I began writing THE TRUE in a fever state:
It was early morning and there was fog outside my window.
The cats were resting at my feet.
I was having an anxiety attack.
I could only breathe if I held the computer tight and let my fingers tell me what my brain would not.
“Where am I?” I asked myself, “Where am I?”
This was the state of my mind when I began to write for myself and no one else, as I was beginning to see that I had been trapped in a Con for two years. I was culling through the book I had written a year earlier, now realizing that what I had researched was in fact all lies. I was also trying to write as quickly as I could so that I would not forget the truth — that I had fallen, like a love-sick girl into a metaverse of corruption.
All I could think of was Bulgakov and his remarkable book, The Master and Margarita. I had learned of the book’s importance in 1990 when I left America for the first time and met artists who had been recently freed from behind the “Iron Curtain”. I was told that if I wanted to understand the true experience of Soviet rule I could get all I needed from it. So, I read it — and did not get it. That was 1990. I was twenty-one and in love for the first time with a Romanian whom I idealized. I was just a kid.
The Master and Margarita was beyond me:
I hadn’t understood a magician conning an entire theater to give over its money.
I hadn’t understood a talking cat that everyone seemed to believe was human.
I hadn’t understood a search for Jesus Christ that leads only to ruin.
Then, I got conned by a child of the Soviet way.
So, early in the morning of 2021, I picked up the book with new eyes. I read The Master and Margarita and only it could slow down my heart rate. I understood the shadows of lies, the illusion of connection, and the way magical realism was the only way to describe your brain, how all of its understanding of reality could be pushed through a metaphysical meat-grinder. Yes, Bulgakov was right. Bulgakov was real. Then, he haunted my dreams.
Now, here’s the thing: I grew up in theaters with ghosts. If you don’t have a ghost in your theater your theater is probably only half-baked. So, we had them and you did not want to piss them off. My dad, a theater director, before any opening night, would give an offering of cigarettes and a coke to our resident ghost. Our friend, Charles Ludlam, would kick anyone out of the theater who was stupid enough to whistle, speak any Shakespeare, or generally speak ill of the dead — if he caught you he’d make you spit, turn around three times and leave with your tail between your legs. It was serious fucking business.
Europeans are even more serious about phantoms because they have truly ancient ghosts. Ducu (whom I write about in The True, and was a “theater brat” like me) had very strict rules about his ghosts. In Paris, he sat and waited for Moliere to tip his hat on the stage of Le Odeon theater — “I felt him! His energy was pure humor!” Ducu cried. In Romania, Ducu was sure that dead actors and directors blended with the paint and formed a thin wall between him and the art he was making. Ghosts for theaters are the energy of the past, and they are imbued with the possibility for success or failure for any show. So, to be aligned with them helps to spread the luck you need to not have a flop. Ghosts are the true critics.
In 2021, I was truly in a “flop”. I had believed a woman who fed me lies that I was happy to accept. I had written a book about Ducu that was all fabrication. I was alone and left with the hollow sound of my breath. What was I going to do but admit I was in the ghosting of the past, a Soviet-style lie and I was a piece of fiction. So, I read Bulgakov, drank strong coffee, and let him take over my dreams.
Bulgakov told me this, “Accept that it’s all a lie. Accept that you are true even though the lies are all around you. Find a way to write the truth without leaving out the lies — write them all down with equal importance. Write!”
So the end of my book ends in a dream. In it, we are trapped in a theater where ghosts take over and try to come to terms with my mess. Bulgakov, Moliere, Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, Sarah Bernhardt, and others take the stage of my inner life and try to lead me home.
In the end, the past haunts us, and this is a part of our deepest meaning — that we are haunted. That we long to connect with the unknown. That we too are bound to be ghosts, and it is better to understand your ghosts so that you can be a proper one when, eventually, you take your final curtain call and pass over, the audience of your life — applauding.