Sleep No More

In elementary school, my friend Ashley and I found an old suitcase in my parents' attic. My mom said she didn't know where it came from, and so somehow we decided that it belonged to an old mental patient of my mother's, named Jenny. There were a few strange drawings and documents in the suitcase and we spent hours building mysteries around them. I remember writing in my diary something along the lines of, "WE FOUND OUT NEW THINGS ABOUT JENNY TODAY!!!!!!" I believed in these stories with every fiber of my being and they brought me great pleasure.

I thought about suitcases and attics and mysteries last week when I went with my lovely friend Gayle to see Sleep No More, which I can only really describe as a "production." Or, like a Shakespearean haunted house. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. But the experience was bittersweet because I realized how much work it takes, at the ripe old age of 25, to wholly activate my imagination. During the exploration of the old hotel, I wanted to make believe that I had stumbled upon it myself and was now parsing through some dark, gothic past. And yet, I found myself analyzing my struggle to fully engage ("This will make for a great blog post!"). Alas. My 9 year old self could have dove right in at 100%, whereas I peaked at around 15%.

But it did bring me back to the days of being young and desperate for real seances, graveyards, secret trapdoors, mirrors, diaries, and adventure. With a touch of Edward Gorey for good measure.