Moving onward today with MOTORAMA. The vibe works, chilly and distant. Bear in mind it’s not about me feeling cold and distant. It’s more the world feeling cold and distant and vibing on entirely another frequency. I’m still very much in the here and now, but perhaps not feeling that things are right. Maybe it’s more about not really wanting to be a part of it. It’s hard to explain. Explaining is my job, I know, but the words don’t always come at will.

Speaking of words, Motorama records with English lyrics and sometimes the word choices seem just a bit off. They’re not always what an English speaker may use. They’re not exactly wrong but they’re not exactly right either. It does lend to the whole mood with their songs though. It adds that one extra dimension of distance, like that split second of hesitation, questioning, am I saying what I really want to say? Am I being clear here? It’s the right tension for the songs. It’s just right.

And there’s another dimension to the distance beyond that. It’s like remembering or recounting a conversation, rather than listening to a conversation firsthand. There’s a sort of longing to maybe go back and say things differently. Who hasn’t been there, hanging on the memory of words spoken, that you can’t go back and un-say.

This may seem like a hard right turn in the flow here, but there is a connection here. I’ve seen four theater productions in the last four weeks, between Broadway and Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway. Four widely disparate stories in four disparate settings. Four different stories stretched across four different budgets. Two plays were excellent, one beyond words. Another play was very, very good. Then the fourth was just… something. I won’t be dismissive of it as it would fall under the experimental category, and it was a very personal story for sure, and took a lot of courage to tell. It just seemed… well, there are different ways to tell stories so while I left the theater last night feeling mostly negative about it, I will say today that it isn’t they way I would have chosen to tell the story.

At the same time, it’s not my story to tell, so let’s be fair.

The bigger point of bringing these up though isn’t to review theater. It’s just to say that the creative world around me has opened further and it’s impossible to immerse ones self in these acts of expression and not be moved. It’s made me kind of restless, and maybe that’s the whole source of the restlessness I’ve been feeling. I’m not sure but it seems right. I feel like I should be storytelling. Or maybe it’s just my compulsion to spill the beans. To self-confess To self-eviscerate?

To have some kind of outlet, I guess. Motorama has spent the last 15 years telling these stories that they tell through their songs. They’re not angry and screaming and running into walls. They’re just telling sad, little stories. It’s not the way I would tell my story either. It’s closer to it, but everyone has not only their own story but their own way to tell it. There are probably more difference in how to tell stories than there are difference in the stories themselves. Humans just aren’t that interesting. The repertoire of our experience is not all that varied. That’s why storytelling is healing. It connects us when we hear someone and their story is ours. It’s the whole you are me and I am you and we are each other experience. It’s why we start to feel like we know actors and songwriters and even the characters they portray.

I think it’s time to start telling stories again. It’s time to connect.

Does this make sense?