“A day” suggests that the victim is moving on, putting on like a pair of sneakers the aphorism: “Time heals all wounds,” and she is walking in them, fast, away from the pain. (Pair that “day” with a handful of others and she’ll have a week, then a month under her belt, and she’ll be feeling nothing but relief soon.) But, “what a difference the day makes” refers to a kind of chronic depression that settles whenever night falls, and this kind of the blues is much harder to escape. The song title changes the message entirely, and the original, melancholy title has a more ominous tone that resonates more truly with my experience of love.
Now, if I could lead us both off of this interesting but brambled path and back onto the main road, I would tell you that today’s topic is about the wrong title, and how, sometimes, the mistaken title is really the right message. . .and the misstep, the better move.
In January, I woke from my sleep, dissatisfied and bored with every fiber of my existence. I wanted OUT, but I would settle for UP. So, I started exploring what UP might look like for me: it definitely required a career change. (I had taught English for fourteen years and was beginning to hate what I loved; literature and the rules of writing become impossible yokes when foisted upon the unyielding. Plus, in that small academic setting, I had no literary friends, no other writers or even book-loving acquaintances. Teaching was merely a job, the smock they shoved their arms into every morning, and then shed in the late afternoons, just as quickly. I had no peer group and I was shriveling in isolation, while surrounded by others.)
So, I did what every creative idiot my age does: I pulled a Thoreau and slipped into the woods for what felt like a very unproductive month, while continuing to audition and attempt to climb the local theatre ladders the traditional way, knowing I would, first, have to pry off another actress’s fingers, displacing her hold, because every rung festered with bodies who clung in desperation to remain at the level they had clawed out for themselves. The only good that came from this hiatus was I got back into reading, consistently and daily—for hours at a time.
In February, I started walking every single day, attempting to discipline myself, physically, hoping it would strengthen my interior resolve. In March, I met with a peer who had gone back to school to be a playwright, and his boldness inspired me. I had never heard of a ten-minute play, let alone seen one performed or written one. But, that was about to change. . .(To Be Con’t)