The sound inside..

is the name of a play written by Adam Rapp. Yesterday, while my apartment was being cleaned, I celebrated the second day of Barnes and Noble reopening by browsing the store, and ultimately choosing to buy Adam's play, and yes, also a mystery by Agatha Christie. A strange and fascinating juxtaposition, though i don't know if I realized it then. Adam's play had a run on Broadway---I wanted to see it but had not-- so when I saw I had the chance to buy it and experience it---for certainly when I returned home to my newly cleaned apartment, there would be nothing else to do---I did just that.

  I met Adam Rapp in September of 1991---I had become friends with his brother Anthony, and was looking to cast a 10 minute (worthless) play that I had been asked to direct. Adam had appeared in Anthony's production of a John Guare play (Marco Polo sings a Solo); I asked Anthony to see if Adam would want to work with me on this one. Adam accepted my offer;at the time, he was working for Penguin down in the lower part of the West Village. We became good friends, and remained so for about 6 years. I went to many readings  or read his earliest writings; even though I liked him, I was not impressed---the points they made seemed obvious--most everything remained on the surface. Adam himself, seemed easy to understand; he wanted to write, but also was a compulsive basketball player--and seemed very comfortable in the dating world.  His head seemed very much in the present. So of course, you can understand my amazement when, around 2000, his plays became internal---he began to create a whole universe of people and actions that seemed totally remote from the friend that I knew. But these people and and their actions were unique. Within the removed framework he created, these characters were authentic.  Somehow those earlier, clumsy attempt at playwriting were necessary--once he let go of them he could move on to that unique and fascinating world--where sometimes not a word would be wasted---of his later plays.

  The narrator of The Sound Inside (the play) is a fifty three year old college English professor  at Yale .who is alone, and has stomach problems. Interesting because at this moment I am experiencing problems with my stomach as well---problems that I have trouble understanding. Problems and sometimes pain that has forced me to consider the possibility of a colonoscopy, something I really don't want. The play recounts her relationship with one the freshmen in her English class. Bella, (the woman) lives a fairly isolated and self sufficient life---even among the hubub of the Yale campus where she teaches. The play is about their relationship and the effect that they have on each other from the play's beginning to its end. As I expected, it drew me in. Its ending, or its total meaning, is never made clear. But it was the experience that I wanted---the rest of the evening I tuned into WNYC to get some results of the important races that were taking place in the city. But thoughts about the play dominated my vision

I am writing this post, this sentence at 3:44 Wednesday morning. About a half hour ago, i awoke from a sleep that probably lasted an hour and a half. When I stood up, to go to the bathroom, I was shocked. Not only was there no pain in my stomach, but the rest of my body carried with it a
kind of quiet--no pain anywhere. This is the same body I had in 1976, after an unexpected break up with a woman stunned me and (though I did not know it then) put my life on a different path. The break up signified the end of  the first part of my adult life. As I am writing this, as I was after the break up, I am now, totally alone. But has the body really not changed?  Now, at 3:45, Is this real? No wonder I tire in the early evening.  No wonder trips to Williamsburg or Bushwick seem impossible.

As in  the beginning.  The other book that I bought: an Agatha Christie mystery---I had enjoyed reading another one earlier in the lockdown--it was beautifully put together and kept my mind from the blankness of the days.  As I got up, I thought to myself: Adam's play is all internal. Christie's mystery is the complete absence of anything internal--it is all surface.  I had chosen two completely opposite reading experiences. Can I now, after The Sound Inside, and all it has brought up in me, possibly
take on the Christie. Or should I go back to the charming but somewhat inane Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld, Maybe  I  should return to Barnes and Noble  and seek out another "galvanic' book.
It's all open..