Something that had the quality of a dimly lit stage set just before the curtains rise on opening night. There was a rhythm to it, a beckoning, and a bittersweet tear in time.
There's a strange sensation - you recall it from childhood - about sleeping in the afternoon. You rise into a different world from the one in which you lay down. The shadows have been rearranged. There's a sensation of sad sweetness, as if something has been overlooked. I used to feel it coming out of the movies just before dinnertime, after the matinee. How, I wondered, did Broadway actors face it, this bittersweet sense of time's slipping past.
Women's orgasms will quadruple in intensity if she's in a beautiful, dimly lit room versus a brightly lit, uncomfortable room.
Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead
All life requires a rhythm of rest. . .
There is a rhythm in the way day dissolves into night, and night into morning. There is a rhythm as the active growth of spring and summer is quieted by the necessary dormancy of fall and winter. There is a tidal rhythm, a deep, eternal conversation between the land and the great sea.
My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn't know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.
I went to the opening of 'Sister Act,' and I had such a great time. I had no idea what it was about, and I had never seen the movies. But I heard the show went through some major last-minute craziness in previews, and man, opening night was really fun and really entertaining.
When you go through a tunnel - you're going on a train - you go through a tunnel, the tunnel is dark, but you're still going forward. Just remember that. But if you're not going to get up on stage for one night because you're discouraged or something, then the train is going to stop. Everytime you get up on stage, if it's a long tunnel, it's going to take a lot of times of going on stage before things get bright again. You keep going on stage, you go forward. EVERY night you go on stage.
Of course it does on opening night, but I've never had that devastating stage fright that some people get, but apparently, you can develop it.
I had to write a comedy set and film a show at the same time. And it's the second time I've been up on stage as a stand-up comedian with untested material. I was saying it out loud for the first time that night. It didn't go how I expected, but in the best possible way.
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night,
To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire,
As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
It's important for me not to peak before I hit the stage. In other words, I save all of my creative and physical energy for when I walk on stage. If I can get 45 minutes of just easy going, playing rhythm, songs, stuff like that, then that's what I do to make sure that I'm all stretched out and ready.
Going to Morocco was massive; that's where I really found music which had the African syncopation and swing mixed with Arabic strains, and together they had this transporting, bittersweet quality.
I've had the chance to watch Metallica's James Hetfield from the side of the stage night after night, listening to his monitors, and his playing is so perfect. Slash is an amazing lead guitarist, but when you listen to his rhythm playing, you can hear how he pulls everything together with such a great feel, which is the most important thing.
A dimly lit tavern, a willing young woman, are some of the reasons I cheat.
Dimly lit restaurants always make me think they're trying to hide the food.
Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open.