Catfish

"And I got the part. I began to take classes. Sense-memory exercises. Practice making things real. Before your performance create a reality for yourself to step into. I remember that when I began taking class we'd have a pretend teacup and pretend to drink from it. How hot is it, how full is it, is there a saucer, is there a spoon, are you going to put sugar in it, how many lumps. And then you sip it, and others were transported by this stuff, but I never found any of it helpful. What's more, I couldn't do it. I was no good at the exercises, no good at all. I'd try to do this stuff and it never would work.... I'd look ridiculous as I held my pretend teacup and pretended to drink from it. There was always a sly voice inside me saying, 'There is no teacup.'"

-- Philip Roth, The Humbling


--

Really need to stop buying books on impulse. Not that I need to deliberate for weeks and fill a special jar labeled "next book money," but two days ago when I walked into the Bookworm in West Omaha the first title that jumped at me (actually it was the humongous "ROTH" printed above the title) I removed from the rack and stuck it under my arm, and there it stayed until I laid it on the checkout counter.

Full disclosure: I was there to buy The Great Gatsby, because my baby sister just started reading it in 11th-grade English and when I scanned my stacks for my own copy, I was shocked to find I never had one.

Anyway, The Humbling is good so far: sort of like Roth's Everyman but with a theatrical bent. The protagonist is an ailing actor bewildered by the impotence of his lost talent. Some great passages in there that every actor can relate to (and maybe any artist: at one point he says, "You can get very good at getting by on what you get by on when you don't have anything else," which is sort of brilliant).

--

Snapped at a co-worker last night. Felt bad about it. Maybe "snapped" is the wrong word. "Coldly accepted criticism" is more accurate. I was swamped. I felt he was telling me how to do my job. I coldly accepted his criticism.

Went through a phase when this was the norm. After working in Scotland a few years back, I caught this (European?) snobbishness that made me assertive and assholish when I came back. I wrote emails with flippant confidence, I spoke to superiors with audacity and passivity, I kissed a girl out of nowhere and nothing, for no real reason. I bought booze specifically so I could talk about it. I tried to give looks to people that implied I was waiting for them to make up their minds. I swaggered.

The chill lasted about half an hour, when I felt guilt like a headache. I apologized and he said he was only trying to help and I said I knew.

--

Catfish, incidentally, is only showing at one cinema in Omaha, about fifteen minutes west from work, and I got out there to see it. Was very excited, was ready to enjoy. Go figure: I enjoyed it. Probably a better movie about Facebook than The Social Network, which is really a myth about how websites are created and a parable of wealth. Catfish is not as shattering as the trailer suggests--it's more like a slow spiderweb cracking a windshield. Not so much a movie with a twist as a movie with a paradigm shift that keeps pushing and pushing.

See it if you get the chance.

--

Rehearsals start in a few days. It'll be nice to do That again.

Backing

"What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth--the filth, the war, the poverty--was that life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn't interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heaven. To him that was a dressing room for hell."

-- Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin


--

Been almost a month, I think, back in Nebraska. I brag to distant friends and former co-workers that I have accomplished a lot in a few weeks, but really I have settled a lot. I've settled more than I've sought, attained, conquered. I feel like the heyday of my comeback (such as it is) was the second week, when I nailed three auditions in a row, callbacks subsequent.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

And the truest accomplishment in the days following? I finished White Noise. Helluva book. Those last 50 pages are a vicarious speed race confrontation with death and a smooth denouement chaser. And somewhere, a voice on a TV said, "Woo hoo!"

--

So, the jobs. I'm in a show at the local children's theatre, The Rose, which runs in a little over a month, for a little over a month. Rehearsals start next week. I'm getting paid--plus--and they've cast me in a spring show, too, playing a flamboyant-tortured-artist-teen. Through the bam-bam auditions, a director funneled me to a talent agency's auditions, where I read one day as a confused patron chewing beef jerky and the next as a puppeteer/cashier trying to sell a lottery ticket. And aside from a brief, ill-prepared foray into the world of Aussie accents, and a grungy visit to read for an independent film, this is what I've got. By way of auditions and roles, anyway.

I'm teaching, too. My high school drama teacher owns the local dance academy, and every Thursday night I teach the "Broadway" classes: improvisation intro, voice control, expressive movement. Brief lectures. All girls. Forty-five minutes. Out by 7:15.

And yes, I'm working at a restaurant. Chic and corporate, with bulbous chandeliers and onyx walls, steps of service, pricey cocktails. Had the first blowout VIP party last night, and I bar-backed. Never done it before, gonna do it lots more. There is education in the handling of wine bottles, life lessons in the observation of drinkers, parables in the crating of glasses. It means I'm on a track (of sorts) to becoming a bartender. Months. Until I can flip and shake and twist and shout. I'm also one of few employees allowed into the wine incubator, a glassed-in tower in the middle of everything like a wine phone booth, a shoe box of silence. And maybe it was the deejay's choice of music, the smell of citrus squished into mats, the trimness of the clientèle or the impossibility of crowding behind that bar, but I had a lot of fun. It's challenging, but fun.

Being a server's assistant is cheesecake. Bar-backing is peanut brittle.