Friends & Relations: I woke up this morning and had zero voice left. Nicholas R Munson very graciously saved my tail by agreeing to go on for tonight's preview with very little notice. Come over to Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse tonight and watch him slay!
Oh, posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation, to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the pains to preserve it. - John Adams
Thanks so much for all of the Birfday love, everyone! I spent the day getting shat on by a bird, eating all of the Olive Garden breadsticks and working on a project that means a great deal to me. Not a bad start to the final year of my 40s!
Shout out to whoever let the pack of Mormons into my building. They took one look at my face and decided to peddle their Garden of Eden in Missourah theory somewhere else...
I know all we do is adapt movies into musicals these days, but I'm excited for How To Train Your Dragon. No idea how anyone would pull that off onstage but I'm here for it!
There's always gonna be another mountain. I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be another uphill battle. Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb! - Hannah Montana
Frodo leaving the Shire is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking endings in all of literature. He won. The Ring was destroyed. The Shire was saved. And he couldn't stay.
Not because he didn't want to. But because the journey cost him more than anyone around him could see. He carried the weight of the world's evil on his body and soul, and even though the Ring was gone, the scars weren't.
That's Tolkien writing the truest thing he ever wrote: some suffering in this life cannot be healed in this life. There are wounds - spiritual, physical, emotional - that only eternity can restore.
Frodo’s departure isn’t a sad ending, it’s the hope of heaven for someone who gave everything and was broken by it. It's about the promise that what was broken will be made whole. Just not here. And not yet.