Get a Hobby
When the Boston Conservatory at Berklee asked me to give the commencement speech to its 2019 graduating class, my answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!” How could I respond in any other way when presented with the opportunity to receive an honorary doctorate from this highly revered music college? This was my second honorary degree, as my first was from Ball State University, where I am on the theater faculty, which is wild to me, considering I dropped out of Carnegie Mellon after my freshman year. As I sat down to prepare my speech, I thought about what I wished someone had told me when I was the same age as these bright-eyed, hugely talented, and hopeful graduates. What were the principles I turned to again and again when life felt challenging? It didn’t take me long to figure out what to say. I boiled it down to three pieces of advice:
To any exciting opportunity! However terrifying or beyond your comfort zone. Say yes to life.
Even if others don’t agree. In the end, no matter what happens or how it all turns out, it will have been your choice. Own your choices, because even if you fail, your gut will get smarter. But if you follow someone else’s gut and you fail, all you learn is…to trust your own gut.
Or two or three! Find a creative outlet. Something that doesn’t require someone to give you permission to do it. Pick something that has nothing to do with what you do for a living. And pick something that brings you joy.
This last piece of advice is perhaps the most important, for me at least.
Most people know me as an actress, either as Liza, the forty-year-old divorcée passing as a millennial to get a publishing job on Younger, or perhaps as Reno, the tap-dancing evangelist-turned-nightclub-chanteuse in Anything Goes. Some know me as a singer and may have even come to my cabaret show at the Café Carlyle. But anyone who knows me well knows that I am as passionate about crafting as I am about singing, dancing, and acting. Ultimately, I see myself as a maker, and crafting is the art of making things—it can be crochet, cross-stitch, drawing, cooking, collaging, or even gardening. It can also be creating a musical, or an evening of song, or a book. What matters most is that there is something tangible at the end of the process. Plus, the very act of making these things is what keeps me centered.
Anxiety runs in my family—in me. I am the daughter of an agoraphobic mother. I make a living as a performer. It’s complicated. And yet, if I am feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I crochet, or collage, or cross-stitch. These hobbies have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life. So when I thought about writing a book, it seemed like a no-brainer that crafts would play a major role. Each beautiful thing I have made over the years tells the story of who I was when I made it. (Mostly blankets! Dozens of blankets!) My crafts have helped hold me together and given me a place to pour all of my love or sadness into.
You’ll see in this book that when I talk about crafts, I mean a wide range of things, but I do have a favorite. I first got hooked (get it?) on crochet when I was on a national tour with Grease, playing Sandy Dumbrowski. I was nineteen years old and had lost my voice, so I was on a forced two-week vocal rest. I went to stay with my parents, who were living in Memphis, Tennessee, at the time, and since I couldn’t speak, I wanted a project to help me pass the time. I went to a craft store, likely Michaels or Jo-Ann Fabrics, which are now two of my favorite places on the planet, and bought a book called How to Crochet. It was New Year’s Eve 1994, and I wrote the following entry in my journal: “On this 1st day of 1995, I taught myself how to crochet. I think it’s neat. I want to make people things.”
Since then, some of my proudest achievements are things I’ve created with my hands—whether it be the penguin baby blanket I made when my daughter Emily was born or the toilet-paper-roll cover I crocheted for Hilary Duff’s wedding present—because what else do you get Hilary Duff but a handmade albino octopus toilet-paper-roll cover (with rainbow button suckers on its cream tentacles)?
Most recently, I decided to cross-stitch a Christmas stocking for Emily, similar to one my mother stitched for me when I was a child. My mom and I had a complicated relationship. And while I cannot find that stocking, I still have the Strawberry Shortcake bookmark she made me when I was eight years old. That was during the peak of my obsession with the red-haired cartoon character. I had coloring books, figurines, and even a garbage pail, all store-bought. I find it so moving that my mother took the time to meticulously stitch that sweet girl in her poufy pink bonnet and white frilly apron into existence. She added my first and last name in red thread and a row of hearts in pink and green, then finished the piece with a calico border. I don’t recall my mother saying “I love you” often. But I do know that she poured her love for me into that bookmark. I tell my daughter I love her every day. But, following my mom’s example, I also make things for her as tangible proof of that love.
Similar to the list of roles I’ve played on TV or Broadway, I have a hobby résumé. For every production I was in or concert I have sung, there is a collage or stuffed animal that tells the behind-the-scenes backstory of my life. On set, I was making out with Peter Hermann, one of my love interests in Younger. In my dressing room, I was crocheting a pink dinosaur for Emily. Every piece I describe within these pages means so much more than the yarn or marker with which it was made. Each is a time capsule and heirloom, spanning my past, present, and future, and together they tell a fuller, more complex and colorful story of who I am and how I want to be remembered.
This is not your traditional memoir. I wanted to root my stories in the things I have made over the years, so the result is an overlapping, not unlike my most recent crafting feat: mosaic crochet. For this, you use two different colors of yarn at a time, switching back and forth often, working into previous rows. It is never straight across—you have to double back to make intricate patterns. The result is layered, colorful, and complex.
I wrote this book for my mother and my daughter. The first so I might better understand her; the second so she might better understand me.