A Lightbulb Moment
by Julia Motyka
Welcome to The Artist’s Survival Guide, where artists share the art that got them through. A movie, a garden, a song, a meal, a favorite dance class, the novel that’s been read several times over. For many of us, these things give us faith, they are where we find comfort, succor and direction. Maybe a shift in perspective. My hope is that this weekly column will do some of that for you, too. Today we hear from author—and a dear collaborator,
- Chris
A Lightbulb Moment by Julia Motyka
The August before I turned 23 found me in NYC living in a shared studio apartment, working three nanny jobs, tutoring kids in the Bronx, transcribing dissertation interviews, and still barely scraping by.
My father, whom I’d taken care of during a long hospitalization for AIDS related illnesses, was mostly back on his feet. It was my turn to struggle. I couldn’t sleep most nights, and when I did I had nightmares. I dreamed that I was shot in the back of the head, that I fell from cliffs and tall buildings, that I was chased into the void by witches. I died in every dream; waking with a gasp only when I’d felt my heart beat for the last time.
I couldn’t afford to go to a restaurant, or museum, or the theater, but walking—at least— was free. And so, in what little spare time I had, I roamed the streets of the village wondering what I was there for.
One evening, out for a walk, I ran into my friend Rob. He had free tickets to a show downtown, did I want to go? There were four of us that met that night at a run down theater on West 3rd Street for what turned out to be a truly strange magic show in which a man swallowed a lightbulb and almost severed his brachial artery with a sword trick gone a bit wrong.
As he took his bow, we cheered and screamed. We were all handed kazoos and noisemakers as we walked out the theater doors to a summer thunderstorm that lit the night sky on fire with lightning and turned the streets into slick and shining paintings of water. One of our group took off running and the rest followed. We blew into our kazoos and whooped and hollered and laughed for the sheer pleasure of the air in our lungs; for free theater tickets and other bodies next to us on the strange and often lonely journey of life. We collapsed against the edge of a building on Minetta Lane and stood under large raindrops as they fell from a sky too high to touch but somehow, for that moment, not out of reach. We were soaked to the bone. I felt washed clean.
When the rain stopped, we walked together down the middle of the empty road, street lights creating Rorschachs of butterflies on the ground all around us.
I looked around and—for the first time in a long time—I felt a part of something; like I too had swallowed a lightbulb.
I was lighter.
I was made of light.
Julia Motyka is an internationally recognized writer, performer, audiobook narrator, and yoga teacher who lives in NYC with her husband, two kids, and an ever-growing menagerie of animals. She has recent pieces at Dorothy Parker's Ashes and The Manifest Station and was one of the winners of The Fish Anthology Prize for Short Memoir, 2020. Her solo show, What I Know, Now will premiere at Bay Street Theatre this summer. As a performer, she's appeared Off-Broadway and with some of the nation's top regional theatres, winning awards in San Francisco and Colorado and a nomination in LA and has voiced scores of audio books. She writes The Clubhouse here on Substack and would love to see you there! www.juliamotyka.com. Insta: @juliamotyka_me.
Oh, how I love this. Conjures memories of my own early twenties and the constant teetering between despair and elation (a sensation that, for me, has not entirely dissipated with the years, but only become manageable through repetition.) Thank you so much for sharing. Now want to read all of Julia's work!