I am having a bad day. My whole body hurts. I have been taking ibuprofen in excess of 2000mgs a day for a couple of weeks now. Some days, it helps, but on days like today, it has done nothing, and tears prickle at the corners of my eyes trying to move past the pain and the anxiety and the anxiety that pain creates, and the vicious cycle that swirls around as that snake eats its tail forever.

But, I know when I go home that I have a few newer books waiting for me to open them, or movies asking to be watched for the 12th time. I know that I can turn on an album and just exist in the bad. 

Having a bad day does not demand I do anything about it. That is what I am trying to learn. People keep thinking that there is something you can do about it. There are doctors and medication, all of which I have and am thankful for, but there are just some days when having those things makes no difference and it is going to be a bad day, even if I cry for God to take it from me. 

Even in the bad, though, books are written. 

Even in the bad, films are made.

Even in the bad, songs are recorded. 

Sometimes, the point of those things is to be there in the bad. Sometimes, the bad makes them better.

The Past 3.5 Years

A lot has happened in the last three-and-a-half years. Too many things to tell in a condensed version, if I were being honest. I sit here on a shortened lunch break, in my second full-time position that I have now been in for 10 months, since leaving my previous and first full-time job. I have ended up so far of left field from where I thought I would be.

When last I wrote to you in April 2014, my last post happened about two weeks before I fell in a Best Buy parking lot, after leaving disappointed that they did not have the complete series of Chuck. I still blame my compulsion to watch the show, every time I feel poorly, on the fact that I was in the throws of new discovery when my original injury occurred.

It was one of those bad sprains that I had not experienced in almost two years by that point. It was my right ankle. I had to drive home on it. My left knee was bleeding.

I fell in front of a guy and his girl as they were getting out of their car. They made no move to help me, but when I fell he stepped forward and said, "Oh shit! That looked like it hurt." Why don't you walk over here and I will show you exactly how much it hurt.

In August 2014, I secured tickets to see Hamlet at the Barbican in London for a friend and I. I told my chiropractor that I had bought Hamlet tickets later than week and she said, "For where?" I said, London. And she said, "For when?" I said, October 2015. She had no idea I wanted to go. I said to see Hamlet or to London? To either. New level of nerd status unlocked.

I met my ankle surgeon for the first time on 12 September 2014. It was an appointment in the middle of the morning. I had been referred by a different orthopaedic surgeon to him earlier in the week, as that orthopaedic had no idea what to do with my ankle pain, since my ankle "appeared stable." I left that office believing that surgeon was an idiot, and praying the surgeon he referred me to would know what he was talking about.

That sports medicine foot & ankle surgeon declared that the x-ray I had had taken a few days after my sprain was bad, because my foot was pointed, and the MRI I had three weeks before seeing him was too dark to determine if I only had the contusion my PCP and the referring ortho thought. I had to go for a CT scan, because he thought my ankle was actually broken. Two weeks later, the results of my CT scan proved his suspicions correct. ENTER Surgery #1.

I had my ankle surgery to repair the fracture and tearing ligaments on 23 October 2014. I was non-weight bearing for 6-8 weeks. I came off my crutches the second week of December. By Christmas, my surgeon said I could drive myself again. It was the best Christmas gift I got that year, which I know sounds ridiculous.

At the end February 2015, I was offered an entry level position with a background screening company fives minutes from my house. You could not ask for an easier morning commute if you thought to ask for such a thing in the first place. Background screenings was not online marketing for publishing. I actually really enjoyed working at the job, though. The stories of people misbehaving are incredible. If I had taken better notes, upon expiry of my confidentiality in October 2018, even the handful of stories I have saved will probably make the best stories.

At the end of July 2015, despite periodic check-ins with my surgeon since being discharged from his care and physical therapy in April, I was back in his office. My ankle still hurt, and especially my Achilles tendon. I had suffered contracture after the stabilization procedure, so rehab was initially tasking and my recovery was slower than both he and my PT anticipated. That visit was the first time, I baked for his office staff and his residents. He had been nothing but kind, patient, and exceeded his job responsibilities by answering a deluge of questions via email for months or engaging in the most nerdy conversations as distraction in his office. If he was going to have to put up with me more, I could at least repay the kindness.

He said at 9-10 months out, my pain should not be so acute. He ordered an MRI to make sure something had not been missed, or that anything was tearing. A week later, in August, I was in his Oakland office for my MRI results. A resident came in, and introduced himself, asking if I was the one responsible for the cupcakes. I told him if they did not appear often, then yes. He told me my Achilles was developing micro-tears, confirming the original suspicion. My surgeon came in and after discussion, recommended a second surgery to release the tightness in my tendon, and stop the tears from worsening.

He then looked at me and asked when my trip was planned. October. He said there was no reason I could not wait to have the surgery until I was back. Outside of the fact that I had no idea how to coordinate surgery around a newer full-time job, it was relieving to hear that my ankle was not going to cancel the trip that I had been planning almost as long as I had known him. I asked him if he was absolutely sure. He told me, "Your ankle will not explode between now and October. Besides, I am not going to deprive you of a once-in-a-lifetime trip to London."

My friend and I were in London from 14 October 2015 to 20 October 2015. My friend flew in Tuesday night, before we left Wednesday evening, and flew home Wednesday evening, after we got home Tuesday night. We saw Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet at the Barbican on 17 October 2015. We left over two hours early for the show. We got lost between our flat and the theater due to restricted line maintenance on the tube. We got to the theatre just 10 minutes shy of curtain. My friend hit me in the arm when the curtain rose and Benedict was sitting there, as if I could not see him, too.

ENTER Surgery #2, 22 October 2015. One year to the day of the first. I am nothing if not consistent. Even though the surgery was not as complicated as the first one, and dealt with only soft tissue and no bones, my recovery was difficult. I was getting sick when we left for London. I lost my voice and ran a fever most of the time we were there, but still we went out and did almost everything we planned to do before we had arrived. There was minimal rest and I had to stop taking certain medications while we were there, because of my up-coming surgery.

I was off work from London through the end of October, recovering from post-op. At the beginning of November, I was back in the office. A week later, I was in my PCP's office. The illness I thought I was recovering from in the nic of time for my surgery not to be cancelled, roared back causing ear, sinus, and upper respiratory infections. My PCP told me I had to stay home Monday-Wednesday, and could only go back to work on Thursday. The following week, on Tuesday, my mom took me to the ER, because it hurt to breath. My surgeon thought I was too far out from post-op for it to be a clot, but nevertheless, precautions had to be taken.

When you walk into an ER at 6pm at night, complaining of chest pain and difficulty breathing 3 weeks out of surgery, medical staff descend on you rather quickly. One of the nurses talked to me about the book I was finishing, an investigative journalist's expose on an angel of death, The Good Nurse. She thought I was brave for reading that while in a hospital. My mother thought I was morbid for reading it at all.

My mom and I did not go home until well after 9pm. As we were pulling into the garage, she said she forgot to tell me that I had package. Mail is always nice to receive, especially during surgical recovery. She asked what I had ordered. I told her I had not ordered anything. She asked again, saying the package was from London. I told her I certainly had not ordered anything from overseas since we had returned. It was a stretch, but I had been very good, despite the increase of my obsession that I did not think could be made any worse.

It was from a press company I did not recognize. I ripped open the envelope and pulled out a special, slipcase edition of the Shakespeare documentary, Muse of Fire. I almost screamed. I read the letter. Months before I had been to London, I had submitted my name for a drawing to win a copy of the documentary from Shakespeare Magazine. Since we submitted our address with our entry, they did not announce a winner prior to shipping the prize. The slipcase was signed by the two creators of Muse of Fire--Dan Poole and Miles Terera, as well as Sir Ian McKellan, Dame Judy Dench, and Tom Hiddleston. That night, after a long day of work, an evening in the ER, and a diagnosis of nothing more serious than pleurisy, I curled up in bed and put the documentary on. I told my friends in a message what had come in the mail. My friend, that had been to London with me, told me that if we were not as close as we were, she would shank me for that in a heartbeat.

For 90 minutes, I was able to forget how bad it hurt to exist between my lungs and my ankle. On the heels of a trip predicated on consuming Shakespeare, that my surgeon had allowed me to delay my second surgery for, and on the wings of recovering from that surgery and my respiratory infections, Shakespeare had brilliantly timed his arrival again.

Four weeks later, when I was cleared to drive by my ankle surgeon, I went and saw NT Live's encore broadcast of Coriolanus from the Donmar Warehouse down in the SouthSide Works. Within seven weeks, seeing both Benedict and Tom play Shakespearean characters, I thought Tom was the better Shakespearean actor, despite the fact that Hamlet is still my favorite play. Again, being able to drive in time to take myself to see it, was amazing. 

I know it seems like this post has been more about the medical treatment that has consumed my time over the past 3.5 years. It is actually not about that, but there is too much in the details to be shared in an overview. I just wanted to catch you up in big strokes.

It would take too much time to count all the conversations I have had with my ankle surgeon that were both about my surgeries and not, but also the level of nerdism we possess for books, movies, and tv shows we both enjoy. It would take a lot of space to recount my friend's and I's adventures in London: the smells of a perfect day in Hyde Park, the sounds of my friend collapsing in our flat kitchen over Hank Williams tunes in a fit of laughter, or the sheer awe of seeing Hamlet live and praying to God that the adrenaline of almost missing curtain would not ruin it.

I could tell you that instead of having a third surgery in October 2016, I got a new job with a company I submitted 14 applications to, between November 2015 and September 2016, before getting this job, which I love. It still in a field with no relationship to marketing, publicity or publishing. I work with physicians every day. 

I could tell you that I totaled my first, solo purchased, brand new car in an accident in November. It created a small fracture in my left ankle, which my surgeon only found six months later, this May, since it presented as a mild sprain in the direct aftermath. I could tell you that 3 weeks after learning of my bone chip, I fell and sprained that left ankle while crossing the street back to my office during lunch, and how when I saw my ankle surgeon the next day, I was reading Murder On the Orient Express.

He told me, "I heard you fell, again." Yes. "And that you have hurt yourself, again." Yes. "Sheridan, we have talked about this more than once. You need to stop falling and hurting yourself." I am gravity's favorite test subject. Then we talked about the book and upcoming movie, and how he was going to see someone that weekend who shared a name with someone in the book, before he even touched my ankle. It is his modus operandi. He knows the pain it will cause when he presses on an injury. With me, because our nerd is so similar, and it was a discovery he made after the first surgery, he provides distracting conversation. I relax and my body is easier to manipulate for things like range of motion tests and evaluating the ligaments included in the injury.

I could tell you that while driving in and out of the city for work in the past few weeks, I have listened to a Shakespeare lecture from Oxford University on Henry V, and whether Hal is hero or villain, and how I had not thought to evaluate his moral character after watching The Hollow Crown.

What I should tell you is that I have written and read nothing like I intended when I created this space three-and-a-half years ago. I have seen a lot of theater, though. I went to New York City for the first time in April 2016, to see She Loves Me on Broadway. I watched it again in a theater encore a week after my car accident this past fall, and it made me feel almost human again. I have seen NTLive's War Horse, Treasure Island, Man and Superman, Coriolanus, an encore of Hamlet, and finally this past October, after missing it due to both ankle surgeries the previous two years, both screenings of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein. A couple of weeks ago, I saw Disney's Newsies on Broadway, when it had its theater encore appearance. 

While I did not keep up with writing about writing, reading, film, or Shakespeare as I had intended, I have consumed more theater and literature than I also thought. I have seen more movies than I can count, and too many for my bank account to be outwardly proud. I started a new job with a company I have wanted to work for since after my second ankle surgery, and I love what I do, even though it is pretty left of what I thought I would be doing with my life. I can see myself building a life here in this city, which I was not sure would happen for me as I hoped. 

For now, until the words come again, I pray you are well. My con artist cat, Caffrey, and I wish you grand adventures, enough film in your camera to capture them, and enough ink in your pen to preserve them. 

When You Suffer from Withdrawal and Need a Written Word Fix

It began like my Tuesdays generally do: with an open to close day at the bridal salon. Just tonight I was talking with a coworker, at my second job, that I never truly saw a need to dislike the general public until I began working retail. They can be an interesting amalgamation of personalities, but in the wedding industry, they are generally nosey, or "simply curious" is how they might phrase it. Figurative language at its finest, I assure you.

I talk about books and reading often at the bridal salon. That and what shows we are all watching on television. If I do not, I get to answer, "Are you seeing anyone?" or "Are you married?" multiple times a day, when I am not asking the necessary nuptial-oritented questions. Being a sales consultant affords me the ability to meet the people us readers only ever dream about. One of the brides I worked with is a manager at a B&N in the metro area. Another was having a literature themed wedding: she looking for something Roaring 20s, her groom to be decked in Regency attire. There is something satisfying about knowing all those Pinterest book lovers' wedding photographs are not staged and that such couples actually exist. It gives readers like me hope that a wedding registry at Barnes&Noble may, one day, become in-vogue or a trend worth initiating.

This particular Tuesday began with a series of text message exchanges between myself and a girlfriend I had not seen in over a month. Considering our fourteen minute commute between front doors, and the fact that I perceive Denver, Colorado to be "down the road," such extended absence is frowned upon. We were to grab coffee at the conclusion of my shift, presuming we closed on time, which almost never happens rolling into summer wedding season.

By her lunch break, we were calling for a second rain check. She felt bad. Someone had given her tickets to the Pens game that night and she wanted me to come with her. Puck dropped at 7pm. I reminded her I was not done until 7, but the Devil often controls quitting time. She would need to leave no later than 6 if she was to beat out traffic, maybe earlier for decent parking. I insisted she make arrangements with someone who actually had been to a hockey game before and we would have coffee another time.

She relented and I promptly moved up plans with a friend I was not to see until Thursday. We graduated high school together and, in Fall 2012, realized we had transferred to the same university back home after taking a seat in a Travel Writing class; she a Writing major, myself a History major. Since our December university graduation, and despite our seven minute door-to-door, it had been even longer since I had seen her. I had told her I was in need of a bookish fix. It followed in a similar series of texts recollected as such:

S: Hey! Plans have changed tonight. Still available to go book hunting?

A: Absolutely. I am always up for books.

S: Brilliant. My friend got tickets to a Pens game that starts when my shift is finished. I told her I would pass on attending.

A: Really? If given the choice is it not obvious: books? men wrestling on ice?

S: I will always choose books if given the choice, but I understand the allure of free tickets.

A: Taken. What time?

S: Done with work at 7 o'clock. Will confirm when we actually lock the shop door.

A: See you then.

Truly a magnificent alternate activity. I caught her up on my new, and rabid, love of Shakespeare brought on by the Hollow Crown. I explained to her the premise and the actors present: Ben Whishaw, Sir Patrick Stewart, Jeremy Irons, Tom Hiddleston, Clarence Posey, the actor who plays Argus Filch whose name always escapes me when I need it, and the awful villain of a business man in Sahara, among others. I then told her that Benedict Cumberbatch, whom she refers to a Fandom Fingers (an origin story I shall have to delight you with another time), is to be Richard III in the continuing Hollow Crown installments in 2016, after assuming Hamlet on the London stage in 2015.

Immediately, she declared me one of "those fans." Her insistence that Shakespeare characters are often flat followed us, from Best Buy to the Drama section of B&N, with the conclusion that Hamlet is her least favorite of the ones she has read because he is "a whiny, spoiled, complaining bitch of a prince who gets nearly everyone, including himself, killed." How her delivery, so matter of fact, often threatens to crush my rib cage in upon my lungs and heart.

I make no excuses about it, though. I experience explosive excitement when I know literature is being translated well. I can become excited about most things with minimal effort. If I am passionate about it or if it is particularly clever, I am hooked. And yet, she writes me off with chagrin when she is the one who admitted to me that she broke down and watched the Avengers for the same reason every fangirl on tumblr did: for Loki. One example of why I avoid tumblr like the modern day bubonic plague.

I am, most astutely, the kettle to her pot.

Despite the sharp contrasting views we may take in regards to the classics, there are things upon which we mutually agree:

1. Outside of J.K. Rowling, no author may have defined our childhood more than Brian Jacques, whose last name I will still pronounce as if I were in intermediate French class in school and not in the Western-PA butchered pronunciation of "Jakes." I can think of no other reason an English author would allow such lazy syllabic emphasis.

2. A night of books will always be a better option than hockey because I do not need to wear a coat inside a temperature controlled bookstore. And why would I bother going to a hockey game? I am going to sit there reading and be cold doing it, without access to Earl Grey or English Breakfast or Chai tea. As a tea and not a coffee drinker, this is threatening violence or silence.

Her points cannot really be argued with or, for me, I can think of no better counter arguments. I will leave that to someone who understands the hockey. My sports knowledge is limited to four things: soccer (because I played it), basketball (a lot of my friends played it), equestrian (I trained for it and had that one PC game that taught you all the rules), and tennis (my little brother was doubles champion one summer, after three hip surgeries). My friend is an addict right along with me and that is vastly important. It takes a reader to know a reader. To have someone willing to hold you accountable in a book shop and vice versa, not in the way your mothers do because you cannot dawdle, but in the "they close at nine, we cannot sleep here" kind of way.

You need to have that friend who will make you feel better by telling you something that speaks to you on a core level. Whether it is recommending an audio book you chewed through in under four days because it became compulsion or it is the announcement that J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of Beowulf is being released after NINETY years and what wretched grinch could possibly have withheld it for so long. You will both mutually agree they are, in the most cliched sense, tyrants.

My friend is the kind of friend who will go with me to every midnight Hobbit and Lord of the Rings premiere until the end of time. She also told me that anyone that did not think Desolation and Benedict's, unfortunately for her, perfect embodiment of Smaug was not the most accurate and fantastical thing to be realized about childhood that I should promptly remove them from my friends circle, both in reality and by virtual association. No one deserves to have such negativity in their lives.

That is the kind of friend you need. The kind where the stress of life can be alleviated by saying one word: Books. No question mark. No explication. Just books and maybe, going through withdrawal and they will be all too happy to assist in getting you both a fix of the best possible thing to be made of paper and ink. They will be the friend that would not think it ridiculous to take the literary tours, to fly all the way to Paris just to see Shakespeare & Company, who think Half Priced Books is a marvel, and who insist the Tattered Cover, in Denver, is what your heaven will look like.

Sometimes the cure for going through withdrawal for the book worm in us, is to take one friend, get in the car, get in an argument over literature or listen to a live recording of David Sedaris at Carnegie Hall, and drive. To a book store. A Starbucks. No where and back.

After all, there are two choices when you believe the words are missing: to read them or to write them.

Alright, We Need to Have It Out

We need to have a rather, in my opinion, important discussion. I know it will ruffle feathers, but we must draw lines in the sand or find the overlap in the venn diagram.

I want to discuss this literary medium oft referred to as "audio books." There is an individual wall for them in my city's tragic excuse for a library. Whole websites like Audible.com serve the every whim of endless novel recitations for those whom public transportation makes up 98% of their daily work commute or the avid road trip-takers who can cover breaths of road in a day.

If you are anything like my mother, you love a good audio book. She ensures she has a neat little stack of romance and comedy or the ill-fated, often microwave spliced experiment of those two genres. She would never consider leaving our town's mere adequate selection untouched when a road trip presents itself.

Conversely, if you have ever road-tripped with anyone like my dear mum, you most likely hate audio books. Maybe it is solely because the things she chose are not your first choices. Maybe auditory is not your preferred learning paradigm; it is most definitely not mine. Even more, perhaps it is the often static voices audio books are read in that make them truly dreadful 'trapped in a car for hours' listening. 

Why am I asking you these questions? Wednesday brought about a sudden change of heart for me. 

Let me explain my philosophy, first. I find myself a purist when it comes to my books: hardcover over all else, trade paper is usually what things are run in from the off now, and mass markets are strictly airport fauna. My father, forevermore known as Captain to you, decided that I should be privy to the first incarnation of Amazon's Kindle. A dreadful mistake on his part, however jovial his intentions had been. I despise it with a hatred toward something containing literature like you would not believe. It has no backlight, because that is frightful news for your retinas, and was always a sucker punch trying to turn the page. I kept flipping the Kindle itself, not pressing the 'next page' button. As comical as that may be, I refuse to believe that publishing will ever cease to exist in physical form. I will not allow it. The blessed thing about books? They do not run out of battery. 

Audio books are about the only thing I dislike on near equal ground to my first generation Kindle. I do not like having a story read to me. Part of me screams at the narrator, "If you are not going to delineate characters by changing your voice, you should not bother at all." The majority of me simply gets frustrated and knows I can read the book faster reading it than hearing it. 

Until Wednesday. You must understand a crucial shift. I positively love radio theatre, especially out of Great Britain. If you have not listened to the comedy radio show, "Cabin Pressure," there is actually little I can do for you than tell you go drop fifty dollars and wait with baited breath for the final episode to come out like the rest of us. If you have not heard the Radio Theatre's recordings of Oliver Twist and the Screwtape Letters, especially, Amazon has become your best friend.

Yet, this turn out is something different entirely. I began listening to an audio book on Wednesday night and have not stopped since. I am utterly enraptured. Completely caught up in the story, like every reader should be when they crack the spine, as cringe worthy a sound as it is. The narrator is exquisite, the prose eloquent, the narrative itself is a mystery thriller during the French Revolution. There is a sprinkle of romance. An impressively renown actor lends his vocal talent to the storyline and each character is an individual. He and she talk, act, and move different from each other. It is like having my own mind read the story out loud.

It is something we all do as readers. We develop this notion of what a character ought to sound, look, and act like within our mind's eye. It is what makes the translation between page and film so treacherous. It is the difference between listening to an audio book and believing you are listening to radio theatre and audio drama. 

This is why we needed to have it out. I want to know where you fall on the audio book line. And if you love them infinitely more than I do, which is not a difficult task, then I would like you to share your favorite stories and the requisite narrators.

Wednesday began with my alma mater on every major news network, between here and the BBC, for a mass-stabbing and me, awaiting news from family friends, listening to ambulance sirens and helicopter blades beating the air in rapid succession. Wednesday ended with literature serving as a solace, as it does in all circumstances, when the ability to enter a new reality is at its most crucial.

It ended with me downloading the zip file, sent by a friend in an effort to lighten my heart, of Sally Gardner's "The Red Necklace" narrated by one Tom Hiddleston. And now, half way through disc four out of five, I can say that maybe, if all novels were read with the same vivre and pin ache, books on audio could find their place on my shelf or on my iPod. If the voice actors that bring them to life serve the dynamic, I will gladly hang my coat on the bandwagon of people that consume pages on the daily commute by having someone read to them the way a book should always be read.

ENTER Agonizing Trouble

Back in December, this space was meant to be a place where I chronicled my ascent towards regaining a cultural savvy in regards to literature. Something quite the reverse has happened: I began a tail spin and irrecoverable decent into more BBC television shows, listened to the final series of Cabin Pressure (a most brilliant comedy for Radio4) and now, presently find myself mentally ticking the days for an air date announcement regarding the forty-five minute special finale which was recorded back in February at RADA Studios in London. I have completed my insanity maze by landing in Shakespeare.

[Enter] Agonizing Trouble.
agony. n.  1. extreme mental or physical suffering.  2. severe struggle.
trouble. n.  1. difficulty or distress; vexation; affliction

I have been bamboozled.
Hit by a Pittsburgh city bus (which, as a side note, is an honest probability).
Failed to "Mind the Gap."

It is going to sound 100% ludicrous. It began with an innocent email message chain between two girlfriends and myself. They believed I needed more BBC and British actors in my life, mistake one, and proceeded to lay waste with a singular suggestion. The Hollow Crown.

I am telling you now it is a trap.
Diving down the rabbit hole.
Fingers crossed that Sherlock poisoned your Earl Grey.
That the worst thing you find taped to your hat is a lemon.
Loki'd. By Steve.

It is an enigma of the most seductive kind.
Charismatic. Charming.
Romantic. Revealing. Raw.
Masculine. Feminine.
Redefines love-hate relationship.

The Hollow Crown proved one glaring fact about my education: Shakespeare should never be met in a classroom. And never reading it. Not a first.

That sounds contradictory, does it not? Here I am saying I was going to keep record of the books I plan to read and I got side-lined by a mini-series. Amazon Prime is a huge problem. I had wiggle room in my tight monthly two part-time job budget. I have free two-day shipping. I consumed nine hours of Shakespeare drama in two and a half days. With subtitles. Around working twenty of those sixty hours.

I discovered many things because of it:

• I found the complete and collected works of Shakespeare in a thrift store. for free. on my birthday.
• It has been open to some page, currently Gaunt's soliloquy from Richard II, for two months.
• As Americans, we are insurmountably lazy about our eloquence.
• We would sound exponentially more attractive to the world if we stopped talking faster than our brain.
• I decided my pattern of speech was eminently dull. Developing from iambic pentameter would improve my cadence. I have begun reading Romeo & Juliet to one of my cats. Thus far, she remains unimpressed. Not surprising. I am nonsense at acting.
• My desire to consume theatre skyrocketed. There is a direct correlation.
• I can barely stop speaking about it. I want to know what people have read themselves, what they recommend, what context they can provide.
• The first thing I did after watching the Hollow Crown was check out a book about the Shakespeare folios and then proceed to have a heart attack when I saw a most glorious little video clip of several people, reading from a First Folio--one of the most expensive books in the world--and turning the pages without gloves! 

See, it is things like that, despite peoples' obvious reverence, that make me sound insane. But that book is several centuries old and you all are touching it with oil covered fingers. Ah!

That is the agonizing trouble part. I hear it everywhere now. I am starting to talk in metaphor more and more frequent. I just gifted the Hollow Crown to a friend and in her card had to reduce Sonnet CXVI to  200 characters. Jaguar's new British villains campaign released a new spot this last week. Famous actor aside, Richard II was playing on the radio and was quoted at the end, in conjunction with the roar of the engine. Those words were the only thing I could think about when I pulled along side one on Friday evening leaving my second shift. I have watched it a dozen times. It is helping me memorize portions of a monologue that I had only heard first by Sir Patrick Stewart. Now, I have to find Olivier. 

And Shakespeare's birthday is coming up and I am ill-prepared. Watching the Hollow Crown with subtitles does not actually count as having read the plays in full, so my Shakespeare count stands at a measly, official, three: Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. I read a massive portion of King John for a dramaturgy, but did not complete it. I was a sophomore in high school, I barely liked Romeo and Juliet. I find myself, currently, in the throws of Cymbeline. It is one of which I had never heard, but whose character names I am eminently familiar. 

This is, therefore, what I have decided to do instead. Shakespeare has become this consuming passion of mine. It makes me stupid, truly, because when I listen to all these actors I have admired for years talk about their characters or the story or the author, I realize how clever he was. He understood the human mind and the human condition and this thing I have called agonizing trouble, the chasing something just out your reach. His characters do it all the time. And so shall I.

I was not born and raised in England. I will never have the foundation of Shakespearean study that I now desperately wish I had. I will, most likely, never study Shakespeare at the Royal Academy or London Academy. I cannot tell you if I will ever see the Globe or Stratford-Upon-Avon. I would like to think that when 2015 rolls around, my friends and I will board a plane for an extended weekend in London to partake of Hamlet, but there are little guarantees. 

But I want you to walk with me, if you like. Or running would be even better. Running through the park I frequent, reciting Shakespeare, sounds like a medium for impressive cardiovascular strength. It is alright if you look at me funny. I am already that girl you see in the Pittsburgh suburbs with her car windows down, volume all the way up, singing and dancing to every word of Sham Rock or the Foundations or Seal or Macklemore because I have to be able to rap to one thing and sound impressively ridiculous. I suffer little doubt there is footage of it somewhere in a stone that has yet to be over-turned. 

Regardless of how silly is makes us look, I want you to come. I want you to become this crazy and openly passionate lyricist. Let us bring back this idea that eloquence does not have to sound, for lack of a better word, American, but more than simply being English, to disprove an encounter between a butler and a nanny. 

Come with me.

Walk with me.

Run with me.

Dance and sing with me.

Be a child again.

If we cannot behold Shakespeare afresh with childlike wonder in his 450th year, we are lost.

Pull out the five year old inside yourself. Pull your Shakespeare off the shelf. Pin down your cat.

Shall we begin? Yes. Yes, I quite like this. What a glorious confrontation awaits.

[ENTER] Agonizing Trouble.

Libera Libris

Libera Libris…free books…

What a novel concept.

Be prepared for the literature puns. They will pour out of me like that one tap faucet in the house you inherit from some long dead, seven greats grandparent or distant relative that redefines what the term "fixer-upper" actually means.

This blog, however, begins with these few opening words because I find myself seven days away from concluding my undergraduate course work. I could not be more thrilled. Four years and one part-time semester later (this ridiculous thing called a thesis paper) and I am almost done. Real life, however difficult, is so close, and I cannot wait for it to officially arrive.

Graduating has put me in a curious frame of mind, as I find myself unsure how long it will be before I go from two jobs to one "big girl" job--not by any means suggesting that working as a sales consultant for a bridal boutique and a customer service associate for a retail chain are not big girl jobs--but they are not. Not to me.

I interned under the online marketing director for a division of Random House this summer and firmly believe marketing/publicity/sales within the publishing world is where I am meant to be. If I can sell someone a $2000 gown in the space of two hours, I can sell the public a book, and with better tag lines than some of the ones I have seen floating around the industry [side note: comparing a book to Twilight does not make people want to read it and should avoid any further associations].

Working this summer, though, maintaining an online database, showed me how integral online marketing is to any good product and some of the best marketing comes not from the author or the publishing house and agent, but from the trial readers. People who are in love with the ebb and flow of the written word have swarmed the blogosphere offering their analysis of new releases, classics, underrated, and overrated alike. Publishing houses have responded in kind, offering readers willing to write about the books, advance copies in exchange for the ability to utilize reviews in marketing and publicity materials.

As a bibliophile, I see no better trade off. However, I refuse to jump into such a proposition without first knowing what I have missed. I do not know how some of you do it, but I am not great at balancing academia and free reading, and find that the past few years has put me woefully behind in the manner of all things concerning books and the stories there in produced.

This is where I will play catch-up. I have already begun emailing and messaging friends requesting a list of suggestions. I suspect the list will become gratuitous. One friend alone tonight gave me twenty-six suggestions, a combination of author names or series titles, which means that number, in reading material, is close to double that. One whole notebook page full already. I cannot wait to see what else comes, hopefully, pouring in over the next week.

On Monday, December 9th, I will provide the list of recommendations as they stand from each of my friends and will update them as more are offered and cross them off as they are read and reviewed. I will have them all written out and ready to be pulled, at random, from a Penn State mason jar, most likely. I was converted on October 12th, this year at the Penn State v. Michigan game, but that is a separate story completely.

I look forward to immersing myself in books again. I have been far too starved of culture for immeasurably too long.

If I know anything, I know two things: left-handers will rule in a post-apocalyptic regime and everyone needs to be a little bookish.