I’m high, People!
Altitude-wise. And surrounded by high people. Colorado.
Well, all my anxiety about Aspen was unwarranted but real nonetheless. It turns out that a lot of my weird feelings were from childhood. Also, from having bad shows there in the past, but a lot of bad memories from ski trips I went on with my family. It’s weird how that stuff lingers or leaves a residue on all your adult thoughts. I know it doesn’t sound like heavy trauma and it isn’t. Things that are supposed to be fun, with all the expectation around having that experience, when they turn to shit and emotional clusterfucks they seem to leave a deeper impression in the neural pathways. Days ruined from outbursts of rage over a missing hat or the wrong socks or frozen toes or… Dad. It was rare when we were getting ready to hit the slopes in the morning that someone didn’t end up crying, if not all of us. That all came back to me up there for some reason.
The Wheeler Opera Houser where I performed is a beautiful little theater built in the 1800s, I think. I’d been there before but I have no real recollection of it because I was so stressed out the other times I’d been there. It’s a sweet venue. It’s odd. There is a part of me that freaks out before a show. It isn’t based in anything anymore. It’s an old pattern. A dead tendril. A phantom limb. I will get it wagging though. And as soon as I step on the stage for sound check I realize I am home.
The show was fun. Got through some new stuff. Dealt with a couple ‘where are the jokes’ Republican folks. All-in-all, good times. I couldn’t breathe right and my brain was a little tweaked from the altitude but there were no major skids. I stayed on the wire.
Aspen is a weird place. Some of the richest people in the world own houses there that they go to for a few days a year. Really rich people go there to ski. Some regular folks, too. Then there are the people that live there year-round and work the work. They see some shit. They know what’s up. They have special chips on their practical shoulders.
I walked past a guy sitting in front of a storefront on the street and as I passed he said, ‘You want to buy a house?’ He was a realtor. Selling homes like drugs. I said, ‘Is that really an impulse buy?’ He said, ‘Sometimes. It’s an emotional thing.’ I told him I didn’t have my check book. Aspen.
Today I talk to Rob Lowe about Rob Lowe. Better guy than I thought, I think. On Thursday me and Phoebe Robinson resolve some of the smaller racial tensions and questions and talk comedy, too. Great talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer lives!
Love,
Maron