I feel so cowed in the face of true greatness. Huge swaths of my life have been spent recognizing the accomplishment of something that seems so far beyond my reach. It’s uncomfortable, to have a Salieri complex: it’s lonely, living in the space above where most people are, yet below the plane of genius, or whatever word you want to use for it. I see, cannot unsee, the gaps between the majority of people and myself; I also see, also cannot unsee, the chasm between where I am and where so many of those people I admire are.

It is whatever that particular thing is inside a person that makes them fight. I don’t know, I’ve never felt like much of a fighter. I have no competitive drive. I think I killed it in myself very long ago. Competing never seemed to work out great for me. Things came easily to me or not at all. I get angry, but I don’t get motivated. I don’t understand why we have to best each other.

It feels so out of step with everything that modern life, especially modern Western life, asks of us, presents to us. Part of why I think I fell in love with theatre is that it’s one of the only places where it truly felt to me like people were working equitably towards a common goal. It’s hard work, theatre is. The best of its participants innately understand that each aspect is different but nevertheless crucial. It doesn’t get done without all of us.

Two critics of very different kinds read what I’ve written.

One of them accuses me of ingratitude, of selfishness, of the problem of privilege. Salieri was, still, very well known, even if he wasn’t Mozart. She sees a person who has never had to try that hard in their life, at anything. How can you lament not-having when you are so doused in having? She is right.

The other sneers at my self-importance, and lets me know there’s a third subset that I fall into which is even worse: there are the Mozarts, and the Salieris, and then there’s me, the wannabe Salieri. Is it more embarrassing to find being good agonizing or to be mistaken about being good?

A chart reader tells me I have placements that suggest my life is full of the occult, of strange happenings, of thin veils. Is it possible this self-consciousness is a curse I visited upon myself (possible, more like likely)?

It is a venn diagram that I am always confused by. I love to read, love to read a good book, a great book, love nothing more than that—okay, a few things more than that, but not many. I can write, I do write, I make a living writing. The progression seems natural. Yet when I try to overlap the 2 circles, they repel each other. Reading amazing writing makes me sad about the prospect of writing; writing more makes it harder for me to read as much, for self-preservation, or from pity, or something else.

This is a letter to something beyond myself (it is a letter to me). It is a—and I hate to use this word, man, I really hate it—it is a prayer to some far-flung corner of existence to please, please, please, let me know what I want, (this time, any time). For someone so strong in their self, the darkest chasm is the one I always find at my own center. Stare into the abyss too long and it changes, moves of its own accord. Who is driving this void? Are you there, Whoever? It’s me, Whoever.

Anyway, I finished The Sentence, by Louise Erdich, a writer who makes me ecstatic that books exist, and hopeless for my own case. It is a Covid book, and it is a George Floyd book—I haven’t felt particularly interested in reading anything like that, and I didn’t know before I picked it up that this book was set in 2020 in Minneapolis, in a very real version of our own timeline. But then, of course, Erdich is always a balm, and we give thanks for whatever she turns her healing words onto. Read it if you want to feel sad and mad and bad again about what happened 6 years ago; read it if you want to feel hopeful that things can always start over; read it if you want to feel terror and apprehension that maybe humans will never change.

But at least we’ll have Erdich and her books, to show us the gap between what we are and what we could be.