You may recognize the actress Megan Davis. Most memorably, she made a name for herself when she aced the challenging role of Amber Heard in the film "Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial" for which she was nominated Best Actress at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards. She is also featured in "American Horror Story," "2 Broke Girl$" and "Bones."
A big surprise to many fans, Megan Davis also sings opera! Her first leading opera role was at the Tulsa Opera when at just 12 years old she starred in "The Cunning Little Vixen." A few years later, she took the leading role in the theatre production "The Day They Shot John Lennon" at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival.
She majored in Acting and Musical Theatre at the University of Arizona before moving to Los Angeles, where she is also a screenwriter. In recent months, she has just finished an upcoming film with Adam Irigoyen that she wrote called "Hemorrhage."
This summer, the multi-talented artist released her debut poetry book, "What Breaks Us." It's a soul-stirring collection that readers of all sexual orientations can appreciate, a love story, but not about loving another person, a story about loving yourself enough to heal and be free.
Originally from Tulsa, a place that's still hard for her to visit due to its lack of acceptance of LGBT relationships, Davis writes, "I grew up not having a clue how to handle the emotion and the turbulence I felt inside. I turned to alcohol and drugs at a very young age ... I had to get sober."
The answer for her was found in writing, even though she never was one to keep a journal. "I would sit down to write and get my feelings out of myself and onto paper, poetry is what would come out."
With chapters about heartbreak, broken-ness, attachment/addiction, sex, hate, love, life, friendship, human-ness, freedom, spirituality, empowerment, and healing, "What Breaks Us" is an intensely personal book that chronicles her transcendence from pain and bitterness in an unhappy relationship to perfect clarity of the situation, "I wish I loved myself enough to leave you," and finally to daring to heal.
Davis writes that she hopes to help the reader in "navigating their own brokenness as they piece themselves back together to ultimately find that love within."
For one, her poetry wrestles to make sense of "the confusion of her generation," the first internet generation, "a sophisticated solipsism," as they all try to connect alone online where they "only have 140 characters to be important."
It's impossible to heal a problem that is an integral part of daily life until it can be identified. This is perhaps especially true when dealing with new problems previous generations weren't saddled with.
"I read Ginsberg and Kerouac and think I understand,
Then I write out a quote and take a screenshot and post it on
Instagram... So connected that there's no connection."
Social media multiplies many illusions, including about fame, leading people to believe it brings love and acceptance. But experience has led her to powerful, unforgettable insights, even if they are not ubiquitous, "Where were you when you realized that no one truly cares about anyone else?"
A major hurdle is learning to put emotions in perspective, because they pass, emotions always pass.
Megan Davis writes Odes to Edgar Allan Poe and e.e. cummings, and even takes on Nietzsche's glaring blind spots, recognizing that his dead God is the priggish man-made God invented to keep women enslaved, a God that in no way resembles the God that created the universe. Like a sage or prophetess, she knows truth is within reach, "And you can always find what's true, When mind and heart and soul are in matrimony."
Even if "The thing she loved so much about the truth was its madness."
In the chapter "empowerment," she writes that there is "no better compliment than to be kind-hearted. Be worthy of this honor."
Excerpt from "What Breaks Us":
"I like to think of God as a little kid,
Free from the need to judge,
Able to see everything and everyone for who they are,
No less, no better,
Because children are free from the insecurities,
Free from the need to make that which they don't understand
seem lesser;
All they see is beauty,
Looking at everything with such wonder,
Believing anyone is capable of anything in this world,
And even beyond eternity."
"What Breaks Us" by Megan Davis, Manhattan Book Group. $19.99
www.whatbreaksuspoetry.com
www.instagram.com/meggydavis
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