Waking this morning, unable to sleep anymore after my boyfriend's "see you later" kiss as he went off to work, I was accompanied by a familiar restlessness. The roof seemed the only place to go and so I went, straddling the wall. There's something about elevation that seems at one time natural, an expected preference, but then at another time transcendent. Most of us live between five and seven feet off the ground. We are stuck by gravity to remain on the ground, to inhabit a vantage point that keeps us, in the great scheme of things, quite small. Sitting on a roof four floors off the ground, I become greater than my building, greater than the small buildings around me. I see over them and into Manhattan ahead of me, Brooklyn behind. The city, which is so easy to feel lost and swallowed up in, becomes an objective pinpoint "over there." It is small, manageable, containable. I like to look down on things, see them from above and watch.
Only a few people were on the street so early, though, in my part of Brooklyn, there are often only a few people on the street. An elderly woman entered her apartment building across the street, a few kids walked down the street, I'm sure happy for Saturday, a van of workers pulled up and begin unloading supplies as the climbed onto the roof of the single story building next door.
A few workers noticed me, curious about the girl precariously poised on a fourth floor roof who watched them. A few waved and smiled. After sitting for a little while, I noticed another people watcher. An elderly man crouched at his window across the street with a cup of coffee, doing exactly the same thing I was doing. However, he didn't notice me, didn't realize that he had became part of the group of people to be watched on this early morning. I watched him watch the workers I had previously been watching. I wanted to wave to him, welcome him into this voyeuristic complicity. However, he didn't notice me. I left as the workers began changing on the roof, offering them privacy though the elderly man continued to watch.
A Thought: There's a balance one must find as an actor of stripping down one's own tendencies and idiosyncrasies and developing new characteristics of the character. But where exactly is this balance? One creates and inhabits the character through the self, but where is the line between the self and the character and where do these two merge? That I do not yet have an answer for.
A Find: Interstate Gallery on Knickerbocker. Last night there was an opening reception for a new exhibit that was based off of David Lynch's Twin Peaks. Opening receptions are wonderful. There are so many people to meet, artists to speak with, the gallery owner himself to become friendly with, as well as the art, of course. Any chance you have of going to opening receptions, go!
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