The Chatty McJune Monthly
Writing some sketches, being confused about time, appreciating texture.
STUFF I FINISHED THIS MONTH:
a bunch of sketches 📝
one house made out of cardboard 🏠
This month, apart from a quick zip to Minneapolis for a wedding, I was home. My plan had been to bash out a bunch of video projects I’ve had simmering on my computer and shimmering in the back of my mind for ages. What ended up happening is not that. “Where is the time going?” I howled several times to several friends. I think where it went is that I had to reorient within my Chicago life, get a little sick, catch up on freelance work, throw myself a late birthday party, and then burrow deep into writing a sketch packet with a deadline.
A FEW DOODLES
A WORD ABOUT THOMAS’ BAGELS
If you go to the Thomas’ Breakfast Instagram page, you can find several 15-second clips where I am holding up a tiny microphone to the mouths of passersby. To produce these videos, I stood on Michigan Avenue for eight hours (minus a blessed hour for a seated, heated lunch) in April and asked every person who walked by about breakfast. Almost nobody wanted to speak to me, and many did out of the kindness of their hearts and, presumably, out of the awkwardness of saying “leave me alone.” It was a humbling exercise. Never more humbling than at the very end of the shoot when, sunburned and wind chapped, I stood on the median in Michigan Avenue by myself in a Thomas’ Bagels trucker hat and I shouted random things about breakfast as a drone circled overhead. Every time I looked over at the ad agency people, they did the “keep going” hand motion and I would whirl back around and shout something erudite like “Chicago, who likes English Muffins?” while cars streamed by. I am not sure exactly what I was shouting because it was at least six minutes long and I blacked out. The cars couldn’t see the drone. For them, I was merely yelling “Cinnamon bread goes crazy!” during rush hour for my own pleasure.
You simply must trust the process, especially when someone is paying you. I believe that writhing on the floor in Level 2 improv class at iO genuinely prepared me for such a gig. You build up a muscle doing improv which propels you forward to hop in a scene to support someone or to fill the empty stage, even when it might seem…um, humiliating. However, the muscle you build is not just the doing it, but the doing it with joy.
It appears they did not end up using the drone shot.
A MERE MENTION OF A SKETCH PACKET
This month I wrote 8 sketches! That’s way more than usual. Please clap. I wrote them for a submission packet. Something nice about having a deadline and a purpose is that it makes me flush out ideas I’ve been sitting on. If I think of a premise but I can’t quite crack it (or I’m feeling lazy) then the idea sits in my notebook, a little puzzle for another time. And there’s nothing like having a couple weeks to do a packet, then suddenly a couple days (howling: where does time go?) that gets me to sit down and work through the puzzles, to sit in the frustration.
It’s also nice that once I’ve gotten something on the page and typed The End and edited it and gotten notes from my smart, funny friends, then even if it’s not exactly where I want it to be, it has a chance to become something else down the line. When I leave ideas as little knotted up puzzles in my notebook, they have bleak prospects as time goes on. Last year, I adapted a sketch I wrote for a packet and pitched it at Second City. It ended up being the group scene that opened our show for a year. Satisfying.
Also satisfying? I taught a sketch workshop earlier this month for high school kids. Then later when I was writing sketches, I used my own advice.
I would like to recommend some books now. I am re-reading Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I read it last summer and then had a deep urge to do it again one year later. It makes me love life more. And it makes me nostalgic for Chicago, when I’m in Chicago.
Near the beginning she writes about taking a workshop with the Neo-Futurists and how the philosophy makes sense to her.
“Work must reflect the randomness of life, with its incessant, merciless, almost humorous bombardment of highly contrasting emotions and experiences.”
Lately I’ve been thinking about how bad feelings are swirled through my favorite memories. Hard times are smushed so tight against good times that it’s hard to catch your breath. And more likely, it’s all happening at once. When I read back through my journal, I’m often surprised. “That happened on the same day as that? Oh my god, and THAT happened the next day?” It’s all squashed together! My god. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life reminds me that it’s inevitable— life is textured— and a bad mood streaking through a day or an unanswered text sitting like an anvil on my phone during a vacation doesn’t spoil the whole thing. No relationship, no evening, no man-on-the-street bagel commercial shoot is all 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀.
Also, Splinters by Leslie Jamison was delicious.
I bet everybody knows this, but there are great second-hand book sites. Recycle! Spurn Amazon. I mostly use Biblio, but have also used Abe Books and Thrift Books. Sometimes if the library doesn’t have a specific book I want, I get it used online for a couple bucks, then put it in a Little Free Library when I’m done.
Please comment if you have a good book to share. Would love to fill up my summer with good books.
Love,
Claire
My favorite novel is A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. Highly recommend. Also great as an audiobook.
Love reading these updates :) I read Bunny by Mona Awad a couple months ago and haven't stopped thinking about it.