Get your tickets now. Seriously. We've got a short run and you don't want to miss this show.
A period-piece for the dot-com generation:
Get your tickets now. Seriously. We've got a short run and you don't want to miss this show.
trying to say more with less
1-Our fictions are only as interesting as the possible truths behind them.
2-"The strength of the character's wants equals the strength of the play." (Frank Hauser)
3-First, there's the loss of naivete. Of realizing that so many hopes and and perceptions were so different from reality. Realizing your parents are flawed human beings too. That the person you'll marry won't be everything and more, but also human and imperfect. That no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to always be happy and have everything you want all the time.
And then you move on. And realize that you don't really need those things. That life is glorious even with all it's imperfections and disappointments amidst the occasional triumph.
Things become even better then.
This is gratitude: realizing the true value of things without comparing them endlessly to the mint-condition gold standard ideal. Loving in spite of imperfection
4-There's never enough time. And that's ok.
Helen's Harp
'Ten o'clock at night?' she exclaimed.
It had long since gotten dark.
'I see lights over there, and a darkness over there. And when you stand between me and the light, I can almost see your shadow'
Her eyes were silver and unseeing, catching the glint of the chandelier above. She sat in her silk white night gown and a whiter terry robe untied loosely round her waist. Her frizzy hair was a grey halo flaming off her scalp, and when she looked at me, she looked both far beyond and yet no farther than the insides of her eyes.
I handed her the autoharp, and she became the vision of a perfect fiery seraphim waiting on the edges of this world.
Her blind fingers touched the air gingerly, looking for the keys as she softly strummed away. The notes were distant and tinny.
'It has such a gentle sound'
and sometimes when she closed her eyes, I couldn't tell if she was sleeping or not.
'I keep them closed so much now' she said. 'I can't see with them open anyway, and it helps with the dryness'. She had lived her entire life in a desert.
But as she told us stories of travels and family, childhood and motherhood, her eyes would dart back and forth, scan the horizon--visions of a distant life sprang up on the canvas of her inner eye.
She was strumming so softly we could barely hear, but the notes were perfect until we put the harp away.
Offerings
Every night, after everyone has gone to sleep, I am still awake. I am a hunter and I hunt alone.
I slip quietly out the back door and the night is dark and cool and filled with the throbbing sounds of chanting crickets.
I slink out into the shadows and keep my head low.
It's there in the blackest blackness that I wait and listen.
Cars off in the distance.
Neighbors watching tv next door.
And then...a faint rustling in the leaves. A scampering through the grass and a brief flash of beady eyes.
My gently curving spring-loaded spine uncoils as I fly forward, grasping palms extended as I leave the ground.
Contact. Claws sink silently.
I've got it in my hands, then by the neck in my teeth. It stops twitching after a few shakes, and I saunter back to the porch.
I'll leave it, fully intact, on the doormat.
A thank you.
A "you feed me, I'll feed you" gesture.
But I know it still will be there in the morning. My gifts are never good enough.
A bigger one will come out in the morning, I'll slink inside the door, pretending not to watch for her reaction. But really, I'll be spying through the corner of my pale slit eyes as the long-maned one twists and stretches her mouth and closes the door in a huff.
It still will be there in the morning and I'll pretend to be aloof.
So now I'll sulk off into the night again to wait and watch and pounce and prey until I get a second for myself.
My gifts are always good enough for me.
Look and Listen
'Audience' comes from the latin verb 'audiere' meaning 'to hear'.
Also from latin is 'spectat', meaning 'to look', which gave rise to 'spectators'.
--Hiatus--
The author is gone to the UK for a month.
And no, he probably won't be telling you anything about it here, because he'll be out there living it.
Recounts may appear at a later date. No guarantees.
no one got the mail today
During the show rumbles overhead.
coming out of the blackbox
purple shifting skies catch yellow distant lights and
flash quiet far-off thunder.
Walking in the front door
coming home that's only sometimes home
wondering if I'll ever come back to myself
My brother plays softly stroking strumming guitar.
Parents' bedroom door open across the hall--no one to wake up inside
The room is empty.
I open the front door, then the back, to let more sky inside my house.
It's brighter at night. Cleaner, the sky.
and walk out onto the driveway picking up the mail.
Two-thirty am and there's a cricket in the garden, just one. Doing his own thing.
Singing louder than the others--soloist performance. Midnight arias wistful and alone.
Reach inside the dark mail box my fingers find nothing.
Walk back beneath the fruiting trees and smash purple berries underfoot, grinding seeds and juice into
purple stained pavement.
The mail never came today, that's just the kind of day it was.
But the night air after the rain was sweet cedar and rose dew drops, summer honey and sleeping breeze.
(I used to run to the mailbox everyday, heart pounding in my throat, hoping against hope.)
This morning
woke up early to find the front door still wide open
and no one had come home.
Sounds Carry Uphill
And in the midst of a crowd it can be hard to hear yourself think.
A red toy airplane buzzing overhead
Frisbee right behind us.
Soccer. Scene change. And the jets roar by.
Fireworks make me five again. White weeping willows in the sky.
I ran across the field, thinking they were over, only to find myself driving away from the finale.
Performing in Front of a Fountain
Golden yellow cream sun sunlight
lights up the backdrop
Backstage we see everything that's happening on.
Shadows of shadows.
Tybalt's death in paper cut-out shadow puppets
Dancing on the wall
and when you look through the slit in the curtain there's a golden glowing stripe on your face
and the fountain is spouting sunfire and sparkling bullion
spilling liquid light
that's soaking over everything.
Lights like this don't fade into the evening--
they just bounce and reflect up and off into the sky forever:
The sun behind the fountain.
There's Nothing Left to Burn
She put her hands gingerly on his back.
They stared up at the stars and all of them were moving like fireflies. Satellites.
Then they realized that the clouds were moving--Chess pieces. Dragons and ducks in the night sky.
Why didn't anything feel? We gave up and sang drinking songs.
I've Always Felt Guilty Doing What I've Loved
"The goals of art are incommensurate (as mathematicians say) with social goals. The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations. If I were told that I could write a novel in which I should set forth the apparently correct attitudes toward all social questions, I would not devote even two hours of work to such a novel, but if I were told that what I shall write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they will weep and smile over it and will fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strengths to it."
--Tolstoy
Lost and
1- Wallet: (twice)
incl. Driver's License, Credit Card, Student ID, Frequent Fritter card from Bruges, Picture of You (x2)
2- Keys
(always)
3- Glasses
(sometimes)
4- Direction
(still looking)
Now That We've Broken Up, I No Longer Feel Intimidated by Your Ex
"The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work. Hence his work is beautiful and his life bad."
--Tolstoy
The End of the Season this Summer
Within the next week I'll have three projects up:
--Grassroots Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet--Actor, Producer
--Noorda Summer Camp: The Secret Life of Girls--Director
--Edinburgh Fringe Fest Preview: Rappaccini's Daughter--Director, Co-Writer
I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to do each of these projects--each one was a totally lucky break and I felt like I had won the lottery when I got each job. Now that the end is in sight for all three, I'm beginning to worry that lightning rarely strikes twice. Famine mentality sets in even while the meal is still on the table.
On 15 Days Gone By
John drank a gallon of barium and I had to float the class twice.
Katie Sue tore her ACL doing the Julie Olsen.
Clark left for London.
Daniel's coming too.
I don't come over for the movies.
Kyle said my show should have been called "Lil Bitches".
That made me mad.
Andrew kissed the pavement. Road rash hickies everywhere. Love hurts.
I never sleep at night.
Anton said I was his favorite.
Jess and Nick are delights.
Porter's doing well.
Scott is full of wisdom (especially with children).
Liz has got a nue gig.
We all wish Daniel was getting paid more.
Deep down inside, I'm a terrible, terrible friend. (most of the time)
Garabedian
“Your style was kind of astonishing”
said Jameson.
"It was never there in the notebook at all"
he replied.
And Jameson thought back the the large desk Paul had kept in his office at NYU. The large desk that was entirely bare except for when Garabedian sat behind it feverishly plotting away in the small 4x6 notebook.
"That notebook was just somewhere for me to hold it, to keep it tied down so it wouldn't blow away until I'd put it all together. Good ideas are like kites--they want to take off without you, and unless you keep them under your thumbs til they're ready, you'll have a mess of string up in the trees before you now it and you'll be wondering how the whole thing got up there in the first place."
Grassroots Opening
Really I thrive under stressful conditions. Do my best work when things are tight.
Had a blast performing with Grassroots on Friday. Everyone was late, half the cast lacked the foresight to realize that there would be nowhere to change into costume at the festival. I got lost. Everyone got lost. There was nowhere to park. It was noisy. It was hot, then overcast, then the wind picked up and blew our set over before we had even started. They were giving helicopter rides a few blocks away.
But
It was magical, the fading blue evening light pierced by twirling orange-yellow carnival rides, our cast holding the ladders against the wind and learning to project over the gale--demanding to be heard amidst the rush and competing attractions. Dan dressed as the Nurse, playing accordion. Trevor's pinstripe Mercutio perched on the top of a ladder waving red feather-boa from the top of his cane, drawing the crowd like pied piper. Small children peering up at Juliet in her balcony, Romeo holding his cordial against the elements.
"Go hence to have more talk of these sad things"
We did our jig and went our way.
Nothing went right; everything was perfect.
Thunderous Eagle
looming over the mountain--wanted to see it's talons flash
nick the peak with lightning claws.
But it circled until after sunset
(beating great purple feathered wings and swirling leaves and midnight and gardens below)
What a wingspan.
(at times with fists)
In the midst of it all, they kept looking up, wondering what came next. And something always did.
Cockle Burrs
Only stick to you because they want to go somewhere
--Wandering hearts with clinging spikes.
and
I'm far too young to be bitter
and just old enough not to not be.
So next time it rains and you watch for the worms to surface and seek refuge on the sidewalk, please save one there for me--not a worm, but a glance up at the sky as you wince to keep the raindrops out with your pretty eyelashes.
(That crashing of glass is, in reality, the sound of my heart)
She leaned in and whispered something so sweetly, not even he could hear her. And then, half asleep, he dreamed that she was someone else.
Tiger Hearts
This will make you bleed. Not blood--but sweat and tears. Sweat and tears that are the lifeblood of perseverance. Or something like that. And no one will remember. Not even you.
Evidence of Your Creative Life
I.
As I was looking over grad school admission requirements a few months ago, I was amazed at the variation in selection methods and processes.
One school simply asked applicants to:
"Be prepared to show evidence of your creative life"
That phrase has stuck with me over the past several months as I ponder what I could bring as evidence.
Theatre is in so many ways fleeting and ethereal--how do you capture something that's only meant to happen once? Everything a director does in hindsight appears as shadows and echoes.
II.
It's all about the process I suppose. While I cannot show you footage of what it looked like to see a flower in my garden bloom, I could probably tell you about all the watering and weeding I did to help encourage it's growth. These are things a gardener knows well, and should have no trouble explaining and practicing.
If I planned ahead, I could probably document the various stages of a flower's development, and I might be able to capture some of the experience through pictures, or even a video clip. But the fact remains that none of those things will be quite the same as actually seeing the beauty of a flower firsthand. Of feeling the velvet of it's petals, smelling it's perfume, or watching the way a honeybee might emerge from it dusted in yellow flecks of pollen. Trying to capture any of these things would result in a less than genuine understanding.
III.
But that's the trick of theatre anyway, isn't it? And isn't that precisely what a good director aims to do? The actors in Cherry Orchard are not really in Russia, nor have they ever existed in any part of the time period in which the play takes place, but all the same, if the production is successful, the audience might be persuaded that these things could be. That is how we are creative. We engage the imagination of the audience to the point of belief and wonder.
IV.
In the end, presenting convincing evidence of a life (creative or otherwise) is the ultimate aim of a theatrical experience.
Symphonic Acting?
Directing actors is much more like conducting an orchestra than it is like producing a painting.
I have considered before the idea that actors are like paintbrushes: They must absorb the right color and work in concert with with one another to produce harmonious color schemes.They must be placed on the right locations on the canvas and with just the right technique to create the lines and shapes that compose the work.
But actors are not like paintbrushes, because while an artist holds a paintbrush in his hand and controls his instrument's every movement, a director does not. A puppeteer might, but a good director does not.
An orchestra conductor has before him a recipe for action--the score, just as a director has the script.
But many of the similarities end here. A conductor has a set number of musical instruments and understands the demands and limitations of each, the variation is controlled and well-defined according to the specifications of, for example, a concert violin.
A director must work with a very different set of instruments: Living, breathing, singularly unique, human Actors.
The seemingly infinite and limitless variety of human physicality and personality creates an entirely new set of challenges and potential for complexity.
While any performance of an orchestral piece will be unique and somewhat variable in execution, it is usually immediately clear as to whether or not the piece was performed as intended. Substituting electric guitars for the violin section would be a clear departure from most classical pieces.
And here's where things get interesting in term of looking at this metaphor of actors as instruments. Sometimes you find that the violins don't always want to be violins. The violins decide that they'd rather be trombones, and insist on trying to play the trombone parts. Or they decide that violins best know how loud the violins should play a section and proceed to ignore the conductor's direction by taking things up an octave and increasing the volume by 50 decibels. And sometimes the members of an orchestra show up with an instrument that's out of tune and expect you to ignore the fact that it's out of tune. Or worse, it might be missing strings and the conductor is expected to re-arrange the piece to accommodate for the limited range.
Would this EVER happen in a real orchestra? No, of course not.
But does it happen in the theatre? Yes. All the time. Especially as actors and directors are training and developing an understanding of this complex system.
But is there beauty and potential in that? Absolutely. An instrumental solo can be played with varying level of proficiency, and in the hands of a master, will also include some degree of nuanced interpretation and variation, but when it comes down to it, you only have a set number of variable to work with--tone, dynamics, tempo.
But how many ways are there to play Hamlet? The possibilities are endless.
When dealing with living, feeling, sensitive actors as instruments in the creation and exhibition of a work of art, things become much more interesting.
More Worth than Many Sparrows
It was autumn.
The sun sparkled across the tumbling current in the overflow canal behind the factory.
He had been told never to go near the treacherous waters, and up until today, had never been tempted. That changed as soon as he saw the break in the fence. The opening snipped in the chainlink was just big enough for a young boy with a sense of adventure to weasel through, his cotton jacket only snagging a little as pulled his scrawny frame through the gap . The raft was harder to coax through the fence. He was careful not to let the jutting wire ends scar the half-inflated rubber skin of the bulging inner-tube.
Now he stood on the edge of the concrete river, surprised at how quick the dark water was, and yet so quiet. It's black snake body hardly made a sound as it squirmed through the deep white trough.
He would be fine once he got down into the water. It would be fun. He would ride his little makeshift raft all the way to the lake. It was getting down to the water that would be the scary part. The sides of the canal were steep and it was a good six or seven feet down to the water's surface.
He sat down on the edge and let his feet over the side first. There was barely enough of a slope to stand on, and he began scooting down towards the water while pulling the edge of his small raft behind him in one hand, and using the other to keep his balance on the steep incline.
He tried to move the raft down in front of him and made it nearly three feet from the water's edge before slipping and plunging hands-out face first into the deep current. The splash was louder and colder than he could have imagined, and then everything was instantly muted again as sank and tumbled. He gasped and struggled against the swift flow of the dark water pulling him down and pushing him along. Air, and more splashing, and flailing. His head slipped under as he lost his grip on the tube--it felt slippery in his hands and flipped over every time he tried to get his weight on top of it. It wasn't long before his clothes felt heavy and his limbs began to shake in the cold water. His fingertips were white and trembling as he clenched his hands into the rubber of the raft. The canal made a series of bends and he scrambled to grab onto the steep banks as he passed, but the concrete sides denied any holds and the water pushed him along faster and faster and threatened to tear him from the raft. It was in these moments that he thought not of his mother and her warnings, or of his father and the trouble he would be in, or even of how much he had wanted to impress his brother by proving to him that he was big enough not to be left out of all the fun. It was in these moments, as he approached the culvert pipe, that he thought of the little yellow birds that had built a nest outside his window. He remembered the chick that had fallen from the tree and how his featherless frame had scuttled and spasmed in the grass before the night came and he grew silent in the cold.
Again, the rushing current sucked him under and into the maw of the pipe; his raft popping from his hands as the water pulled him deeper.
In the darkness, he saw the yellow bird with the black wingtips and scruff of orange on it's forehead flitting back and forth from the treetops to the bushes near the ground. It landed on his window sill to share a mouthful of carefully gathered seeds.
What was it's name?
Do birds have names?
Does God, who knows when every sparrow falls, give them each a name because they are his own?
In slow motion he saw every wingbeat as the little yellow-orange bird bent his knees to launch from the sill, the outline of his black tipped wings forming perfect v's as he raised and lowered them above his back. The bird pulled his legs in close to his body floated into the open air.
He watched the bird fly slowly away from his window, and suddenly night was falling. Everything dimming into dusky blue until he could just barely make out a faintly bobbing yellow beacon against the night horizon. And then there was no horizon, and no bird, and everything was quiet.
Good Friends around the Fire
My brother Andrew brought his guitar to the park for our rehearsal, even though he feels self-conscious about playing for strangers--because he's my brother and we do those sorts of things for each other.
Jordan came to the park even though it was really cold to support the show.
We all decided to go visit Daniel while he was tending Rocklyn.
As soon as we got to Daniel's house, Becca turned right around to go pick Liz up at the theatre even though we had just come from there.
Daniel watched the baby while Liz was at rehearsal. The baby threw up on him three times and he still loves her and he still loves Liz.
Matt and Amy and Jess and Nick and Dan and Kyle and Andrew and Becca and I all sat around the firepit in Dan's backyard until it was after midnight and the marshmallows were gone and our eyes were teary from smoke and laughing and after the chocolate on Becca's dress was found by taste-test to be less hershey, more bat, and after Kyle lamented reaching the ripe antiquity of twenty-two, and Andrew had played all the songs that needed to be played, we piled in the truck and drove home before the full moon had risen too high in the early summer sky.
And meanwhile, Robbie, Erin, and Eric drove all night long so they could be back with us by morning to finish the show.
These are the people I am glad to know.
Crickets
If anything is beautiful in the world, it is the sound of crickets strumming the songs of summer.
Consciousness
"That man who does not live in awe of something outside himself is dead. The experience of drama is one of those moments in which a human being sits in awe, wonder, and admiration of something outside of self."
--William Ball, A Sense of Direction
Revelations
Brain is fried.
Today was way too long. One of those "day late and a dollar short" days.
Everything worked out in the end--and writing that I realize that it does in fact almost always work out. (when has it not!?)
Three of our actors in Grassroots are stranded in California. Things will work out though. The show always goes on.
Finally have a stage manager for Secret Life.
Can't wait to get cracking on Rappaccini. Can't wait to get to London.
Bill Ball quote floating around my head the past several days: "A thing becomes beautiful because of the possibility of it's absence." Or something along those lines. I love that concept. I think it's true and beautiful.
But does that mean, conversely, that a thing can become less beautiful because of the possibility of it's presence?
The Snowbank Shakespeare Co.
The year I graduated from high school, May was warm and gorgeous.
I remember nights under the stars when we'd sit out in the park until after midnight talking about the future and all the plans we did or didn't have. After our all-night graduation party we watched the sunrise and then went for a morning swim in Brandon's pool. That's how warm it was.It is once again that same time of May, but yesterday morning, everyone in the valley woke to a white slushy blanket of snow.
My first thoughts on looking out the window: 'How are we going to rehearse in this?'
This time last year, the Grassroots Shakespeare Company was just beginning it's brief but intensive rehearsal process--just eight days of evening rehearsals to stage an entire show.
This year we've gotten a head start and are nearly finished with an equally intensive process. But one that has been much, much colder as well.
We've rehearsed and performed in rain, wind, and some fairly chilly evenings, but never in the snow.
By the time evening rolled around, most of the snow had melted in an equally bizarre afternoon of shifting clouds and sunlight. We arrived at the park to find another bizarre scene. Most of the leafy, well-manicured trees in the park looked as though they'd been harrassed by Godzilla. Big chunks of elm and oak and maple were strewn in every direction, giant limbs ripped from their trunks by the weight of the late, heavy snow.
After we'd been rehearsing in the chilly night air, all of us freezing, I looked up, shivering, and said: 'Why aren't we burning the trees?!'
And there was no good answer. We collected a small pile of downed branches, stripped off their wet leaves, and then fed them slowly into a small fire we made in one of the barbecue units near the pavillion. It smoked and smoldered at first, but after serving the infant fire an appetizer of past term papers and last semester's handouts, it grew more hungry and able to consume the meaty twigs we gave it.
Our hands now warmed, we went back to our make-shift stage and finished blocking the epilogue of Romeo and Juliet.
Lunch with Clyde and Helen
The four of us, sitting down to lunch. My brother, my grandparents, myself.
Helen is blind now:
'Everything is blacker than black' she says. 'Except when there's some light. I can still see where the lights are'.
Clyde is more radically liberal than most of the twenty-somethings I know. He explains to us the history of racial oppression and then progress he's seen in his lifetime.
Helen talks about our microscopic size in the cosmos, and how beautiful our little sphere is.
Andrew responds: 'And wouldn't it be a shame, knowing that we are so rare in the universe, that this might be the only place in the vast expanses of space where such creatures speak to one another, and connect, and can even contemplate the fragility of their existence, if we were to destroy each other?
Praise whatever is there. Whatever is there is praiseworthy.
"The artist is a person whose business in life is to praise. Artists discover the wonders of nature and we call attention to those wonders. The theatre artist gathers people into a dark room and says to them, 'Look what we've discovered. Isn't this admirable? Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this awesome? Isn't this amazing?' An artist is someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the Universe."
--William Ball, A Sense of Direction
The 6 O'Clock News
I've made a decision and set a goal.
There are a lot of good things in the world that are worth talking about, and I'd like to make it my business to talk about them. There's this quote from William Ball in his book "A Sense of Direction" where he talks about the artist's whole purpose being to seek out the best things in life and champion them. He says the artist must find out what is good and worthwhile and share those things with the world. He goes on to say that this is especially the job of the director to attach himself to works that he can be passionate about, to share with actors the beauty and fragility of everything, and convey to the audience those wordless mysteries that can only be known through the catharsis of shared experience.
So if I am going to be an effective and passionate director, then I had better become pretty good at communicating beauty.
And so, I have set a goal: Every day at 6pm I will post about something in the world that I find interesting, thought-provoking, beautiful or otherwise worth sharing.
So I'll make a deal with you: you be my audience, and I'll do my best to make checking back here everyday worth your while. Deal? Alright.
Now go away and come back tomorrow.
Resolutions
I'm back! After four months of hopping state lines and living in roadside hotels, I'm finally home again.
I've actually been home for nearly a month now, but I'm only just beginning to feel like I'm back. Like I'm rooted and making connections again.
Touring was good for me. It taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of. It made me desperately anxious to finish college. Having an actual, honest-to-goodness, legitimate paying job in theatre put to rest a lot of fears and reservations I've had about going into the arts. Sure, it's a risk. Sure, not many people can make a living from it. But spending four months with nine other people that are actually making it work was really eye opening. And empowering. It's actually possible. You can actually make a living doing what you love. I don't know if I've ever believed that before because I know very few people that make it happen. Now that I've seen it, I can believe it. I feel I can move forward with confidence in the direction of my choosing. I will no longer wonder: "What am I going to do with a theatre degree?" Because the answer is simple: Theatre. I will use my theatre degree for what it was intended: working in theatre.
Often Things Are Better Left Unsaid
I wonder if baby chicks ever decorate the insides of their shells before they realize it's all going to crumble around them?
I don't want to be back from tour. At least now I know that jobs exist out there that I could enjoy doing. I'm subbing as a tracker at Dixon this week, and while it's only a measly four hours a day, those four hours will feel at least twice as long as a full twelve-hour work day on tour. Turns out jobs don't always have to feel excruciatingly mind-numbing to be classified as work.
I'm looking for a car. A cheap one. Preferably a working one, though I will accept slightly busted.
Summer is coming, or already here, depending on which scale you use. According to the school scale, Summer has arrived for the cougars, and will arrive soon for the UVUers this week. My sister in High School will not see summer for another month. Of course the only true measure of Summer commencement is the signal from a chorus of crickets that is yet to tune their instruments this year.
What goes around, comes around. Over and over again. And again and again.
I moved back into my parents house for the Summer. Or at least for the part of the Summer that I'll be here. I moved back into my old bedroom that I haven't lived in since high school. It's a nice room, the only room that's ever really been my room.
Do you think chickens ever realize that they're never going to fly the coop? Or do they always keep hoping for something better? Do they know that anything out there is better?
Allergies in full swing. Nose versus Nature. Nature always wins.
Anna came back from India. She's really tan. I can't tell if it's from India, or from tanning since she's been back. She seems happier. She's moving to Salt Lake this week. I'm jealous.
Can chickens really run around with their heads cut-off? Could I run around with my head cut-off? Do chickens' heads realize they've become detached?
I think my brother was upset that I left him for four months on tour. I would feel the same way if he had left me with that apartment all to myself. I feel bad about that. I love my brother. I need to make it up to him.
Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you reading this?
Do chickens know that they're chickens? If not, what do they know?
My grandmother's blindness has affected her memory. She's come unstuck in so many ways--she asked me twice what month it was. She used to tell me the same stories over and over again in detail, her eyes darting back and forth scanning the intricacies of her inner imagery. Now she tells the same stories, but without any detail. Her eyes are clouded with cataracts. At least she still knows who I am. I still love to be with her. Her soft, knobby, leather hands are still the same. Still hold mine just the way they did when I was four years old.
Do dreams happen in real time, or faster than real time? Up to one third of your life is spent sleeping. If I live to be 90 years old, I will sleep for 30 years.
Wouldn't it be great if you could program your dreams? Like popping a dvd into a dreamplayer that would let you live out an alternate reality in your sleep. Or at the very least a book on tape. There's a lot you could learn in 30 years of dreaming if you could remember any of it.
I wonder if my grandma remembers what I look like?
I watched part of a show on the Discovery channel with Stephen Hawking talking about different ways to time travel. If you orbit a black hole in a spaceship, time will move slower for you than for everyone else in the universe.
My sister tried to tell me that chai was herbal tea. "Well it's made out of plants, isn't it?" Yes, it is, along with Coca leaves and Hemlock, which also make excellent herbal teas I hear. Everything that's natural is good for you.
I ate leftover chicken for dinner. It was dry, but had buffalo sauce on the side, which made it more bearable. What is it about that sauce that makes it buffalo? Did people ever eat actual buffalo with that sauce? Wikipedia says that buffalo sauce is named after Buffalo, New York where it originated. Wikipedia answers so many questions and destroys so many beautiful mysteries.
I saw Dan and Liz on Sunday. Rocklyn is teething. That's one thing I'm glad we get out of the way before we start remembering things. Can you imagine how traumatizing it would be to experience that as an adult? Especially if you didn't expect it and had no idea what was happening to you. Although, I suppose that's really a lot what puberty is like.
Standing in line at the Hollywood Video going out of business sale:
Cashier: You got some good ones. And a lot of them for almost nothing--nice work.
Guy: Yeah, I totally did. It's always good when video stores go out of business.
Cashier: Good for you, at least.
That would be really hard to be faced with the fact that your job was terminal. Especially right now.
Cashier: Oh man, I think our printer just died.
Other Cashier: I call breaking it.
Cashier: Yeah?
Other Cashier: Yeah. With a baseball bat.
And other times, the things you think you shouldn't say out loud are just the things that should be said.
Avoidance
The other day I was wasting time surfing the web and had the urge to check up on an old friend, but I couldn't remember what their blog address was. I jumped around on several other blogs I thought might link up, but still couldn't find it. While I was in the process of doing this, I remembered that I had a link to their page on my own blog, but some sort of gut reaction inside me jerked and I realized that I didn't want to visit my blog.
Then I thought: well, that's ridiculous--why would I not want to visit my own page?
But after being unable to find a link on any other pages, and giving in and visiting my own blog, I realized that it was true. I was, in fact, avoiding myself.
Why would I do that?
I feel like I'm someone who's pretty comfortable in their own skin. I do ridiculous things onstage every day on tour. Really embarrassing things, and they rarely ever even phase me anymore.
But I am an avoidist. (Yes. I did just make up that word)
If something makes me uncomfortable or creates the potential of adding stress to my life, I will go to lengths great and small to avoid it.
For most people, the definition of 'efficiency' has something to do with maximizing the amount of work you can accomplish in the least amount of time while exerting the least amount of effort.
For me, efficiency, is more about achieving the greatest amount of action while minimizing the duration and intensity of discomfort. And perhaps I just described Mill's concept of 'utility' in a twisted sort of way. Backwards.
Am I really uncomfortable with myself, and I just don't know it? Consciously, at least?
Maybe I'm just becoming less comfortable with disclosure, with the idea of putting myself out there on a digital platter for any cyber snoop to take a sniff of.
Or maybe I just don't have that same need to express myself that I used to, or maybe my expressive needs are already being met at the moment. I definitely don't write much when I'm involved in an ongoing creative endeavor.
Then why am I writing now? Sometimes I write when I'm lonely. These hotel rooms are starting to feel more and more like home. A strange home where the sheets magically change themselves everyday, where you never have to go grocery shopping or redecorate. A home where no one is ever waiting for you unless you lose your key and have to go down to the front desk to get a new one.
...
I just got off the phone and I'm lonlier now than I was before.
But really I don't think it's lonliness. I think I'm not ready for this to end. Tour has been hard, but it's been so rewarding and gratifying and met my wants and needs in so many ways. I'm not ready to go back to everything old--to my shitty overpriced apartment that is less home than this Best Western. To all the jockeying and cloying of the theatre department.
I shouldn't complain, I've got a lot of really fantastic opportunities lined up for this summer, but in some ways it all seems like a demotion. I'm not ready to come back to earth, to my old self.
2.2.10 (late night in Vegas)
(1)
"--and because"
those linking words.
We've got a show in the morning
and we'll drive half-asleep to the stage
smear make-up
dribble lips loosen chords limber up
(Where do we go from here?)
and I'm enjoying all of this but I feel so half-asleep
Lights lights lights
neon vegas lights
and finding my light the edges are blurry sometimes it's hard to find
She was half asleep when I called her
always on the fringes in the morning and at night we meet
across the timelines timezones time of mine
calling long-distance
she said sometimes the dyslexia makes some things better
45 or 54?
That's great. Just great. So great. Great great.
living long distance
I've been here before--and really I don't mind it
(tethered balloon keeps in contact with the ground.)
All the kids--bright kids. Good kids. Kids kids.
It's like Disneyland for wash-up kids
Caesar'sPalaceDisneyPalaceLuxorParisGrand
full of smoke and the drinking and the kinking and the girls
and the girls selling girls selling girls on the street
snapsnap"nightclub"snapsnap"specialdeal"
selling snapsnap neon lights neon shirts neon love snapsnap
(four miles south of the strip now)
SuiteEmerald. Green Carpet. No new towels. Could be worse.
Apathy incarnate. But everybody wants to feel, wants to
looking for snapsnap
snapsnap something that pops
something that's bright (snap)
that's sheen shiny shimmer shifty shining schnapp snappy
something that (snapsnap) fills the night
that feels so wrong snapsnap so right. (sna--
and it never comes. A city full of seekers looking for a deal
a real deal, a good meal, a deal deal, a budget budget scoring deal!
Airplanes overhead--circling for effect.
Jets. For a show. For us or them?
And what is this all about anyway?
We're somwhere around here--underground garage parking. there it is.
So Many Things
I have no pictures for you, and for that, I apologize. Perhaps sometimes the thousand-words that a picture can convey are still not enough to do justice to the moment of a memory.
Some things in my life seem too good to be true, too sweet to be lasting:
I'm actually being paid to spend all my time in the theatre.
It's been this way for nearly a month now and I still can't quite come to grips with how good it is. The festival gave me a place to live, pays me a decent salary, adds a stipend for food, provides a car that the company shares, and picks up the tab for dinner every evening. I still can't believe it.
On top of that, my fellow actors couldn't be a more kind and considerate group of people to live and work with.
...
Grassroots held a successful workshop last Saturday, and while I was sad to be so far away, I am thrilled to hear that the show went so well, and was glad that I was able to contribute in helping with the cutting and in organizing.
I can't wait to put together a summer show with the troupe--we've got so many talented people on board and in the wings.
...
Got a call on Thursday about a job offer in June--Directing one of the shows with the Noorda Summer Program. Could not be more excited! What a great opportunity to sharpen my skills and get my feet wet.
...
Also getting more and more excited for Study Abroad in July--The Globe has a great season, and I'm eager to see what the other theatres will be offering. I'm also feeling pretty great about working with Scott on Rappacini's Daughter--our brainstorming sessions were electric. It ought to be an amazing experience--a once in a lifetime opportunity.
...
Also, I got straight A's for the first time in College at the end of last semester.
...
Writing all this makes me really nervous--everything really does sound too good to be true. I keep waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me--can life really be this good? Am I just in some sort of crazy sweet spot in my life where I'm young and naive and nothing will ever really be this good again?
Breathe.
Game plan: Whether it lasts or not, I'll enjoy the sun while it shines.
Watch for a postcard in your mailbox.
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