Floor Sample

The drive cross-country did seem a drive back to sanity. I decreased my medication as we drove. When we arrived back in the verdant East, I found myself feeling more grounded. Precarious as I might have felt, it was hard not to be excited. An old college friend had resurfaced just as we left for Taos. His name was Jack Hofsiss, and he was a distinguished director. Our show Magellan was of interest to him. We were thrilled to have his support. Again, New York seemed to offer us exactly what we really needed. Larry phoned us to say he had detected a “natural resonance” with a new player. We told him about Jack. “That’s him,” Larry snapped. “He wants a challenge.”

Magellan was nothing if not a challenge. It was a larger-than-life undertaking. Divided into seven sections, the story unfolded through sixty-five distinct pieces of music. There were sailors, sailors’ wives, storms at sea, mutinies, starvation, and eventually triumph. Magellan was a man obsessed, a visionary who struck out to wrest his destiny from the gods. At no point could he pause to consider the odds against him. He had to stomach his fears and simply sail on.

Working on Magellan, there could be no looking back. Piece by piece, like a great boat, the work had to be built. I would hear heroic melodies. Emma would supply harmonies. Sometimes the story was so harrowing that it was difficult to write. Two hundred fifty-seven men began the voyage. Seventeen survived. Scurvy and mutiny beset the ships. They suffered starvation crossing the Pacific. Writing music to match these events was an emotional challenge—and one I often felt too fragile to accomplish.

This was when I would follow Max’s advice, sending up a prayer to Oscar Hammerstein II. He had written Show Boat, an outsize piece of work. He was no stranger to gargantuan tasks. “Just keep on,” I seemed to hear. One more day I would go to the piano, picking out the melodies that came to my ear.

“What are you writing?” friends would routinely ask me. I hesitated to say, “An opera.” Who was I, an untrained musician, to be trying such a grandiose project? And yet the project itself seemed to call to me inexorably. Like Magellan’s wife, I was obsessed with his voyage. I picked out more and more melodies.

As fall turned to winter, Emma and I kept our shoulders to the grindstone. The vast skeleton of Magellan was beginning to take on flesh and sinew. For the first time, we dared play it all the way through for Jack Hofsiss. His enthusiasm was heartening and contagious. “I love it,” he would say—followed by a list of changes he thought we might want to consider. Hofsiss’s changes were often challenging. He picked at lyrics, insisting on accuracy and specificity. He demanded that we etch a clear picture of each character. What did they want? Would they get it? Under his hand, the story took on shape and symmetry. “I’m a bit of a task-driver,” he would comment mildly—only to set a further set of tasks. Emma and I felt lucky to have his direction. I prayed to Oscar Hammerstein II and to John Newland to have the creativity necessary to execute them.

Magellan took up the mornings. In the afternoons I found myself writing about the lessons it was teaching me, lessons of endurance and patience. Faith and Will, I titled the book I found myself shaping. It had to do with finding courage in the face of doubt. As for myself, I felt I needed to find courage. I had long known that the medication I was taking could cause serious side effects. Now it was causing them. I began experiencing an involuntary tic.

I sought a second opinion and met with even tougher news. I learned that I had already remained on Navane far too long. Even my lowest dosage was dangerous. Reluctantly I decided to change doctors. I would have to change drugs or risk a permanent and disfiguring disability.

My drug withdrawal from Navane was handled by crisscrossing me over onto the new drug. Every week I took a little less Navane and a little more of something called Risperdal. My sanity seemed stable enough, but my weight zoomed up by twenty pounds. I found the sudden weight gain terrifying.

“Oh, yes. That can happen,” said my doctor. Focused on my psyche and not on my physique, he was unconcerned. I, for my part, was very concerned. My clothes were tight. I found it embarrassing to stand up and teach in public. I felt frumpy.

And I didn’t feel fine. In addition to the extra physical weight I was carrying, I began to carry a psychic weight. For no apparent reason I felt cut off from spiritual contact. Faith became a concept instead of an experience. Writing about faith, I found myself writing about the dark night of the soul. I seemed to have stumbled into difficult country.

“Just don’t drink,” I reminded myself as my depression deepened. Liquor stores were starting to glow. Bars winked at me. I could taste scotch on my tongue. “There’s nothing going on that a drink is going to make better,” I told myself. At night I would crave sugar, a craving I medicated with fruit. It was better than drinking, but I became awfully sick of strawberries.

“No one ever said it would be comfortable to be sober,” my mentor pointed out. “It’s great when it is comfortable, but that doesn’t really mean we should expect it. Life is stressful. Anyone who tells you that it’s not is a fool—or living a life I don’t understand. Just stay sober. Don’t take your emotional temperature so often. Work with another alcoholic. Get out of yourself a little. That always helps. Some times are simply not comfortable.”

It wasn’t difficult to find another alcoholic to work with. My long years of sobriety were impressive to people. My experience, strength, and hope were valued. Listening to another’s problems, I found myself less focused on mine. I was able to finish Faith and Will and to begin writing new essays, this time based in New York rather than Taos. I was still fighting with depression and I still craved a drink. Both of these factors emerged in my writing. My essays seemed to be about how to keep on keeping on, the power of persistence, which all artists sorely need. Writing daily, I myself searched for stamina. Everything felt uphill. What I needed, I thought, was a dose of good news. That isn’t what I got. Instead, I got a solid round of artist’s blues.

I had heard of this phenomenon from other writers. Increasingly, decisions about what to publish are being made not only on literary merit but on market potential as well. If a book doesn’t look like a big seller—in other words, if it doesn’t look a lot like something that has been done before—a writer may have a hard time placing it.

Two more times my agent phoned with “good” but tentative news. Despite myself, I began to feel the odds were stacked against me. Maybe my book was too quirky, maybe it didn’t bear a strong enough resemblance to previous winners. Discouraged, my agent threw up her hands. “Maybe you need to look at the book one more time,” she told me. “We keep getting so close!”

So I took my novel back and read it. I still liked the characters. I still liked the plot. Surely there must be something to be fleshed out or altered? I couldn’t figure out what. I sent the book back to Ed Towle, back to Gerard, and back to Linda Kahn. The notes that came back from them were minimal. “We think it’s fine,” came the consensus. Frustrated, I sent the book to Domenica, who was working on her screenplay. To my rue and delight, she came back with detailed notes, notes that seemed right to me.

I decided to execute Domenica’s notes. Ever since she was a child, she had the knack of seeing what was wrong with a piece of art. I had often joked to Martin that by crossing a director and a writer, we had emerged with a critic. We had certainly emerged with someone with fine critical faculties. I found Domenica’s notes picky—“Virgo notes,” she called them—nearly microscopic in their focus. They were probably just what I needed. Reading the book after implementing them, I had to admit I thought it was subtly better. My agent thought so too. We put the book back on the market, hoping again for the best.

Emma and I were hoping for the best on another front as well. It was time to put up our backer’s audition for The Medium at Large. We had planned it for mid-January but found casting difficult, as people took extended winter breaks. On Myler’s advice, we rescheduled for February, planning to use our “extra” time to keep on tinkering. We were at a dangerous point, however, the point where we would be changing things just for the sake of change, not improvement. An artist needs to know when to stop, and so, restless as we were, we forced ourselves to stop tinkering. The show we had in hand was the show we had.

One more time we hired Kim Grigsby to be our musical director. One more time Myler swung into action on casting. Emma made lists and more lists. We cast a wide net of invitations. A backer’s audition costs about fifteen thousand dollars, and we wanted to do only one. At Myler’s suggestion we hired a woman whose sole job was to ensure that backers actually attend. I was teaching a weekly class at the New York Open Center, and I extended an invitation to all of my students to come and see our work—wanting to be an example of my creative tool kit.

This time we put on two performances, not one. On both occasions the theater was jammed. To our delight we had an even stronger cast than we had before. The audience laughed and clapped, sometimes interrupting the show with its applause. Emma and I sat in the back row again, trying to be objective but finding it hard.

Standing in the lobby after the performances, Emma and I received our compliments and encouragement. Only one person voiced a sour note. “Too much music!” Talking among ourselves, we didn’t really see how the show could have gone any better. Exiting the theater, Jack Hofsiss told us, “I didn’t like it. I loved it. I want to direct it, but I don’t want to step on Myler’s toes.”

This was more than we had hoped for. Earlier, Myler, who was busy writing his own shows, had said to us, “I will take the show as far as I can, but then someone will come along who is perfect for it and then you should go with him.” When we told Myler about Hofsiss, he was excited for us, even exuberant. “I admire Jack,” he told us. “He’s perfect for your show. If Jack will direct it, he absolutely has my blessing to take over from here. This is an opportunity you can’t afford to miss.”

To Myler’s eye, we had scored exactly the win we needed. To our own way of thinking, we were still missing the backing of a real producer or theater. In the days following our reading, we kept waiting for the phone to ring. It didn’t ring. Emma fell into a depression. I quickly followed suit. So much work! So much money! So little feedback! At two weeks and counting, our friend Bruce Pomahac took mercy on us and invited us to a celebratory lunch. Once he had us seated across from him, he said, “This is the hard part, the waiting-for-something-to-happen part. Now you have joined the club. Stephen Sondheim and everyone else is in the same boat you are.”

For the moment there was nothing more to be done on The Medium, but there was a lot of work left on Magellan, and that is where we focused our efforts. Once a week we met with Hofsiss. He continued to suggest dramatic changes. Under his guidance the drama in Magellan became ever sharper. But we still needed the backing of a producer or a theater.

In the meanwhile, I wrote and taught. Emma orchestrated and arranged. As my sober mentors adjured me, I tried to put first things first, taking life one day at a time. It was difficult. “Don’t drink five minutes before the miracle,” one elder chivvied me.

I finished teaching my twelve-week class at the New York Open Center, and on the last night a tall, beautiful blonde, Barbara Roberts, approached me. She handed me an envelope, saying, “I thought this might be of interest to you.” Enclosed I found her very impressive résumé and a letter offering to help with The Medium at Large. She didn’t really want to be a theatrical producer, her letter said, but she didn’t mind acting like one on our behalf. She thought we might be a good match with the Vineyard Theatre, origin of the hot Tony Award-winning show Avenue Q.

Emma and I pinched ourselves. We were delighted to have help with our show, and so we said yes to Barbara Roberts. She knew Jack Hofsiss’s work and she thought that he, too, might be of interest to the Vineyard. Talking with Hofsiss, we discovered that he thought the Vineyard was a perfect venue for The Medium. All that remained now was for them to like the show. We waited on pins and needles while they read. Just as we were at our wit’s end, Barbara phoned: they liked the show. In fact, they loved it. While they couldn’t offer us a production, they could offer us their backing for a full-scale reading. They wanted to support us in any way they could. This included networking for us and matching us up with a proper agent. We were thrilled. As I glanced at Emma in our first meeting with them, my eyes smarted with tears of relief.

Accustomed to life as outsiders, we now found ourselves on an inside track. The Vineyard was a name to be conjured with. At Hofsiss’s suggestion, we switched gears from Magellan to The Medium. He had some tinkering in mind, and we began to work with him as we had with Myler to fine-tune our script and score. We soon found that if his opinions on Magellan had seemed helpful, his opinions on The Medium were even more so.

“Now, girls,” he lectured us. “I don’t ever want you to change anything or go along with anything that you feel violates the show in any way. Having said that, I do have my thoughts.”

His thoughts included a new opening number and a new romantic duet. Emma and I happily set to work writing the tunes. Hofsiss believed in the music part of musical comedy. “Give me a little more. Make it a little longer,” he would say. Or “This song needs to be funny. Find me a word that rhymes with ‘crusader,’ means ‘nadir,’ but is funnier.”

The score wasn’t all that came under his scrutiny. The book took some surprising new twists at his suggestion. I had written one spinsterish sister and one repentant floozie. “Repentance isn’t funny,” Hofsiss scolded me. He wanted his characters stubbornly willful, sinners to the very end, and he was right. That made them far funnier. “Think of Ado Annie from Oklahoma!” he urged me. “She never repents.”

It was a relief to be funny. Our work sessions with Hofsiss felt like play, and yet the show was shaping up nicely. We wrote an overture. We wrote a new duet. When I spoke with Bernice, she would chuckle with delight at how everything was unfolding. She thoroughly approved of anything having to do with music, and with both Magellan and The Medium at Large on the boil, she hoped that my temperament would lighten up a little—and not a moment too soon.

Rickety and beset by mood swings as I altered my medication, I suffered from repeated bouts of depression. Everything was fine—but I wasn’t. Each day was a steep uphill climb. I had no patience for my own temperament. My dark moods angered me. One day I pressed my hand to my forehead and sighed dramatically, “Darkness!” Unfortunately for me—or fortunately—Emma overheard my exclamation and she found it hilarious.

After that, “darkness” became a household joke, and I needed jokes more than ever now. Once more it was time to accept the things I cannot change; change the things I can. The new medication caused the same involuntary tic as the old. We would need to change a third time, my psychopharmacologist said. The tic was simply too dangerous to ignore.

I did know what bad meant, and I didn’t want to go through it again—or put Emma and Domenica through it again. Carefully monitored and medicated, my biochemistry was bearable—and far better than another breakdown. By using Morning Pages, Artist Dates, and Walks, I often could keep my depression at bay. It would lie in wait for me each morning as I woke, but I could—and did—dig my way out. If I wasn’t happy, if I still suffered from “darkness,” at least I was functional, and that went a long way toward making things better. Functional, I could write prose. I could teach. Functional, I could show up at the piano and meet my melodies there. Beautiful music seemed to be born despite my temperament. “Good enough,” I told myself. “One day at a time.” Blessedly, my obsession to drink was lifting.

So, once more we tinkered with my medicine. Now I was given two differing drugs to take, Abilify in the morning and a low dose of Risperdal in the afternoon, soon to be discontinued. “Try to be grateful we have the medicines,” my psychopharmacologist cajoled me. “Think of how it was before we had them.” I thought of my parents and their recurrent breakdowns.

I hated the regime but had to admit that within a week I felt subtly better. Evidently my malaise had been biochemical after all. That was certainly what my doctor thought. I thought perhaps it was also the stress of long-postponed decisions. To wit: I lived in New York but still yearned for Taos.

“How can you even think about Taos?” Emma wanted to know. “That place nearly killed you. It’s not safe there for you. You need doctors. You need medicine. You need structure. It’s a matter of life and death.”

One morning I woke with the answer: let go of Taos. Accept the fact that my time there was over. Keep my friends. Keep my memories, but move on. I held this answer to the light. I expected to feel a wince of pain as I thought of giving up my home. Instead, I felt oddly at peace. Maybe there really was safety for me in New York.

I understood suddenly that by relinquishing Taos, I was placing myself squarely in the hands of God. “Build with me and do with me what you will,” I had prayed—and this was evidently God’s will for me.

In New York I had many students to teach. I was an artist among other artists, one more soul striving to make my way in the great sea of souls. And further, in New York I was one more sober alcoholic in a great river of sober alcoholics. My story was one more story amid many. And that story wasn’t over. I wasn’t at an end. Instead, I was at a beginning. I could add my voice to a choir of voices. I could try.

“Just try. That’s all you need to do,” I repeat to myself as I grab for a jacket. Tiger Lily, my cocker spaniel, runs to get her leash. Her enthusiasm is contagious. I catch myself grinning. We are headed out to Central Park, where the flowering trees are at the height of their bloom: crimson, ivory, fuchsia. We will walk along the cinder bridle paths amid the elders and the lovers.