Attrition! Attrition! .... Attrition!

Sing the title to "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof and it's way funnier.

I've been blog-absent for years now, it seems. I only honestly admit this because I just spent the past hour or so reading old entries and getting lost in the alleyways of memory lane. ("I was still friends with people from high school in my junior year of college! And I wish I still was! Oh my god how detached I feel now by comparison!")

There's this idea that got introduced in my playwriting class that seems a little daunting. It's what makes "All My Sons" a fucking virtuousic dramatic work-- indicative of what theater should be able and IS able to do. It's the concept that dramatic actions build upon every dramatic action that's come before it-- the attrition of emotion/information is cumulative, and pressure builds until the drama has stuffed itself into too small a space and something has to explode in a cathartic release (CLIMAX!).

That being said, I have a bit of a problem with attrition in my own life. I think it comes with my ability to completely forget the past and live completely in the future. (This is a recent development... ironically.)

I love progress. And I love thinking that the version of myself that I am at the moment is more advanced and evolved than previous versions of myself. But reading old entries makes me realize that old me wasn't the senseless, underdeveloped me that I always pretend she was. Granted, reading old entries is a bit like hearing a stranger talk (and what a clever, attractive stranger she was). But I wasn't completely retarded, and certainly not so less sophisticated than I am now. Less well-read, perhaps. But not unintelligent and not completely incomprehensible.

Speaking about completely incomprehensible behavior, I had a point about "attrition" that may have been thrown to the wolves of a slightly inebriated mind. Blame it on people at work deciding that Thursday night is the best possible night to throw a Bourbon party.