learning silence to better speak

This blog is defunct

2011-11-01T15:29:00.001-04:00

Thanks for coming here! I am currently updating regularly at http://scottleewilliams.blogspot.com. All the archived content from here, is now there. See you there!

I was not wrong

2008-10-08T13:48:00.004-04:00

So that was awful. Simply dreadful. Me, the producer, the director, and the stage manager in a 6 by 10 room, all of us watching me flail around trying to find distinct physicality for 6 different characters. One of the problems is a disconnect from my body that manifests itself in a particular stiffness. That's one. The other problem is far more destructive.

Director: OK, let's try it again. I really want to see the difference between this character and the last.

Me (clueless, feeling totally out of ideas, desperately ransacking my brain to think of how people actually move, since I've now apparently become a robot who is propelled around the room by glitchy algorithms that cause him to twitch like a deranged flamingo): Yeah, great. Let's give it a shot.

Voice in my head: You suck. The director is sorry she has to work with you. You have no connection to real people, and you are a bad human being.

(flailing attempt at characterization, all the time fighting to maintain emotional equilibrium)

Director: OK, can you try that again?

Me (panicking now): Sure. Absolutely. Let me just see. (pause to catch my breath internally, draw a complete blank on next gambit. Fuckit, wing it.)

(try again, only bigger, trying to ignore the rising black tide of anxiety)

Voice in my head: You totally suck.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Leaving the rehearsal (after two excruciating hours), I swore I would never act in another show ever again. Jesus. I was wishing I wasn't in this one. I had no business looking at a script, let alone getting on a stage.

As soon as I was done and was by myself for an hour or so, I felt better. Calmer. More like myself again, but still. What a mess. So, I've got homework. To find pictures of possible triggers for the characters, and to find essential "psychological gestures" for each of the 6 characters.

Oh, and to look at old people. All the old people I've ever known walked around like 50 year olds until they suddenly were confined to wheelchairs at the age of 95. I have no idea how old people walk, move, talk. It's like an entire demographic effectively stopped existing for me. Need to rectify that pretty quickly, considering I play an old coot who happens to be the last surviving extra from the movie The Quiet Man.

So, I've got a day to learn how to loosen up, shut up the voices in my head, learn how to walk like an 80 year old man, and get a passable Irish dialect.

Wish me luck!

There is you, and then there is your body

2008-10-07T11:41:00.004-04:00

The first rehearsal, the read through, is actually where I feel the most comfortable. I can make ridiculous choices, nobody cares, and nobody will really judge because they are too busy wondering what you think about them. Plus, there's no strain of "where do I stand, where do I move, what's my line again?" I feel like I can go with impulses and make choices and try things. It's when I get on my feet that I start to feel stiff and wooden, like I'm trying too hard.

Part of it might be that once I have found something, I like to stick with it, even to the point where the impulse is no longer authentic. I operate on instinct and have a regrettable tendency to get bored with myself. I get self-conscious later in the process, as opposed to becoming more confident. If I were to diagram it, my process might be:

1. Initial receiving of script: abject terror. Why did I decide to do this? All the time eaten up in a rehearsal process, and really I'm not that good an actor, I have no idea why I keep putting myself through this.
2. First reading: Oh, hey, you know, I'm pretty fucking good at this. I love reading. I'm making choices, getting laughs, trying things. Yeah, this is gonna work out awesome.
3. Rehearsal process: Oh, God, why did I say I would do this? I'm a fraud, obviously. The only reason I haven't been called out on it is that the director is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Jesus.
4. Memorization: why did I smoke so much pot in college? My brain is a fucking sieve! (unless it's Shakespeare, which is remarkably easy to memorize for me). Please God, don't let me go up like I did at that summer stock theater that one time. Jesus.

And if I'm lucky:
5. dress rehearsals: Oh, this isn't so bad. yeah. There might be some moments here and there that are working. OK, I get it, I get it.
And if I'm VERY lucky:
6. End of Run: Oh, man, I'm just really starting to nail it every time. Shit, can't we extend? They love us! C'mon, man! Just one more show.

We enter phase 3 tonight. Pray for me, bitches.

BTW, without indicating why, I would like to say I am also a little worried about the show coming to completion, given the recent economic downturn. Cash Rules Everything Around Me, dollar-dollar bill, y'all. Here's hoping this show gets off the ground.

New Show - Stones In His Pockets

2008-10-06T13:16:00.003-04:00

The premise - 2 actors playing 13 characters, most of them Irish, 2 of them women. 2 acts. Not a small play. A few weeks of rehearsals and then a solid weeks worth of shows. While my girlfriend is preparing to leave for two months on her own acting odyssey.

OK, I'm a little nervous. Put this together with the fact that we had some issues with the casting initially, and you have a rocky beginning to the process. We initially had someone else all set to play opposite me, but he had to drop out, so we had to do a few days of casting, and it was tough finding anybody who was up to snuff. Luckily we found the guy we did, as I think he will bring up the level of funny from my semi-ha-ha to rollicking rofl levels.

We do our first read-through tonight. I've been listening to dialect instruction CD's and Irish podcasts, hoping to absorb the accent. Scottish is dead easy, and English I've been doing since I was a little boy, but Irish is tough to do without sounding like an Irish Spring Commercial reject, or a refugee from a Lucky Charms factory.

I took this job specifically because I knew that it would challenge me, and so it has, already. I just want to make something beautiful and funny and fun.

I'll be writing impressions (hopefully more cogent than the above) of the rehearsal process as often as I can. Talk to you soon.

What I learned from blogging (almost) every day.

2008-05-13T16:12:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd write a longer post to talk about what I've learned from writing (semi-) regularly on my other blog: Four Every Day. It's been an interesting experiment, and there are are a few interesting lessons that have come up.

1. Blogs are not comics

This may seem obvious, but a blog diary, no matter the constraints you put on it, will never be the written equivalent of a webcomic diary. I started Four Every Day as a response to the awesome comic American Elf by James Kochalka. I loved the simplicity of it, the everyday-ness of it (in the sense of it being both daily and ordinary). The form of a slightly surreal diary thing, constrained into simplicity and a relative minimum of verbiage, really appealed to me. But, you know what, I really can't draw. Just not my strong suit. This has always bothered me, but I decided to really just constrain myself in other ways, and see what came out. Unfortunately, even though the four sentences thing is pretty interesting, as an exercise, it's just not as cool as comics. Comics have specificity. Writing can have it, but comics have it almost by definition. It's inherent. If you draw something from your life, it will have to be concrete. It will have space and weight and location and, unless you are drawing, say, concentric jagged lines or something to represent anger or whatever, it will be a drawing of something, and it will be somewhere (even if it is only in a blank space on the page). Comics are real pictures even if they aren't of real things. And that makes them cool.

So, the point is: I need to get out of my head.

This leads to my second point:

2. Specificity!!

I noticed that the best posts (oh, you think I don't read them obsessively. Yes I do!) are posts that take place someplace: the subway, my house, a particular street. The posts I've enjoyed the most have a specificity of place and action - somebody speaks, somebody does something. It's so easy to get all abstract and up in my head, and this form really brings out the disconnect between reality and my brain.

Good comics are almost of necessity specific. Good writing should be, too. I am discovering that I still need a lot of work there.

Point: try to write as if everything weren't happening in a vacuum. Names, places, weather, light, heat, sounds, smells - make it happen in four sentence.

3. (Almost) Nobody Cares That You Have a Blog

Blogs and webcomics differ in this aspect as well: There are very few people who will actively read your blog when you write about your mundane little life. This may be because I'm still learning the craft of writing, or it maybe that I don't "promote" as much, but truth to tell, I'm not sure that it matters. I read numerous webcomics - one's that I've found through other blogs, other webcomics that have links on webcomics that I like. Some of these guys sell advertisements, some sell t-shirts. Almost nobody does it full time, but most of these guys talk about going to the conventions or doing a signing, selling merchandise, and I think that's great. Most of them are supremely talented.

You can't really do the same on a personal diary blog. You have to be willing to talk about issues in which your readers are interested, and almost no one cares about you. Or me, for that matter. I'm sure there are people who aren't my friends who's blogs I read, but I couldn't name any off of the top of my head, and the reverse is true - I'm pretty sure that only a few random friends read my blogs. That's OK.

Some people might make money from blogging, but as far as I can tell, I'm not one of them. As much as it pains me to admit, I have an enormous ego, and there was a part of me (ruthlessly supressed but still present) that wanted folk to be beating a path to my door. Maybe I expected hundreds of views, and a summons from the Great Blog Gods to take my place at the table of bounty and book deals. "Come," they would say, "good and faithful blogger. We have prepared a place for you, and no one will ever question your l33t blogging skillz again." Yeah, I'm a tool. I mean, not that I really expected it, but I sorta did, a little.

4. Everyday isn't easy

If you're the kind to do the math, you'll notice that I have done fewer blog posts than there have been days. To put it kindly, I have not written 4 every day. To be exact, I am 55 off of my goal. So I missed, since December 10th, 2007, almost 2 months. That is just piss-poor. Yes, I must learn to be more kind to myself, I must not allow my perfectionism to diminish my goals, etc. But come on! Come on! Two months? Come on! I didn't think it was that many so I went and counted. I maybe off slightly in my count, but as I read it, I missed:

2 days in December
2 days in January
14 days in February
19 days in March
13 days in April
7 days in May (so far)

(the disrepancy occurs because there were a couple of days I posted more than once per day). Still, I think I'll put off saying if the experiment is a success until I've posted everyday for, say, 90 days. That seems reasonable.

Things that I thought I had just thought of, but which after a quick google search, turned out to be pretty unoriginal:

2008-04-11T11:07:00.001-04:00

Neckbeard the Pirate.

As above, so below. As within, so without

2008-04-01T09:21:00.003-04:00

Passing a bunch of men unloading stuff from a large moving van, I remembered reading a list somewhere that of the ten most stressful events in life, moving house was near the top-- right up there with death and divorce. For the first time it struck me how most every time you see people moving in or out of a place, you're witnessing a paradigm event in their lives. Beginnings and endings. Great happiness or anticipation ("We're moving to Rio!"), or at the other end of the scale failure and fear of a future they never anticipated but has now arrived. I'm thinking about all those people in the US who are losing their homes because of the mortgage crisis. When we see a moving van or hear someone is giving up their flat we usually shrug or ignore it. But the reality is in one way or the other, it is proof that lives are about to change profoundly. You've experienced it yourself whenever you've moved. Almost every van we see represents some kind of intense human drama.

- from Jonathan Carroll's blog

Whatever you've got going on in your life will become manifest in the world when you move. If your internal life is orderly and well tended, your move will express that. It's never easy, but it won't be as hard.

But if you've neglected your life, put things off, tried to kill your best impulses and avoided making hard decisions about what to keep and what to discard, it will be so much more difficult that you can imagine. Karma always comes back.

That's what I learned in March.

Lovecraft in Brooklyn - by the Mountain Goats

2008-03-11T09:06:00.003-04:00

Gonna be too hot to breathe today
But everybody is out here on the streets
Somebody has opened up the fire hydrant
Cold water rushing out in sheets

Some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey
Asks me for a cigarette
Companionship is where you find it
So I take what I can get

Hubcaps on the cars like fun house mirrors
Stick to the shadows when I can

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Well the sun goes down
The armies of the voiceless
Several hundred-thousand strong
Come without their bandages
Their voices raised in song

When the street lights sputter out
They make this awful sizzling sound
I cast my gaze towards the pavement
Too many blood stains on the ground

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Head outside most everyday to try to keep the wolves away
Imagine nice things I might say, if company should come

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid
Headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jars
And then the girl behind the counter
She asks me how I feel today.

I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.

---------------------------------------------

(cf. The Horror at Red Hook and this.)

Muscle'n Flo - by Menomena

2008-02-15T11:38:00.000-05:00

Oh in the morning
I stumble
my way towards
the mirror and my makeup
it's light out
and I now
face just what I'm made of

There's so much more
left to do
Well I'm not young
But I'm not through

Oh in the evening
I stumble
my way towards another day
we struggle
it's dark out
it's time now
that I pick up my hustle

Make a call
make some cash
make your mark
make it last
tiny scores
tiny rooms
lofty goals
met too soon
too soon

Well here I stand
a broken man
If I could I would raise my hands
I come before you humbly
If I could I'd be on my knees

Come lay down your head upon my chest
feel my heart beat feel my unrest
If Jesus could only wash my feet
Then I'd get up strong and muscle on
Oh in the morning
I stumble
my way towards
the mirror and my makeup
it's light out
and I now
face just what I'm made of

There's so much more
left to do
Well I'm not young
But I'm not through

tiny scores
tiny rooms
lofty goals
met too soon

Love, Love, Love - by the Mountain Goats

2008-01-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
And Joseph's brothers sold him down the river for a song
Sonny Liston rubbed some Tiger Balm into his glove
Some things you do for money
And some you do for love, love, love

Raskalnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why
When he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye
Some things you do for money
And some you do for fun
But the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

Love love is gonna lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place
Now we see things as in a mirror darkly
Then we shall see each other face to face

Somewhere in Seattle, young Kurt Cobain
Snuck out to the greenhouse put a bullet in his brain
snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above
some moments last forever, but some flare up with love, love, love

I will f-ing get through Ulysses this time

2008-01-16T13:08:00.000-05:00

I mean it. Damnnit.

The only time I've been able to get further than 90 pages into this book was in college once when going up on acid. I managed to read a good hundred pages, but I just found I couldn't maintain interest after the sparkle faded from the universe.

Well, I found an awesome service, which I will recommend to my fellow cubemates. Please to follow the link to the Daily Lit Website. There you will find a great number of books, most of them free, which they will be kind enough to send to you in daily installments to your email account or blog-reader. I found Ulysses (320 some segments! - I'll finish it around the end of the year, I guess) and also Don Quixote. I am a bit leery of reading public domain translations, but what the hell, right? This is a prime example of "chunking" a large task into smaller tasks and doing each of those as you go.

I guess I'm adding "Ulysses" to my list of things to do in 2008. Wish they had "Finnegan's Wake", though.

Actors are important?

2008-01-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Great post over here at Isaac Butler's blog about the importance of actors and how training may have a place outside academia.

And it's not just great for his agreeing with me about the primacy of actors and audiences to the playmaking process.

It's part of a series of posts on his blog that I'm still digesting, and I'll probably have something to say about it later. That is all.

addendum - goals for 2008

2008-01-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

I've also decided I will participate in National Novel Writing Month. Cuz I'm crazy. That'll be in November. If you happen to see me that month, please ask, in a high pitched, rising intonation, "Yeah? How's that book coming? Hmmm? Got an outline written? Hmmm? Maybe a main character? Coupla themes, hmmmm?" That'll be awesome.

So, who wants to do this with me?

Obama won in Iowa

2008-01-04T10:03:00.001-05:00

It is interesting to note that second place John Edwards recieved 30% of the votes for a total of 716. To put that in perspective, second place Republican Mitt "I get my own planet when I die" Romney recieved 23,682. Anybody who thinks Obama's (or any even relatively progressive candidate) got it locked should rethink that.

--------------------------------------------

It is a testament to my father's love of this country that no President in his lifetime has been worthy of governing it.

goals for 2008

2008-01-03T16:15:00.001-05:00

I almost titled this post "well, kids, what have we learned?" but..., ugh.

So, looking forward. Stuff to do.

- I am moving the fuck out of Kew Gardens. Yes. I. Am.
- I really want to do a comic book/graphic novel/comic strip. I have awesome, ridiculous scripts filled chock-a-block with obscure, esoteric references, excessive verbiage, and ludicrous plotlines. Artists! Call me! Seriously!
- regardless if the pathetic plea of the previous bullet point gets a response, I will write another comic script.
- I will work with some new people in the theatre (not that I don't love my previous collaborators, but I want new blood!). Steps have been taken and results already achieved: watch this space for details.
- I will be more social. I fell off the world last year, mostly out of a sense of guilt. I like to think I've flagellated myself enough for one decade. So that's enough of that. I want to be amongst friends! I like people and I want them to know it!
- I will continue writing the hell out of my new blog/project Four Every Day. I don't know what it means, but it feels significant. So I'ma gonna do it some more.

That's all. Are those resolutions? whatever. I'm also gonna look at things with "soft eyes" (stole that from The Wire). I'm choosing to use it to mean looking at things without trying to figure them out quite so much, without trying to see only what I want to see.

In some ways I lost a lot of ground last year, but I feel like I was really destroying the village to save it. I want to build things on a firm foundation, not just what I think I should be. I hurt a lot of people last year, too, and I hope to have learned from that to be honest in the first place, and not just when I've run out of options.

The theme last year was "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me". I guess life is what happens after you think it's all over. I hope you have a wonderful year, full of love and happiness, and I really wish you well. God (in whatever flavor you happen to favor) bless.

Should I tell?

2007-12-18T12:10:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping my new blog address secret, but I'm sort of starting to be proud of it. It's a little wonky and silly, and nothing much really happens, but it sure sounds like my life, so I'm gonna go with it.

http://foureveryday.blogspot.com

A diary, of sorts. Enjoy.

Scott

Haven't seen me for a while?

2007-12-16T06:11:00.000-05:00

This is where I've been hiding.

Bad Hair Day

2007-12-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

There’s no real way of knowing what might make for a “bad” day on the stage. You might not have had enough sleep. Or too much. Or just the right amount. There may be something going on in your life that screws your concentration. You might get some news right before going on stage, or maybe there’s some someone in the audience you’re particularly eager to impress. Maybe you’ve had a few days off. Or maybe the tides are wrong, or the phase of the moon. Whatever it is, you feel it. And you speak the lines and hit your marks and yet you can feel a part of you is somewhere else, watching you. “Ah, you’re not really here, are you?” says this part. And this part is correct, you’re not here, but you just have to keep going, because people paid to see this, and theatre only goes in one direction.

And you have about as much control over this as the days that you have a bad hair day. You smile, and style, and tell yourself that maybe people aren’t paying too close attention tonight, and you use your best techniques (because that is, after all, all you have to fall back on), and hope.

This is where (at this point, still based on an incomplete reading) Grotowski’s theories and my experiences converge. There is a trance that one must achieve (that is the word that Grotowski uses, and I think it is apt) in order to allow a character to speak, to move, to “live and breathe”. Voudon practitioners, when they achieve union with whatever God they happen to be invoking, call the experience being “ridden”. The God “rides” the priest, the priestess, speaks through him or her to the gathered tribe, the community at large, and offers advice, instruction. Maybe the God stirs up the pot for his own amusement, maybe he tries to help with the crisis of the moment. The village, the community, offers what it has in trade: food, drink, tobacco, women, boys.

Roberto Calasso speaks of encounters with the divine in a similar way, but he uses the term “rape”. A much harsher word, but none the less accurate, bringing as it does the innuendo of the Voudon term to the fore. All encounters with the divine have an aura of compulsion, beginning as they do with the overpowering brightness of the divine and the grudging assent of the ego, and ending in the (to the ego) horrifying dissolving of barriers and complete immersion. “Good fences make good neighbors” says the ego, and the divine sweeps down laughing like a storm and wrecks the fences, tears up the stones, leaves the land disheveled and ravished, the ego reeling from the blow.

In Grotowski, he speaks of a humility, a “holiness” that is not the “doing” of an action, but a removal of barriers of not doing. A subtractive discipline, that allows the character to speak through one by the dissolving of the restrictions on action and voice and movement, that gives the slightest impulse immediate expression. This may be why he speaks of an ascetic aesthetic (to coin a ridiculous phrase). There is a monastic quality to the whole thing that stems from negation. Negation of the “self” in service to the character. Negation of the habitual constrictions of muscle armor and ways of speaking and breathing. When the ego sees these things disappearing, since death, non-existence, above all, is the terror of the ego, it freaks out.

I remember during my days at school, no classes were more fraught with emotional breakdowns and freakouts than the voice and speech classes. Inevitably, as people were forced to confront and attempt to change their speaking patterns and their muscular tensions, someone would completely meltdown. Crying, shaking, hysterical (I must admit to a few breakdowns of my own in that class. In a side note, my voice and speech teacher also inspired a huge crush when I was in school, which I figure is also only appropriate. Transference and all that…).

This would seem to be why acting was so closely aligned to the sacred in Greece, and why the church always frowned upon it. There was something unwholesome about these people, these actors, going into their trance. Something unhealthy about those who were not themselves for a good portion of their day. Almost like prostitution, the way they opened themselves and let the “other” live through them, and all for a few coins. In a world that prizes the hard edged, the clearly defined, the actor seems altogether too… squishy. Too easily penetrated. This may also explain the homosexual panic that many people seem to have when they encounter male actors, as well. And why the actors that we love the most are the movie star celebrities, the ones that play only themselves, over and over and over.

So, basically what I’m saying with all of the above, was that I was off last night. I was thinking about how fucked my life was and I lost my edge. When it’s there, though, that brilliant edge of concentration is really something to feel. It makes the bad hair days worth it, I’m telling you.

Towards a Poor (and miserable) Theatre

2007-12-13T14:47:00.000-05:00

On the recommendations of a friend I worked with at Cortland Repertory Theatre this summer, I bought a copy of Jerzy Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theatre, from which I realized I stole some, if not all of my ideas for my last post. I’ve been reading it with some interest.

So, not one to let close reading or analysis stand in the way of putting my foot in my mouth, here are some initial thoughts.

It sure seems dour. This is theatre of the hairshirt and the flail. He constantly speaks of a “holy theatre” that requires sacrifice and self-immolation (that phrase “self-immolation” may actually be a quote. Can’t be bothered to look it up right now). A digging into the psyche and laying bare of the roots of action and emotion. My God. How many more times do we have to go through this? Perhaps, as so often happens with gurus (and especially acting gurus) there is a slight disconnect between the technique and the practice, but it sure sounds like he is a patriarch daddy-type who practices psychology without a license, putting his actors through the wringer in an effort to wrest great performances out of them. I have had teachers like this and I find them reprehensible. If Grotowski is of that stripe, I have no use for this technique of his. Good DAY, sir!

Well, this may be my own daddy-complex (often wounded by imperfect men and women who have experimented on me in their well-intentioned attempts to “mould” me) complaining. He may have aught to teach me, so I will keep reading, but I read with a skepticism that I did not possess when I was younger.

I have read about the great British actors, Olivier, Gielgud, and Guinness for example, and they had no recourse to such techniques, no need to put themselves through such fresh hell with every performance. The texts were tough enough, the physical demands plenty to engage and leave them worn out and frazzled. Perhaps that is what Grotowski speaks of, that the great Brits did unconsciously. Perhaps what helps to make the greats great is an emptying out. An engagement with the audience, with their fellow actors, and with the material that exhausts the mind and body, leaving a certain purity to shine through.

Regardless, when I was a Christian (or rather, when I was religious-mad), I would have taken to Grotowski’s theories like a drowning man takes to water. I loved the idea of sacrificing myself. I was all about that, and especially for art, love, “God”, or whatever. Now, I look on theories like this one with a certain distaste.

One of the things I love about theatre is that it is fun. Not fun in the sense of “Ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, aren’t we having a wonderful time.” Fun in the sense of play, a concentrated engagement with the subject at hand that allows one to push oneself to the fullest. The way children play. Not forced, not straining and painful and “intense” but fun! I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun.

Now, I know that, in many of the circles I run with, when I’m at work, I tend to be the less-fun guy. When everybody is getting goofy, starting to get slappy, I am the one saying “C’mon, guys, let’s just get through this!” Yeah, I’m that guy. Always have been. So when I say I’m having fun in theatre, to me that means doing the work as best I can, and being totally engaged and trying to become more than I am right now. Always striving. Even the failures and mistakes and wrong turns are part of the fun, for me. Everything else is just sorta distraction.

So perhaps there is something to the Grotowski fellow’s theories. I’ll keep reading and find out, but truthfully, what I’m looking for is something that treats the process, not as pain and suffering, but as play. It can be painful, of course, in much the same way that an athlete is in pain when he pushes himself in training, but pain is not the same as hurt, i.e. aches are not injuries, and hitting the wall and going on is not the same as vomiting up blood. Acting should not be an assault on the psyche of the actor. We’re not strip-mining. We’re panning. The river will bring us what we need.

but is it art?

2007-12-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

Based on a discussion I had with Patrick the other day, I thought I should post this. I’m not under any illusions that I’m widely read (unlike some of the folks that I’ll be discussing in this post), but I thought I’d put in my two cents.

I was perusing my list of theatre blogs on bloglines, and a thought struck me. Of the theatre blogs I read on a regular basis, there were none by actors. Directors, yes. Playwrights, yes. No actors.

Now this got me thinking yet further. The discussion on most of the blogs often revolves around what makes for good theatre. A recent discussion, for example, had folks from all over the New York scene weighing in on the relative merits of “production values” and what the term meant. It was an interesting discussion, to be sure, and one near and dear to my heart. A lot of times, people will be talking about theatre’s place in society, declining audiences, relevancy to other media, etc. And sometimes the question is as simple as: what is theatre, really?

Well, what is it? A friend of mine recently expressed interest in getting involved in the extensive performance poetry scene in New York, and asked me to sort of introduce him to some of the better venues and groups working in them. I’ve had some experience with these groups, and I knew some of the folks pretty well, so of course I agreed. The angle of the performance of poetry interested me pretty intensely for a while a few years back, but I found I didn’t cotton to it as much as I enjoyed traditional theatre. But if you really think about it, aside from the conventions (verse instead of “natural” speech (though not always!), physicality based on gesture rather than full expression with the body (again, not always!), roots in hip-hop and its culture) what’s performance poetry but a different kind of theatre? At its essence, it’s a person using their voice and body to tell a story.

Is anything else necessary? Not costumes, not lights, not microphones, not sets, not pre-written, naturalistic (or otherwise) texts, not directors, not props, not musicians, not really even a stage. Nothing but someone with an audience telling a story using their voice and body.

The voice distinguishes it from dance, the body distinguishes it from radio. Other than that, it’s fair game. Anything else is convention. That gives a lot of leeway. TV shows and movies could be considered a subset of theatre, since the story is told using broadcast images of people telling stories. Animation could (I suppose) also be considered a subset, since representations of bodies are used… though one would have to argue about the more surreal elements of, say, Looney Tunes, and I don’t intend to do that here.

Performance poetry, is, obviously under this definition, another subset. The text is verse, the gestures have their own conventions, but the story is still told (or even only evoked) by a person using their body and voice.

I love working with directors. I love to take direction and work in collaboration with people who have differing visions than I. But under the definition I’ve posited directors are definitely non-essential. Witness the phenomenon of the “actor-manager” in British (and, I’m presuming American) theatre up until very recently.

Playwrights (and, in fact plays as conventionally understood, as in: stage directions, so-and-so speaks, such-and-such also speaks, they are told to do things, all as words on a page) are also not essential. Which is not to say I don’t like reading plays. I LOVE reading plays. I’m just trying to peel things down to essentials, here, and by this definition, not so much.

So that begs the question. Why is theatre being defined online by people who are, as far as I can tell, non-essential to the matter? This is also not to say that they shouldn’t. On the contrary, everyone should come up with their own definitions, and I love a good debate over ideas, even ones I agree with. But why are they the face of theatre? Where my actors at?

Well, I talked to both Stephanie and Patrick about this matter, and they both pointed out the same thing. Most actors are not writers. That’s all. In fact, many actors I know could be considered by some definition to be functionally illiterate. And lazy.

When I count the number of plays I’ve heard and seen ruined by an actor who couldn’t be bothered to speak the words of the play as the author wrote them, or who blazed past the meaning of the lines by completely ignoring such elementary considerations as punctuation, I’ll admit to becoming a little steamed.

Well, I can write (somewhat), and I can read (a bit), and so I guess I’m gonna write a little about that.

What's all this, then?

2007-12-11T19:15:00.000-05:00

Why did I start a new blog?

Because I wasn't posting here, and sometimes it takes a new enterprise to reinvigorate my enthusiasm for a form.

Because I was reading this compulsively at work and thought, "Man, that looks like fun, but I can't draw."

Because I'm thinking that, if I do it every day, I might do some posting here by accident.

Because I know that if I have a form that is constrained, I will inevitably think of things that don't fit in the form, and then I'll write them here, and that will be nice.

Because I think I'm just crazy enough to do something ridiculous and have it work out OK.

Because some people have more than one creative outlet, and some of them end up being kind of interesting.

Because little steps are just as valid as big steps.

Because I wanted to notice and appreciate things more.

Because in noticing and appreciating things more, I hope to become more grateful for my life, and therefore more in love with it.

Because I am trying to save my life from time, but I am restricted by my own laziness and so therefore must make arbitrary games in order to trick myself into enlightenment.

Because I am trying to save my life, period.

Because I am afraid that things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

Because I will stem the tide of fear with humor and lighthearted-ness.

Because I still believe that life is worth living.

Lest we forget...

2007-08-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

62 years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. About 105,000 people were killed in Hiroshima or died from injuries and radiation afterwards. The woman pictured above was waiting for medical attention after the bomb nick-named "Fat Man" destroyed her city. The baby, too weak to suckle, died 10 days later.

I spent years afraid that I would get out of class, look southeast and see a mushroom cloud rising over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. I used to spend hours pouring over maps and thinking about blast-radii and wind currents. I actually woke up one morning, in the grip of some mania I could not name, and said goodbye to everyone I knew, convinced that today, out of a clear blue sky, today the bombs would fall.

The fact that this failed to happen has not reduced my fear by much. We still live beneath the shadows of terrible wings. The world must destroy all nuclear weapons, though this may be a sad exemplar of Pandora's Box.

At least we should remember those who have already died as a result of these weapons, and pray to whatever Gods you please to save us from the flames.

Peanuts, by Charles Bukowski

2007-08-04T11:47:00.000-04:00

Holy God, this is fucking genius.

Who is it that you say I am?

2007-08-02T17:01:00.001-04:00

You Are The Chariot

You represent a difficult battle, and a well-deserved victory.
You tend to struggle to get what you want, both internally and externally.
You excel at controlling opposing forces, getting down the same path.
In the end, you bring glory and success - using pure will to move forward.

Your fortune:

There is great conflict in your life right now, either with yourself or others.
You must find a solution to this conflict, which is likely to be a "middle road" between the two forces.
You posses the skills to triumph over these struggles, as long as your will is strong.
You are transforming your inner self, building a better foundation for future successes.

What Tarot Card Are You?

best new song (of the moment)

2007-07-26T12:31:00.000-04:00

This is goodbooks, and this song makes me cry.

'Course, I cry at phone commercials, so don't take my word for it. This just rocks.

I miss my friends...

2007-07-13T08:37:00.000-04:00

Music Giggity - Save the Date! July 29th, 2007

2007-05-13T12:21:00.000-04:00

I have another show! This one's a singer songwriter gig, just me, no band (though I am now officially looking for a band, man - gotta start it with a positive jam). I'm really excited to do this show, since it'll be my first gig playing my tunes since, like, 2000? 2001? Something like that.

I'll be playing at Otto's Shrunken Head on July 29th. You'll have plenty of opportunities to hear about it (I've already posted the date on my MYSPACE MUSIC PAGE), 'cuz I'm sure I'll be mentioning it ad nauseum. Just put aside the date, don't plan on doing anything, I want to see you there. Yes, you!

Wisdom of the streets

2007-05-07T16:19:00.000-04:00

Recently, I reinstituted a long-standing policy I had to take any flyer handed to me on the street. There are two reasons for this, both of them quite cool. The first reason is that, when these poor schmucks are out on the street, they are often just trying to earn a buck or two. They don't get paid unless they hand out all the flyers, and since it doesn't take any effort for me to throw them away, I figure I can help a guy put food on his table.

The second reason is more selfish. Sometimes, the grinning fellow handing out the flyers in Times Square or outside the theatre is a genuine nutjob. Truly crazy. And he's printed up all these flyers himself, and he is going to save you from hellfire, which is cool, and very nice of him. And sometimes, amidst the usual "Dear heavenly Father, I am a sinner. By the grace of your son, Jesus... etc., etc., etc.", you can find a gem of weirdness.

I recieved a pamphlet from Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. Mr. Alamo, is, no doubt, quite sincere in his faith. But there is something very interesting going on here that he may not be aware of. I'm going to reproduce some large portions, here, but trust me when I say it's worth the effort.

A few years after I was born again of the Spirit, I saw the Lord Jesus Christ with my eyes wide open. Sue was asleep, and I was wide awake. The room was pitch dark when a Spirit resembling a three to four-foot fluorescent light appeared in the room. It came into the room with a hissing sound, and with another hissing sound it formed itself into an oval-shaped mirror with a gold frame around it. Jesus was sitting in the mirror. He sat upon a purple throne-like chair that was trimmed in gold. The purple fabric looked like velvet. The back of the chair came up almost to the top of His head.

Jesus is not blonde and blue-eyed with long, stringy hair. He had the same skin color as myself, olive, which everyone in my life calls Caucasian. Again, He had black, bushy hair and a gold crown, which was about a half inch thick. It sat right on the top of His head and it looked like it was supposed to be there. And again, I wondered why no one ever thinks to wear a crown because it looks so good. His eyes were dark brown or black, and He was very handsome, better looking than any man I’ve ever seen. He was looking directly at me. By the way He looked at me, I could tell that He knew all about me and that He liked me as a person.

In this vision that I saw of Jesus there was a look of concern in His eyes, like He wanted to give me some urgent warning. I didn’t know what it was. He began talking to me but His voice was broken. It was like He was on radio, on the air, and somebody was quickly turning His voice on and off, on and off, all the time He was talking to me so that I couldn’t get anything He was saying. Later, I found out that His concern was that I wasn’t communicating with Him much at all.

I was astonished to read in the book of James that the Word of God, again, which is Jesus, is the mirror, the looking glass for us to look at to see if our reflection in it is like Jesus.

Now, if you're familiar at all with South American shamanistic practices (or have read Grant Morrison's The Invisibles) you know that, in the trance state, the shaman is able to extrude a substance from his orifices which could be called a liquid mirror. This magic liquid mirror allows the shaman to communicate with entities outside of this dimension, and to learn things to bring back to this world about curing diseases, increasing peace between tribe members, and maintaining good realtions with the dead. I would say that Mr. Alamo's mirror bears at least a passing resemblence to this "magic mirror" and that he is experiencing, albeit with a heavy Christian cultural overlay, a very sophisticated shamanistic experience. An experience that, for all it's crazy christian vibe, is still psychologically valid.

The one thing about these experiences is that, as any acid casualty will tell you, it's all in how you interpret the thing whether or not your vision has anything to teach you. The old-school shamen always brought back the visions with their own cultural overlay, so there's no shame in that. Mr. Alamo's cultural reality tunnel is Christian, and therefore, he saw Jesus. Makes sense.

The other thing is that there is one thing that Mr. Alamo may be missing, and that is the understanding of what he is truly seeing. It's in plain sight, so he is forgiven for missing it. Can you see it?

(I'll give you a second).

That's right. He is looking in a mirror. Mirrors don't work by reflecting partly back. Mirrors are at their best when they reflect back perfectly, without distortion.

Mr. Alamos was seeing a vision of his truest self, and the thing he may never know is that he is seeing himself. (in dreams, all things are YOU!). His vision is telling him - he is Jesus!

All the major religions tell us this, but here is Mr. Alamo's *proof*. He has been granted an insight of a major order, but, sadly, it slips away from him. He doesn't dream big enough, and doesn't have the cultural support (as he would in, say, a Hindu culture) to see what a gift he has been given.

And look what else: "I found out that His concern was that I wasn’t communicating with Him much at all." His innermost self, his soul that is identical with God, is telling him that he is missed. His soul misses him and wants him to come home. Truly beautiful.

Mr. Alamo, for better or worse, is the real deal. He may be all kinds of crazy christian, but he is a real visionary. I wish that the psychological lexicon for him to interpret his visions was more widely available, and was more grounded in our culture, so that, instead of dividing us, and making us feel that we are separate and alone and far from our God, we could realize how close heaven is, how near our God. "He is closer than your heart," says the Quran of God, and here's hoping we all see.

Update: I also posted on my music blog over here at my Myspace music page. It has nothing to do with this, I've just had a lot on my mind, lately. Enjoy!

Random 5

2007-05-03T12:27:00.000-04:00

Where we plumb the depths of a man’s iPod with unblinking eyes. Remember, when you stare into the playlist, it stares back into you (what?).

1. Marcus Garvey – Sinead O’Connor
This is off her amazing album of reggae covers Throw Down Your Arms, which was one of my favorite albums last year. The arrangements are very traditional, with some of the top session players from that style, very authentic, and she sings her heart out. There’s very little of the whispery, shattered sounding Sinead of old on this record. She’s just singing songs she loves. She is a serious one though, isn’t she? Most of the songs on this collection emphasize reggae’s political bent, rather than its party frat-boy, light up a spliff and relax aspect. Which, one might say, is a balance, but still.

2. There is a Light that Never Goes Out – The Smiths
Morrissey, god love you. This may be my favorite Smiths song of all time. The lyrics are heartfelt, with a sly wit to the mopery (“And if a ten ton truck/ crashes into us/ to die by your side/ what a heavenly way to die”). and the music. When the strings kick in on the chorus, I feel like crying a little. So beautiful. I want to cover this song so much.

3. La Costa Brava – Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
I went through a Ted Leo phase in 2005 and listened to Shake the Sheets until I couldn’t stand it anymore. As I am wont to do, I foisted my obsession of the moment on everyone that I knew, and got, to my surprise, mixed reactions. One listener complained that “all the songs started to sound the same.” What? How could they? But in listening to the new Ted Leo album, I understand what they meant. On this album, anyway, the songs do sound remarkably similar, if they make an impression at all. Shake the Sheets still rules, though, but this one, not so much.

4. There is a Reason – Alison Krauss and Union Station
This one’s the gospel tune she does on every Union Station album, usually penned by her banjo player, Ron Block. A very pretty tune, foreswearing the world and its treasures for the rewards of heaven. When I was rocking Christianity pretty hard, this tune moved me deeply. It’s still very pretty, but it’s almost as if I’m looking at a TV show I used to enjoy when I was a kid. There’s a certain nostalgia (one of my most damning vices) to the whole thing, a wistful longing, remembering the simplicity of belief. I mean, I still believe, I just believe a whole lot of other things, too...

5. Sitting in Limbo – Jimmy Cliff
Must be reggae day on Scott’s iPod, right? Love this one, too. Jimmy Cliff has a very pure singing voice, with uplifting lyrics and a sense of redemption in even the saddest lyrics. One of the reasons I admire reggae so much is that it is a music of belief, without neglecting the earthier aspects of being a human. I’m very attracted to strong belief of any kind, but I’ve found that belief only works through a certain amount of exclusion. Which is all well and good. Magic works as much by what we exclude as what we include. Then it’s just a question of finding a good set of included vs. excluded things, a set that suits you, that you can really get behind. Reggae has some things that I can relate to (earthiness, a connection to the land, to the oppressed, a sense of social justice, use of shamanic plants) and some things I most assuredly cannot (Hallie Sallasie is the Messiah? Really? Oh, and the fact that a number of sects in Rastafarianism believe white men to be the devil. Yeah, there is that).

On a side note, I'm pretty sure that nobody but me really cares about the History of Plunge, so if you're interested, leave a comment, and I'll hook you up.

New blog post on Myspace

2007-04-28T14:36:00.000-04:00

I'm keeping a separate little music blog over at my myspace music page. If'n you're interested, there's a new post on the blog that you can read by clicking here.

Love you, too.

Don't write about using drugs in yr blog

2007-04-24T16:08:00.000-04:00

http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/04/23/Feldmar/

Turns out the good Canadian doctor used LSD 40 years ago and was denied admission to the US based on this. Apparently "drug users" and those accused of crimes of "moral turpitude" are not eligible to cross the United States borders.

I may have to take some posts off-line...

Giggity - Gig!

2007-04-23T13:04:00.000-04:00

I know I promised a brief history of Plunge in my next installment, but I wanted to crow a bit. I booked a show for the summer! Huzzah!

I'll be performing at Cortland Rep in their production of Ten Little Indians opening July 4Th. I'll be playing the part of Philip Lombard. After I'd told a few people about getting the job, I mentioned to Katie how no one seems particularly surprised. "Except you!" she replied.

It's always funny, talking about booking a gig. There's an urge to celebrate, and, at the same time, I often feel slightly subdued. I'm reminded of the story of the football coach who frowned on his players doing celebratory dances in the end zone after a touchdown. "Act like you've been there before," was all he said.

So, I say, awesome! I've got a gig! Apparently I am, once again, a working actor. And yes, I do occasionally feel some surprise at that.

You oughta know...

2007-04-19T23:50:00.000-04:00

Two things. Firstly, I wrote a song for my friends at Stone Soup for their new show The Maguffin. They're doing that show in conjunction with another, called Stone, the next two weekends, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, at 8 pm. From their website:

Stone, a chilling fairy tale, explores the power and the risks of finding one's own place in the world as a young man is asked to deliver a seemingly ordinary stone to a mason's house. The puppet character elements in this production will be the first of such re-imagining for Stone, originally commissioned by England's Gay Sweatshop Theatre during the 1970’s.

featuring Seiko Carter, Caroline Reck, Ben Trawick-Smith and Chris Wild

The Maguffin by Adam Hunault and Stone Soup
This original farce speculates what happens when the gay marriage movement dies, creating a frenzied attempt by the Republican Party to preserve their mainstream identity. In order to perpetuate their struggle against the agenda of the liberal left, they attempt to revitalize the gay marriage platform. The Maguffin takes a decidedly modern look at how contemporary political issues are exploited by sound-bite politician's need for media control and re-election.

featuring Lauren Birriel, David Bryant, DR Hanson, Jacques Laurent, Marsha Martinez, Rachel Rhodes and Maria Schirmer
------------

I got to sit in on some of the rehearsals, as well as a reading, and this is a terrific show. Please do try and come out and see these excellent performers in two great shows for the price of one (plus, you can here one of my songs as performed by someone else). You can buy tickets online here.

These guys asking me to write a song really meant a lot to me, and they sort of spurred a recent burst of creativity that has led to some really great breakthroughs. I'm very grateful to them, and I want to do my best to support. See this show.

-------------

Also, those crazy Nosedive kids are doing a show about the dark underbelly of Suburban complacency, the seething, poisoned heart of the American Dream, the violent, animalistic rage that lurks beneath every banal water-cooler conversation at the office. You know... a comedy. Come see their take on it... I saw it and it reminded me of Blue Velvet meets Kids in the Hall. It's kinda ridiculous. It's called Suburban Peepshow, and it's also playing the next two weekends. Check it out, mang. Buy tix here.

The MySpace-ness Music Stuff and a Brief History of My Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy

2007-04-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

So, if you're on MySpace (and I've "Friended" you there) then you probably know that I've got a new music page up (haven't seen it yet? go to http://www.myspace.com/lemurshaman and check it out). I had the idea while I was on tour, to just sort of start putting stuff out there, see if there was any response. So far, and admitedly it's only been like, 12 hours at the most, but the response has been kind of nice. The people that I wanted to hear the music are hearing it. Since I do a lot of things in a small way (theatre, poetry, saxophone) most people don't know that there's this entirely other side of me that actually has been around and doing stuff for a lot longer than the theatre or the poetry (well, almost as long as the poetry)...

When I was 3 I wanted to be a drummer. When I was 8, I wanted to be in KISS (I wanted to be Gene Simmons (a.k.a. "Dragon") because he had the coolest makeup and spit blood). When I was 13 (and already starting to become the effete geek I was for most of high school), during lunchhour I would hide from bullies in the library and listen to the Beatles or my sister's Pat Benetar tapes. I would dream of being a rockstar. By the time I was 14, I had Queen's "Night At the Opera" completely memorized and was starting to look to my friends to start bands.

Mark Lancaster, Tim Lang, and Tony Gomez all had instruments (bongos, a Casio Keyboard, a 5 stringed guitar) and I coralled them on weekends and we made music, including a cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "Find the Cost of Freedom", and a song that involved slowing down the "Samba" setting on the keyboard until the rhythms were almost unrecognizable. We called ourselves "E%" and made our friends listen our Radio Shack Dictophone tape until the writing wore off. Nowadays, they'd call it low-fi, and if we had lived in Brooklyn we'd have had a three album deal on K Records and would be huge in Belgium, but since it was Tucson, we languished in obscurity.

When I was 15, a bunch of my friends who played band instruments and I (I had picked saxophone through some wilful perversity that made me not want to be predicatable and play drums) started a band for a talent show. We called ourselves 909D (after the rehearsal room we practiced in) and, when then talent show was over, the bass player, the drummer, and I tried to put together a rock band. We called our selves (after much debate, and mostly because of me) HarborcOat (yes, with the capitalized "O" and everything) after my favorite song off the R.E.M. album Reckoning, even though we sounded exactly nothing like R.E.M. We recorded three songs at a real recording studio (Westwood Studios in Tucson, for those who keep track of such things), and promptly broke up because I had to go to a swim meet.

I did a couple of bands after that, and then went to college where I played saxophone with a pop-punk band called Dennis Mitchell and the Wilsons. The band was good but I really wanted to sing and write the tunes. I met a guitarist named Chris Kaufmann, and we ended up forming a band called (after much debate and mostly because of me) Plunge. My record for choosing band names poorly continued unabated. But we were cool because we had two awesome drummers and were the loudest local band in Tucson - we were measured at 125 decibels on stage, with no soundsystem, just the instruments. I got vocal nodes from singing in that band (actually "pre-nodular formations" but whatever).

Then our bass player left and we couldn't find another one (always had a problem keeping bass players in that band, probably because Chris and I were always telling them what to play), so the band sort of fell apart. Then I moved to New York, started doing the singer-songwriter thing around town, had to quit because I had no friends and nobody to come to my shows, and got back into theater.

What's the point of all this non-sense (and congratulations if you've read this far through what is, I'm fairly certain, my most rambling, incoherent post yet)? Just to say that, while all this was going on, I was also: acting in shows, writing scads of poetry, and playing saxophone all over the place. And some of you know parts of this (my theatre friends know one part, my poet friends know another, friends who have known me since college know another), and none of the parts really seem to overlap, you know? But I love the music. That's, in some ways, the part that has the least compromise, the part that is the most self-directed.

So I'm starting to come back to it... maybe I'll do some open mics and see if there's any interest, maybe get a show. Baby steps. Just to see what happens. Suffice to say, if you've listened to the music (and, again, you can find it here at: http://www.myspace.com/lemurshaman) let me know what you think. Do you like it? Hate it? Want to make babies to it? I'm interested. If I get a good response, I'll start posting other new songs. I've been writing a lot, and I've got a bunch of songs to share. Let me know!

Next time, more about the sordid history of PLUNGE!

The coolest thing EVER

2007-04-17T00:49:00.000-04:00

Seriously. This shit makes me so happy I think I'm gonna burst.

Not for the faint of heart. So strange it might make you want to be normal again.

Wake up

2007-04-16T00:45:00.000-04:00

It is true. Yes it is.

(Grant Morrison at Disinfo conference)

one more thing I'm obsessing over

2007-04-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

The great John Crowley, whose books Aegypt, Little, Big, and Love and Sleep have changed my life in many ways, is putting out the final book in the Aegypt series this month. So I've been re-reading the entire series with more attention to detail than usual. I tend to read books the way a third-grader drinks water after recess: in huge gulps, with lots of gasping breaths in between swallows, as if my life depended upon the next mouthful. I'm forcing myself to slow down a little, take my time and really feel the details and "stars, stones, and roses" that populate Crowley's books. If you haven't read this series, it is, amongst other things: an alternate history of the world (for the world has more than one history), a book about angels and gods, a story of John Dee and Giordano Bruno, a gnostic fable, an astrological allegory, and a story about a historian trying to write a book. It's about heartbreak, the webs we weave out of love, and a love note to the 16th and 17th centuries. It is one of the best sets of books I've ever read, by one of America's greatest authors.

Enough hyperbole (all true, though. Every word). Go read and enjoy.

I'll post links to his books shortly. The browser I'm on won't let me do more than one window at a time.

What I'm currently obsessing over

2007-04-12T10:18:00.000-04:00

1. The Mountain Goats

While I was in Boston rehearsing for the life-disrupting upheaveal that was to be my first (and, as of this writing, so far my only tour), I was riding in a van with some co-workers. The radio was on, and I heard a song that stopped me dead. Those who know me well, know that I have, at the best of times, difficulty staying focused when there are good songs playing. I should say, rather, songs of any kind. Any music at all, actually. Muzak. Somebody whistling as they wander past. But really good music, and I am worthless. I tune out everything else, and listen only to the sound. So this song came on, a voice that sounded like it came from the depths of the past, lyrics that resonated perfectly with what I was going through. The song was "Going to Georgia" by a fellow named John Darnielle, who recorded under the name of The Mountain Goats, and the lyrics went like this:

The most remarkable thing about coming home to you is the feeling of being in motion again.
It's the most extraordinary thing in the world.
I have two big hands and a heart pumping blood and a
1967 Colt 45 with a busted saftey catch

The world shines
as I cross the Macon county line
Going to Georgia

The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you
and that you are standing in the doorway
and you smile as you ease the gun from my hands
and I'm frozen with joy, right where I stand
The world throws it's light underneath your hair
40 miles from Atlanta this is
nowhere
Going to Georgia.

The world shines
as I cross the Macon County line
Going to Georgia.
I wrote down as many words as I could remember in my notebook, driving through Boston on that rainy day in August, and waited through a good half-dozen indie-rock songs (something by blonde-redhead that didn't suck, a Billy Bragg tune that was actually Phranc), buy I couldn't care less because all I wanted to know was Who? Sang? That? Song? And finally the DJ came on and went through the list of the last 10 songs he played and I got incredibly worried because what if the title didn't match the words, and I couldn't figure out where in the play list it came? But of course the title exactly matched the word, and I went out and found every single recording of the Mountain Goats I could. He sounds like an appalachian meth-head crossed with Cormac McCarthy or something. I love the Mountain Goats, and over the last few (difficult, struggle-filled, brilliant, complicated, unhappy, aching-with-happiness) months, they have been one of a handful of things that have been my solace and my salve, calming me when I am too wound up with whatever crisis or disaster that seems to be on the horizon, getting me amped up and ready to face the next challenge. Thank you, Mountain Goats.

Truthfully, everything else has been a distant second in terms of obsession (that I'm going to talk about here, anyway), but there have been a few other things.

2. Writing songs about other people

When I found out that the majority of songs that The Mountain Goats wrote were not from his own life, but fictional, I freaked out a little. For one thing, I was actually very happy, because that meant that the man who wrote songs like "No Children" or "Family Happiness" was not (as I for a short while thought) a crazy mo-fo, but a gifted, imaginative lyricist and performer. It also meant that one didn't have to write about one's own life to write emotional, heartfelt, powerful lyrics. This was quite the revelation. Given that I had no desire to talk about my current situation until it was sorted out, both in my mind/heart and in the lives of those affected, it gave me something else to talk about. And it was much easier. The attempt to make something that spoke directly to my experience was difficult, and, in some ways, a little stifling. I mean, I've got enough experiences in the past year to make a whole mess of songs, but I don't know that I really am ready to do that, yet.

So when I was in Phoenix, ditching one of my closest friend's weddings to be with my father as he recovered from heart surgery, there was a book sale at the state fairgrounds. I went there early to get good deals, walking through residential Phoenix in the early February morning, thinking about things, feeling sorry for myself, pity for my father, etc. Finally made it to the state fairgrounds, and the book sale was in the animal exhibition hall, which, in spite of it's name, did not smell of animals at all. It was the size of an airplane hanger, and filled with tables full of books. Unfortunately, most of the good ones had been picked over the day before, but I manfully found a few books I wanted. Then, at the reference table, I found the treasures: a book of anecdotes, a dictionary of unusual and archaic words, and a book called The Book of A Thousand Things. Now, the anecdote book was simply interesting, paragraph long stories about various famous and somewhat-famous people, but the Book of a Thousand Things was even cooler. This book, written in 1943, purported to answer all sorts of questions about the world. And it was written exactly that way, in question and answer form. "What was the year without a summer?" "Does lightning make natural glass?" and crazier questions that I don't remember right now. So I've been reading these books and writing songs based on whatever I happen to find interesting in them. As it turns out, writing songs ostensibly NOT about yourself is actually a great way to talk about things that you're thinking about. I hope to have a whole album worth of material by the summer.... I'll keep you posted.

3. Boxing

Man, I don't know names, or titles, or any of that, but I am digging on watching guys beat the crap outta other guys. While I was on tour I watched, while sick as a dog, the movie Cinderella Man. The boxing sequences really got me going, and I realized I wanted to see more. It was exciting - none of this team player stuff, none of this running or dribbling or passing or excessive body armor and end zones and free throws and foul balls (most of which I really enjoy watching live, but which on TV just bores me to tears). No, this is just two guys circling a roped-in square, trying to knock each other down (but not kill - the aggression is carefully monitored. The idea is not to permanently damage each other - that wouldn't be cool at all, just cruel). Boxing is international, too, so that means when somebody says they're world champion, they're not just making it up ("World Series"? When a Japanese team is in the running with a Cuban team for the pennant, then we can call it a "World Series").

There's a couple of TV shows, too (Rome, Lost, The Tudors, BBC's Robin Hood), but you know, maybe some other time I'll obsess about that. So, back to work (yes, I'm temping again, after a brutal three months of beating my head against the audition wall looking for paid work as an actor). Enjoy.

Hiraeth

2007-03-08T21:10:00.000-05:00

In John Crowley's excellent (and, in my case, life-changing) book, Aegypt, the word "hiraeth" is defined thusly:

"...he knew well that burden of feeling the Welsh call hiraeth, something neither hope nor regret, neither revelation nor memory, but a compund of all of these, a yearining that could fill the heart as with warm rain."

I have suffered under the weight of this feeling, this hiraeth, for what feels like most of my life. Most of the major decisions of my life have come at it's urging, most of my mistakes and almost every one of my triumphs through it's counsel.

This excuses nothing. I am responsible, to paraphrase the Gourds song, for the stupid things I do. There is no way to avoid it, though - I am, at heart, not a rational person, moving through life making decisions the way that most people seem to do, thinking things through. I long for something, and I keep longing, casting about as best I can to try to find it, without even truly knowing what it is.

I hope that the people who love me understand. I do many things that seem willful, or destructive, or completely unintelligble.

I'm trying. As are we all. I hope we shall arrive soon.

update

2007-03-08T20:27:00.000-05:00

So what's going ahn? I spend most of my days auditioning for work. Since I was laid off of my job a year ago, I have been focusing on my acting career. I use the word "career" with some degree of accuracy, since I did, in fact, work as an actor for about 6 months last year, on a tour which precipitated a great deal of upheaval in my life. I'll write about that some other (much later) time.

Right now I'm working on a new show: Menaechmi Twins by Plautus, put on by Theater Ludicrum. It's another kid's show, but the translation is terrific, it's a fun show, and I'm really looking forward to working.

I'm also writing a new song for Stone Soup Theatre Arts new show The Maguffin. It's gonna be fun.

So that's that. I'm making it through, and I hope you're doing OK, too...

Random 5

2007-02-26T15:01:00.000-05:00

In which we plumb the depths of the unconcious using the divination tool of the first 5 random songs on the Ipod. Behold the Mystery!

1. Imogen Heep - Sweet Religion

Discovered this little chantuse on tour. Very English sounding, lots of looped vocals and overdubs over electronic beats. The song she did for Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia ('Can't Take it In') makes me cry. Like a less shrill Kate Bush, but way more beautiful than that description makes it sound.

2. Queen - You're my Best Friend

Off "The Game". A genuinely sweet song, but I'm not sure if this was during the phase when he was lining boys up outside his dressing room after his show for orgies. I wonder how his partner felt about that...? Not to cast aspersions on his character, but I wonder at his sincerity...

3. My Vien Ilin - Ted Leo & the Pharmacists

A very repetitive song - the lyrics rock, though: "And when I was 17/I declared myself a DMZ/but they continued bombing me/hot and steadily". and then it freaks out about midway through and gets super heavy. Ted Leo makes me feel better when days go shitty. Hope, spitfire, music to make me want to keep on fighting. He's a rockstar in my world.

4. Roll to Me - Del Amitri

"Look around your world pretty baby/is it everything you'd hope it'd be/the wrong guy, the wrong situation/the right time to roll to me." A perfect gem of late 90's pop. Would be perfect on a "Friends" soundtrack (and I think they were), but that's not really an insult. Jangly guitars, tighttight harmonies, under three minutes. Just the right thing to put a smile on my face.

5. Hey Julie - Fountains of Wayne

It's like the music gods took pity on me today. I needed good, sweet, uplifting music, and three songs that make me feel better, right in a row. "Hours on the phone making pointless calls/I got a desk full of papers that means nothing at all/sometimes I catch myself staring into space/counting down the hours till I get to see your face." I don't have a fucking desk job, and frankly, that's enough to make me feel like the hours of pounding the pavement, getting rejected, humiliating myself at dance calls (for REAL, that sucks), it's all worth it. I don't go to an office every morning. HAH! Fucking right on!!!!!

My New Year

2007-02-23T15:23:00.000-05:00

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim
Scope out every angle of unfair advantage
I'm gonna bribe the officials
I'm gonna kill all the judges
It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage

Our mother has been absent
Ever since we founded Rome
But there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home

- Up the Wolves, The Mountain Goats

Memed!

2007-01-05T11:04:00.000-05:00

I've actually been watching this little meme for a while and hoping that it would come to me, but when it does... all I got was a rock.

The meme goes:
1) Find the nearest book
2) Open to page 123
3) Type lines 6-8 of said book
4) Tag three others.

So the book nearest to me is not cool, nor is it particularly interesting. Over where I usually sit with the 'puter, I'm reading a copy of "Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation", which is kinda interesting, and makes me look like a freak, which I always am into. But here, in living room central, I'm working on audition stuff, and here I have a copy of "The Ultimate Audition Book: 222 monologues 2 Minutes & Under".

The lines are:

"Sir Epicure Mammon: a foolish nobleman, 40-50

Sir Epicure Mammon has been conned by Subtle into
believe he possesses a stone that can cure all disease."

Does this tell me something about myself (or rather, something I didn't know already)? Does this exercise in bibliomancy reveal some hidden wisdom by which I might guide my life, or a path down roads heretofore veiled?

No, it does not. Ah, well.

So tag, Rich, Oscar, and, oh hell, let's say Danielle.

Plus, go here for one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. Enjoy, and happy new year!

A note of hope

2006-09-16T12:33:00.000-04:00

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

no posts?

2006-08-12T23:12:00.000-04:00

It's not because I don't like you! It's just that I'll be posting a little more frequently at my other blog while I'm tour. Go on, go check it out. I'll still put stuff here periodically, mostly about drugs, sex, or magick, but, you know, not for the kiddies. :)

Random Rules Wednesday

2006-08-03T11:27:00.000-04:00

first five random songs off the ipod.

1. Sting Me - The Black Crowes. I hugely dig the Black Crowes. This is a great song off a great album, but not something I listen to much lately. I think I burned out on them.

2. Tin Man - America. One of the pivotal songs of my childhood. "Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man/that he didn't, didn't already have." This song, and actually, most of America's catalog, has this mid-seventies burned-out sadness, as if all the hedonism of the 60's just left them hollowed out and melancholy. And, as anyone will tell you, melacholy is one of my favorites.

3. Cinnamon Girl - Prince. Not my favorite song off Musicology, but it's Prince, which means that it's better than most of the crap out there right now. Another burnout album. Part of the problem I have with music is that, if I like something very much, I'll listen to it to the exclusion of anything else. Over and over, several times in a row, learning all the words, memorizing song titles through sheer repetition. Used to drive my wife crazy. As I may have mentioned, she banned several genres ("sad bastard music" which included Death Cab for Cutie, Pedro the Lion, and Starflyer 59, "all reggae" which she said she couldn't listen to unless she was in the carribean) and artists (Weezer, Todd Rundgren) outright because I listened to them over and over. Just an example of my addictive personality. The only thing that saves me is my ADD, which means I shortly get bored.

4. Holy Water - Soundgarden. Music from my youth. Ah, the sweet dulcet tones of Grunge. I put this on my ipod in a fit of nostalgia, but I haven't listened to it all that much. Some things no longer speak to us the same way they did.

5. Budge - Dinosaur Jr. Yet again, the music of youth. This one aged quite a bit better, for some reason. Maybe because I didn't listen to it constantly over a period of several months. Mr. Macis's voice is whiny, but he plays guitar like a beast, and his songs are always rocking. Except when they drag.

They say that most people stop listening to music at a certain age, that the music one listens to in, say, college, is the music one will be listening to for the rest of one's life. I don't know how people can do that. I get bored, and I'm constantly looking for new music, new thoughts, new sensations. For example.

6. The New Face of Zero and One - The New Pornographers. Now this is good stuff. Fresh sounding, energetic, very much of the moment, with great melodies, unusual structures and progressions. Great stuff.

Creation is not complete

2006-08-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

As I was out last night wandering the neighborhood getting snacks I saw a woman and her dog. The dog is a white and black american pit bull, and last night she was standing with it. Pit bulls can have incredibly sweet personalities, if they're raised right, and this woman seemed to be lucky enough to have found one of those. Last night, she stood above the dog while he gazed off into the night, the both of them watching the people and dogs and cars pass by in front of the apartment building. She leaned over and kissed the dog on the top of his broad, flat head, and he wagged his tail and smiled.

Again, this morning, I'm out in the early morning haze, before it gets really hot but where you can feel the heat winding up to really smash the day to pieces, and I see the same woman walking her dog. She looked bored, and just waking up, but he looked perky and happy to be out, his long pink tongue lolling out of his enormous square jaws. It suddenly struck me, in that moment, that she had really lifted that dog up, in an evolutionary sense. Pit bulls can be dumb and mean and scared, and they have an incredible capacity for destruction. This dog, however, seemed well-adjusted and quite intelligent, and I know from experience that that has as much to do with the raising as with the temperment of the dog.

I thought of one of my favorite books growing up, Startide Rising by David Brin, which talks a lot about humans evolving animals in our biosphere through the application of technology - chimps and dolphins are electronically and biologically augmented to be able to speak and reason with humans. I have always thought that is is the job of humans to help the animals we interact with become more conscious, more intelligent. This, in turn led me to think of the story of Adam and his responsibility to "name" all the animals. Why is he given this job?

In pre-lapsarian times (we're speaking mythically, now. Don't start spreading rumors that I'm a literalist) Adam's job, given him by God, was to name all the animals. But really what does that mean? Of course, it's nice to have names for things. It allows us to communicate with each other, without having to constantly resort to "That thing. Over there. No, over there. The other one!" But if you take a moment to consider, there was no one but God, and Adam. This implies another reason for the names. Perhaps names were given in order that the things themselves might learn them. We see, in this story, a hint of the function of humanity. Being conscious, it is our gift to bring consciousness to the world, to make the world more conscious. God, being in all things present, is awakened through our agency. And not big daddy thunder god, but God, consciousness, light.

The story goes that God made everthing, and on the seventh day, he rested. I would posit that, until the world knows itself (and not just animals, but all things) creation is not completed. As it says in the Bible, "For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God." Romans 8:19

In order for us to create the world, we must become fully concious, ourselves. Until we awaken, the world lies before us, dead as science has always supposed it to be, inert matter. We must make the world live. Spiritual work is not selfish or world-denying. It is the primary reason for which we have come here.

Led Zepplin, Magick, and Literary Theory

2006-08-01T10:21:00.000-04:00

This is why I love the Net. This article on Led Zepplin IV (otherwise known as the Zoso album) is simply brilliant. I have a difficult time even explaining how deeply I relate to it, except to talk for a moment about Yes.

As a freshman in high school, I was a living embodiment of the truism that boys mature later than girls. I was tall, gawky, awkward, shy, spastic, not too far removed from the nerd who used to cast horoscopes (from the book The Cosmic Informer) and play D&D. Somebody, I can't even remember who, got me a copy of Classic Yes with the Roger Dean artwork (which you can see here) and I was in love. The music was grandiose and the artwork just killed me. I became obsessed, partially because I could sense, in the otherworldly art and the lofty music, another reality, akin to the world created by my (at the time) favorite writer, J.R.R. Tolkien. The whole package hinted that there was another world, a world of myth and quests, of wizardry and romance, that lay just beyond my sight, and that this album (not just the music or the artwork or the lyrics but the whole package) was a gateway to this other world.

And it wasn't just this music, this album, it was this whole genre of early 70's British rock (American rock, for all its considerable charms, never really got the hang of the "other world" thing. I can't think of a single American band that really nailed it, though bands like, say, Kansas, sort of tried...). King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Marillion. The albums were about creating an entire experience, almost a cosmology. And I ate it up.

When you're 14, 15, 16, your entire world resonates with significance. The massive hormones surging through your bloodstream, the wracking emotions that seem to arise from nothing leaving you dazed and blinking, all of these seem to impart to the world a weight. Every experience is fraught with meaning and import. It is the time of sexual imprinting, and the male teenage mind is designed to see the world in that obsessional, magickal way. I mention this because, really, what else is magickal thinking but the creation of significance through the use of the imagination.

So, the article: it's a long read, but well worth it. Fascinating stuff. Check it out.

Update: For more insights into my formative years, check out this post about Jack Chick on the 3 Quarks Daily blog. Jack Chick (and the little pamphlets he popularized) was a huge part of my semi-evangelical Christian upbringing, and a huge part of the guilt, shame, and otherwise occasionally twisted meanderings of my soul.

I actually used to collect his pamphlets when I was in college, and had over 80 of them. I think I tossed 'em when I moved to New York. Good times.

Other Scott

2006-07-28T19:16:00.000-04:00

So, I need to talk about Scott Pilgrim. I just met him today, and I think... well, I have a major thing for Scott Pilgrim. He's funny, he plays bass, he has all kinds of girl problems, and he's the best fighter in Toronto.

He's also a comic book character. And he ROCKS.

Yeah, aside from the level of homosexuality in the 1st paragraph of this post, which I'm pretty sure I'm OK with, that's my new thing right now. Scott Pilgrim saved my shit today, just when I was starting to get depressed. It's the funniest, most human, most surprising graphic work out there right now, and I'm in love with it. The people on Barbelith.com got me turned onto it, and I think the guy that directed Shaun of the Dead is set to do the movie treatment. I know I'm like 2 years behind the curve on this one, but this is such a great book.

It's a american manga (even though it's canadian). I didn't care for the art at all, but it kept surprising me, and making me laugh. It's quite excellent, and if you haven't read it, go out and buy it right freakin' now. It's that good.

Also James' Blog has a great little post about the place of Nosedive Productions (the theatre company I frequently work with) in the theatre world. Specifically, it asks the eternal question (which I have been asking myself of late) "How we gonna get PAID?" Some of my (admittedly, slightly incoherent) thoughts are to be found there.

Random Rules - Scot's ipod

2006-07-26T12:56:00.000-04:00

Taking a cue from The Onion's AV club, I will, on Wednesdays, play and comment on the first 5 random songs that come up on my ipod. So there.

Kate Bush - "Love and Anger"
I had a roommate in college who loved Kate Bush. LOVED her. He had great taste in music and was, in almost all other respects, a singularly unpleasant person. He was into 4AD bands with beautiful woman singers singing unintelligibly in high, ethereal voices. I was glad that he got me into Kate Bush, though, as it turns out that any entheogenic trips that seem to be going awry can be mellowed by Ms. Bush and her lovely, lovely voice.

The Cardigans - "Heartbreaker"
Don't have much to say on this one, except that these guys were really great, and then put out a couple of really not-good albums. This album, though, was terrific, "First Band on the Moon". It's what happens when really talented musicians who would rather make depressing music try to make ironic pop and end up just making pop. Pop is not ironic! Behold the power of pop!

Immortal Technique - "Peruvian Cocaine"
Interesting in that it uses multiple rappers to create an almost linear narrative through monolouges of the cycle of drugs from picking and smuggling to sales. A great song, but sometimes he comes off a little polemical to me. I appreciate strident militancy, but I feel like he leaves out other points of view...

Dolly Parton - "Stairway to Heaven"
Another great moment in Dolly's re-positioning herself for the ironic hipster audience. Bluegrass meets Zepplin, and I'm shallow enough to think this is pretty f-ing cool. I saw Dolly at Radio City music hall, and saw more drag queens in the audience than I have ever seen in my life. It was like a convention!

Pearl Jam - "Low Light"
This points up one of the problems with my iPod "system" (if such a beast could be said to exist). I like listening to albums, and try to put whole albums on my Pod in an effort to expose myself to tracks I wouldn't normally check out, but when I'm walking around with the sucker on "shuffle" it comes up with songs that I really don't want to hear. Like this forgettable little gem from "Yield". Ah well.

And so we end, not with a bang, but a whimper.

---------
Also, if you have a moment, go check out Author John Crowley's Blog at http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/. He is one of the greatest authors in English working right now, and he has a livejournal. That is just so *cute*!

The newest addition to the family

2006-07-26T07:48:00.000-04:00

Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to my niece, Ms. Caitlin Rose Larson. She was born on the 26th of June in the year 2006, and she is the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.

Caitlin, this is everyone.

Jupiter, Jehovah and Holst

2006-07-25T16:07:00.000-04:00

So, this past Sunday I went to church for what will probably end up being the last time this year (while I’m in Boston and on tour I probably won’t be attending, and, as I have mentioned, the current experiment with Christianity may need to be revamped in order to remain relevant to current experiences/desires). I walked to church and turned on the old iPod which I had recently loaded up with Holst’s The Planets Suite.

A bit of background - after studying some in astrology, Gustav Holst decided to write a suite based around the astrologically important planets of his time: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Pluto hadn’t been discovered when he started, so it isn’t included. He wrote each part of the suite to evoke the astrological/mythical aspects of the given planet. For example, the opening is “Mars, The Bringer of War”, there’s “Venus, The Bringer of Peace,” etc.

On my way to church, and feeling in a syncretic mood, I dialed up “Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity.” I hate the title, by the way. It’s gets at the Latin roots of the word jollity, i.e. Jove, another name for Jupiter, but Jollity seems so frivolous, and neither the piece, nor the Thunder God, are frivolous. The music, however, perfectly captures the sense of what is traditionally longed for in the Christian vision of God – a generous, loving, joyful daddy whose concern and mercy is complete and utter. Since Jehovah is essentially a Semitic Thunder/Sky God, it’s very easy to draw parallels. The music is both majestic and playful, the sound of Leviathan gamboling in the deepest oceans. There is a both weight and lightness to the sound that is created, a solemnity that has, at its heart, a deep and abiding joy.

In listening to the piece, I was reminded of Alan Moore’s Promethea. At one point, Promethea is ascending the Tree of Life and she comes to the sphere of Chesed (also know as Mercy), which is traditionally associated with Jupiter. She remarks, “This is bigger than the love people have for each other. This is the unconditional love of the universe for its children. For itself.” and later, a character (I can’t remember who) says that the universe would take a bullet for us, if it could. It is the strong, protective love of the father.

I was struck, as we went through the service, of the prevalence in traditional Christianity of the flip side of Chesed (the qlippoth, for those keeping score at home), tyranny. It is characterized by intolerance for the possibility of ambiguity or other opinions on how to deal with the world. This is what happens when any one aspect of the world is too strongly emphasized. It becomes it’s opposite. I saw this most strongly while talking a number of years ago to my friend Mary (those who have ears, let them hear). I read the book of Revelations under her influence, and saw deep into the heart of the qlippoth of Chesed. I saw a God so grief-stricken at his creation’s fall that he sees no choice but to destroy it utterly. The wrath and sorrow made perfect sense. This is the God that condemns unbelievers to Hell, that licks the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah clean with tongues of flame. This is the God that most of us know, the S&M God fetishized into reality by Goth kids, Death Metalheads, and Fundamentalist Christians.

I don’t know if “God” is really like this. Presumably, even though it is an extreme position, it represents some aspect of the universe that has manifested at one point or another. It isn’t healthy, in my opinion, but that’s just me.

The vision that I saw while reading Revelations, and the vision I had listening to Holst were flip sides of the same vision. But I know which I prefer. It was very nice to have, in my heart and resonating in my mind, a vision of God which is both loving, and majestic, not to mention totally divorced from the vengeful Daddy fantasies of the Fundamentalist Christian Wing.

And, as a side note for all you bourgeoning Qabbalists out there, do take note that Holst’s The Planets is really excellent for invoking planetary energies. Enjoy!

Loki loves you

2006-07-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

Had a friend call me “Loki” the other night. The context isn’t really important (a late-night conversation, some advice). Now, too many comic books when I was a kid messed up my head a little about Loki – Captain America fought him, if I recall, and he was the impetus behind the formation of The Avengers (Marvel Comic’s Avengers, not the hip British TV show with Emma Peel). I always saw Loki as the vindictive side of chaos. Even his portrayal in Norse mythology tends to paint him as the fly in the ointment, the uninvited guest, the guy who lays the turd in the punchbowl. But I did a little more research, and found some interesting things...

Here’s what I wrote my friend:

Did a little research on Loki, just to see if there was a match - turns out that there is some indication that Loki is what is called a hypostasis of Odin, i.e. they're the same in the way that the parts of the Trinity are the same. Loki is just Odin in his more... chaotic aspect. This makes some sense, since they are blood brothers, and the connection between them is strong enough to cause all kinds of problems.

The other interesting point is that Odin is the only "top dog" god in any pantheon associated with Mercury. There's some indication that Mercury was top god in the Mediterranean for a while. His symbol was the lignum/phallic standing stone, which you can still find scattered along roads in Greece... but then the aryan/semitic influence came down the pike and everybody wanted big daddy thunder gods. No accounting for taste, I guess.

Mercury/Odin/Hermes all being associated with language gives more evidence as to the Loki/Odin connection. In Odin we have the "positive" (i.e. socially acceptable and cohesive) aspect of language, while in Loki we see the shadow side - tricks, scams, seductions, stories. We also see, in Loki, the ambivalent relationship between the dark, reticent Norse and language. Reasoning, poetry, wisdom, the ability to speak well, these are all prized in their culture, but at the same time they recognize and are afraid of and disturbed by language's power to wreak havoc. Once again the uncomfortable aspects of a given power are shunted off into the "other" and then kept in check (cf. Prometheus. Notice the similarities between Prom. and Loki in their ends, both bound to rocks in never ending torments).

And to bring it back around to me (don't I always?) my friend Chad always used to call me "Spider". In reading the book "Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman, I found out that Spider is the trickster god in the African/Jamaican tradition. I have been consciously taking on the more trickster-y aspects of that moniker over the past year or so: charm, stories, constructive chaos. Spider is the well-spring of civilization. He is the inventive part that looks at the work and tries to think of a way to get it done faster so he can sleep with the pretty girls. He is imagination and surprise and the twist ending that leaves you laughing in spite of yourself. So when the runes told you Loki would give you advice, they were talking about it in the only language they had.... pretty cool, huh?

Not that I am entirely Spider/Loki (apparently I also have aspects of Pan, according to this friend – high praise, indeed! I mean, if that’s your thing). I’m just trying to learn to access that part of myself. I’ve met some people who embody chaos much more strongly than I ever could hope to (DH, I’m looking at you). There’s a downside to everything though, isn’t there? Embody chaos, you may find your life becoming unmanageable. Balance is the key. Wisdom and chaos in equal measure, with the occasional wild list to one side, just to keep things interesting.

Meet the new blog...

2006-07-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

...same as the old blog. I've created a new blog over at http://scotontour.blogspot.com that will serve as my connection to my friends and loved ones while I'm doing the touring thing.

Part of the reason I'll be posting at this other blog is to create a sort of clearinghouse of information as I learn stuff about the whole touring "lifestyle" or whatever. There wasn't a thing on the web about how to tour, so I figured I'd contribute to the knowledge base by making something that people could refer back to. So there you go.

I'll continue to post my usual rantings and metaphysical ravings here, but travel stuff will be in the new blog - go there and see what's what, schmecky.

Words to live by

2006-07-09T13:11:00.000-04:00

"...the guy who'll get up there in front of people and not be afraid of humiliation is the most powerful guy in the room."

- Wayne Coyne, in July 13th Rolling Stone Magazine

In failure, we may find success

2006-07-07T13:00:00.000-04:00

In reading Ramsey Dukes’ very enlightening (and occasionally exasperating) introduction to A.O. Spare’s Book of Pleasure, I was struck by the following passage

“We may not be liberated from failure and misery, but we may be in a position to use it. Knowing the law of duality brings the possibility of distinguishing ourselves from its working. No more the blind slide into despair but rather the studied descent, and the plan to use that unavoidable despair in order to plan the next high point.”

This seemed familiar to me. Anyone who has watched a space opera like Star Trek or the like will probably be familiar with the concept of the “slingshot” in which the gravity of a planet or star is used to increase velocity. As one approaches the influence of said star or planet, one’s speed increases as gravity begins to exert its inexorable influence. The extra speed is used to whip one around the planet and send one shooting off (presumably in the direction one wishes to go) at a greatly accelerated rate.

It seems that, theoretically anyway, one should be able to use ones decent towards failure in the same way. Calculating velocity and relative angles, one might even be able to increase speed as one rounds the corner toward “failure and misery”. It is not just the ability to “plan the high point” that we are gifted with in our failure. Used correctly, our next triumph is contained in our failure! “All” we need do is go with the motion, use the momentum to thrust us into our next venture.

“All,” indeed. Of course, this is very, very difficult to remember when one is in the midst of a failure or misery. Often the tendency is to get “stuck” in the moment of pain. Our relationship to pain is complex. Pain is our greatest friend, warning us of our vulnerability and attempting to protect us from the costs of our reckless wandering through the world. Since it is such a friend (though we don’t always think of it this way), we tend to hang on to our pain. In fact, we’re actually hardwired to remember our pain for a long time, and keep it close. It’s purpose, after all, is to keep us safe, and who are we to deny the accumulated wisdom of several million years of evolution?

Psychosynthesis posits that problems are often caused by a portion of our personality doing work that it wasn’t designed to do, or through certain aspects of ourselves becoming stuck in extreme positions. Consciousness allows us to look at these aspects of our personalities (for example, our memory and the personality that develops around a particularly painful memory or experience) and find other solutions than acting out unconsciously from a place that no longer functions as we’d like.

All of this rigamorale is to say that, for example, when my recent situation ended, I found myself presented with a unique opportunity, which I used for all I was worth. I ended up with a much better job (and hopefully, prospects for other jobs) which will be the beginning of a totally different direction for me.

I hope my friends in difficulties right now (and there are some – those recovering from a so-called “failure”, those who are still stuck in negative and difficult mind-sets due to traumatic experiences, those who are re-evaluating their self-image and attempting to reconstruct a working persona with which to deal with the world) can read this and find some comfort.

Nervous Boy Trailer

2006-07-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

Check out this amazing trailer for "The Adventures of Nervous Boy (A Penny Dreadful)". I think it looks pretty amazing.

Remember, this is our last weekend. Do yourself a favor and check it out. See you there!

Woody Allen meets "American Psycho" - my current show

2006-06-11T01:15:00.000-04:00

Really, you want to see this one. One of the best shows Nosedive has ever done, and a show I'm extremely proud of. I know y'all are busy, but make the effort - come out, see the show, and thank me later.

The cast is top-notch, there's fight choreography by Qui Nguyen from Vampire Cowboys, it's funny as hell, and heck, maybe you'll learn something, too.

The Adventures of Nervous Boy (A Penny Dreadful)
a new play by James Comtois, directed by Pete Boisvert
June 8-10, 15-17, 22-24 (Thursdays through Saturdays)

The Gene Frankel Underground at 24 Bond Street (between Bowery and Lafayette)

All shows are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15.

For tickets visit www.theatermania.com

Adults only. No kidding.

www.nosediveproductions.com

Kids, don't do drugs: Part Deux - Tripping and trolls

2006-05-22T15:33:00.000-04:00

There may be arguments for vegetarianism that are informed by experience, rather than theory or ideas of morality.

Mr. Hooper, he dead.

2006-05-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

A perfect blending of childhood education and art. Thanks CTW and Mr. Henson (RIP) for this.

And for my next trick...

2006-04-23T23:55:00.000-04:00

Part of the reason I've been so scarce lately. I'm in this, as well as writing an original song for the show. It's the first three weekends (Thurs.-Sat.) in May. Let me know if you're gonna be there!

Penetralia

Stone Soup's 5th original play
The Actors Theatre Workshop
145 W. 28th Street, NYC
May 4-20, 2006

The inhabitants of Penetralia live in the secure knowledge that all business is everyone’s business. A communication system, both advanced and ancient, keeps everyone in the know. But the idyll is forever disrupted by a disturbing discovery, as a mild-mannered Professor fully realizes his mind’s potential. Stone Soup’s fifth original production explores secret-keeping, and the frightening consequences in a society that criminalizes it.

Click Here for Tickets or call 212-352-3101

We do what we're told

2006-04-20T23:36:00.000-04:00

WFMU has an amazing post on their blog about Stanley Milgram's Obedience experiment in which subjects were tested to see how they responded to an authority figure asking them to torture another human being. There's even a documentary! Though I think they unfairly slag Peter Gabriel, it's a must read.

I find myself often thinking of this little experiment when confronted by authority figures in my own life. I talk a pretty good game when I'm just chatting with friends or talking to my lady, but in the midst of the confrontation, I tend to be less strong. I've been pretty well conditioned, I have. I would have to say that the point of most initiation is to come face to face with one's conditioning, and by so doing, learn to overcome it. I hope I shall arrive soon.

What's goin' ahn

2006-04-18T15:52:00.001-04:00

My review of Portuguese duo Dead Combo can be found here at Escrever Sobre Musica e Impossivel.

Tomorrow night I'll be performing with synonymUS at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe with Kelly Tsai. You should come check it out!

And Stone Soup, the theatre collective that I'm currently in rehearsal with for a new play is having a Barking Beauty Pagent to raise money for the ASPCA and for the new show. If you're into dogs in cutsey clothing, this one's for you!

Easter!

2006-04-16T14:23:00.000-04:00

At church this morning, I was feeling bored. Yes, sadly, I think my current experiment with Christianity will need to have a radical change in parameters in order to remain relevant to my current experiences. But, it was Easter, I sing in the choir, so I was at church. And bored. The priest was discussing the Gospel of Judas (which I think is a fantastic find, both theologically and historically) and altogether missing the point, in my opinion. In his words, this new Gospel said that Jesus “cut a deal” with his persecutors, when it quite clearly doesn’t say anything of the kind.

It actually just says (in my opinion, and IANATheologian) that Judas was in on the crucifixion, not just as betrayer, but as part and party to the plan for redemption, and that his was (aside from Jesus) the most difficult role. He not only had to betray his friend, but he had to be the scapegoat, the one reviled throughout history as the quintessential betrayer. But he did this, and did it well, because he loved Jesus, and Jesus asked him to do it. It reminds me of a Jorge Luis Borges tale that pretty much says the same thing, only Borges goes so far as to say that Judas was the real savior, because not only did his do the hardest job of the crucifixion tale (betray his friend, accept the hatred and scorn of millions throughout history), but he also is still suffering even to this day in Hell. That he suffers for us the tortures of Hell for all eternity that we might never have to experience them.

But I digress. I was bored until we started singing the hymns for the day. And with one line I remembered.

“Now the queen of seasons, bright with the day of splendour, with the royal fest of feasts, comes its joy to render.”

They make think they’re talking about Mary, but we know better, don’t we? Here’s another one:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again.
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain.
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green

Though the roots of Christianity may be in some life-denying, rule-bound form of Judaism, there’s a Pagan overlay grafted onto it that makes it quite palatable, if you know where to look. The myth of the dying son/sun is, of course, everywhere in the mythologies of Europe, and in Christianity we celebrate it today, Easter. We decorate the church in flowers and green, baptize babies and speak of the symbolism of new life signifying the death and resurrection of the Christ. But you and I, dear readers, we know they’ve got it backwards. Eternal life is now, right here and now in the renewing of the seasons, in the birth and growth, maturation and “death” of the earth in every year. The good earth, which is both mother and destroyer, shows her good side this time of year. We good children of the planet have a duty to share in the fecundity of spring!

The thinly veiled paganism of Christian ritual did my heart some good, I tell you what. I went out of there with a “spring” in my step and a song in my heart. It’s a beautiful day, kids. Go out there and get laid for Jesus.

-------

UPDATE:

And in case you think I'm a bit to hippie-ish, click here to watch parasitic worms crawl from the orifices of their hosts and remember - nature is creepy.

Me and Mia - part 2

2006-04-13T10:20:00.000-04:00

You may remember a post I wrote last year about Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and their song about bulimia and anorexia. Well, YouTube has a video for the song that inspired one of the best poems I've ever written and you can see it right here - plus any thing that gets more people to hear that song is a good thing: it's AWESOME!

I didn't lose my job...

2006-03-27T20:08:00.000-05:00

... it's just, when I got there, somebody else was doing it.

- Bobcat Goldthwait

"It was resolved." :)

Return of the Repressed

2006-03-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article about the rites of Eleusis and the ergot fungus. A little background: the ancient Greeks had a mystery religion that centered on these mysterious rites of Eleusis. Plato’s writing on “The Cave” is thought to have been inspired by his experiences at Eleusis, and many of the top intellectuals, artists and statesman were thought to have gone through these arcane rituals, which involved a reverence toward Demeter, the Goddess of grain, and ended with an overwhelming experience of the realms of the Gods and deep insight into Life and Death. OK. The main pharmacological catalyst of these little rites was the ergot fungus, which is often found as purple spurs or knots on grain that has been infected. Now, in small doses, heavy duty hallucinations and insights into reality are reported. At large doses, however, things get a little less pleasant. Boils, seizures, women having spontaneous abortions, massive hallucinations, and death are all reported symptoms of ergot poisoning.

So the Greeks did this mind-blowing exercise for thousands of years, and then the Christians come around, and of course, in Christian theology, nobody gets to alter their brains without permission. The Christians shut the magic show down, and ergot goes underground for a few hundred years.

Until the Middle-Ages, that is, when villages around Europe begin having outbreaks of a terrible infection called St. Anthony’s fire. Symptoms include: spontaneous abortions, outbreaks of terrible boils, seizures, and widespread hallucinations. When the cause is finally tracked down, the culprit turns out to be, you guessed it, our buddy ergot, infesting grain that was sold to the poor.

Predominantly Christian Europe burns from within as the ancient blessing that anchored the Rites of Eleusis returns as a horrible curse. This is what comes from the repression of gnosis. The substances of choice for consciousness altering in Europe then (and all over the West, even into our day), tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, offer precious little in the way of liminal understanding of the universe. Eleusis offered insight into life and death, the culmination of mysteries in an experiential knowledge of the world through entheogens. This is what happens when you blow off the gnosis. It sort of struck me as both a “return of the repressed”, and also a revenge of the Gods that were displaced as the Western world was forced to embrace Christianity.

There’s a story there, don’t you think?

I think my last post was too long

2006-03-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

so I'm bumping it down, just to see what happens.

A History of Violence

2006-03-19T00:29:00.000-05:00

Just watched David Cronenberg’s History of Violence. I’ve been a Cronenberg fan since seeing Naked Lunch in college. It was part of what made me really want to become a writer in a serious way. I used to sit and smoke cigarette after cigarette (Camel Wides or Benson and Hedges 100’s) until I got this buzzing in my head that almost laid me out on the couch, and I’d sit at my purple Remington Portable typewriter and pound out page after page of stream of consciousness weirdness in an attempt to break through something into somewhere else. A lot of my prose was (and, to a certain degree, still is) a bit stilted, as if the critic were sitting on my shoulder, making sure that I didn’t do anything stupid enough to be interesting. So I would do just about anything to break out of my own head, try to sound like something other than a college kid in a small town who really didn’t know shit.

So, the movie. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading this. Go see it.

I got to really thinking about it, and I’m trying to organize my thoughts, here, but it really is about the history, that is, human history, of violence. It didn’t seem to me to be an “anti-violence” movie in a traditional, “violence is bad, kids” way, as much as it asks us to examine our attitudes toward violence, and how humans have handled it throughout the ages.

I’ll just start with what really struck me. The last scene is an amazingly powerful bit of film-making. The main character, Tom, has just come home from what appears to be the final chapter of killing that was required to defend both his family, and, by extension, the life that he has worked so hard to create. His family is at the primal scene of the evening meal. He stands at the door, wounded, outside the circle. He has been estranged from all of them by the horrific acts that he has committed to save them, and by acts that he has done in the past that have come to light through the course of the movie. No one looks at him. His wife looks down, his son looks at his mother, and then away. His daughter, finally, is the one to act. She gets up from the table, gets her father’s plate and utensils, and places them at his seat. He hesitates, and then sits. His face is filled with frightened hope.

His son is next. He is completely at sea, looking at his mother, trying to gauge her reaction. He seems to come to a decision, and he offers his father the meat from the table. Still the father’s eyes are locked on the mother. Will she accept him?

She finally looks at him, her eyes are filled with tears. He watches her with fear and hope and longing. His eyes are red, his whole world depends on her. Not a word is spoken. The screen goes black.

There was something so mythic about this scene. This was the primal scene of the man returning to the tribe, and his petition for cleansing and reintegration. Violence is, and has almost always been, in civilized groups, a taboo. The chaos that it sows requires that it be circumscribed by very strict rules and rituals. Though it may be necessary for the masculine to access that shadow side of violence and rage in order to protect and further the interests of the tribe, there must always be a reintegration in order for civilization to continue. Violence could almost be seen as a contagion in this case – you can’t bring that shit back in the house without undergoing a ritualized cleansing.

And who regulates that cleansing? Well, short of a priestly caste, and going back further in human history (not to mention into the realm of archetype and myth), it is the Feminine that must give the blessing in order for reintegration to take place. Why is it that mothers, sweethearts and wives are held in such high esteem during times of war? What is the role that the feminine plays in the prosecution of violence? Obviously, sometimes violence is required, but if you bring it into the circle of the tribe, breakdown of the whole society becomes eminent. Therefore the Feminine, left behind while the Masculine goes off and murders, must be there when the Masculine returns. And there is a ritual – blessing is not always automatic, nor should it be. In order for the ritual to have power and efficacy, there is a test. The Masculine must petition the Feminine for re-entry into the tribe. For though everyone in the tribe may wish to receive the returning warriors back into the fold, it is ultimately the Feminine that must recognize and certify his fitness. If he is still the Wild Man, still the killer, he brings the contagion with him, and society will disintegrate.

What makes this scene, and this movie so powerful, is not only mythic quality that it has, the sense that this is a reenactment of a situation that has happened, has been happening for thousands of years. It is also that the characters are human, each of them with their personalities intact, each of them of them with their own histories, their own ambiguities and their own relationships with violence.

And the whole movie functions on this level. The story is complete in itself, but there is always the mythic level beneath. The ritualistic aspect of the returning warrior is emphasized in the preceding scene, where, after murdering his brother in self-defense, he throws the gun into a lake, only to collapse on the shore. He removes his blood-stained shirt, and washes himself clean.

Again, working backwards, before the penultimate scene of murder, the lead character and his brother discuss the benefits of marriage. Tom’s brother, a gangster and criminal, remarks that he can’t see any upside to marriage. He, of course, cannot see or recognize the value of the civilizing aspect that Tom’s marriage has. He has built his whole life on violence, and his life is entirely outside of society. Tom’s entire life has been restructured around his attempt to reintegrate into society.

As their discussion continues, Tom’s brother reveals that he tried to strangle Tom in his crib. “Every kid does that, I guess,” he muses. Cain and Abel are indirectly invoked through this simple sentence, as well as the equally ancient myth of Hercules attacked in his crib by the snake – the snake always reminding us of our “lower”, shadow natures.

Tom has tried to flee his violent nature, the shadow. It is not enough to flee it, however. He has to kill it. The only way to kill it (in the form of his brother) is to embrace it (the killer inside himself - the skilled assassin that he tried to flee).

This is an amazing movie. Certainly one of Cronenberg’s best, and one of the better I’ve seen in a long while. Check it out.

Out and About

2006-03-16T11:34:00.000-05:00

Since this blog tends toward the more introspective, I thought it best to reveal that, yes, I do occasionally have a life.

Tuesday was a joint b-day party for Piddimus Maximus and my lovely wife. We met some friends, had some drinks (I was on a strict Shirley Temple regimen (ginger ale and grenadine) due to the antibiotics for this ridiculous sinus infection that seems to be my lot every four months or so), a few laughs. It was delightful. Mr. Maximus and I seem to have this thing where every couple of months we’ll get together and engage in these long, intense bouts of conversation that always end up with the two of us saying, “Man, we have to hang out more!” Then we both promptly vanish and are swallowed by the gaping maw of New York, only to be spit up a few months later, “Oh, man, we have got to get together more often!” This is what passes for friendships in the modern age. Thankfully, some bonds, no matter how infrequent, are strong. I’m glad to have a friend in that one, even if mutual business and the meat grinder of the City sometimes make our primary form of communication the email, the text message, the occasional telepathic missive, or even the blog entry.

Last night was the monthly synonymUS performance (as seen on MySpace!). We took a slight break from our usual Sunday night jams before the show, and I think it sort of showed. We never quite hit our groove with the open mic-ers, and though we are gifted enough to be able to do a passable job on minimal rehearsal (it’s sort of our stock-in-trade) I felt like we could have done a lot better. There were moments that were entirely the opposite of what the poet requested, not because we had better ideas, but simply because we never locked in to what they had asked for in the first place. An East-Indian style piece sort of lay there, simply because we never quite found the tonality (and that, I would say, was as much my fault as anything else). A piece in which the poet asked for Soundgarden ended up funk. I was disappointed, is all.

The after-show, was, as always, a joy. We went to a new (to me) place called Esperanto. It was a little expensive and the service blew, but there was a band, everybody was super pretty, the company was lovely and the food was fantastic. Conversation veered from Alan Moore and V for Vendetta to poetics and the sexual politics of message boards. Oscar probably has some pictures up (he obsessively photographed the evening, down to what he called “…the jackson pollack remains” of a chocolate volcano. Sexy!).

Today is Steph’s birthday and she is taking the day off. Quiet, now! Mama’s watchin’ her stories! I’m gonna get her some cupcakes from the Cupcake Café and give her her birthday gift tonight – the box set of the entire Friday the 13th movie series. I know, I know, what a sap I am. And they say the romance goes out of marriages in a few years…

By the way, the movie Incubus starred William Shatner and had dialog entirely spoken in Esperanto (the language invented in 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof to foster international peace and understanding – hey, good luck with that!). It was released in 1965 to worldwide indifference.

Nostalgia

2006-03-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

I wrote this last week. I don't necessarily feel like this now (especially the stuff about Austin), but I figured I'd post it for posterity's sake.

----------------------------------------------
3/9/06

Why does the past come calling today? Why do the grey streets of New York, with their grey skies above filled with grey pigeons flying low above grey canyons of stone buildings, why today do they fill me with longing? When there’s no one else to call, when all the friends are off on their errands and the darkness gets too thick, I return to my pain like a three-legged dog worrying a bone that used to be his other leg. The longing is not for a person, but for a time before, a nostalgia for possibility, a sense that, in a new city, I could remake myself. Instead, I have found myself again.

I traveled twice from childhood to some simulacrum of adulthood. Once when I moved to New York, and once when the ghost of myself finally caught me here, ten years later. He grabs me by the back of my shirt, he shakes me, he says, “You see? You see what you were supposed to do? What were you thinking? What were you thinking?”

The air is clear, or maybe it’s just my eyes. Everything looks sharp edged and defined, and I find myself searching the faces of the people I walk by in the streets. They don’t seem to notice, the beautiful clarity, the perfect dull pearl of the light that turns New York city into the exact movie it was when I first moved here.

New York existed only as a TV show when I was growing up. That pearlescent sheen of soot and smoke, grit and grime was New York to me, only I didn’t know it. But I remember the first day I came here, riding in the back of a cab from JFK towards the Upper West Side, and the day was like this, a fine, cool, grey July day. I looked out the window and remembered a land of Welcome Back Kotter, of Sesame Street, of Barney Miller. In a way, living in New York has been like revisiting the part of my childhood that was only lived in 30 minute segments on TV.

Some people dream of living in New York. I’ve never understood that. It’s sort of like dreaming of having a really nice wardrobe. New York is designer labels and fine leather, it’s Prada or Coach or Louis Vuitton with the perfect hat. I moved to New York because I knew Tucson was kicking me out, and I didn’t have anyplace else I needed to be. There’s no actual reason to live anywhere; you just have to go on a feeling, I suppose.

Sometimes Steph talks about moving to Austin, but I get a bad feeling about that place. It reminds me of the things I hated about Tucson, the superior small town hipsters and their insular clique, the smug superiority. I spent too many years alone in that town. New York, I found friends, parties, love, creativity. Tucson was “How Soon is Now?” land, where you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.

I even have friends in Austin, or people I think of as friends, but I don’t know, it just seems wrong, somehow. Or it could just be a combination of a backache, a cold, a sinus infection, these beastly antibiotics, a grey day in a city I have grown to love but which I will eventually leave. Perhaps I’m only feeling a phantom of future pain, a remembrance of loss to come.

Omphalskepsis

2006-03-01T22:37:00.000-05:00

“Sure and still you’re right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they’re not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o’ self-indulgence.”

- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

My apologies. I forgot I was a drop of water in the vast ocean of the universe. Though I know it’ll happen again, I’ll try to keep relapses to a minimum. Thanks to Danielle for her kind words.

Why I'm scared of being a teacher

2006-02-28T17:56:00.000-05:00

I recall, with great vividness (and not a little shame), a conversation I had with my father when I told him my ambition was to be an artist (an actor, a musician, a writer, whatever). He looked at me and said, “And what if you can’t make a living doing it?”

I looked him in the eye and said, “Then I’ll die.”

It’s easy to talk about death when you are, as far as you can tell, immortal. I was sixteen, completely in love with myself, and not a little convinced as to my position somewhere near the rotational center of the universe. I knew that I wouldn’t have any problem “making it”, and that, if the world could possibly be so cruel and short sighted as to reject me, well then, that was a world that didn’t deserve me.

Regardless, my father, practical and far-sighted as always, insisted that I learn how to type. And learn I did, and though I may not be the fastest typist I know (my speed tops out at about 65-75 words per minute or so), my ability to put food in my refrigerator and beer in my belly stems, in large part, from the sapling planted by my father when he recognized that his son, while pleasant and sweet, was a bit of a flake. He did his best to prepare me and give me roots, and though he wasn’t entirely successful, he did manage to give me enough skills to keep me fed. For that, as for a great many other things, I am grateful to him.

Having said that, I can say that part of the assistant’s job (or secretary, to use the unfashionable term – probably in another age I’d have been called a “clerk”) is organization, a skill which anyone who knows me for longer than a few days will tell you I sorely lack. Lack might be a bit strong of a word – let’s say it’s underdeveloped, shall we? This underdeveloped skill, the ability to make order in an occasionally chaotic world, is the most highly valued part of the assistant’s trade. If I can keep my boss’s files in order, get him/her to meetings and make sure he/she remembers all his/her phone messages, then I’m a magician, and they pay me well for that. And though I suppose I can do these things, I really just don’t care. Order and harmony are all well and good, but I’m a bit indifferent as to whether anyone else has them. Yes, I am selfish, I admit it, and I have found that not all the promises of payment or the threat of punishment increase my desire to help other people get organized. I will occasionally plunge into the world of organization, but it pains me to do so, and I usually do it only for those that I love. I can often barely be troubled to organize myself, even under the most dire and necessitous of circumstances. Bears have better filing systems than I. Dogs bury bones with more forethought and are able to retrieve them with more speed than I could find you my paystubs.

So, part of the job that I can do to make my way in the world is unpleasant to me. Now, I’ve always considered that people who like to do certain jobs should, by all means, do them. A person who enjoys building should make bridges. A person who enjoys plants might make a good farmer, or a gardener, or an agriculturalist. And so on.

I also set great store by the fact that many jobs are passed down from parent to child. Fathers farming pass down the job to their sons, who may have some sort of genetic information coded in their tiny little genes (farmers have blue denim genes, like cowboys, with thick stiches).

I’m boring myself. Suffice to say, I hate my job and I want to do something else. Teaching is what you might call the family business. My mother and father were teachers (you might even say teaching is what brought me into being, since they met as science teachers at a middle school in Southern Illinois). My sister is a fantastic teacher of first graders, and her enthusiasm and grace with them is a constant inspiration to me to be kinder, to always say please and thank you, and to hold hands when I cross the street. I enjoy working with children (I’ve been a youth leader at church, as well as having been a teaching artist in Tucson and in New York), and I like to talk. So what’s the problem? Seems fairly straightforward, doesn’t it? Once Steph is out of school, I can go back to school myself, get a masters in education, get a teaching job, and that’s that. I’m earning my bread and butter doing something that is both noble and rewarding on a personal level. I’ve got a gift for it, and it would certainly sit well with my folks. Why not?

I’ll tell you why not. Couple reasons, actually. For one thing, I see teaching, not as something that you do to pay the bills, but as a vocation, like the priesthood. You teach because you feel that you want to make a difference. People teach because kids need teachers. Some of the most formative and influential people in my life have been teachers – Ms. Close, who told me I could write. Mr. McEaneny, who taught me to always remember who I am and what I represent, Mr. Siedel, who taught me that being a curmudgeon was actually cool, and that I have no idea how much I can achieve if I’m willing to push myself. The last thing this world needs is another teacher in it for the paycheck.

So, if I revere teaching so much, why not use my talents to make a difference?

I’m afraid I might be good at it.

I’m an artist. It’s how I’ve thought of myself since I was 15 years old. It’s what I’ve always wanted to be. If I were to be a teacher and be good at it, I’m afraid that I’d be like that Mr. Holland fucker. Admittedly, his music sucked (it took him his whole life to write THAT piece of trash? Buddy, you made the right decision to be a teacher), but the point is still valid. In fact, maybe more so. What if I find out that, hey, I’m a great teacher, I should have been doing this all along, and this whole art thing? Yeah, not so much. Learning that one has been fooling oneself for the past *ahem*20*ahem* years can be a bit of a jolt, and perhaps you, dear readers, might understand my reluctance to rip the veil of illusion.

I don’t want to find out I should have been a teacher. I don’t want to find out that I’ve been chasing an empty dream. Worse, I don’t want to get so involved in what I rightly believe to be a noble and praiseworthy profession that I lose sight of what’s really important – i.e. art.
Want to know the worst part? Part of the reason I want to be an artist – money. I want to be ridiculously famous and wealthy. At the very least I want to earn a decent living from art. I don’t want to starve for my art! Is that wrong? I’m tired of doing other things to earn my living! I’m an artist, goddamnit! Somebody fucking feed me!

Yes, I know the world needs teachers. Yes, I know that it is selfish to put my own goals and aspirations above the good of others and the world. There you go. I am not a particularly “good” person. I want success – money, fame, privilege – or, barring that, at least a home and a family supported by doing what I’m good at and what I love. Or what I think I’m good at. Oh, hell. I don’t know.

So I’m a little conflicted about the whole teaching thing. Lots of people are great teachers, and I know plenty of great artists who make their living teaching, but I’m a little scared that I’ll have to be good at it because it’s important, and I won’t have any free time or energy to make art, and then I’ll end up getting comfortable with it, and forget all about this stupid art thing, and I’ll have to work a regular job for the rest of my life. And really that’s the main thing. I just don’t want to work a regular job ever in my whole life ever. And yet it seems that’s all I’m fit to do. All anybody’ll pay me for, anyway.

Fuck.

Choices (or "If You're so Fricking Talented, Why Do You Work In Insurance?")

2006-02-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

Never was a sports fan. When all the kids went around my elementary school with their Dallas Cowboys t-shirts or their Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirts, I wanted to be like them, to fit in. Problem was, I wasn’t particularly good at it. I wasn’t interested in the games themselves. So, good geekboy that I was, I went with what mattered to me – how cool I thought their mascots were.

I remember liking the Dolphins and the Cowboys (was there a team called the Bengals? I recall liking them, too, since they were tigers, and from Ohio). I wore a Dolphins sweatshirt and people would ask me about Dan Marino and I’d pretend to know what the heck they were talking about. I remember feeling confused and trying really hard to be like the other kids and just not knowing how to do it. How do you pick a favorite team? What were the criteria? I knew that just liking the mascot was totally beside the point, in my heart I knew this, but I couldn’t figure out how it worked.

Being a rather strange child I thought about it fairly deeply (as deeply as a six-year old can think, which is sometimes pretty deep). My thought processes gradually evolved over many years and eventually went like this:

If you are cheering for a sports team, then you must like something about them. but what? It’s not like you’re playing the game with them. You don’t get fired if they lose and you don’t make any money if they win (this was before I became aware that people bet on sports teams, which seems incredibly stupid to me. Joe Montana has a bad day and you lose two hundred dollars. Brilliant. Gambling isn’t a sin because it’s immoral – God just hates stupid people).

Is it because you like the way they play, or you think they’re better athletes? My dad always talked about hating Knicks because he thought they played dirty ball and whined when their opponents played rough back. I thought that was a good reason to dislike a team, and that made a certain amount of sense, but there are plenty of people who liked them for the same reason. And as far as skill goes, there are many athletes of equal or, on some days superior skill on other teams, and even the most skilled team loses some days.

It sort of makes sense if the team you cheer for “the home team” but there are plenty of people who are from, say, Cincinnati, who don’t like the Bengals. Why not? Growing up first in Columbus, Ohio and then in Arizona, neither of which had a professional sports team, I myself was bereft of regional loyalties.

I finally came to the conclusion (and though the arguments are a little more fleshed out above, they existed, in nascent form, in the mind of the six-year old I was) that the choice was entirely arbitrary. I didn’t think of it in those terms, I just remember a feeling of loss. I understood something which confused and hurt me, but which I knew to be true. There was no real reason to like a sports team. You could like any team, for any reason, and it would be the right team, for the right reason. You could have arguments in the schoolyard (and, as we all know, kids did, with all the sophistication of a senate debate: “Cowboys rule!” “Steelers kick ass!” “Dolphins suck!”) until the last bell rang, and you would still never convince anyone of anything, and never prove it to anyone that Staubach or whoever the fuck was a better quarterback. This made me crazy, because now my arguments with my schoolmates lacked all conviction. How could I argue, when I knew that there was no way to argue someone out of an opinion that had no rational criteria?

This started to cause me problems in other ways, too. How do you make a decision about, say, ice cream flavors. What flavor of ice cream do you want? I don’t know – they’re all good. Which do I like more? How should I know? I haven’t tried them all, and anyway, what criteria would I use to say, “Yes, I like Huckleberry Crunch more than Rocky Road”? The question “What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” could send me into absolute paroxysms of self-doubt and confusion. And then the kids who would try to argue the relative merits of one type of ice cream or another – oy! I had nothing to say. Oh sure, I’d argue, but all the other kids knew my heart wasn’t in it.

Then they’d ask me what I want to be when I grew up. When I was younger, it was easy. Space was cool, drums were cool. I wanted to be an astronaut, or a drummer. Eventually, though, I realized that any choice I made was, once again, entirely arbitrary. You could do anything! So how could you know what you wanted, what you were good at, unless you did it? And you clearly couldn’t do everything, or even most things. And what if you did it and it turned out you didn’t like it? I knew most people didn’t really like their jobs. So I’d pick things. A musician, a rock star (two different things, donchaknow), a marine biologist, a minister (I’ll tell you that story some other time), a writer (that one seems to have stuck, for some reason), a comedian. But my choices, again, lacked conviction, because I knew there was no reason to want any one particular thing, except that I wanted it, and that just didn’t seem like a good enough reason.

Maybe, my religious upbringing suggested, God had a plan for us, and each of us was specifically made to do one particular thing. This was comforting, and made a certain amount of sense. But after reading “Being and Nothingness” at the tender young age of 13 and realizing that even the concept of God was arbitrary, I realized I was well and truly fucked. The fact that a billion people in China didn’t believe in Jesus at all broke my brain.

Looking back, I think my failure to achieve any success or reach anything of real lasting value stems primarily from this. I knew that you could believe anything you wanted, do anything you wanted, eat anything you wanted, even die, if you cared to. So why do anything?

I’m still not sure I know. But I do know this.

Last night, a little after midnight, my toilet clogged and overflowed, sending shitty water all over my bathroom, soaking the rugs. I wanted to go to sleep, but I had to fix the toilet, or deal with the stench and filth in the morning. So I stayed up an hour or so, bailing out the shitty water, unclogging the toilet, mopping up the shitty water soaked floor, wiping down surfaces, hanging up rugs to dry. And I realized something.

Sometimes it’s not arbitrary. Sometimes you really have very little choice. Certain choices become unacceptable, and you know exactly what you have to do. Even if you don’t want to, sometimes you gotta clean up shit.

I pulled on rubber gloves, and behold, I was comforted.

Rocking the Suburbs (just like William Carlos did)

2006-02-17T16:04:00.000-05:00

Read in Rutherford, NJ last night at a series honoring William Carlos Williams. My friend Ray, who was also reading, and I grabbed a bus at the Port Authority and amused each other talking about movies, the sets we were reading, and the Rate my Poo website (which I have yet to check out. Ray tells me it’s truly something to behold, but I guess I’ll have to take his word for it for the time being).

The bus dropped us off at train station, and we walked the main shopping district up to the library, past a mix of small, funky little shops and the usual suburban whatnot. One store was actually a restaurant called Café Eros that billed itself as “funky, underground Greek dining” which I told Ray was actually code for cunnilingus with a Greek woman. We thought it was pretty funny, but in retrospect, probably not. Given that the suburbs are sort of my "hood" (since all suburbs are really the same), I felt right at home.

We walked past an enormous blue house which I later found out was WCW’s house, past an even larger stone Presbyterian Church that sat on a hill above the road and dominated the landscape, crossed the street and went down some stairs to the library meeting room where we were greeted by our friend John Trause.

The reading was small, and sparsely attended, but what people there were there seemed very attentive and glad to be there. An older, stooped gentleman started things off by reading a few golden oldies from the WCW catalog, and then John introduced Ray and me.

He spoke very highly of us, and I found myself almost blushing. It’s nice to be well regarded by people you yourself hold in high esteem. Sort of a mutual admiration society, but still, it’s cool. You get to say all those things that most people find themselves on their deathbeds wishing they’d said – really, how many people are going to wish when they die, “God, I really wish I hadn’t told all those people how much I liked what they do.”

Anyway, I get up, do my poems (including a brand spanking new piece I wrote specifically in honor of the period of WCW’s work I’m most familiar with, his Imagist work. It’s about a coffee mug. The idea was we’d both write a piece, no more than 10 lines, no more than 5 words per line, about something we saw everyday – I picked a coffee mug. Ray picked the pussin’-out-didn’t-write-it, which is OK, too). It was fun, the audience was tuned in, and by the end I really felt like I had them. My funnier, lighter stuff seems to go over better, and in some ways, it’s more fun for me to read. It’s more emotionally moving to me, too, which is sort of a switch. I always thought, maybe just because I’m immature, that pain is more interesting. Truthfully though, pain is boring, especially in poetry. How many more times do I have to hear a fucking poem about (pick one): a. rape, b. love lost, c. murder, d. child abuse, e. drug abuse, f. parent/friend/loved one/cat dying, before I die? More to the point, how many more times do I have to write those poems? I’m sick of it. The poems that have moved me the most over the past year have been triumphs and battle cries, prayers and hymns. Tears streamed down my face in Albuquerque at the National Poetry Slam, when the Washington, DC team did their poem about trees and plants - it was so beautiful that I cried. To all the poets of the world, stop trying to make me cry by showing me your bleeding hands, and show me something beautiful. We’ll cry together.

(/rant OFF) So I did, as my closing poems, Vanilla and the Nokia poem. Crowd pleasers both, and I was close to tears myself a few places in them. I just missed my lady, whom I don’t really see enough, even though I’ve seen her relatively often of late. Our schedules and our lives hardly ever match up, and I’ve been staying up too late reading/watching TV/answering email/surfing the web. I was heckled by a drunk guy, which is a first for me in the poetry world, and I finished up, plugged PARSE, and got the hell off the stage.

Ray did his set, a nicely structured bit of work in which he alternated thematically similar poems from WCW with his own work. The nearest I can get to describing what makes Williams so great is strength and clarity. There is something crystalline about his work that also bespeaks of great tensile strength. His words do not wilt beneath the weight of his vision. Sometimes, you can hear, even in the greatest poets, the vision overreaching the grasp of the writer, and the words sound inadequate and lost amidst the crushing space of what the author wanted to say. WCW never sounds that way. He always seems to be describing exactly what he sees in a way that conveys exactly what he wants us to see (and feel, and understand) about it. The strength and clarity of his work accented wonderful similar qualities in Ray’s work, and since Ray is such a great reader, himself, it was even more of a pleasure. Great work read by a great reader.

There was an open mic, with a few people reading their work. The poems were of, shall we say, varying quality, with John reading off a few great ones, and my drunken heckler getting up to do his thing. There was an amazing moment when he stood behind the podium, and it was as if he suddenly realized he was drunker than shit, and he was ashamed. It was an amazing moment, I never thought I’d say that shame could be beautiful, but it was beautiful seeing a man awaken from a dream, even for only a moment. Beautiful and painful. He read his own work, and a couple of Poe poems (which makes me smile – I wanted to say “Poe’s a New Yorker, my man! Come back with some more NJ poets, and we can talk.”) which he read with such passion and abandon that I was momentarily stunned. His own work wasn’t great but the way he read Poe was really something: tears and fury, rising cadence and

After the reading we wandered back to John’s car, got a ride back to Penn Station, NY. I loved walking through Rutherford, since I am truly a child of the suburbs, and I had a great time just being out of the city, doing a reading with such a great audience, and hanging with friends. Plus, I got to see WCW’s house, which, given that he was one of the first poets I ever “discovered” and read voraciously, put the capper on a great night.

Stephen King and the Devil

2006-02-02T14:24:00.000-05:00

I’m re-reading Stephen King’s On Writing and my suspicions are once again confirmed that King signed a contract, not with Simon & Schuster, but Satan. Now this is a book about writing. A good chunk of it is a style manual. Boring, right?

Wrong. It’s a barn-burner, a page turner. The ideas in it eat away at my brain, and I find myself thinking of them at odd moments during the day, excited for the next time I get to read it. No way does anybody have this sort of effect on folks (and I know I’m not the only one) without some sort of deal with His Infernal Majesty.

Here’s the negotiations on the contract as I imagine them.

“Mr. King, we’re prepared to offer you our standard contract on a lifetime basis. Now, there will be no need to renew or review any of the terms once you’ve signed, as this is a non-revocable contract, not subject to cancellation by either party at any time. As I’m sure you’re aware, the head of our Company is sometimes unfairly characterized as a, well, as a bit of a cheat. Regardless, you’ll be happy to see all the terms laid out here in black and white.”

The board room is tastefully appointed with dark wood paneling and indirect, subdued lighting that glints off discreet brass accents. The giant wood table dominating the center of the room seems to suck the light deep inside it, where it dimly gleams beneath the almost black, glassy surface. The lawyer from “The Company,” wears a simple dark suit. His skin is tan, almost leathery.

“Um, this is great. Just great. But, for the record, what will I get again?”

“Mr. King, let me assure you, no one is more concerned for the success of our clients than The Company. Your success, is, you might say, our success. The greater the rewards in the form of earthly joys and privileges, pleasures of the flesh, as it were, the greater the dividends paid to the head of our Company on fulfillment of the contract.”

“Yeah. Could you just lay it out straight for me there, fella?”

The lawyer laughs a dry, papery laugh. “Mr. King. You are quite the direct one, aren’t you? As we have discussed, upon execution of this contract your writings will become as popular as any author in history.”

“Can you really do that? What, are you gonna round people up and make them buy my books?”

“Oh, Mr. King, there will be nothing coercive about the means which the company uses. There never is.” He paused for a moment, as if amused at some private joke, then continued. “The company prides itself on the fact that all relationships with clients and end-users are completely consensual. In fact,” he says, his voice deepening to almost, but not quite, a growl, “we can’t do business any other way.”

“So how’s it work? Step by step.”

“Well, yes, then. An end-user will voluntarily purchase one of your books, based perhaps on a review or an advertising campaign coordinated by any one of our many operatives in publishing. Once they have opened the book and freely accepted participation in the reading process, we will have an opportunity to be slightly more, shall we say, persuasive. They will not stop reading until they have finished every page.”

“And how do you do that?”

“Well, that is proprietary information, but I can describe the effects of the process for you in a little more detail. At first, the book will be nothing more than a pleasant distraction, something to while away a few hours. With our help, however, that will quickly change. The ideas, the tone, the situations and characters, will begin to echo in the reader’s mind. They will think about reading your book when they are working, or showering. They will read your book deep into the night, dismissing sleep and sex and all but the most rudimentary contact with the outside world.

“Now, this is the most exciting part: once they have finished, we implant a residual energy signature that sets up an emotional resonance whenever they see your name on the cover of a book. It’s a very basic Pavlovian response mechanism, but extremely effective. This creates a ready-made market for additional books, and assures a long life for books already in print.”

Stephen pauses for a moment, staring at his hands. His voice is thick when he speaks again.

“And what do I have to do?”

Again the dusty laugh, like insects scurrying across dry, rotted wood. “Oh, Mr. King! Don’t worry! You have nothing to fear from us. At the appropriate time, we will merely continue the process you yourself have already begun.” Stephen starts a little at this, wipes his nose furtively. “No, by the time the contract comes into force, you will hardly notice any transition at all. Perhaps by that time you will have become so adept with your skills, since, after all, we will merely be amplifying what talents you already have, that you will be able to join our organization in a more…” he pauses, considering his words carefully, “…permanent capacity.”

An idea occurs to Stephen. He waves his hand as if brushing away flies. “Now wait,” he says. “Wait. Now, wait a minute. If you’re just ‘amplifying’ things that I can already do, what do I need you for?”

The lawyer frowns. “Mr. King. We are the foremost representatives of those who wish to be independent and successful. We choose only the most driven, the most talented people to be our clients. If we did not see the potential latent within you, we would never have approached you. You have a formidable gift, Mr. King, there is no question, but natural gifts will only take you so far. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers, all of them talented, some of them perhaps even more so than you, who will never reach their full potential. Do you wish to be one of them? Do you wish upon your wife and lovely children a life like the one you had? The poverty, the crushed dreams and deferred ambitions that weigh upon the mind and body like chains? Is this what you want?” The lawyer’s voice seems to acquire a weight that it did not have before. The room grows even more quiet, everything listening to this small, leathery man’s low, urgent words.

He leans in close to Stephen. He is almost whispering, now. “And let me also say, Mr. King, that it would not be wise at this juncture in the proceedings to walk away from the table. No, Mr. King, not wise at all. Our clients include many people in your industry. Many powerful people. It would not do, Mr. King, to acquire a reputation so early in your career of being a difficult person. I do not think that would be wise at all.”

The lawyer leans back, and there is air in the room again. He brushes an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve and smiles brightly. “So Mr. King,” he says, “are there any other questions I might be able to answer while we’re here? I’d like to make sure you’re completely comfortable before we finish our negotiations. I think, if you’ve had your lawyer look over the contract, that he will find it to be,” the smile widens, “completely fair.”

Stephen sits without speaking. The lawyer continues, “I must say, Mr. King, you’re quite the negotiator. Very sharp. I can see why The Company pursued you with such interest. You’ve asked wonderful questions, and really, you’re getting one of the best deals I’ve ever seen.” The lawyer lays a pen on the table parallel with the edge of the contract. “Now, if we’re quite done here, I think we’ll just need your signature to begin our work together.”

Stephen picks up the pen, and it feels incredibly heavy in his hand. The barrel looks like it’s made of the same material as the table, as if it absorbed and held light deep within itself. He stares at it blankly for a few moments, fascinated.

“Mr. King?”

Stephen shakes his head. “Yeah, fair.” he says. He fumbles the cap off the pen, and signs his name at the bottom of the document.

“And sign here, just another copy. Initial here, here, and here. And just one more signature here, your standard indemnity clause. And we’re done!” The lawyer sweeps the pages from the table with one hand and taps them into a tidy stack. Stephen stares at the space where the contract was on the table. Now there is only his reflection staring back at him. The face looks unfamiliar, floating somewhere deep inside the darkness, down there with the light.

The lawyer quickly puts the contract into his briefcase, and snaps it closed. “Alright then, Mr. King? There will be no further need to contact me in the future, but you have my card, nonetheless. It has been a pleasure meeting with you, and I wish you success in all your future endeavors. I’m sure you will be successful. Very sure indeed, Mr. King.”

Stephen continues to stare at his reflection, pale and white far below. Finally, hearing the words, he shakes his head. “Um, yeah. OK.” The lawyer stands, and Stephen stands as well. He still clutches the lawyer’s pen in his hand. He looks at it like he’s holding a snake he is afraid will bite him if he lets go, says, “You want your pen?”

The lawyer shakes Stephen’s hand, smiling a smile somehow wider than the confines of his face, and full of teeth. “Please keep it, Mr. King. With my compliments.”

How to get out of Hell

2006-01-27T16:12:00.000-05:00

My good friend Ray gave me a copy of the new Sinead O’Connor album ”Throw Down Your Arms”, and let me tell you folks, it is a masterpiece. She worked with two of the best reggae producers of all time, Sly and Robby, and she makes some beautiful music with them. Reggae music is not an easy sell for most people. Somebody looking like me (white, longish hair, bearded, slightly spacey look in my eyes most of the time) comes up to you, says “Hey man, you gotta check out this new reggae album!” you give them a wide berth. They’re either a wigger, a college student, a stoner, a frat guy, or any combination of those. I can cop to being any one of those at some point in my life, but I do not lie, this is an amazing album. I’ve been a fan of Sinead since Lion and the Cobra, ever since I saw this beautiful bald chick singing about Troy (I think I’ve had a thing for chicks with really short hair since the first Star Trek movie. Long long hair, or really short – either way works for me). Gospel Oak was a really important album to me for a certain period of my life, and I have a feeling this album came along at the right time for another changing time.

Now, reggae’s like the blues, but with more God, less Devil. Plus, any God that’s down with the Rastafarian sacraments is A-OK with me. Like the blues, reggae music is good for when you feel bad – and I’ve been feeling pretty bad, lately. Lots of pressure and stress at work, trying to keep ahead of too many projects in my real life. I don’t know where exactly I’m going with a lot of these projects (and by extension, my life), and the time for decision and consolidation is rapidly approaching. Something’s got to be done. The work thing, in particular, is giving me pain like you wouldn’t believe. So, when I’m feeling victimized (and, no question, a person is a victim only to the extent that they believe themselves to be one) I sometimes entertain revenge fantasies. You know the ones: telling the boss exactly where to stick it, and how deep, screwing the company at exactly the right moment when they depend on you most. Yeah, those fantasies. Not that we’d ever act on them, because we’re far too well trained for that. We’ve got student loans, and spouses in grad school, and health insurance that keeps us in antibiotics when we’re sick. But we still get that slight sickness in our throats, that taste of bile that has just a tinge of blood to it when the boss tells us we need to pick up the slack, and we think these thoughts.

So I’m listening to this new wonderful reggae album, and a song I’ve never heard comes on. The little black-on-grey LCD letters on the Ipod screen tell me it is called “Downpressor Man.” And the lyrics go like this:

Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to
On that day?

If you run to the sea
The sea will be boiling
(x 3)
On that day

If you run to the rocks
The rocks will be melting
(x 3)
On that day

If you make your bed in hell
I will be there.
(x 3)
On that day.

Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
(x 3)
On that day?

Simple. The revenge/justification fantasy of the downtrodden and poorly treated everywhere. “Well, you may be on top now, but one of these days, there’ll be a judgment, there’ll be a reckoning, and you will get what you require.” And like I’m so oppressed, right? Still, everybody thinks, at least once (some people, more like once a day) “Man, I can’t wait till you get yours.”

But then came that line: If you make your bed in hell, I will be there. I heard something quite extraordinary, and I don’t know if it was the writer’s intention or not, but there it was. One of the central tenets of Rastafarianism is “I and I”, that is very similar to “Tat Tvam Asi” or “thou art that." It is the ultimate identification of self and God that comes in the awakened spirit and mind. One understands, at one’s root, that one is not ultimately different from God, and that God lives in one, as one lives in God. Now, this idea has ramifications.

Think about it this way: When you condemn one person, you condemn the God that is in them, and, by extension, the God in you. And since God is in you and you are in God, ipso facto – you are in Hell.

Similarly, if one condemns oneself to Hell, through guilt or a gross misunderstanding of the truth behind all religions, one puts the entire world in Hell.

Thinking this, I suddenly saw the verse that ran, “If you make your bed in Hell, I will be there” not as a promise, i.e. wherever you try to hide, I’ll find you and make you pay, but as a plea. “If you go down to hell, I have to go with you. If you act against what you know to be right, you condemn yourself, and by doing so, you kill us all.” This made the song incredibly sad for me, but also wise.

We almost all of us labor under our guilt, straining at the weight of it. Heavy, brown, turdlike guilt, awkward in its bulk and threatening at any moment to crush us under its smelly burden. Some of it was placed there by others, some of it we picked up along the way, some of it we were born with. When I am particularly down with the guilt, I speak with the voice I like to call “The Critic” (not the cartoon). He is vicious, ruthless, and utterly truthful, and he hates everything, and himself (myself) most particularly. He adds to my guilt with his hatred and rage and then turns it on the people around him. He puts the world in hell and then wonders why the place smells like shit. I’ve discovered, however, that there is a way out of Hell. But it’s not easy.

The only possible release is to accept. Everything. Completely.

Ain’t that a bitch.

The only way out is love, complete and total, unconditional, doggy chewing a bone, baby playing with a soap bubble, Jesus on the cross, Gandhi taking (another) beating, Martin Luther King in a pool of blood love. And I don’t care what anybody says, that is damn near impossible, some days. And the worst of it is, it’s gotta be for everybody, including and especially your stinking, horrid, selfish, unreliable, forgetful, vain, lying, cowardly, weak-willed self. Or else it doesn’t count.

Shit.

quote for the day

2006-01-19T08:19:00.000-05:00

Read at Jonathan Carroll's blog

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."
both quotes from E.L. Doctorow

Kids, don't do drugs... or whatever

2006-01-12T23:19:00.000-05:00

Michael was a hippy. He played guitar and did Tai Chi. He had long, straight, thin hair that hung down almost to his waist. He liked to smoke pot and do drugs. He was my roommate for several years and I adored him.

He introduced me to psychedelic drugs thusly: when I said I wanted to do LSD, he told me that he would not, absolutely would not get me anything more intoxicating than a saltine cracker unless I read the following books – The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and Beyond the Brain by Stanislav Grof. He handed me the stack, told me to read them and went back in his room to play guitar.

I learned a lot of crazy crap from that hippy. I also obtained my first (and many subsequent) dose of mushrooms.

My early experiences with mushrooms were lovely. Numinous, heart opening experiences where I saw the true nature of the universe. The world was a living, breathing, loving creation. I was an integral part of this living creation, and the pain of the world was that we never knew how alive and loving it was.

Yeah, that was until my first bad trip.

Now I liked listening to music on shrooms. I found that it helped me to access those deeper levels of emotion and sacredness during the trip. One time though…

I ate the mushrooms, drank my orange juice, and settled in for a nice trip. But what music should I use? Kate Bush was usually a good bet (The Hounds of Love is a particularly good album) or maybe Spacemen 3 (Taking Drugs to make Music to Take Drugs to). No, I’ve done that.

What about the Smiths? Yeah! That sounds like a GREAT idea! The Smiths…!

…the most depressing, whiny, self-absorbed music ever created. Sad-bastard music before they even invented sad-bastard music.

I listened to, I think, Meat is Murder, and got angrier, and angrier, and angrier. I saw myself through this music, through what listening to this music said about me, and I despised it. I was tired of being an effeminate, ineffectual, weak little hippy boy. The girls thought I was gay, the guys didn’t respect me. I hadn’t had sex in months and I was horribly lonely. I didn’t do what I wanted and I didn’t do what I should. I hated myself and this music represented everything I hated. In a second I was off the couch and had launched the tape-player across the room, where it smashed on the wall like a bomb going off (louder than bombs? whatever). I then found myself stalking around the center of the room in a tight circle, my hands clenched into claws, and this sound was coming out of my throat that I did not recognize: inarticulate, mid-way between a scream and a roar, strangled and raw full of hate and rage. An animal sound, a sick, wounded sound.

This continued for several minutes until Michael, hearing the commotion, decided to check on me. Upon seeing an obviously enraged maniac lurching in increasingly tighter circles around his living room he did not, bless him, call the police, or try to restrain said maniac. No, he actually tried to talk me down. “It’s alright,” he said. “Everything’s alright…”

My jaw clenched, barely in control, I growled, “Go back in your room!” He beat a hasty retreat.

The screaming/roaring/choking continued until I finally fell into an uneasy sleep a few hours later. I slept fitfully through the night.

On waking the next day, I wandered around in sort of haze. I remembered clearly what had happened, apologized to my slightly shaken, but none the worse for wear, roommate (who was, I’m sure, making a mental note to get the fuck out as soon as possible), and went out to fix breakfast.

Now, as I may have mentioned, my housekeeping skills left a bit to be desired. The house was usually a sty. Sometimes, there might have been dishes in the sink. From, say, a week ago. With food on them. Or maybe the garbage hadn’t been taken out. In, like a month.

But today, the house REALLY reeked. There was a smell that was something like rotten cabbage at the bottom of the sink, spoiled milk, and something dead. It was foul, and it was everywhere. Even I, with my ability to ignore filth, couldn’t let this pass. I had to clean it up.

But I couldn’t find the stench. The refrigerator was clean. The garbage had been taken out. The dishes were done. Where was that smell coming from?

I mentioned it to Michael, and he looked at me, a little sadly. “You mean you don’t know?” he said.

“No. What is it?”

“It’s you, man. You released all that shit from inside you. That smell is your anger.”

And I knew he was right. We had to air out the house for two days.

So this is the new year, and I actually feel kinda different

2006-01-06T19:09:00.000-05:00

It’s the 6th of January, and I’m writing this outside, next to my parent’s pool. The palm trees sway in a gentle breeze, and the birds chuckle and coo to one another.

It is 85 degrees out, blue skies, dry and sunny. I cannot see a cloud in any direction.

When I was growing up, Phoenix was a punchline. An upstart L.A. without any culturally redeeming qualities to recommend it. Phoenix was where you went if you wanted to commit suicide, but didn’t have the guts to get it over with all at once. It might take you years to die in Phoenix, just because it sucked so much.

Times have changed, or maybe just me. I don’t have anyone to hang out with, aside from my lovely wife and my folks, but I have been supremely content. I’ve been in Rivendell…

Aside from a few small, desperate inconveniences. They’re my fault, no doubt, but still, it’s been trying.

So I get the check from my roommate for rent and sundry expenses on New Year’s Eve – no time to put it in the bank, as we’re leaving first thing in the morning, and why rush? There’ll be plenty of time! I’ll deposit the checks in the bank first thing on Tuesday (Monday being a bank holiday) write a check to the landlord, and have done with it. Easy!

Except I forget my checkbook. OK, no problem, I’ll still deposit the check, get a bank check, mail it out, and still be fine.

Did you know that Citibank has not a single branch or ATM in the entire state of Arizona? No, neither did I. After driving all over God’s green earth to fucking Scottsdale of all places, only to discover that the ATM I was directed to by the ever so helpful Citibank website was not, in fact, a Citibank ATM, but only one owned by one of their affiliate networks. Of course I couldn’t deposit the checks there. Of course.

My brief and, understandably, terse conversation with Citibank revealed these facts, along with the helpful advice that I should “buy a money order and send that.” Cocksuckers. With what money should I buy this money order? And will the extra that I pay for this miraculously purchased money order be reimbursed by the gentle benevolent blockheads at Citibank? No it will not.

Keeping myself in check, I decide to go with this dunderheaded new plan, nothing else leaping forward to suggest itself.

Frankly, I’m boring myself, but suffice to say that the money order was purchased, only I had to buy two, and Walmart kept refusing my debit card, and Citibank told me I could only purchase $1,000 per 24 hour period, and every time I tried to call Citibank to discuss it, my cell phone would die and I had to go back and forth to Walmart four times, and Steph and I got in a wicked argument about money, which was made all the worse by the knowledge that it was all my fucking fault, and had I simply brought the fucking checkbook (or better yet, paid the rent before we left) none of this would be happening. Arguments where you know you’re wrong have the tendency to turn into vicious personal attacks, just to keep the focus off of the fact that a) you’re wrong, b) you’re stupidly defending your wrongs and c) you’re just wrong, wrong, wrong. A process that could have taken fifteen minutes and a stamp took 3 days, 4 trips to Walmart, fourteen dollars to express mail the money, an argument with my wife, two hour-long conversations with various fuckwits at Citibank, and the admission to my parents that, in spite of living on my own for well over 15 years now, I’m still an irresponsible twit.

It was as if the ghost of 2005 wanted to get some last licks in before I could really arrive in 2006.

That’s Steph’s interpretation. My thought is that I asked for this.

Through various methods, I have recently asked that the universe provide me with opportunities to increase my “Strength”, that is, my ability to deal with the world effectively and to control my own character flaws. Now, most of my life, I have had the ability to coast by on sheer luck – good karma, good timing, call it what you will. I watched that rug get jerked right out from under me this week, and I think that that is the lesson the universe is trying to teach me. In watching the lives of my friends and loved ones, I have noticed that the kind of convergence of events like the ones I experienced this weekend happens pretty frequently – people get kicked out of their apartments on holidays, simple arguments escalate into trips to the hospital, promised funds don’t come through, trusted equipment fails. But I was always amazed to watch it happen. But now that it’s happened to me, I realized something. I have lived a charmed life up to this point, and there is no guarantee that it will continue to be so charmed. I have asked to become stronger, and the universe has obliged by removing the net, the net I barely recognized was there, but which I now know was essential. That little bit of wiggle room, that space to procrastinate which I always had because “hey, everything always turns out alright in the end” is gone. The training wheels are off, and now I get to play for real.

Looks like it’s going to be an interesting year…

Hey Poetry Freaks!

2005-12-29T12:56:00.000-05:00

In my first "real" publication (i.e. publications of which I am not the editor), two of my poems have been posted online at Poetz.com. This is a fantastic site listing poetry events in the community, not to mention featuring work by writers such as yours truly. Do go visit, and enjoy.

Also – HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s hoping that 2006 treats you even better than 2005 (which wouldn’t be hard for some folks given the year some of my friends have had). Thank you all for being part of my life.

I’ll be in AZ starting January 1 through January 9, so I may not be blogging much. Oh, I might, but I just don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. I need to retreat, rethink, plan out the next years campaigns, and really get my shit together. Let’s hear it for morbid introspection!

Saturnalia as orgy

2005-12-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

I love Christmas time...

...but the world is older and much stranger than we sometimes acknowledge...

Merry Christmas to all. Let us celebrate the rebirth of the "Sun" of God....

meme - 4 things

2005-12-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

Four Jobs You've Had in Your Life:

Telemarketer
Graveyard shift Donut Finisher
Porter (read: Janitor) at said Donut Shop
Glorified copy boy for the Rockefeller Family

Four Movies You could Watch Over and Over:

Shawn of the Dead
Boogie Nights
Dazed and Confused
Blazing Saddles

Four Places You've Lived:

Chicago, IL
Columbus, OH
Tucson, AZ
New York, NY

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch:

Deadwood
Rome
West Wing
Weeds

Four Places You've Been on Vacation:

Barbados
Albuquerque, NM
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA

Four Websites You Visit Daily:

Bloglines
Plastic.com
Google
Discordian Research Technology (www.singlenesia.com/news)

Four of Your Favorite Foods:

Migas
Eggs and (fake) bacon with Toast and OJ
Dani's House of Pizza
Kachoori (from Baluchi's)

Four Places You'd Rather Be:

No place I'd rather be, except perhaps with my family on Christmas

Transit Strike is OVER (if you want it)

2005-12-24T12:32:00.000-05:00

(Thanks John and Yoko)

I feel like I can breathe. I realize, more and more every day, how much I love my adopted city. During the strike, I almost felt as if I were crippled.

To the MTA and TWU: I'm not mad, just disappointed. Don't do it again.

Went down to Rockefeller Center with the wife's parents to see the tree. Every street was packed with people madly rushing about to get their final shopping done. The whole town seemed to be out, pushing, shoving, cursing, weaving through throngs, tourists looking bewildered and backing into people as they try to get everyone in the shot with their digital cameras plastered to their faces. It was great.

Saw King Kong last night. A beautiful movie. As my friend Brian said, "A tragedy." I didn't identify, as he suggested I might, with the ape, but I certainly did sympathize. An old man, finally finding love in the midst of his loneliness.

disconnected post, but I'm still waking up and getting ready for the upcoming celebrations.

Happy Christmas, if that's your style, Or Haunnakah, if that's your flavor. Much love, regardless.

The Christmas Carol as Saturn Redeemed

2005-12-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

I’m in a play right now – A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol (if you haven’t made plans to see it already, why the fuck not?) – and it is a good time. By that I mean that I am enjoying the play, the process, and the company in equal measure. The play itself is a wonderful adaptation of the original Dickens Carol by Mr. Jimmy Comtois, and the process, while grueling, has been a joy. It’s fun to do a well written, skillfully directed play. The cast is also terrific: pleasant, charming folks all. Having my wife in the cast also insures that I’ll see her more than once a fortnight. So that’s good.

I was interested to note that, in spite of some fairly significant dramas amongst cast members and crew, everyone seems to be keeping in remarkably good spirits. No snarling backstage brawls, no bickering, no moody creatures poisoning the air with their depressive silences. No, everyone seems to be clicking right along, with as little friction as possible.

Why is this?

Why is it that certain shows almost always seem to create friendly relations between the cast members? Why is it that certain shows seem to have almost the opposite effect? As an example, I’ve been in several productions of Godspell, and in every single one, there was a sense of real camaraderie between the cast. Almost as if the subject matter had some sort of gentling effect on the players.

I pondered this for a while in connection with the Christmas Carol, and I realized that what I was seeing was a very similar effect. But first, a little background…

The original holiday season of winter was the Saturnalia. Long before Jesus was even a twinkle in Mary’s eye, the Romans (and others, though they called it by different names) coped with the long cruelty of winter by throwing a massive party and getting wrecked. They exchanged gifts and basically celebrated the fact that winter, though hard and deadly, was finite, and that it would not last. Saturn was the god of Hard Reality, of Duty, of Leaden Depression. Basically Saturn personified everything that winter was about. Saturnalia was a party to redeem Saturn from his gloomy gus persona and remind him that winter ends, spring comes, and all shall be well. The world will not always be privation and despair, cold wind and bitter snow, hard choices and resources that will only extend so far. Generosity has a place, benevolence has a place, joy and a good party all have places, even at the most cruel depth of winter.

Which brings us to the Christmas Carol. A cruel, poverty fearing, dutiful old man is redeemed through reminders of his past and fears of his future. He is reminded that there is more to life than despair, and he joins in the celebration going on all around him. The Christmas Carol invokes the spirit of Saturn in the person of Scrooge, and then invites him to the party. The Christmas Carol is Saturn Redeemed, and this spirit of joy echoes the same party that’s been going on for thousands of years. And we, the players, we feel that spirit of joy in ourselves, and it makes for a benevolent and generous spirit, even when the worst is crashing down on us (and, a couple of times, it seemed like the worst was coming for us, with a vengeance).

So, God Bless us, everyone.

Come and see the show, by the way. I swear it won’t be as treacle-y and sweet as the stuff I wrote above, but I do guarantee a good time. It’s funny! With masks! And puppets!

A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol

2005-12-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

Nosedive? What is this Nosedive?

Nosedive Productions is an off-off Broadway Theatre company producing original plays. They are well known both for the quality of their productions and for their, shall we say, irreverent attitude. I’m terribly proud to be part of this show for the second year in a row, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never seen a Christmas Carol like this. The traditional story is lovingly revamped for the cynic in all of us, and, after all, what’s a cynic but a disappointed romantic in need of a belly laugh, a hug, and a whack upside the head? I’ll be playing the ghost of Christmas Present, and did I mention the eggnog available for your enjoyment during the show (eggnog also available in “not-so-jolly” strength for the kiddies)?

We sold out a good portion of the run last year, and after a mention last week in both New York Magazine and the New York Post, I’m sure this year’s shows at the Kraine Theatre are going to go quickly. Get your tickets now!

Here’s the skinny:

A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol
The Kraine Theatre
85 East 4th Street (west of 2nd Ave)
December 8-10, 15-17
Thursday through Saturday, 8 pm
$15 Admission

For reservations, please call 212-696-7342

Join us for nog, hilarity, and Christmas sentiment. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Nuts in White Satin

2005-11-22T11:38:00.000-05:00

I touched my first breast to the dulcet tones of “Spirit of Radio” by Rush. We were making out on her bed with a poster of David Bowie (circa “Let’s Dance”) gazing down on us in boredom from the ceiling of the bedroom in her parent’s house in the suburbs of Tucson (which is like saying it was the suburbs of the suburbs. Can a city be almost entirely suburbs and still call itself a city?). It was in one of those planned communities where all the houses look like they were less constructed than extruded from a tube onto the scraped earth to quickly gelatinize and then harden in the blazing desert sun. She let me lick and suck at her nipples until she grew tired of it, sighed, said “That’s enough,” sat up and pulled down her shirt.

A few years later, I lost my virginity to the Moody Blues Greatest Hits Volume 1. Specifically, if I remember, side 2, which included “Nights in White Satin”. The concrete block walls of my dorm room were cold and the tile floor chilly and my bed springs creaked in protest as she lowered herself onto me. I did not love her, and was barely attracted to her. We ended up going out for a year or so after that, mostly out of my own sense of guilt. (As an interesting side note, I also used that album to listen to while I was having my wisdom teeth pulled. I was given a local anesthetic and a muscle relaxant. I listened to the Moody Blues and fell asleep before they were done.)

My friend Roger read a poem last night during the Slam at 13 which spoke of calypso music as being the sort of template for love making among his people as well as the substrate of a repressed culture preserving its integrity. I saw quite clearly in this brief instant the absolute bankruptcy of white suburban culture, and I was sad. He spoke of calypso, writhing and passionate, double twitch hips and the language of resistance.

Compare and contrast, if you will, to Rush and the Moody Blues. Intellectual pretensions, half-assed ripping off of older Western music traditions, but without any real connection to, skill for, or understanding of those traditions. Not to mention being practically impossible to dance to. This was the music of my sexual awakening…

Is it any wonder I started taking drugs?

My Collected Works, Ages 5-18, and What Became of Them

2005-11-18T15:43:00.000-05:00

First, a word about Kaufmann. I met him through a mutual acquaintance in college when I mentioned that I was looking for a guitarist with whom I could collaborate. I thought he was a bit dim (as I have mentioned, for a good portion of my youth I always believed myself to be the smartest person in the room with an arrogance that was almost shocking in its complete lack of self-awareness. I could never understand it when people seemed to dislike me. “What did I do?”), a terrible singer, and an amazing guitarist. He was playing with his girlfriend at the time in a mostly lame acoustic duo (a side note: why do guitarists always do this? Paul McCartney is, of course the classic example of an excellent musician so blinded by love that he allows his clearly musically inept girlfriend/wife to sing on his records when obviously she should never have be left alone in the same room with a microphone. Just saying. His girlfriend wasn't as bad as all that, but she clearly didn't have a gift for it.). We chatted a little, and eventually became roommates, then friends, then band mates, and finally that weird, co-dependent thing that sometimes happens between men who work very closely together without having clearly defined personal boundaries. We never had sex, or were even romantically involved, but the relationship had all the intensity of a married couple, with as messy and unpleasant (in some ways) a divorce.

But all that came later. Kaufmann was not, in fact, dim at all. Not even close. Though he may have sanded some of the sharper edges off his mind with the liberal application of certain recreational pharmaceuticals, he was (and remains) one of the most intelligent and creative artists I’ve ever met. I was completely ignorant in my youth of the concept of other types of intelligence beyond the verbal, and so I had to learn, slowly, that this man had some pretty amazing depths.

So, originally a physics major, he, like so many of my friends, dumped science and went into the arts. Kaufmann actually majored in Studio Art, specifically painting, but his real goal was to be a ROCK STAR! In the meantime, he was a skilled and powerful painter, with a very interesting way of archiving his work. He told me this in the very impressionable months directly before I went insane in earnest, and I was smitten with the idea.

Kaufmann had a horror of repeating himself, and in an effort to not rest on his laurels, to always be striving ahead toward new ideas and better execution, he would, at the end of every year, get ready for his retrospective show by digging a pit, either out in the desert or in some convenient vacant lot. Into that pit he would place all of his paintings, sketchbooks, drawings, prints, etc. from the past year, and set them on fire. Once that was all taken care of, he would take a jar, carefully label it with a piece of masking tape with the words “Collected Works” and the year, collect all the ashes, seal them in the jar, and that would be that.

Wow. Several things appealed to me about this idea. Firstly, the irrevocability of the act appealed to me in a huge way. I love commitment, even in wrong actions. The beauty of action taken wholeheartedly, without reservation, excited both admiration and longing in me. I had been, for much of my life, drifting at the whims of: parents, friends, teachers, coaches, bosses, church, etc. All of them wanted something of me, and since I didn’t know what I wanted, I went with whatever they said. I never really developed a sense of who I was.

Another reason involved the extremity of the action, the way that you could never take it back. My favorite moments in life, even now, involve that moment that comes when one is unable to do anything but what one is doing. When one starts the race, knowing that one now has no real choice but to finish. The instant of jumping off the high dive (I have a slight fear of heights), knowing that there’s no place to go but down. The relaxation of tension that comes from surrender to the moment. So.

Now, I had, in a box that I had carried around with me since I was 5, everything that I had ever written in my life. I had decided I wanted to write since I was about that young. I loved stories and poems, rhyming and music. I published a few things in college magazines when I was in high school and junior high, and I was a compulsive journal keeper (“diaries” were for girls. I kept a “journal”, full of feelings and dreams and crushes and the boring minutia of my days. No, it was not a fucking diary. There’s a difference! Well, if I have to explain it to you… oh, fine, whatever. It was a diary.). Everything. From the poem to my mother in first grade, to the story I wrote in high school to amuse my English teacher to my most recent diary. All of it.

I was finally becoming myself. I was out of the dorm, living on my own, I’d had sex (with a *woman* finally!), I’d gotten drunk, I was skipping class if I wanted, I was my own person! Yes, I’d had a remarkably sheltered life – no small contributing factor in the insanity that followed. I realized that if I really wanted to become myself, I had to get rid of everything that I was. The simplest solution? Burn that shit.

So on a prearranged night around sundown, with much solemnity and thought, I took a few pages, fed them into the wood burning stove in my house, and lit them on fire, gradually adding more as the fire caught the pages. It took me over an hour to burn it all.

I’d like to say I mourned, but mostly I just felt sick to my stomach and horrified. I still, to this day, don’t know if I did the right thing, but I burned every last page. I took the ashes, and I buried them in the front yard at the Adams house. I was no longer what I was – no longer a child, and sure as fuck not a man.

I was about to embark on a journey to the depths of myself. No net. I didn’t know enough at the time to be scared.

Cars I have loved

2005-11-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

1. The Pinto – ’70 something, Ford, Avocado Green, full back window on the hatchback (not like the half-windows they had on most models). Never rear-ended, and, subsequently, never exploded. This was probably the most poorly made car I have ever been in. The Arizona sun did not agree with it, at all, and the plastic and vinyl interior began to disintegrate almost immediately upon our moving to Tucson. By the time my mother got rid of it, the seat belt buckles had dissolved, leaving a blossom of metal springs and brittle black plastic shards. I used to ride to school with my mom while she was getting her Ph.D. and this was the car we traveled in. Less like a car, and more like the furniture of my very young childhood.

2. The Matador – ’76, AMC, beige, station wagon, brown interior. This one had door handles of shiny textured metal that were inset in the doors. My sister learned to drive in this one, and, as a teenager, ran it up on the median on Oracle Road driving me home from swim practice one rainy afternoon, with me screaming all the while “We’re going to die! We’re going to die!” She denies everything, of course. Of course, she is lying. A real piece, but memorable and beloved in the same way one might reminisce fondly on an old family pet that growled at shadows, barked at crickets, and farted.

3. The Celebrity – ’83, Chevy, black, automatic, 4 door. This was the car I learned to drive in, and the car in which I had my first accident (Grandma, sister, mother all in the car yelling as we plowed serenely into the blue VW Bug trying to turn left in front of us.) The sun in AZ is not kind to all black cars, and by the time this one was sold, it looked like it had been baked in an oven. The paint was utterly carbonized and starting to disappear in places. I also had my first blowjob in this car, from a nice Seventh-Day Adventist girl who never wore makeup, always wore skirts, and who never cut her hair. I eventually broke up with her because I was stupid. It was a good car, and it was my job to wash it every weekend, which I did with varying degrees of conscientiousness.

4. The Lynx – ’82, Mercury, grey, hatchback, standard transmission. This was the car I in which I learned how to drive a stick. Tangerine Road was long, straight, two lanes, deserted, and out in the north boonies of Tucson when I was in High School (now it’s fairly close to civilization, due to the unfettered development now rampant in the Southwest). Once, in high school, my parents let me take my friends out in it, and we stalled in the middle of a busy intersection while I tried to figure out the intricacies of second and fourth gear. My friends screamed as cars careened around us honking and making rude conjectures as to the nature of my parentage. Nobody died, but my friends were still nervous about riding with me, even a year later. Ingrates. A good car, but a little troubled. As was the tendency with my family, we rode it into the ground. Dad eventually cracked the frame in a fender bender, and it became useless to us.

5. The Rabbit – ’82, Volkswagen, brown, four-door, hatchback, automatic. My first car, given me by my parents. I nicknamed it Shadrach after my favorite Beastie-Boys song, and for no other reason. When I later went insane, I sold it to pay for (in this order): 1) rent for a summer, 2) drugs (mostly pot, with the occasional foray into mushrooms, acid, and blotter paper dipped in what was probably roach spray), 3) a motorcycle which I didn’t know how to take care of and which I then proceeded to drive into the ground. It was a good car. I should have kept it, but I was stupid, and since it was a gift, I didn’t value it. Because I was a shithead.

6. The Corrolla – ’81, Toyota, white, two door hatchback, 5 speed automatic transmission. I bought this car with my own money that I earned while living in a trailer park after deciding I needed to clean up and go back to school. It was fairly reliable, except for the time that I tried to drive up to Sedona with my girlfriend for a relationship saving vacation and it broke down about a mile outside of town. The transmission needed replacing, and since Toyota only made the 5 speeds for two years (80 and 81) we had to find a transmission in a junkyard in Phoenix, have it shipped up to Sedona and put in by a gentleman mechanic who recognized the signs of a self-destructing relationship in our eyes and was terribly kind to us in our misery. Other than that, a fine car which I sold to have enough money to come to New York.

Dad only bought American cars, if you'll notice. No purpose to this post, just a story I wanted to tell.

My most illegal post yet!

2005-11-14T16:12:00.000-05:00

I asked everyone in the last post to let me know which of three possible stories they'd like me to tell in today's edition. And after a overwhelming response...

Your indifference is duly noted. Since no one seems to give a shit, I’m just going to tell the story I haven’t already told a million times.

Her name started with an S and ended with a long “e” sound. She was 16 when I met her.

A brief sideline seems to be in order, here. Of the girls/women that I have dated, the breakdown of names goes something like this.

1 Shelley - twice
1 Andrea
1 Debbie
1 Stacey
1 Sherri
1 Elizabeth
2 Stephanie’s (one with a “y”, one with an “ie”)

One night stands and unconsummated crushes excluded. So, anybody notice a pattern, there? That’s right - of the 8 long-term (over a month) relationships, over half were with women whose names began and ended with the sounds “S” and “EE” (long e). Admittedly, this is a small sample, and not necessarily out of line with the average phonetic breakdown of women’s names popular during the birth years of 1965-1975, but still, what the hell, right? Maybe, unconsciously, I knew that the women for me had this particular name (“Oh, man, I know her name was something like Stephanie or Sally, maybe Stacey? Shit, I knew this one…”) and so I dated variations of her until I found the right one.

Well I thought it was interesting, anyway.

So, S-ee was blonde, and attractive. And not very bright. She had a long, slightly horsey face that was made more lovely by her big blue eyes and high cheekbones. She was short, muscular, and curvy, with a little bit of baby fat on her. We met through a mutual friend at a Denny’s on Oracle Road in Tucson. I thought she was stupid (as was my wont. At 19 I believed that no one was quite as smart as I was. I’ve since found out otherwise…) but cute, and I was immoral enough at the time to take her number when she offered it at the end of the evening. She seemed smitten, and I was (constantly) lonely and (eternally) in need of reassurance as to my attractiveness after a series of romantic and worldly setbacks culminating about a year later in my being fired from a Dunkin’ Donuts for stealing eggs since I couldn’t afford food. I was not quite at my lowest ebb at this point, and so might have appeared to be somewhat of a catch at the time (neurotic, scraggly, slacker potheads always being so in vogue among youngish women determined to alarm and enrage their parents). I took the number and forgot about it.

She got tired of waiting and called me a few weeks later, having obtained my number through the aforementioned friend. We talked on the phone quite a bit over the next few days while I decided what the hell to do. She talked about her home life (miserable) her commitment to school (non-existent) and her dreams (more on those later). I was flattered by her attention (not to mention constantly horny and lonely), and immediately agreed upon a date after finding out that she had just turned 17.

I picked her up in the city in my 1978 VW Rabbit (nicknamed Shadrach) and took her to a movie the name of which utterly escapes me. We went back to my house and talked on the couch. I determined that I absolutely would not touch her (my suspicions aroused as to her age), but as the conversation became more and more personal, I started getting the idea that things were more than a little bad at home, and I finally got the confession that her step-dad hit her (and maybe touched her inappropriately – never really got a straight answer on that one). She kept telling me, over and over, she didn’t want to go home. It got later and later. My judgment (never super hi-fi when it came to women anyway) became increasingly clouded as we began to make out (that resolution not to touch her? Yeah, not so much.). Finally I agreed that she could stay the night, I’d take her back the next day. We agreed that we weren’t ready for sex, and slept chastely in my bed.

The next morning she straddled me like a horse and rode me to sweaty climaxes until I finally came, as well. We cuddled and made goo-goo sounds at each other for a few hours until our bliss was broken by a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

Her step-dad had ferreted out my name and number from a friend of S’s and proceeded to let me know, in no uncertain terms, what he would do to me. I, being young, stupid, and… well, mostly just really stupid, didn’t have the sense to lie and say I didn’t know where she was. Instead I told him that she was with me and that she didn’t want to come home (!). So add to my list of transgressions kidnapping. Just so we’re clear, her step-dad was a fireplug, ugly and muscular, with a jaw like Popeye and a silent, sullen charm that only lifted slightly when he spoke of riding his motorcycle. You see, he was involved with a local motorcycle club that… oh, didn’t I mention he was a scary fucking biker? Must have slipped my mind. Yeah, a tattooed, muscled, construction working, backhanding, possibly molesting biker. And I just kept his step-daughter out all night, doing god knows what to her, and she didn’t want to come home, and aren’t I the noble fucking knight? Yeah, this was getting exciting. I hung up the phone, turned off the ringer and tried to figure out what to do with the blonde sex-goddess in my bed who it seemed was setting me up to get my ass kicked by at least one and quite possibly several scary bikers. Never mind the legal action he was threatening me with after he beat me to a wet spot on the sidewalk.

A half-hour later came the pounding on the front door.

Now I found sense. When confronted by the possibility of imminent death at the hands of a marauding biker, I huddled in the bed, listening to him curse, and indicated with my eyes to the lovely creature next to me that she must, must, must, must be silent. She was in this, as in so many other, infinitely more pleasant things, utterly compliant. Fortunately, I believe she might have been as terrified as I was. She knew what this guy could do.

The only possible explanation I can give for this total abrogation of reason and good sense was… well, she told me that her only goal in life was to become an exotic dancer. Sigh. What could I have done? At my age. With a constant hard-on. And no plans. And she was cute!

Yeah, I was an idiot.

Anti-climactic-ly, that’s as far as it went. He left after about 15 minutes of sheer terror (pounding the door, threats, warnings of the imminent arrival of the police, rinse, repeat). I dropped her off at her house later that night. Met her parents about two weeks later (no one mentioned anything about it), and dated her a couple of months until I got bored and dumped her.

I saw her in the wedding columns less than six months later. Pregnant. The only other thing she wanted more than being an exotic dancer? Babies. Dodged a bullet on that one, I suppose.

The Adams House

2005-11-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

In response to this post mentioning in passing my old haunts at the Euclid and Adams house, my oldest friend in the whole world Rabbit wrote this:

Euclid and Adams! I have fond memories of that place, though I didn't have to live there. I do remember you lighting cockroaches on fire, but I also remember making plans to go to the first Lollapalooza.

Now that is the kind of note that gives one pause. “Lighting cockroaches on fire”? Really? My response was as one might expect –

Oh Jesus. Did I really light cockroaches on fire? Please do elaborate (though I must admit to a touch of The Fear).

His response was most illuminating:

I seem to remember you saying it was more effective than smashing them. and not as gross.

Lord have mercy. I do not remember that at all. Then again, a lot of weirdness went down at that place that I might have trouble remembering.

Perhaps a little background… while I was in college, I went insane. After moving out of the hellish extension of high school that was the freshman dorm, I moved into a small triplex north of the university (to the heated objections of my parents whom I deftly manipulated into getting me what I wanted anyway by procrastinating to the point where no other choice was possible). On one side of us in the –plex lived a lesbian couple (the more butch half of which would eventually score me my first mescaline) who routinely came home drunk in the wee hours to scream obscenities and thence to pound the living shit out of each other (I called the cops a couple of times). The lesbian community in Tucson at the time (early 90’s) had heard of the term “lipstick lesbian,” but found it slightly disturbing and really wanted nothing to do with it. These were muscular bruisers with short, spiky hair, plaid shirts, jeans, work boots, gutter mouths and wicked senses of humor, along with viscously short fuses and jealous streaks a mile wide. They were awesome, and frightened my skinny white Christian ass to death.

On the other side was a man with an indeterminate number of dogs and aluminum foil over all the windows. The less said about him, the better (“he kept to himself, we hardly ever saw him. We had no idea that he would….” You know the type.)

The construction was shoddy, the floors uneven. We had a claw foot bathtub, and a cast iron wood burning stove (which came in useful later. If this story continues, I’ll let you know). I was the one constant in this little gingerbread slum, with a parade of roommates and crashers. My first roommate was a tuba player/music education major who’s Catholicism rendered him incapable of telling his parents he was actually living with his girlfriend. He was the ideal roommate, remarkable only by his absences and his utter horror at my house cleaning habits, which could be generously termed “plague-incubating”. The comments above about my insect extermination experiments might give you a clue as to what I’m talking about.

So, this was the setting for the beginning of a breakdown in morality, manners, and mental (not to mention physical) hygiene, all (at least initially) funded by the generosity of the University of Arizona and my increasing annoyed, then angered, then worried, and finally disturbed and fearful parents. This was where I learned about all manner of illicit and dangerous substances, where I huddled in my room avoiding a statutory rape charge, where I determined the fate of my entire collected works (ages 5-18).

Since I might feel like writing about this stuff again, I leave it in your hands, dear readers, as to which stories you might enjoy. Should it be:

1) The drug story about mushrooms and the Smiths?
2) What happened to everything I wrote from ages of 5-18?
3) The almost statutory rape story?

Leave a note in comments suggesting which you want to hear, and thanks.

Also, come out tonight to CBGB’s if you get the notion!

Tomorrow at CBGB's! Electric Open Mic!

2005-11-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in yesterday's post - here's the info. I'm playing bass in the hizz-ouse band, and I'm really excited. Come out if you can!

----------------------------------

CBGB's Lounge
Downtown Underground Electric Open Mike - Every Thursday at 8pm

Upcoming dates: 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/01, 12/08

315 Bowery St., New York, NY
212-677-0455

Hosted by jOff wilsOn/The Bowery Boys

15 min. slots. Backline provided, Drummers bring stix/snare. Great open mike for bands or solos looking to hook up with other musicians. No hardcore or metal because of similtaneous shows upstairs in the Gallery.

Where you been?

2005-11-08T16:51:00.000-05:00

Busy. Oh my, yes. Tonight, I’ll be at Acentos, backing up the lovely and talented Eliel Lucero. It’s up in the Bronx, and if you can go, you should. Eliel has really grown in the time that I’ve known him, both as a writer and a performer, and I know he’s bringing his “A” game tonight.

But that’s only the start of the wonderment… there’s so much else going on. “What else?” you say? Let me tell you…

On a whim a few weeks ago, I answered an ad looking for a bass player for an electric open mic at CBGB’s Lounge. Do I play bass? Yes I do! I’ve played a couple of shows with synonymUS and I used to play when I was in college (deep in the mists of time). The fellow running the show liked me, it seems, and having checked out a few of my mp3’s online, said “The gig is yours, if you want it.” It’s every Thursday night at CBGB Lounge (313 Bowery, downstairs), starting at 8. I play bass, Joff plays guitar, and Riley plays drums – we’re the house band, and people can do their solo electric/acoustic thing, or they can tell us chords and we can play along. It’s fun, and poets are welcome (hint, hint).

So there’s that. I taught myself how to play bass back when I lived in this little house on the corner of Euclid and Adams in Tucson. I paid 150 dollars a month for rent (a price which, at the time, seemed a little high), had my own room, and lived with an array of roommates. I’d listen to Fugazi and Jane’s Addiction and try to play along. In an effort to get my chops back up, I’ve reacquainted myself with these bands, and I’m having a great time playing and learning. The band is good people, and the open mic looks to be a lot of fun. Come out if you can.

.I’ve also been doing Funkworthy Fridays with {audio genic} and this past week we did a show celebrating all our Scorpio friends. We had a make-up artist, a costumer, and a tarot reader, and we were all done up and pretty and lovely. It was a hoot. Here’s a picture of me that I think is pretty neat. I keep telling my friends to come out, and let me just say, those who know – go. It’s fun, it’s sexy. If you get the invite for next time, clear your calendar, make the trip, because it WILL be worth it.

I also agreed to do the next Nosedive Productions show of “A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol” as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Last year, I played it up as a harlequin, but this year, I think we might be using masks… I read the re-write of the script, and maybe it’s just me, but I think Jimmy keeps making me more and more pretentious, and maybe a little gay. Gonna have to talk to that boy… These are the same guys that brought you "Jesus is my Valentine" and "Bucket O' Chum" which, now that I think about it, qualify as some of the most terrifying pieces of performance I've ever done.

Plus there’s the regular synonymUS gigs (coming up next week on Wednesday, if you didn’t know), and the usual parties, friends, poetry readings, and, ummm, work. I do work, too.

I may need to retreat at some point soon. The cool thing is that the high level (and quality!) of activity makes it almost impossible for me to a) get in any serious trouble, and b) get depressed – which is sort of the same thing. The idle brain is the devil’s popsicle, or something. Anyway, I’m keeping up with my yoga regimen (30-40 minutes everyday) and a steady diet of recreational pharmaceuticals to stay physically and mentally flexible. So, I’m staying healthy. I don’t see my wife near enough, since grad school has effectively kidnapped her, and she’s got a show coming up at our church, so she disappears on the weekends.

Anyway. That’s where I’ve been. I’ll post details for the various things soon, so if you want, you can check it out.

"Hit that perfect beat, boy"

2005-10-21T23:21:00.000-04:00

Oscar brings the 80's love in this great blog post about the Smiths. Gotta give some love back...

One of the things "they" say is that the music that you listen to between the ages of, say, 16 and 25 is the music you'll listen to for the rest of your life. That may be true. One thing I will say, though, is that no other music taps as directly into your limbic system, in the core of your emotions, as the music you listen to during those years. You may be embarassed by it, you may disown it, but if you grew up in the 80's, and somebody plays Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, I guarantee you are gonna feel something!

Part of it is just the sense of discovery that you feel. The first time you hear that band is like the discovery of pot, or masturbation, or kissing, or the first time you really understood a poem or a novel. It's like a great secret has been revealed to you and you alone. You stare at the stereo, incredulous, wondering that the world has contained, all along, this incredible sound and you have been waiting for it to find you all these years and lo, here it is. And you copy down all the lyrics and you write the band name (if possible, in script exactly copying the font on the newest album) over and over on your notebook and you go into your room with your headphones and you lie on the bed, rigid with the electricity of feeling that the music pushes though your body by way of your ears and you know that you have found a piece of yourself that was hidden in the world. This music, this band, they may have made it, but it is yours.

And there's always a first band, isn't there? The band where you see them on the screen or in the magazine or maybe just on the little blazing stage you made for them behind your closed eye lids and you say to your self, "That's me! That music, that attitude, that hair, that sex, that fury and rage and screaming and spitting and drugs. That's ME!" I remember distinctly the look of disgust on my saxophone teacher's face the day I told him that I didn't want to play jazz, that I had heard a band that sounded like how I felt, and that I wanted to make music like Oingo Boingo. He didn't understand. Nobody ever really understands. That's what makes it yours.

So, to Danny Elfman, and Andy Partridge, and Sting, and Simon LeBon, and Robert Smith, and David Bowie, and Siouxsie Sioux, and Morrissey, Adam Ant, Michael Stipe and all you eighties freaks, a salute. I don't listen to most of you at all, anymore, but I can sing every one of your songs by heart.

Grab bag fun stuff

2005-10-18T10:03:00.000-04:00

PARSE party was fun, once I got past the whole "bleeding out the eyes with stress" thing. People do this all the time, so I guess it's all about what you can get used to. Chad and I learned a huge amount from the experience (give ourselves more lead time, don't freak out and almost throw down just before the show, alert the magazines) and that's a great thing. Everyone seemed to have a good time, including the poets, and we sold a bunch of books and didn't lose our shirts. So that's good. I wanted to especially shout out Raymond Daniel Medina musical madman and grounding force. Without him, all would have been silence.

Incidentally, it just occurred to me: Chad and Scot? Our names are Chad and Scot? How white can we actually get? I feel like we should be wearing pink Izod shirts with upturned collars and speaking through clenched jaws like Thurston Howell III on our yacht.

Speaking of being an over-privileged white guy (HA!), I saw Amiri Baraka last night at 13. Great speaker, and quite inspiring. I really enjoyed his work, and I barely flinched when, during one of his more strident pieces he described those who work evil as being "uglier than white people." NICE! After the final piece (the same piece, I believe, that got the post of NJ poet Laureate eliminated), which asked who was basically the fountain of all evil in the world, my friend Jai leaned over, rubbed my back sympathetically, and said, "It isn't you!" I laughed heartily.

It's like the fact that my dad (and Grandfather) are both 32nd degree Masons. I mean, I don't want to be a whiner, but if I am so all-powerful, I'd think that I would be getting paid more. I don't know, I'm just saying.

I managed to get a copy of PARSE into both Martin Espada's and Amiri Baraka's hands. Amiri's words were, "This is a good looking book." Very happy about that. Hope they like the insides as much.

Finally, here's an amazing poem I found this morning on Slate.com called In The Bulrushes. Check it out.

"We don't have to murder the intelligentsia"

2005-10-12T08:05:00.000-04:00

"Here again, we find ourselves in luck. The society is so glutted with easy entertainment that no writer or company of writers is troublesome enough to warrant the compliment of an arrest, or even the courtesy of a sharp blow to the head. What passes for the American school of dissent talks exclusively to itself in the pages of obscure journals, across the coffee cups in Berkeley and Park Slope, in half‑deserted lecture halls in small Midwestern colleges."

A modest proposal by Lewis Lapham in Harper's Magazine for the realization of the American Fascist Dream - article here. Link courtesy of Discordian Research Technology (Don't Read This).

Could the Spread of Latino Culture throughout the world...

2005-10-09T12:48:00.000-04:00

...be the the path to peace?

I'm a big fan of norteno and soca, myself, but hey, what ever works. Plus, who knew that Egyptians liked salsa?

Beck Hansen is the White Man's Prince (thanks Ray)

2005-10-07T00:05:00.000-04:00

Saw Beck at Hammerstein Ballroom with Ray. Lovely night. The opening act, McRorie, wore a kilt and a suit that allowed him to play electronic drums, bass and guitar with his body. He was canadian, so I guess he couldn't help it. He did numerous rap covers (Rapper's Delight, Fight for Your Right to Party, I Like Big Butts by Sir-Mix-a-Lot (god have mercy on us all)). He also exhorted the fellows to "go downtown" for their ladies. Frankly, even though I appreciate, in no particular order, kilts, electronic drums, canadians, cunnilingus, old-school rap, and one-man-bands, somehow the convergence of all these elements in the singular person of McRorie was too much for my poor mind to take. I emerged into the set break a broken and sadder man. Which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy him.

Then Beck came along to make it all alright. I saw him when he toured with The Flaming Lips for his Sea Change album. He was a little more mellow, a little sad, a little broken himself. Though I loved his voice (apparently, when depressed, Beck's voice modulates from a reedy coffeehouse folky's whine to a rich baritone that would not sound out of place on an LP of old Marine battle hymns), the energy and pizazz was a little lacking. Plus, Steph got ill in the middle of his set and we had to split.

This time, he was every bit the showman, rocking out for a good portion, spicing the mix with the occasional ballad (including a flaming lips cover!) and generally rocking out with his caulking out. It was awesome.

I stayed out afterwards and handed out flyers for the PARSE party until I got picked up by a couple of poet girls who offered to take a bunch of flyers to their school to hand out. I gratefully said yes, accompanied them to Wendy's for a pleasant conversation and ran for my train a few minutes later.

Overall, a fantastic night. In case you're wondering about the post heading, Ray turned to me and spoke those exact words not a half-hour before Beck introduced himself as "The Artist Currently Known as Beck". So it wasn't just us.

Other show news

2005-10-06T06:53:00.000-04:00

My good friend Abena is directing this wonderful piece, and she asked me to be a part of it. I'll be doing some of the music. Come out if you can!

===========
EVE DESCENDING

West End Theatre
263 86th Street, NY, NY
When: Saturday, October 8, 7:00pm & Sunday, October 9, 3:00 pm

Eve Descending is a journey through the stories of women in the Bible. Each woman comes to life through poetry, dance, and song to speak where the scriptures have been silent. (60 Minutes)

TICKETS: $15 available at smarttix.com or at the door.

Featuring: Keisa Ababio, Elana Bell, Annmarie Benedict,* Oscar Bermeo, Jessica Elizabeth, Deborah Goffe, Sabrina Hayeem Ladani, Hanna Kivioja-Honeycutt, Dara Lazar, Daniel Montana, Lynne Procope, Dana Shavonne Rainey*, Melanie Stroh, Jane Titus*, Rich Villar, Scot Williams, Stephanie Williams

*member of Actors Equity

I'm sorry. I know it's wrong. I can't help myself...

2005-10-03T11:37:00.000-04:00

Typhoon Longwang?

Really? Really?

Turns out "Longwang" means Dragon King. Still, that just seems unfortunate.