Courtesy

“D, world destruction
Over and overture
N, do I need
Apostrophe T, need this torture?”

-- They Might Be Giants, "Don't Let's Start"

--

Continuing the music binge. They Might Be Giants’ 1986 self-titled album has some awesome nerd rock. “Youth Culture Killed My Dog” and “Number Three” geek me out. Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. I do most of my listening in my head, between earphones, tethered to the laptop by a frail, black wire. is all right, too, along with the Wallflowers’ Breach.

--

Got a rough one-third packed and ready to go to the New Place. Soon I will rediscover the torture of stairs, the agony of a heavy-laden step. But I welcome the change, the upward shift. With the christening of the New Place, an overnight trip tonight, a triple-show day tomorrow, this weekend looms with the promise of headache. And next weekend is just as stacked: seeing friends in a show at a closing theatre, watching the Reds play poor baseball (in a private box with co-workers), driving to Hillsdale for graduation (and my birthday), driving back for my girlfriend’s birthday and parties into the pre-dawn of the weekend--and back to the grind on Monday.

--

The in-between days are fuzzy. Schools whiz by, the faces of children lost in the haze; outside the box, confusion mixes with splendor as clouds freeload above the river valley to drop majestic rain. Muddy footprints on sidewalks wash and dry into thick scars of dirt as the sun emerges.

As I stop and signal, black teenagers glare at me through the windshield as they cross the street, me in my glasses and spiky Asian hair, me and my courteous wave. Don’t worry, I think to myself; I’m just a lazy pilgrim, passing through at everyone else’s convenience.

--

I am beginning to lose faith in the idea of professionalism--at least, in theatre. Or maybe I am gaining faith, storing up hopes, investing in expectations.

Maybe it's just that I haven't worked long enough yet--or haven't met those who survive the first trying years of an acting career to emerge humble and sans swagger--but I feel floored by how un-professional so many theatre folks are. I guess it's the young ones that always get you down; I don't know; we're all supposed to be young at heart but old in mind and word. At least, that's what I've always thought.

All I know is that work does not have to be a constant battle. Art might, though.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

These derisive snickers exist everywhere, I suppose. Secretaries sneer at the backs of bosses just as teachers sigh and sob in the lounge, just as actors backstab backstage, where the lights are dim, the curtains drawn. I mean, I bitched about directors in college. How is this any different?

I guess if you do it to someone who remains ignorant of your disdain, you don't have to answer for your opinions or misplaced self-righteousness. If your poison works its way through the veins, though, the brain finds out eventually. The killing might be done by that point, anyway. The only thing for it is to be an antidote, darning the dope, high above the mucky-muck.

There is hope in the reminder that it is also a job--work, slaving, activity within boundaries. If it is only fun, all else fails.

Dandelions

"Tomorrow night, will you remember what you said tonight?
Tomorrow night, will all the thrill be gone?
...
Tomorrow night, will you be with me when the moon is bright?
And will you say all the lovely things you said tonight?"

-- B. B. King, "Tomorrow Night," from One Kind Favor

--

Readers of this blog may remember the guy at the coloring party who spoke of his hometown's unusual name, Washington Court House, OH. Well, today, I went there. Teachers taped crafts and joked with each other in the back of the multi-purpose room while I played a turtle and a bunny; murals covered both walls with cartoonish spaceships and children dreaming (in a space shuttle's window you could clearly see Cartman from "South Park" peering into the void, which was odd); the principal gave up her parking space for our van. The folks there are nice, and the town seemed on the "okay" side of tiny.

On the way back, I played B.B. King's 2008 album, "One Kind Favor." I wonder if it's his goodbye to the blues and life, what with the tracks "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "How Many More Years," and "Tomorrow Night." A lot of hope, and a lot of realism--I mean, the guy's been on the brink of death for years. The album art tends toward the stuff of legend, mostly of King's back, guitar neck peeking above his shoulder, as he views an empty landscape.

It's good stuff, just the blues that made him famous, with the age that makes him wise. This album is to King what The Tempest is to Shakespeare.

(I think.)

--

As I drove south to Cincinnati, I saw to the east what looked like a dandelion farm: a field full of yellow, spotted with the green of stems and competing grass, within a sort of ridiculous white-posted fence that trapped the wild weeds, leading like the Yellow Brick Road to a run-down blue farm house. Softly encroached the green, but the dandelions won on their home turf.

I asked the van, "Is that a dandelion farm?"

It was.

--

All forms of rain attacked us on the road: the clouds dripped, jetted, sprinkled and tinkled by turns, shifting weather with the weight of somber shadow. It has been the kind of day that simply removes your motivation to do anything without replacing it. It is a gray thief, a Druid trickster.

But through the clouds flashed sunlight, and for mere seconds at a time, the mist torn from the wet streets behind passing cars and trucks transformed from sickly white to brilliant silver, vapored vipers chasing tires. They hissed in the rain.

--

I must pack everything I own in the next two days and heft/drive/heft it into the loft apartment in Covington. Perhaps prematurely, I have amassed more furniture and clutter in the last two weeks than I have in the last eight months. My ratio of space to possessions continues to change, and the tiny path through it all dwindles, blocked at almost every potential turn.

But there is solitude and calm at the end of this labor (roughly translated, "an entrance code for a security system and a kitchen"). In a week's time, with my high windows staring over rooftops, what will I see when I wake up?

Dandelion farms, hundreds of them, stacked neatly in city blocks and floating in the river. And seeds and petals will fall at my feet, spreading, like wallpaper unrolling on the sidewalk.

One kind favor, please: See that my old room is kept clean. I'm leaving tomorrow night.

Wool

"I took a plane
I took a train
Ah, who cares--you always end up in the city..."

-- The New Pornographers, "Myriad Harbour"

--

There is a building near my block that used to be a museum, built like a miniature castle. It now houses a local television news station. Its powerful satellites atop the tower scramble radio signals within a quarter-mile in every direction. Commercials, music and news disappear in an audible haze, like steel wool in the ears, as you pass through the complicated intersection nearby, and as you reemerge on the other side, the ellipses lift and the advertising, singing and reporting continues.

--

When the temperature changes drastically in Cincinnati, the famous fog settles on the river, a thick white block that devours the bridges that straddle the Ohio River, a foot in the city, a foot in Kentucky. You drive through that mist on early mornings if you commute between states.

Soon, my commute will become comical: I will live in Kentucky, work in Cincinnati, but meet up with the van back in Kentucky. I will make an isosceles triangle, every day, until the end of May.

And with summer's arid air in daylight and spring's chilly nighttime mist, fog will make that triangle a capped trapezoid.

--

The end of May seems at once close and far away. The end of the tour comes with the end of the month: The culmination of nine months of contracted acting.

My feelings are not as mixed as my sense of time, though. I am ready to move out, in and on. I'm eager to return to an office space, a chair removed from rocking, an offstage gig to balance the onstage weight. I want a phone and a new email address, three walls of four, one size to fit all my workplace flair. I also just want to feel like the last nine months of gruel have led to an entree, some red meat, ready for the tasting, for my salivating and savoring.

I am a dog, sitting, obedient, watching a dangled piece of bologna, twitching at the first sign of release, ready and waiting for the fall.

--

In the Book of Revelations, the narrator writes, "You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."

Am I blind at the moment, seeing only what is to come and blinking past the present? Am I deaf, listening to self-help tapes in the car and not hearing the ambulance doo-wopping behind me?

Am I gold to be refined, or just naked silver, to be scrubbed with the steel wool?

--

The transition is what I feel approaching. The impending shift makes me itch, like a donkey scratching its tell-tale hoof and settling under shelter, like a full man feeling a delightful crap inching its way along through his entrails. But it is not a gradual thing, not like weather or digestion, not as I see it. I anticipate its suddenness every day, storing hopes in it like a believer awaiting Eastern trumpets. That's the distinction: a drum roll before panache on cymbals.

Like I said, it's not gradual, a slow feeling. It is a long time in the waiting room before a quick surgery. I know where the TV station will cancel out the radio, and I see the bridge posts suspended in waiting fog; in the meantime, I drive, trying to enjoy the sights and sounds. Steel wool is coming, and soft cotton awaits on the other side.

Scavenger

"I'll have what she's having."

-- Rob Reiner's mother as a random cafe patron in When Harry Met Sally

--

Part of why I don't like movies that were filmed in New York is that there are so many of them. I forget where I heard it, but someone said that every New Yorker thinks there's no place better than the Big Apple. And many New Yorkers work in film, or at least worked in theatre or television before making the leap, or they are writers, producers and directors.

Well, I've been to New York a few times, and it's loud and dirty. Like a big, wet fart. Or a prize pig. Every place is what you make it, and everyone's fart smells good to the perpetrator. And every county's fair is the best; every pig is some pig.

Watched When Harry Met Sally tonight with Teresa. The first time I've seen it in years. And not on TLC or something. Sadly enough, I kept thinking about mimetic theory, the desire of love you see but don't have. Not that--no, that's not what I meant--but I just found it interesting that every time Harry or Sally balked at romance, they killed time strolling the streets of New York, looking at couples hugging on the next corner and smooching to welcome in the New Year.

New Year's in New York: Another reason New York just doesn't really impress me. A large group of people always fails to impress me. (Part of why I remain suspicious of pop culture, Obama, and...I don't know...yoga, or something.)

--

The other big reason I don't so much care for the NY films is that whenever I watch them with people who have been to New York, it feels like a scavenger hunt to which I was invited but in which I can't really participate.

"That scene we just watched--I've been there. In that cafe."

"Oh."

"It's a lot bigger than it looks in the movie."

"Really?"

"Yeah. They cleared out some of the tables so it would look smaller."

"Oh."

And so on.

--

Don't get me wrong: Good movies have been made in New York. I like them.

And I'm sure that if I ever see a flick made in Edinburgh or the Philippines, I'll do the same.

"That street the drunk Scotsman just ran down? I've been on that street."

"Oh."

"Yeah, there's a Facebook picture of me and that statue. The one with the dog."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It had a lot more bird doo on it in real life."

"Oh."

And so on.

--

Side notes:

- Dropped over $100 today in next-apartment purchases: A blue recliner with automann, two swanky lamps, a small skillet (new), and two end tables painted to look ancient. These came from thrift stores, and I paid no more than $13 for any single item.

- Got a five-buck haircut, the best I've had in months, for the lowest price (I think) ever. My receipt came with a coupon which promises three dollars off my next one, and so, if I time it right, I could get a two-buck chop.

- Checked out some good tunes from the library: Gordon Lightfoot, Big in Japan, the big Duke E., and a collection simply and amply named, "Paris." All new additions to the iTunes library--from their library to mine.

- Life of Pi just got really good. The ship sank. The tiger made it to the boat. The narrator despairs on the ocean, alone.

--

I constantly desire that which I don't have. In that way, I am a perfect consumer cog in the machine of industry, and now, with job security and the promise of better pay and pad within weeks, I'm dropping dollars like a careless Rockefeller.

Which I'm not. In any way, shape or form.

Sometimes, it's best to refrain from the scavenger hunt. Hyenas laugh most, but lions have pride.

Quickening

"Working all day for a mean little man
With a clip-on tie and a rub-on tan
He's got me running 'round the office
Like a dog around a track
But when I get back home
You're always there to rub my back."

-- Fountains of Wayne, "Hey Julie"

--

"Finished with this one," she says, slamming the book shut. She is sitting in the front seat, and I can see, above the bumpy blue title printed and embossed on the front cover, the words, "National Bestseller."

This is the second NB I've seen her finish, with similar ceremony and casual pride. Completing the reading of a book is as ordinary as finishing a day of work or class. When the book is done, so is the meal, but there is little to no digestion. She reads like little children eat candy: With speed, with ease, with greedy grins and shallow delight.

This is good taste, the tasting of what already tastes good.

--

I tell her I like to savor words, sometimes reading a single page and shutting the book, and my remark is followed by an awkward silence, as if I've said I like books about baby genitals.

Everyone else says they like to speed-read. Two of them boast having read the entirety of the Harry Potter series several times over, which is the page-number equivalent of breezing through the Bible--twice.

"But I have to read with a piece of paper under each line, because I catch myself going so fast that I just skip over whole paragraphs just to get to the good parts. I look for dialogue."

Good parts. The sum of which can declare the whole good.

(And of course, selling lots of copies makes a book good, too.)

--

A quick digression:

The used car my parents just bought in my stead (it is in Nebraska, away from my eyes and hands) needs several repairs to make it roadtrip-ready. They will drive it across the country in a few weeks when they come to visit, and they want it in tip-top shape. My dad told me today that the mechanic thought he had fixed the clunking near the forward wheels, but upon hearing more noises, they took it back and he found something else wrong. The motor mounts were failing and the motor, the center within the frame, was jostling too freely in the engine chamber.

"Either Dodge just installed bad mounts, or someone, at some point, put this car through some really rough stuff," my dad said. "Bad parts, I guess. But once those are taken care of, the car should be solid."

Bad parts, and yet the whole is good.

--

Now for some pretentious contrast. I was serious about how I read: The last book I consciously sped-read was John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which I blew through in tenth grade in one night. I reread it two years later and was appalled at what I had missed, entire sections of story that were lost in the muddy haze of four in the morning. With bleary eyes, I had continued to read, blind.

I have refused to speed-read ever since. And even when it came to classes, I found it more honest not to read something than to scan for buzz parts and pass it off as knowledge of the book. Thoughtful, guilty silence beats preened, proud words, any day. For me, books that are meant to be read quickly are not really meant to be read at all, not if your definition of the word is to look past what the author says to what he/she whispers. If your definition of reading is mere comprehension of words and a disregard of subtlety, I wonder how much you've read.

When was the last time you read a passage that begged for a rereading? that halted your mere interest in story and wrung your soul to sob in your chest? that seemed the opposite of a "passage," and instead blocked you from moving on?

I'm not saying that every book has to be clunky and difficult. Such books often become bestsellers because they boggle critics.

Still, reading should be a challenge, not a cinch.

--

She has read two books in the time it has taken me to get through one-third of mine. And when pressed as to the quality of her quantity of text, she quickly (oh, so sad, a person for whom all things must pass quickly!) answers, "Oh, it's so good."

The question comes back to me. Well, what do I say? That the book I'm reading comes with (re)commendations from almost a dozen close friends, most whose good taste includes the unsavory and complex, and now, ninety pages and two weeks in, I can't decide whether it's good or not? That I mistrust my own enjoyment? That I appreciate its philosophies but find the arguments a bit prosaic, its logic sensible but expected, its structure competent but a little too familiar?

I remember why books breed worms.

Splurges

"Well, tha's somethin' we shall have to remedy, i'n't it?"

-- Braveheart

--

Yes, I'm quoting Braveheart. Just watched it tonight with my girlfriend, christening the new DVDs. Between the double-clearance deals at a Target in Mason, OH, and a forgotten Blockbuster off I-471 in northern KY, I have almost doubled my personal movie collection.

New to the family are: Smart People, Apollo 13, Braveheart, Crash, Traffic, Cast Away, No Country for Old Men, and Road to Perdition. Many movies I like have one-word titles--oddly enough, that goes for plays, too. This brings my total to twenty-three films on my shelf, not counting TV show collections or my two-disc Led Zeppelin concert edition. It's a modest collection, not nearly as stacked or buff as I'd like, but it has some good stuff. (Don't know what I was thinking when I nabbed About Julia and Atonement at Big Lots, but at least I have American Psycho, the South Park movie, and Raging Bull. Gotta have your bull.) I could easily make a list for the next ten or so I'll buy, but you can imagine that I want many, many more; hence, my decision to limit next month's DVD purchases to pre-2000 films.

That means Jurassic Park, always in my top three when I'm asked the question, is ripe for the picking. (No one since has captured better dinosaurs on screen, despite sixteen years of Hollywood indulging its CGI fantasy fetish.)

--

It's something that happens to me in bookshops and movie stores: I splurge. I could give fewer shits about clothes shopping or scanning shelves for shampoo, but when it comes to books and movies, I become an instant shopaholic, grabbing whatever merchandise the signs are pointing at. I wander aisles, gasping at titles like a twelve-year-old gasps at new Nintendo games, and before I know it, I'm standing at the cash register with new media filling the crook of my arm.

I am always simultaneously reassured and worried at the response these purchases merit. Today, a ditsy bip booped the DVDs past the laser reader and set them in a plastic bag, and when she saw Crash, she exclaimed: "Oh wow, this is such a good movie. I, like, cried."

And then, when the co-workers who obsess over Twilight, "American Idol" and the new Britney Spears album peer at my new stack with approval, something inside me wants to run back to the store's returns table, screaming about regrets.

--

But I don't. Instead, I keep quiet about the movies I like until I get home, and I watch them with awe. I wonder sometimes whether the Hollywood movers and shakers think more about the initial rush of chuckleheads who see the thing five times in theatres, or about the geeks who watch it on laptops, film nerds reclining in their hovels.

There's a difference between the person who has to see a movie three times to be satisfied, and the person who is only satisfied by one out of every three movies they see.

For that matter, there's a huge gap between the movies you can easily handle three times over, and the ones you can only stomach once every three years.

Tunes

"I hope tomorrow is like today."

-- Guster, "I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today"

--

Had a good time with the cast today. Sometimes the best grip, loosened, is better.

I made a Guster mix (began with Ganging Up on the Sun, then pulled from Lost and Gone Forever and Keep It Together) and they liked it. Played some Mae after that, and rounded out a long day--seven hours total in that rickety, squeakety white van--with some Alison Krauss.

--

Krauss, I have learned, is the winningest female in Grammy history, with a total of twenty-six. (She is third overall.) Though her band, Union Station, has been around for two decades, she likes to say that musically, they are just beginning. That they have not yet begun to play, in other words.

In bluegrass, work and life, everything starts today.

--

There is something unsettling about a band who only makes songs you like. At once it is a feeling of hearing music made for you, and then it is a realization that it is you, not the music, that has been conditioned to be liked.

A high-school friend once said that he loved the Rolling Stones, except for some of their songs. "I don't know what the fuck they were doing," he told me. "I think they just made some shit up to sell some vinyl. But they're still my favorite."

"Why?"

"Well, you can't say a band is your favorite unless you hate at least one of their songs."

True. And that sinking feeling is love, when you hear a different sound from the same band. Love is what you feel when you realize, without saying it aloud, that your favorite guys (or gals) have sold out.

--

A note about tune and tone, briefly:

Both are nouns and verbs. And you can tone a tune as well as you can tune a tone, but an atonal tune will be tuned out by more people than an untuned tone.

Or, as the symphony hall of dreams would beckon: Play it, and they will hear.

--

Now, this doesn't go to say that Krauss is the best female musician in history (dame Aretha cringes), or that atonal music is bad. What it does say is, music is really beyond me to comprehend in any pliable sense; that is, I seem to lack the knack to do it myself, aside from singing in the shower, or worse, on a stage. Keys, strings and stops are out of my throat and out of my talent range--but I like what I like. It is the one performance art with which I can only barely identify, but which I still consider part of my identity.

I think I like "good music," but then again, there is some boring shit in my iTunes.

My girlfriend once said of a popular song, "I like it, but I feel like I'm supposed to like it, like someone in a studio was like, 'This song needs to be liked,' and then made a song that was likable but didn't say or do anything. That's why I don't like it: I feel like I've been engineered to like it."

Poppy trillers and acoustic nasal singers take note: You are as numberless as the records you sell, but the underground knows the truth, and it forgets you in the thud of stampeding feet and ca-chinging registers at the record shop. The most popular radio stations are afraid of silence.

It is silence that makes the music necessary, the thinking that begs for artistic noise.

--

It is the same with the stage.

Hands

"The presence of God is the finest of rewards."

-- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

--

After taking an evening doo, I went into my bathroom to wash my hands. As I pumped the little green head on the little green bottle, I saw that the soap level was low. I would have to replace it soon, but since I'm moving apartments in two weeks, it seems like a petty purchase. The soap dispenser has lasted since I moved here in August.

An image of my time in this room: a soap dispenser, slowly dispensing, slowly emptying.

My girlfriend was in the other part of the room, sitting on the bed. I called to her, "Guess what? This--" I came in, holding the soap bottle "--has lasted since August. Isn't that crazy?"

Without giving the bottle a second glance, she said, "You don't wash your hands enough."

That made me think. I tried to remember a time when I didn't wash my hands after using the toilet, and of course no such instance came to mind. On the contrary, I went through a hand-washing kick about two months back, manically sudsing up my fingers and palms every time I had the chance. It seems odd that the single bottle has lasted so long, and even more that my girlfriend thinks I don't wash my hands enough.

--

I'm reading Life of Pi, and the narrator has just described his first encounter with a real-life Muslim. They are sitting in the man's shop, eating unleavened wheels of bread, when the call to prayer plays. The old man excuses himself, rises, goes to another room for a prayer mat, unrolls it, stands on it, and performs a bizarre yet unmistakable ritual of Islam: the thumbs on the lobes of the ears, listening to the Divine Voice; the repetitive kneeling and rising; the right-left check of the head, a silent homage to the Eastern city; the incessant, inaudible mumbling.

The narrator is intrigued, even convicted for not displaying his own zeal.

He recalls two moments in which he feels connected to God, after this event. In one of them, he is riding a bicycle, and in the other, he is walking in the woods after a snowstorm in Canada and he sees the Virgin Mary in a white and blue cloak, superimposed on Nature herself.

--

The Roman ruler turns his back on the crowd, confiding as cowards do with criminals, muttering his disgust, hiding his ambivalence. Disappointed, he turns his face to the crowd, and symbolically washes his hands.

--

I see that my hands are clean, but there are many hands I leave unwashed in my life. I don't fold all my clothes after I do laundry, and shirts crinkle in baskets filled with socks. I don't take out the garbage near the door as often as I should, and now, the spent Kleenexes following a week of sickness burst from the plastic can like clouds from a well. I don't clean my room when it is dirty, opting instead to shift around messes, swapping scatterplots for piles and stacks for heaps. I have ironed one shirt in the last nine months, and it doesn't even belong to me.

I call my sisters when I want to bitch about work. I call my parents when something has gone magnificently wrong or right, and never to ask about how the day feels eleven hours away. It usually just comes up, the right things at the wrong time. Like plants in sidewalk cracks, insects in paninis, or prayer in school.

I find myself too angry in the evenings to think about God. Work has become a chore and a bore, the silver talents waxing dull in my clumsy--but clean--hands.

Images of my time here: Soap slowly leaving, snotted Kleenex multiplying in a corner, coins gathering moss.

--

I do not have a direct pipeline to God, a pump to fuel the soul, but I ought at least to drill.

Sprints

"who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish..."

-- Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"

--

New find from the tour: Bo Burnham, 18-year-old comedy musician, wordsmith extraordinaire. His "Love Is..." is obscene genius, like "South Park." He's Ben Folds, Jason Mraz, and Robin Williams on Broadway combined.

--

Today, we performed in a rich school and everyone got the jokes no one has laughed at for weeks. We return on Thursday, expecting to be flabbergasted again.

Audiences perform for us almost as much as we perform for them. All stage actors love to talk about "the give and take" with the audience, the sort of verbal tickle fight wherein joke feeds on laughter feeds on joke, but I've found that only when you tour--when you do the same show over and over for drastically different groups--can you see how most easily to manipulate them. Some bits have their own punch, and others need a stomp, a take, a grin, a cackle, an extra bit of beat.

--

It occurred to me today, while waiting for a Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich from Panera, that acting in the theatre is much like cooking. You practice a recipe in the same way you rehearse: by doing, by creating, by getting critiques. Cooking is also similar to theatre in that it requires a combination of elements, mixed in perfect proportions, to produce an ideal sampling. Some dishes are tiny, concentrated servings of flavor; in the same way some plays are short vignettes, condensed human experience on the black platter of stage.

But it is the seeming futility of it all that binds the two most. Just like a kid who asks why he has to make the bed in the morning if he's only going to mess it up again that night, a cook or actor must satisfy the question, Why create what I am about to create if it is not going to last?

The meals are devoured and digested; the plays occur, and are gone. All this precision, all this effort, all this ado, and the end result is a satisfied--or miffed--patron rising from a seat, mumbling something to a companion, and leaving the building.

--

My cell phone is dying. When I flip it open, the screen stays blank, a small dead television atop a numeric pad, staring and being stared at, an image-creator turned image-reflector.

So I bid on an eBay phone, a real steal of a deal, and the "new" thing arrives in a few days. It had to be a Sprint phone, purchased on the run, a qualifying sprint before a marathon run.

--

Went to Hillsdale, saw folks I wanted to see, saw folks I didn't want to see, didn't see folks I wanted to see (some read this blog, and I wondered where you were), and didn't give a shit that I didn't see folks I didn't want to see (none of them read this blog, I bet).

Actually, a secret part of me sometimes likes to see people I loathe. Or maybe it's all the time. And maybe a public part of me. There is a judge and jury within us all.

--

Visits, too, are like phones, are like plays, are like food. A lot of preparation, the plunge into action, a steady or sudden decline, the epilogue of thought and feeling, the memory unpurged by events.

Booms

"You like boom
And I like boom
Enough small boom let's boom the boom-ah..."

-- "She's So Hot--Boom," by the Flight of the Conchords

--

Three notable things happened tonight as I left my girlfriend's apartment in Over the Rhine (the Cincy ghetto--if you watch that vid, check out 513pridgebottomboy's comment, the one that starts, "dats good we nice but..."). OTR, as the area is called by locals, has a bad rap as far as neighborhoods go, so housing is very cheap. And sketchy.

And a bit weird.

Cases in point:

--

1.) As we said goodnight at the doorway, someone fired a gun not more than a block away. "Quick," she said, "go home. That was a gunshot." I ran to the car.

2.) I turned on the radio as soon as I got out of OTR. I didn't want to listen to "American Woman" on the classic rock station, so I hit a preset button and it went to the classical station, 91.7. The selection at first sounded like a musical saw concerto with a piano (or something), but I came to realize that the instrument was not a saw, but a softly-cradled electric guitar. I continued listening for the next five minutes, during which time the piece turned into an Irish-sounding lullaby, complete with Aeolian pipes. I have no idea as to the composer or work, but it was beautiful. As I drove under the streetlights and hugged the car against the railing on the Reading Road entrance ramp, I felt like I was in an indie movie--the bittersweet, human kind. The best kind of indie film to feel like your life is.

3.) All the lights were green. Half of them are supposed to blink yellow or red after 10pm on Friday nights.

Backwoods

"I been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain."

-- America, "A Horse with No Name"

--

Went on a trip two days ago, or rather, two nights ago, into the deep hillbilly hills of eastern Kentucky, a four-hour foray that began with raindrops and ended in mist. Had a stomach flu not kept me crumpled over in a fetal pose, I would no doubt have enjoyed the journey, savoring the forests, surrendering to the blur of trees.

Our directions took us from Springfield (northeast of Cincinnati) across the southern rim of Ohio, into West Virginia, and then we sort of scooted straight south to Inez. A new, stunning Super 8 waited for us, literally a light in the dark, with its garish yellow sign fighting the night.

On the way, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Mostly from sick little me.

And the next day, there was much of the same; only, this time, it was the sipping and crunching noise of schoolkids who had been given soda and popcorn on their way to the play. Afterward, there we saw the carnage: littered paper cups, decapitated, the plastic lids skewered by straws, severed from the cup, lying on the auditorium floor like casualties, bleeding Coca-Cola, near debris of kernels.

It was a somber ride home.

--

I have an apartment for the next year, in Covington, KY, which is a suburb of Cincinnati, not a forgotten back-woods town. It is a mile's walk south from the river and its bridges to the city across the way. I have bought silverware, china (a manly black-and-green theme), new towels and a shower curtain. Baby steps, tiny purchases here and there, will take me to full decor. I have to figure out what to do as far as Internet and TV (though I don't watch much except what gets on the web or DVD, come to think of it), but other than that, it's fully-furnished, fully-mine.

Oh, and I have to buy a bed or something.

But it is my first "place," mi apartamento primero, my primary pad. It's odd and a bit embarrassing to admit that for my entire life, I have never lived alone: roommates and housemates, renting laws and lease restrictions, have always prevented my moving in, making it mine, and really nesting.

--

A trip to Hillsdale tomorrow, for Six Characters in Search of An Author. It's the last show of their season, and as such, the last real chance for my friends to meet my girlfriend, for me to see folks, for me to see a show, very probably. It's a grab bag, a gag brag, from here on out.

So, a lot of transitions on the transistor, I guess, in this game of acting for pay. In some ways, serving the Man; in others, excavating the mummy; but all in all, being cool with mine.

--

And Life of Pi is good so far.

Handbag

"Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."

-- Satan, in Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth

--

Back in Franklin, KY, after a long Easter, a Sunday which began at 7:30am, having dressed me in a suit and tie. I had decided to go to my girlfriend's house for the weekend, and her parents are Catholic. My original decision was not to attend Mass, but I realized that there was something profoundly oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic) about staying in a Catholic household for Easter and not going to a Catholic Easter.

After all, what was I going to do instead--stay at home, eat macaroni and cheese, and watch The Passion of the Christ online? No thanks.

So I went to the 8am Mass, and when we returned at 9:30, I made my way to the guest bedroom, mumbling half-jokes to the wall, and took a morning nap.

Then, after baskets, a lamb lunch, and meeting Teresa's grandmother (see story below), we drove back to Cincinnati, repacked our bags, and met up with the other actors to do this overnight.

--

Teresa's grandmother is adorable: her eyesight failing, she tends to stare, wide-eyed, in the direction of something (or someone) new. So as I chomped on lamb, she stared at me, no doubt running slow calculations in her head, like an old computer. I smiled every time.

The conversation turned to knitting methods. And crocheting. Every female at the table--Teresa, her sister and her mother--can trace their knitting technique back to this woman, this old lady with shaky fingers. Like spindles on a wheel connecting to the hub, their talents derive from her. They were talking about right- and left-handed knitting, and how you can hold the needle like a knife or like a pencil, and then, after a few minutes of silence from the grandmother, she told a sudden story--of this one handbag she made, years ago.

It was simple, yet it pangs. It went something like this:

I made my mother a blue handbag when I was a little girl. I'm right-handed but she was left-handed, so the entire time I was making it she kept saying, "What are you doing? That's the wrong way. That's not the way I taught you." But I couldn't tell her that I was making the handbag for her, or it wouldn't be a surprise. So I kept knitting with my right hand holding the needle--like this--and finally, I finished it. And I gave it to her, and she wore it the rest of her life.

And when she died, she left it to me.

The woman's face filled with grief, worry, and tears, as if she at once remembered something that was lost or forgotten. It was a guilty look, above all, and while we thought about her story, she stared at each of us with fresh, wet eyes, playing the persona non grata at the family meal. Her eyes, slow and intense, stumbled down to the plate, and with a trembling fork, she raised some lamb to her lips.

--

We are low-grade, nickel-plated angels, according to Twain. Yet after a lifetime of polishing, our nickel can shine like silver.

Carcasses

"I'm not going to press charges," he said. "I see the humor."

-- senior at Hillsdale (and friend) Rob Ogden, from an article in the Hillsdale Collegian, April 9, 2009

--

Maybe I'm a prude.

After all, I went to Hillsdale College, a place where mommy and daddy prudes send their fledgling prudes for higher education. I remember coming back from summer break to find, raised on Scotch tape all around campus, "posters" spouting Scripture and beseeching female students to dress more modestly. I remember hearing about an elderly CCA speaker calling modern women "sperm spittoons." I remember watching the 2006 Commencement ceremony, as Harvey Mansfield gave his speech on gender roles in American society while ignoring the fact that he stood on a graduation platform, while dozens of offended female professors and family members left the bleachers. I remember being told by a student-actress that the theatre department was "too unvirtuous" for her, and that was why she would no longer participate in our activities.

Women were not the only victims of prudishness at Hillsdale, as I recall. A friend of mine (also a member of the theatre department) was assaulted for being black, and a few homosexual students have suffered verbal abuse from the self-righteous on campus.

All this because we must protect ourselves from those without virtue, right? We praise that which we see in ourselves, call it virtue, trace its ancient lineage, and "prove" our own worth: fortitude on the football field, prudence of progeny, justice for the just few, temperance without tolerance. And those don't even include the theological virtues, the Christian triumverate--faith, hope, and love.

Tell me, perpetrators of the most recent disgrace to my alma mater, to which virtue did you cling while you cleft the carcass of a deer, to pull out its innards and drape them like Christmas lights across a fellow student's porch? What higher purpose drove you to the side of the road, lifting, pilfering the dead body of a goat so you could place it--with a copy of the latest newspaper--before the editor's front door? In short, answer me this: What the hell is wrong with you?

I understand that the paper shouldn't have run a brash editorial. But when a printed crime is met with physical crime, I have to side with the paper. The pen is not only mightier; it is nobler. Case in point, the editorial staff has apologized publicly, several times. The baseball team has yet to do so once. And whose offense stinks most?

It's hard enough sometimes to explain why I chose to go to Hillsdale, but I try anyway. I am a conservative, and yet I associate with liberals because I believe it makes me and them better thinkers and better people. So I try not to suppress my pride when it comes to my school.

But when an eighteen-year-old mayor loses a testicle, gets convicted for writing prank emails, all as he begins his freshman year at the school; when an athlete commits suicide in an underground dorm room; when I hear of racism and sexism thriving at a school whose admission procedures have never contained a word about race or sex; when a personal friend is beaten by locals for the color of his skin, and another is called "faggot" despite the shining colors of his character; and when a bunch of bad baseball players, upset and insulted by a hasty newspaper editorial, sneak out in the dead of night to scour the streets for the dead bodies of animals, to rip these carcasses apart and lay the intestines out like swag banners, to shovel rodents onto another student's porch, to resort to vandalism in place of educated discourse or better field play, to remain nameless while the investigation continues, and then to cower behind coaches, to dodge the scandal, to delay while they should apologize--

When all this happens, it makes me wonder why I went to the same school with these people. With full knowledge of all the good things Hillsdale gave me, I condemn the actions of the baseball players who thought it would be intimidating, funny, badass, or exhilerating to desecrate property and roadkill out of team spirit and wounded pride. You make me sick.

Consider this entry a carcass on your porch, Charger baseball team. Time to clean up.

--

Thanks to Tony at The Sad Bear for the whole story.

--

The opinions expressed on this blog are just that--opinions. These are my words, no one else's, and I adhere to them.

Autism

"In my little town..."

-- Simon and Garfunkel, "My Little Town"

--

Today, we played the Newark Midland Theatre, a beautiful and dark space east of Columbus. After the first show, we had our usual question and answer, and when I called on a tiny, jittery, brown-haired second-grader in the house-right section, she sputtered a few false starts to her question, finally squeaking out something about how we do what we do.

"And, um--well--oh my gosh--I sorta--oh my gosh, oh my gosh," she stammered, and older students in the front rows giggled. "--well, I made this picture for you..." And so on.

After questions, while the others went backstage to take off microphones, I hopped down and went to the little girl's section to receive the gift, a hand-drawn crayon rendition of a classic scene from melodrama: a black-cloaked figure, center, sneaking towards the lady in the balcony, with stage lights shining down, with an audience looking on. It's actually a fine picture.

As I accepted her gift, the girl freaked, almost into hysterics. A teacher urged her to give me a hug, so I very gingerly patted her back (a twentysomething straight male working around children can take no chances). I thanked her and she blushed. I felt awkward, naturally, so I turned back toward the stage, and her teacher stopped me and whispered in my ear: "She has Asperger syndrome. Thank you."

I thanked the teacher, went backstage, and shared the picture with the cast.

--

Asperger's is a form of autism, characterized by "difficulties in social interaction" and "atypical use of language."

I hope that girl grows up to be a fine actress--or, even better, a playwright.

--

Also watched Adventureland this afternoon. It's wonderful. My girlfriend says the main character seemed a lot like me, and I agree. It was almost too good; what I mean is, I almost can't handle some parts of the movie. Kudos, Mr. Rogen.

The music was composed by Yo La Tengo.

--

Outside the Midland Theatre is a bench with a sculpture of Mark Twain seated on it, reading a book, arm slung over the back. It was placed there by Hal Holbrook, famed Twain impersonator and (this I did not know) a 2008 Academy Award-nominee for Best Supporting Actor. I don't put too much stock in the Oscars, but I do esteem the ability to jolt literature to life via performance and recitation. The rewards surpass the awards.

Such is a happy man, I imagine.

--

I suppose being introverted is its own kind of autism. Maybe it is merely a relative of the disorder, a sort of great-uncle. It precedes autism, fosters it; in a way, the severe introvert sees the world through a narrow tube, a space between books on a shelf. It is hard to admit when the alienation you feel is not exclusion, but exile: You have done it to yourself.

Like the difference between two women, or the span of summer months, the gap is both large and small, as significant as it is meaningless, like the expansion of the universe.

And all the big words, fancy thoughts, poetic revelations and depressing music can't teach you to live life like a happy person.

Tendencies

"I simply have to take over
I know I know exactly what they need."

-- Galinda, in "Popular," from Stephen Schwartz's Wicked

--

I am in Heath, Ohio, which is near Newark. It is east of Columbus. And this Super 8 motel is one of the best I've seen, with its doors on the inside of the building. The carpet is maroon. The bedposts, anchored to the wall with screws, are painted to look like dark mahogany. So is the bureau.

The shows are in Newark for the next two days, so this is home for the next two nights. I feel drained and sullied, like a dirty sink. It's the same feeling I used to get when I relented and smoked after weeks or months of quitting. It was hard for me to get up this morning, and so I opted for sleep over bathing. Then, because of an odd mix of annoyance and caffeine, I decided to make the three-hour drive through the April showers and flurries. We listened to musical theatre soundtracks while leftover winter sledge pelted the windshield. The drive made me tired, and the frigid storm made me bleary.

But that's as fleeting as the sleeting. I have a new (to me) car on the way, and the apartment I looked at last night is super swanky, and super affordable. And if I move in by early May, I can get a few more bucks deducted from my monthly rent; it all depends on the whims and plans of the tattooed bootlegger who lives there now.

--

Saw some good friends over the weekend, and saw one of the best onstage comedies of my life on Saturday night: The Foreigner, playing at the Playhouse in the Park. I usually feel a bit disgusted by the productions there, just because it's pop theatre, full of fancy lights and trapdoor scene changes, highly-paid actors and their expensive insincerity, all the pomp without the grandeur. But this show, despite all that, was good: quick, original comedy; new moments and honesty; and the only use of the trapdoor was called for in the script and made perfect, tasteful sense.

Above all, sincerity. That is the one thing that can make or break a show. A sincere theatre is the best. It is too humble to be pretentious, too truthful to be fake, too refined to be pathetic. It should crackle and simmer, the beats as inevitable as clocks ticking.

When it happens in the here and now, even the most ancient stories will dazzle, and the most contrived of scripts will entertain.

It is a rare thing, and wonderful. A good play is hard to find.

To paraphrase Anonymous, no one knows how old Theatre is, but it is old enough to know better.

Skyline

"But how is it with yourself--yourself?"

-- the blind governess in Kipling's "'They'"

--

Ate my third three-way at Skyline Chili tonight with Sawicki and Bugay, who were in town from Chicago to see a high school show downtown. Apparently the high school rents out the big venue at the Aronoff Center, which gets the Broadway touring shows and other big acts. Teresa and I saw (for free) the Playhouse in the Park's The Foreigner while they were seeing the other show. We met up before the shows at a bistro called Biagio's, near the indie film joint on Ludlow, and reunited afterward at the Blind Lemon, where we had a few drinks apiece. Then, as I said, we went to Skyline.

I've gone three times now, and the bizarre chili (the predominant flavors are chocolate and cinnamon) is growing on me. Their three-way, which is chili and cheddar over a bed of spaghetti, was made for late nights.

At the same time, we did see some poor wretch being carried from the ladies' bathroom, where she apparently gave up the ghosts of her Skyline dinner.

--

Today, we played the Erlanger Public Library. The parking lot is all on one side of the building, which is in the area closest to an "inner-city district" in that part of Kentucky, and our loading in and out was long: up the wheelchair ramp, in through the front doors, past the clicking portal, and across the bookshelves to a small cleared space. Literally, we were between bookshelves and the reference section. People on computers turned halfway around during the show and removed their headphones, confused.

--

Two big steps coming up. One, I gave my parents the go-ahead on buying a car in Nebraska. I'll pay them back over the next few months, and when they visit in May, they'll bring along the 2003 gold Neon. And two, I see an apartment tomorrow, the best prospect I have of a living situation right now. It's owned by the boss whom I'm replacing. It's cheap, on the third floor, and in Covington, probably the swankiest Cincinnati suburb south of the river.

Heat isn't covered, but I'd only pay for the one apartment. And heat rises.

Tension

"If you're going to be a diva, you better be good. If you're going to be a bitch, you better be right."

-- anonymous

--

The air is rife with it. I smell it when we break for lunch, I hear it when we load into libraries. It is an elephant in the room, a squid in the soup, a bee in the ear: Tension, a strained connection between two human beings, haunts me. Onstage, it is glorious and powerful; off the stage, it is agonizing.

Tension invades with the stealth of a ninja, creeping in the silence--the awkward silence. And once it makes its presence known, it is hell. Like a bowstring pulled taut, the slightest pluck annoys me, threatens to sever the thread, turning possible melodies to atonal twangs.

Yet, as the old song goes, "What causes that?" Why is there so much tension in my life right now? It could be that I am pulled away, my coil cranked too tightly around a knob. Could be, I am pulling away, withdrawing, and pushing others farther away in the process. Which in a small theatre company, is social suicide. Asides of ire. The cyanide of silence. But who cranks the knob? Am I the cranker, the cranked, or just cranky? Perhaps, in this metaphor, I am not the string, nor the knob, but the musician, adjusting too much, picking nits in every note, listening with a troubled ear for an impossible tone. That must be it. I am doing this to myself.

And the other musicians play on, confused, alienated, offended. They scoot their chairs away, leaving me in a misconstrued solo.

--

All that goes to say, I'm alienating other actors. I need to stop.

--

I am in a different library, killing time before the performance in the conference room. We got here too early, set up too quickly, and while the rest of the cast naps, I am blogging. (Another example of my withdrawn humor.) I have picked up five movies, three of which I have never watched. I don't know when I'll watch them.

The librarian here looks like a girl I worked with in Scotland, a girl I grew to loathe, a person with as much negative energy around her as the person with whom I feel so much tension today. They are the kind of people who suggest too often, who interrupt you to say things which are absolutely false and argue them as true, who will call you by a stupid nickname long after the initial joke of it has staled and spoiled, who are addicted to caffeine and cigarettes but would fess up to neither problem, who are obsessed with the most popular of popular culture and pass this off as being cultured, who love everything that is new even if it is inane, who act like they know you well before they even know you poorly, who mistake sophistry for wisdom, who assume leadership roles that do not exist, who are politely wrong and rudely right.

In short, they simply do not know how they come across, because it is not worth the trouble to tell them as much. Best to ignore, ignore, ignore, with as much tact and fake absentmindedness as possible. After all, these are the folks who come and go in our lives with the speed of Chinese food through a digestive system. They do not last.

When it's time for them to go, it is equally satisfying, for them and for you. It is one of the hardest things for anyone to do, to work with people who don't like you. Which is why, all faults in focus, it is best to bite tongues and unshoulder chips.