Sprints

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

-- Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.