My hard drive failed. I lost three scenes that I'd spent many hours writing and refining. I hadn't backed up my work. Now there's a backup plan. Literally. This week I'll see how much of those scenes I can recover from my own memory. I'm looking forward to getting a first draft of this new play (no title yet).
I started rewriting Care of Trees. I'm workshopping it with a playwright/mentor. My sense was it only needed a few tweaks. Turns out it's not exactly that simple. I've cut the first 25 pages down to 6. There's probably 6 more pages to salvage from the remaining script. It's pretty sobering. I have no idea what it is or where it's going. But the remaining pages are much better, more essential, a distillation of my original intention. It needs to bake some more.
Devised work is on hold. I don't want to be in the studio. There would be a lot of lying on the floor staring at the ceiling. There's something to be said for that, but not at $15 to $30 an hour. Sorting out how to move forward with this work. How to work, with whom to work, and where. It's all open.
It occurred to me yesterday that the loss of the hard drive is somehow symbolic. It feels like everything is being rewritten. There's been a lot of loss this month. A stripping down. I've finally found zero. And pretty much everything else on this list.
To Change Art, Destroy Ego. Ben Vautier, 1965.
