Writer's Diary
6/4/26
Tarkovsky had to shoot Stalker twice; and developed cancer from the chemical plant where the movie was filmed; I think about that a lot.
The reason that I need a break from theater, funding, whatever sort of public social role I’m playing, is that what I really need a break from is the things that happen. It’s New York. Stalkers, violent threats, random social assassination. Generally loss of privacy. A loss of control, really, over my own life—and I know that I’ve done this to myself and may have sought it out, or at least contributed to the conditions under which I’m this weird object of parasocial fascination.
If you haven’t experienced it, you have no idea how fundamentally weird it is for some people to want to be you, for other people to want to destroy you, for other people to want to love you. To copy how you write, to copy the topics you write about. To mock you and meme you. To praise you, blame you.
I guess my willingness to endure it is masochistic. This is essentially what Last Days of Downtown was about—ending the masochism of social performance and trying to find a pure state in which life and art both have meaning again.
E says that there’s something passive about me, and that some people don’t like me because I won’t actually defend myself from them… and somehow I think that’s true.
I think about how Terrence Malick didn’t make anything for 19 years after Days of Heaven. There’s some appeal to that.
There’s so much peace in the leafy parts of Central Park.
I am one of the parasocial fans. I do like your writing. I have read your plays and your journals. You are talented and I enjoy your work.
You aren’t seeking advice, but it sounds like burnout to me. Perhaps do a residency or just move and live somewhere else, preferably a non-English speaking country. Get out of NYC for a good while. Do something beyond what you’ve been doing.