I started posting on Substack about my fascination with Broadway grosses, which are publicly reported. I don’t make an effort to drive any traffic to my personal website, so I thought this might be an easier way to connect with people.
I recorded a voiceover of my last post, which made me wonder if I should really be starting a podcast instead, but I almost never listen to podcasts, so what business would I have starting one? I also wondered if I should be posting on Tiktok, but I find editing videos exhausting, so here we are.
If you’re a fellow Substacker, please join me over there!
This photo is exactly 10 years and 1 day old as of press time.
The stars (or the moons) had aligned so that my friend and I could attend both the Luna Luna exhibition and the Sleep No More farewell bash on the same day, just a few blocks apart.
We roamed the exhibition, gaping in awe at the beauty of the rides as they came to life. We even meandered, unknowingly, into the Luna Luna Wedding Chapel, which featured a performer who offered to officiate any type of wedding imaginable: you could marry yourself, your favorite color, or your friend, to name a few options.
“Do you two want to have a friendship wedding?” she asked us. The ceremony was brief but charming, and it ended with a certificate and a polaroid.
After a costume change, we headed to the party, which was a blur of dancing and shuttling between the many rooms of the McKittrick Hotel one last time. Late in the night, my friend and I made our way down a hidden passageway that funneled us into a crowd of revelers and performers alike. As we entered the room, we heard a familiar voice above the fray, coming from atop a table.
“These two got married today!” she crowed, whipping the room into a frenzy of cheers.
“I think they’re waiting for us to kiss,” my friend said, and we laughed. It wasn’t that kind of wedding. Instead, the performer leaned down, kissed us both, and sent us off into the night before anyone could ask any questions.
Kenny Scharf’s painted chair swing ride, with the chapel off to the left
“Let’s talk about obsessions,” he says. “Write about your most intense obsession from when you were a child.”
“Could you repeat the assignment?” someone asks.
“Yes, but I reserve the right to resent the question.”
For Christmas in 1989, my mother received a copy of the 50th anniversary VHS of the Wizard of Oz. I still remember her opening it, though I’m not sure why: it wasn’t our first VHS, nor had I seen the movie before. It’s as if my 3-year-old self somehow knew: this was the start of something big.
I became fixated on Dorothy, that lost girl who was desperate to find her way home. More importantly, I became obsessed with the actress who played her: Judy Garland.
After countless visits to Oz, my mother took me to the local video store to rent tapes of Judy’s other films: first, Meet Me in St. Louis, then Easter Parade. I still remember the delight I felt after walking down the rows of plastic cases to find that the tape I wanted was in stock; I didn’t realize competition for Judy Garland VHS’s wasn’t terribly stiff.
My mother bought me a Walkman, and I listened to the only cassette tape I remember owning: Judy’s greatest hits from the Decca years. I listened to it so often and so loudly that my mother feared I would damage my hearing, so she used red nail polish to draw a line on the volume dial to show me the max level I could use. I loved that red line; it told me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I preached the Gospel of Garland to my friends, which was, in hindsight, a bit odd for a young boy in rural Vermont to do in the early 1990’s. To one friend, I described in great detail the fashion show of Judy’s previous costumes that I thought she should have opened her concerts with. He listened politely, then asked, “You do know she’s dead, don’t you?”
I called a different friend and used my Walkman to play him one of Judy’s songs over the phone. I was confused when he didn’t recognize her voice. My mother told me to get off the phone. I felt like I’d done something wrong, but I didn’t know what.
My mother and I performed one of Judy’s songs in a church talent show, back when I was young enough to get away without much talent. We rehearsed in her bathroom in front of the mirror. I wore a tiny suit jacket and was too nervous to look anywhere but at my mother. I remember thinking she was so glamorous – both my mother and Judy Garland. What stars.
I probably don’t need to tell you that Judy Garland is a gay icon, but I didn’t know that then. If you’ve heard me speak or seen me walk, I also probably don’t need to tell you that I’m gay, but I didn’t know that then either. All I knew is that Judy Garland made me feel: less alone, more hopeful. Judy let me dream: of a place over the rainbow, a place where I belonged, a place to call home.
Louise Glück wrote, “I remember my childhood as a long wish to be elsewhere.” That resonates with me, even if it’s not quite right. My childhood was a long wish to be someone else, not somewhere else.
My obsession with Judy Garland began with my mother, and even in trying to write about Judy, I find myself writing about her instead. Maybe my mother was my real obsession, as I desperately longed for her to love me, even though I wasn’t the child she wanted.
“Who wants to share what they wrote?” he asks.
One woman wrote about hating her body since the age of seven. Why were so many of us writing about self-loathing? Maybe we all do.
I wish I had been easier to love. I was so angry as a child, frustrated that I was unable to change myself, terrified that I couldn’t change my fate. My mother would always love me, but I didn’t know that then. In the end, just like Dorothy, I would find my way home, safe and sound. In that way, we made our own fate. Maybe we all do.
Visiting the house where Judy Garland was born – my mother was thrilled for me.
In the midst of the recent heatwave, I went to Brookline Booksmith to hear Lev Grossman talk about his new book, The Bright Sword. Sorry for not inviting you, but it was sold out.
The Bright Sword is the latest addition to the Arthurian canon. In preparation for its release, I should have read the Mists of Avalon, or the Once and Future King, or even the Crystal Cave. Instead, I rewatched Disney’s A Sword in the Stone. Have you seen it recently? It does not, I’m afraid to report, hold up. The entire movie is essentially an Animagus song-and-dance routine. Only in the last two minutes of the movie does anything of consequence happen (namely, the titular event). I do not think it did anything to prepare me for a nearly 700 page book.
I also listened to the 2023 Broadway cast recording of Camelot, but I’ve been doing that for much the past year. It is a delightful recording. The cast is perfection (especially Tony-winner Andrew Burnap, or Andy B, as he is affectionately referred to by no one but me). The orchestra is lush. Even the cover art is nice. Does it teach you much about the Arthurian legend? That would require a long response, but in short, there’s simply not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-after-ing than here in Camelot.
I’ve met Lev Grossman a few times. The first was in 2014 for the launch of The Magician’s Land, the final book in the Magicians trilogy and a #1 New York Times bestseller. The books went on to be made into a five-season TV show. Despite his fame and success, he continues to be unfailingly charming, funny, and gracious with fans. Despite the last book having come out a decade ago, he still answers questions about the trilogy. What a nice guy. The paperbacks of the trilogy recently were re-released with gorgeous new covers. Sometimes good things happen to good people.
To my delight, during his talk, Lev Grossman referenced the 2023 Broadway revival of Camelot (and Aaron Sorkin’s revision of the book). I saw it twice (including closing night), so I was excited to talk to him about it when I went up to get my book signed.
The signing line moved slowly, so I had lots of time to ponder what witty, insightful comment I would make about the show, to demonstrate that I, too, was a serious Arthurian scholar, despite my lack of preparation. In my defense, it only took him the better part of a decade to write the book. He’s been talking about it publicly for many years. It’s not as if I had ample time to do background reading. But hey, I saw the show. I saw it twice. I was ready.
Dearest gentle reader, Lev Grossman never saw the 2023 Broadway revival of Camelot.
April 8, 2017. I took the train down from London to visit Monk’s House, where Virginia Woolf was living at the time of her death. Before my trip, I had read that the house was soon to be closed temporarily to visitors for restorations. Visiting that house was very high on my bucket list, even though Woolf would have likely turned her nose up at such pilgrimages, not that she would be there, given the aforementioned death and all. I decided to go at once for fear that the renovations would somehow cause a fire or flood, and the house would be lost. I felt such inexplicable urgency about it. Despite having no money to spare, my husband then a full-time student, I bought a ticket to fly to London from Boston. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day, warm and perfect as it always should be but rarely is. The gardens at the house were in full bloom and more expansive than I’d ever imagined. I would never forget this moment of April. After years of dreaming of this visit, I was finally here. I had done it. I felt unstoppable.
April 8, 2021. My grandfather died. He was in his nineties, so his death was by no means a tragedy, but all the same, I sat on my kitchen floor and cried. To be clear, I was already in the kitchen when my dad called to tell me the news. I didn’t go in there explicitly for the purpose of sitting on the floor and crying, not that there would be anything wrong with it if I had. It was a weird time: people were just starting to get vaccinated against COVID, but I wasn’t eligible yet, so in addition to grief, I felt anxiety about the funeral. I would have felt that in the best of times, though, not that funerals are ever the best of times. It was the first time I left Massachusetts in over a year; it was the first time I saw my parents in over a year as well. It was a lot to handle. I was a pallbearer, and I cried every time I had to touch the casket. My dad gave a beautiful eulogy. He told a story about a time when he and his sister got in over their heads on a home repair project. At an inopportune moment, my grandfather had walked in, and my aunt shouted, “This is all your fault, you know!” My grandfather had only just arrived; how was he to blame? My aunt explained, “You always told us we could do anything. Look where that got us!” My dad said he hoped that he made his own sons feel that way, too. He did, and he does.
April 8, 2024. My parents drove to mainland Texas for the solar eclipse. I sat on my roof deck, thousands of miles away, and read Virginia Woolf’s diary entry about the eclipse of 1927. My grandmother was three years old at the time of that eclipse, and at 100, she watched this year’s eclipse as well, unlike Virginia Woolf or my grandfather, given the aforementioned deaths and all. As my aunt graciously pointed out that day, my own parents might be dead by the next solar eclipse in 20 years. My dad is the oldest child, and I think he and my older brother would both agree that younger siblings are, as a rule, insufferable. As the light shifted, I put on my flimsy paper glasses and imagined my parents doing the same. In my mind, my parents were radiant that day, bathed in the magical golden haze, despite, or because of, my thoughts about their mortality. “How can I express the darkness?” Virginia Woolf wrote 97 years ago. “It was a sudden plunge.” Later, after the eclipse was long over and the sun had set, I sat downstairs and tried to write about the day. I felt such inexplicable urgency about it. My phone rang, and I shouted to the empty room, “I’m so tired!” But I yelled it in French, because it’s easier to be indignant in French. The phone call was from my parents; I hated to be interrupted, but how could I write of my parents while ignoring their call? My dad informed me that the sky in Texas had been cloudy; they had not seen the moment of totality after all. I felt as if we’d all been somehow cosmically spared, for how could any of us die now, never having seen the full eclipse? We would see the next one. We would live to be 100. We could do anything.
The opening chapter of my novel, The Folly of Harvest, was accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of an online literary journal. While I’m thrilled to have even a small part of the book making its way out into the world, the journal’s editor cut the first 3.5 pages of the chapter (“narrative throat-clearing”). I was sad to say farewell to those pages, even if it was the right choice. To make peace with the cut, I’m sharing the lost pages here for posterity.
At first, Mat hadn’t told anyone about getting fired. He didn’t want to admit that he’d lost both his big break and his agent. Worse than pride, it was hubris, but after a month without a successful audition, and with his bank account dwindling, he’d broken down yesterday and called Helen. He’d kept the details to a minimum: he needed a job. As it turns out, Mat doesn’t need an agent since he has a friend like Helen, and she managed to secure him an audition for the very next day. It’s outside the city, but it’s something. Anything but another open dance call.
“You cannot be late,” Helen had said. “The director has no time for unserious people.”
“Why would you say that?” Mat asked. “I’m never late. Unless it’s in the morning, but that’s not fair, I’m not a morning person.”
“You’ll need to take a morning train,” Helen said.
“I won’t be late!” Mat had been indignant at her lack of faith, but to be safe, he woke up extra early today to get to the station.
A robotic voice announces that Mat’s train is delayed. It’s not really his train, of course. He’s not a railroad tycoon, though he was once cast as a featured dancer in a musical version of Atlas Shrugged, or at least he would have been featured if the entire production hadn’t been canned before opening. It’s for the best that audiences weren’t subjected to an 11 o’clock number that rhymed “Who is John Galt?” with the word “gestalt”, but to lose a job he hadn’t even wanted in a show he’d known was bad had been the low point in Mat’s career. Well, until now.
I was a guest today on Michelle Hoover’s podcast, the 7am Novelist, along with fellow GrubStreet Novel Incubator alum, Hesse Phillips. I was nervous, but in the end, we had fun (I think?).
We’d arrived a few minutes early for our reservation at Bar Centrale, so my friend and I decided to do a loop around the block while we waited. I had recently reorganized my bookshelf and discovered that the copy of the script of The Inheritance that he’d gifted me had a perplexing photo on the front.
“It’s not actually the cast of the play!” I said to him. “It’s just four random guys. One of them looks kind of like Andrew Burnap, but it’s not him.”
“That script is from the London production,” he said.
“Andrew Burnap was in the London production!”
“Maybe it was published before he’d been cast.”
“Andrew Burnap’s name is on the cast list in the script!”
“Maybe it’s just a stock photo.”
“It’s not! It’s the same photographer who did the production photos. It makes no sense!”
We reached the corner, where traffic was stopped at a red light. It was time to turn back to the restaurant and stop arguing about this photo since we’d never know why it wasn’t Tony Award winner Andrew Burnap.
“Now that’s Andrew Burnap,” I said.
And there he was, on a Citi Bike. My friend and I did a double take, and then the light changed, and he biked off before we could bother him for a … photo.
Andrew Burnap is currently starring Off Broadway in Spain through 12/17/23.
I was recently featured on the alum blog for GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator.
I wanted to appear professional despite using a selfie, so I took pains to crop the picture to make it look less selfie-ish. The “photo credit” kind of outs me, though – and really, who was I hoping to fool?
It was a thrill to have a chance to talk about To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Maybe this is finally the time I convince someone to read it.
“The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.”
Timothy Deer 