Poem for the NYITA

Congrats and huzzah to the winners and nominees of the 2010 NYIT Awards! We were thrilled to see Crystal Skillman win for Outstanding Original Full Length Script and the New York Neo-Futurists grab the Caffe Cino award; and were admittedly disappointed when our Heather Cohn did not take home the IT for Outstanding Director.

As always, though, the night is mostly about celebrating this amazing community we’re a part of, and it was great to hang with friends old and new. But I confess that old dirty question dressed up and sat on my other side, whispering its name in my ear:

Is this enough?

Sometimes, all our awards and blogger blather and Twitter banter and grant gilding feel like a filibuster against what’s really happening; like keeping up the bed room of a child long gone; like “a speech of the self that sustains itself on speech”.

Is this enough?

Sometimes it hurts, to care so much about something the rest of the world doesn’t much care for; to pour your one life into little rooms like rain onto dry gardens.

A career for most of us is not a big break but a series of small stones piled high enough that when the tide comes, we can still see the place we’ve made. An NYIT Award is one such stone, and I am so grateful for what Shay, Nick and Jason do; giving a little weight to the light we make.

So to all the ninjas and chickens and robots,
To all the fairies and Moors and Danes,
To all those who feel half hour to places
Like a bell to prayer,
I yop this poem for you.

A Poem For The Artists At The NYIT Awards
To all those who stab their hearts with toy swords
And find their light to cry on cue and hold
A half beat longer to make the laugh double
Over; last night, did we take a cab home?

Home is where the house is sold out. Send me
Your conflicts so I can make the schedule,
We get so few hours with this damn code.
How many speakers? How many dimmers?

Tell me what you really thought, I trust you.
Tell me what’s beautiful, what’s a mistake.
Tell me mistakes alone are beautiful.
Give me the bad news, that nothing we do

Is ever enough; give me the good news,
Nothing we do will ever be enough.
******

Here’s to another year of pouring our lives into little rooms.