This week I've been up seven, eight, nine in the morning working on plays I intend to produce in 2023: one completely from scratch; one substantially re-written. It’s easier to write very late or early, without the distractions of the day. The middle of the night really is the only time where I can actually feel focused. I guess that's the general logic of Internet brain. It's at its best when the Internet is at its quietest. There's an inexorable logic to that.
Working on Ardor, an old play, back to back with Afters is a new play is like walking through a self-excavation site—wrestling with ideas that are no longer as important to me, as well as ideas that are… looking at the composite layers and levels side by side.1
The revision is a form of revenge against one's younger self. In Ardor, in particular, which is about a group of friends in the same theater company, including a playwright character, I see much to criticize, both in content and form. With each draft, the playwright character has lost the ability to justify himself, as my own self perception–the perception of the person I was in my mid-20s (and later)—as changed, and I’ve been better to admit, that, well, yeah I was a jerk.
Back then, some of the initial attention (on a very small scale) and validation I'd gotten from my plays, had gone to my head; I don't think I had too much respect for... how hard it was to... write and produce... plays at a sufficiently high level. I was in my Treplev phase, so to speak.2 I realize now that my enthusiasm and romanticism (my ardor) was excuse for shoddy workmanship and egotism.