So this is stuff I wrote a while back, slightly modified, kind of like the short things I wrote in April-May, on the trip.

First : About there being tons of people in your head.

June 16, 2002

If they all weren't looking, she'd cry.

If everyone could just look away for a moment. If everyone could just stop sitting there and enjoying the show.

She's an actress. The public's eyes are all on her, and they know the whole play - or at least they think they do, and if it's different, they're gonna be disappointed. And the public must be pleased. Else they'll stop loving you. The actress can't disappoint the audience - what's an actress without an audience ?

She'll just look very, very far ahead, because when you look far away, you don't have to face what they like to call "now", because you don't see it, you live just to get to that far, far away place, that you never reach, because the farther you get, the farther ahead you look. She'll walk on a wire, staring at the horizon so when she finally falls down the wire and hurts herself, she won't have seen it coming.

And she'll keep acting that new play the audience and some of the actors made up, and she'll block out all the noise from the outside to listen to all those voices screaming in her head, and she'll learn all each of them has to say, she'll learn it by heart so when they're all talking at the same time, she'll hear all of them separately, and she'll be able to concentrate on that soothing voice saying that it's all gonna be all right.