Memorials

"She got no dirty little fingers

Bloodshot eyes are gone

Tell me I'm wrong."

-- The Black Crowes, "Twice as Hard"

--

Looked up that song because it came on the radio when I was between the bank and work. Upon finishing a left turn, I heard the opening guitar, and after it played a few seconds I was about to switch to CD when the song proper began with a rift shift that sounded a lot like the sliding in Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying." I like Zeppelin, and I like bands that sound like Zeppelin. I let it play. The lead singer even sounds like Robert Plant. I couldn't make out many lyrics but I told myself to remember the ones I could, so as to Google the song when I got to the office.

Later, at my desk, I promptly forgot those random lyrics when I saw the red light on my phone (could be one message, could be twenty, I still haven't checked), the inbox's fifty new emails with subject lines listed in boldface, the barrage of How was your vacation's and Glad to be back's.

All this goes to say, I'm grateful for 92.5 FM The Fox's website. Specifically, the "What Song Was That?" feature, which I guess isn't unique to this station but was anyway very useful this morning. I am now resolved to visit the library on my way home to look for the band's 1990 debut album. Thanks, 92.5 FM.

--

A check was waiting on my desk. My last reimbursement for gas (a teaching artist drives a lot). I separated what was perforated and flipped over the receipt slip, usually saved for no real reason, and made a to-do list. It's been awhile since I've been in my cube. I don't know what I have to do, but I know there's a lot of it.

We're replacing a study guide activity with a whole worksheet about bananas in an attempt to get a corporate sponsor--you guessed it, a produce company--to underwrite a show. Parents are emailing like nuts about the summer camp and auditions in August. I'm performing at KidsFest in three days and have no material chosen.

Someone made me a PBJ and I ate the quadrants while clicking through now-irrelevant emails.

--

On the drive to Pennsylvania, I saw an Ohio road sign heralding our approach to two towns. The sign read:

FLUSHING

BETHESDA

I think this would make a phenomenal punk band name.

--

My grandma is in better spirits than we were led to believe. She was not taciturn or snippy, did not make territorial comments about fruits in the fridge--in fact, on the bookend days of our visit, she poured me some of her 8th Continent, which was delicious and tasted like pudding. However, her health is just as bad, and maybe worse, than what we expected. Shortly after we got there, she went upstairs to get my dad's baby bracelet and returned five minutes later wheezing and leaning on everything.

A few months ago, she went into the doctor's office to ask about the strange lump on the left of her neck (not cancer, thank God), and in the ensuing checkups medics discovered a whole mess of problems that need solving.

The most formidable of which is that three of her heart valves have apparently stopped working. She needs surgery, and she needs to be able to go under during it. She's been passed from doctor to doctor and clinic to clinic all over east PA, being told over and over that her chances of surviving such a surgery are slim. A lifetime of smoking and never winning the lottery, the recent death of her husband, the ever-weakening determination not to become a burden...of course we would come and visit, do some landscaping and get her out of the house.

We took her to Grandpa's grave on Memorial Day, which was hot under a harsh sun. She laid a single pink rose on the stone.

She gave my little sister a brass otter figurine she had received from Grandpa years ago. She gave me his pristine collection of Churchill works, too: six beautiful red hardbacks that would make certain Hillsdalians salivate.

My aunt is officially a lesbian now, at least in my mental classification; I met her wife. They share my grandma's basement and have been waging a war with the back yard for a year now. With health issues ravaging the household, they were in no condition to landscape the patio or clear the shelter house. We took care of it, at least until Nature continues its work.

--

It rained only once and we napped in a stuffy spare room.

Conversations were telling. When my dad's family members saw me reading The Brothers Karamazov, they told me--with pride--that they had just bought the latest James Patterson novel. My aunt regaled me with stories that took place in every airport I could think of, chronicles of her exploits as a traveling salesperson. I was sure they were the sorts of people who would listen to NPR every day; they weren't. They have strong opinions about the oil spill and whether we should be in Iraq. My father, an Air Force veteran, nods and does his best to inform and opine without debating.

--

Both my dad's and mom's sides of the family are scattered worldwide. We have Filipino relatives in the native islands and Germany and Missouri. My dad's brothers and sisters mostly stayed in the northeast, but a few strayed into the South. We don't see extended family much. And while the dimensions of these relatives changes with each sparse visit, our knowledge of them and their lives shifting like globs in a lava lamp, the general impression remains of people who have been tested and brought down by life; who are resigned to getting by if and when they can; who pick their battles with wizened, tired ease; who find intense joy in laughter and storytelling. Most smoke and hate themselves for it, or else they drink. My grandfather died from alcoholic pneumonia--while laid up in a veteran's home he drank a beer that filled his lungs.

Without trying to sound self-righteous, I feel many times that some people would never take care of themselves unless others would first care for them. It's not a matter of initiation, imitation or incentive, but of self-worth, of believing in one's own potential as a person, of stepping back from the cliff of self-pity.

My family sits and listens and observes and cooks and cleans and judges. And we hate ourselves for judging, because what separates also relates.

--

Aside from all this, there were genuine moments of childhood-esque fun. Riding a mower. Building fires. Watching "River Monsters" on cable and shaking our heads at the size of river sharks. Drinking 8th Continent and loving it.

In the Orthodox tradition, there is the beautiful idea that when humans, almost entirely ignorant of God, learn more about Him, they love Him more. I think this can work or not-work depending on your point of view, the stuff you choose to read, etc. It seems to be true for people who are devoted to worldly aims: the botanist who becomes enamored of leaves, the linguist who learns his tenth language, the professor who has had tenure for so long he can't count the years.

Maybe this is true. The more you live, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you love; and so, the more you live, the more you love. Or maybe it's a matter of can's: The more you can live, the more you can love.

I think it works or doesn't work with family, too. And even if it doesn't work, I don't regret this Memorial Day weekend at all.

Way

"I'm asking everyone around me
How to live my life
I know the answers I keep hearing
But I listen close each time."

-- Rooney, "Help Me Find My Way," Calling the World

--

At the end of season three of The Wire, McNulty trades the detective life for the beat cop life. He talks with old ladies sitting on stoops and laughs at kids who live on the block. The smile on his face is so shocking, because it's the first time you see him happy. He's been good at his job, but he's hated it. It was almost simply matter of finding out where he wanted to be, not what case he was working or how.

Earlier in the series, a woman at a community meeting says she misses knowing who the cops were, and having them know who she was. McNulty, it seems to me, makes amends.

I watched the end of this episode on Friday morning. Driving to work, the wheels started turning in my head. Am I where I want to be?

The answer is no. So then, where do I want to be? That is the question. The answer is, I'm moving back to Nebraska in September. I will be there for a time. For how long, and while doing what--this is on my mind now.

Maybe I'll start the Children's Theatre of Omaha someday.

--

After lunch, I am meeting with an Orthodox priest. I scheduled this meeting for one o'clock so I could miss the Monday staff meeting. His name is Fr. Steven. I don't know what I want to ask him, but I do know I want to get to know him. Or I want him to know who I am.

It's a bit like buying a car. I don't need him to tell me that I need a car, or that one car in particular is the car for me. I think I already know what I want; I just need to know how to get it.

What I think I already know is: I want to become Orthodox.

--

Talked with my dad last night. My Grandma's not doing well in Pennsylvania, and she will have to go into surgery soon. My family is planning to drive to see her, and I'm planning to come along. The only question is, when.

Whens abound. Friends want to meet on weekends this summer. The possibility of a camping trip in Kentucky. Going to visit Johnny and Ari in DC before they leave the country in July.

Schedules from all sources, GoogleMapped itineraries, money for gas. And it's because where you want to be is around friends and family. Location, location, location.

--

This post kinda sucks. I've been blogging less often. I might be out of practice.

--

Went to a tea party on Saturday to read a book and teach British tea manners to twenty eight-year-old girls in frills and white gloves. They betrayed their age despite the finery with chocolate smeared on cheeks. I had our costume designer make me an ascot for the occasion. As an actor instructing girls on how to float their hands and converse like dainty Englishwomen, I probably came across as a very gay man.

This is a very singular time in my life, in a very pluralistic kind of way.

Starfire

"Mistakes on the part of nature
The living proof of what they're calling love
On certain sideway streets
Where things that don't match meet."

-- The New Pornographers, "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk"

--

I want to get this down while it's fresh:

Next door to this building is a center for those with disabilities. They call themselves Starfire. Their parking lot is separated from ours by a healthy thick hedge, so that generally we forget who our neighbors are. Occasionally we'll see teachers and volunteers leading small groups on outings (little more than slow processions up and down the street--and I mean slow in terms of speed: they are so fascinated by the flowering of grass or the color of the sky they forget to keep up with the group), but that's about it. Our spheres of influence don't really mix: us with the talented kids, them with the mentally-challenged adults.

In terms of visual surroundings, the eye is much more quickly taken in by the attractive dance studio across from us, or the unsightly autism center on the other side. Our building itself is rather drab at the moment, mostly obscured from the road by trees and lacking a sign announcing our presence. Behind us, there is an annex to the parking lot with a storage shed, and beside that, an open field of tall grass which was partially converted into a fenced-in playground.

Relatively speaking, it's an isolated location. We like it that way, to be honest; a certain comfort comes with anonymity, a sort of assurance that keeping your head low is evidence of good judgment and humility. Other arts organizations find themselves on busy streets with lots of foot traffic, and there they thrive. We thrive in near obscurity.

All this goes to say: Before today, I had never been next door.

--

The workshop is "Self-Esteem through Self-Expression," and I've done it dozens of times. It's our most popular one; it's always a hit. It's basic: we use five tools of an actor--voice, body, imagination, focus, and cooperation--to boost self-esteem through fun, interactive games. I have another SESE workshop this evening, actually, with a local Girl Scout troupe.

I've never done it with mentally-challenged adults. I leave our building and walk across our parking lot, past the hedge, and am surprised to find an impressive little building next door. I do not know why exactly I'm surprised. I walk in the front door and step into a wide-open reception area, where I meet two teachers and one of the students (do I call them students, patients, or just "them"?) who enthusiastically greets me with a handshake. They lead me down the hallway to another wide-open area, this one populated by stuffed chairs on wheels and movable plastic tables scattered into faintly discernible sections. I realize this is the miscellaneous room, the space for activities and group meetings. Or visitors. Surrounding this space are conference rooms of various sizes, some in use and some empty and dark. There is some kind of seminar going on in the largest one.

We move the chairs into a rough circle. We get started. I am immediately struck by lack of conformity in this group of ten, aged 30-50: some slouch, staring at the ground; some sit on the edge of their chair, hands folded, smiling expectantly; still others study my person, every expression and gesture noted with almost dreadful attention.

We do a voice warm-up, sirens, and while everyone stands, not everyone participates. We do a physical warm-up, crazy 8's, and not everyone keeps up. We sit down and I take out a brown square piece of fabric. This is for the imagination game, which is much like charades. We will pass this sheet around and transform it into different things, and the others must guess what we have made. I begin by swaddling the cloth into a baby shape, swinging it gently in my arms.

"Baby!" they cry, delighted. I pass it off to a wide-eyed older woman who seems to smile eternally. She folds and unfolds it a few times before inspiration strikes--she folds three sides inwards to make a door shape with the edges. She holds it up proudly. A teacher guesses that it is the building we are in. The woman squeals and giggles: "Yes!" And we pass it on. And on, and on.

This game never fails. No matter what the group, I find that everyone is easily captivated by every fold, every crease, every rotation of the sheet. As an observer I am always fascinated by not only what they create but how they go about it. What strikes me most today during this game is the care with which they handle the fabric. Such deliberate folds, conscientious matching of corner to corner, constant thinking and rethinking. Children fold quickly and callously, depending more on giving hints to the group through physical action than by sculpting the fabric. Not so today. They take two to three minutes each just to create their object.

A man in an Elmo T-shirt takes his turn. He folds diagonally twice and lays it on the floor. We stare and ponder. "It is home plate?" I offer. He says no and chuckles. A teacher asks if it is a slice of pizza. No. The other teacher asks if it is an ice-cream cone.

"No," he says. "It's a triangle." He chuckles, relishing his joke.

One man surprises me most. He is the first to leave his chair and step into the center of the circle. He lays the fabric down like a picnic blanket, spreading hands across the surface to smooth out ripples. Once it is flawless, he folds two sides towards each other, halving the diameter. It is a rectangle. He takes one of the short sides and folds it in a few inches, giving the impression of a pillow on a bed. Then he holds up his hands ("Don't guess yet, watch this"). He kneels beside the sheet. He crosses himself three times and folds his hands to pray.

"Bed!" But he shakes his head. He repeats his motions, crossing himself and praying. "Praying by your bed." He shakes his head. He repeats his actions a third time.

We're all at a loss. "Coffin," he says.

--

After we finish, I am led back to the office by one of the teachers and one of the participants, who reintroduces himself as Steve.

Steve is the one who made a sheet into a coffin. He shakes my hand.

I am sure I will not forget his name.

Struck

"Nearly everyone struggles with the mania for a time; the wise conquer it, the foolish make up the comic opera choruses, the unimportant road companies, and the stage-door-keeper's list of 'extra ladies and gentlemen.' From every class and walk of life, from every town and city troop the victims, abandoning their vocations and their homes, as though they had heard the witching notes of a siren song. They come with high hopes and bright dreams...they besiege the agencies, and the managers, and the teachers of acting until their dreams fade, or their money runs out, or they are smitten with realization."

-- Channing Pollock, in his essay "Stage Struck," originally published in The Footlights Fore and Aft


--

Friends in and of the theatre, I have just read a depressing article about people who perform. Granted, the essay comes to us from 1911, and its main target is the advent of crappy vaudeville, but consider the following and see if you are as struck as I was by sad truth:

In nine cases out of ten the mania to go on the stage is prompted by pure desire for glorification. Love of excitement, the fallacious notion that the profession is one of comparative ease and luxury, may be alloying factors, but the essence of the virus is vanity.

In the course of time [the mediocre actor] even begins to arrogate to himself the heroic virtues of the characters he impersonates. It is sweet to see one's name on the cover of a novel, sweet to scrawl one's autograph in the lower left-hand corner of a painting, but O, how doubly and trebly sweet to meet one's own image lithographed under a laudatory line and posted between advertisements of the newest breakfast food and the latest five cent cigar!

Of dramatic schools the number is legion, but only those conducted by dishonest adventurers promise employment to the enrolled student.

This system [in which actors are selected by agency managers] is undeniably hard, and perhaps unjust to the beginner, but...the investor in drama has the fullest right to minimize his risk.

[The theatrical profession] is the one vocation in which the worker must begin again every year.... Unless he has made a prodigious hit--and prodigious hits are very rare--he finds himself no farther advanced next June than he was last September.

Lost to his best friends and companions, travelling at all hours of the day and night, grateful for board and lodging that would not be tolerated by a domestic servant, the player with a small road company has ample reason to repent his choice of career.

No person can possibly succeed on the dramatic stage without the foundation of genuine talent and a superstructure of culture and education.

--

Regardless of what Pollock wrote 99 years ago, I'm back at work, trying to finish the script for the Mark Twain show which I will perform tomorrow morning. I will drive almost three hours, almost straight east, and almost clearly understanding what it is I will say and do in front of "~400ish" students.

After carpooling to Hillsdale, we spent more than a weekend there. Despite a predictable keynote speech, commencement was a solid ceremony, running under three hours this year thanks to the quick name readings from Dr. Moreno. That morning at the Palace, we constructed a sort of commencement bingo sheet; while we heard no slighting of China, we observed everything else on the list. The college President is delightfully predictable in his consistency, especially as pertains to remarks about female students getting married to slovenly male students, throwing out non sequitur statements (this year's: "I just tried snuff for the first time this week") and interjecting Hillsdalian beatitudes that are too simple to be disputed ("You also believe in beauty").

The real joy was found, as always, in company. Saw Reist and grabbed lunch with Jackson. Listened to Evan playing keyboard while Seth demanded, repeatedly, "Play 'Trolley.' " Smoked--a lot. Stole beers at Econ's place. Arrived on Friday night to a party where everyone seemed to A) have a bottle of liquor and B) be thrusting said bottle at you. Grabbed coffee at the Coffee Cup, Palace, and the newly reformed Broad Street Market. Walked most everywhere. Ran almost all the way to Baw Beese on Saturday. Enjoyed everything.

Joke of the weekend, I think, goes to Zach, who informed us that militant abolitionist John Brown was a chronic masturbator.

"He calls it 'bleedin' Kansas.' "

We must have laughed for ten minutes.

It was a lot for three days and nights. But good, good, good.

--

Attended Orthodox Liturgy at Holy Ascension in Albion. It's the definition of beauty, its congregation the epitome of charity. Seeing professors and students and other folks worshiping together before a white iconostasis in a room with only a few pews in the back--feeling so implicit in worship and organic within form--it was too memorable an experience to cheapen here, but I will say this: If I had attended while I was at Hillsdale, I would have become Orthodox by now.

Quiet

"It occurred to me around dusk
after I had lit three candles
and was pouring myself a glass of wine
that I had not uttered a word to a soul all day."

-- Billy Collins, "Quiet" in Ballistics: Poems


--

Read the full poem here. Preview the book here:

The whole book is great--each poem, too. For what it's worth, my favorites are "August in Paris," "Brightly Colored Boats Upturned on the Banks of the Charles," "The Four-Moon Planet," "The Poems of Others," "Quiet," "Tension," "(detail)," "Baby Listening," and "The Great American Poem."

--

Just as I was starting an episode of The Wire, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pushed Pause and then Talk. "I've just had a really crummy day," said a friend, who then asked if we could meet somewhere, a coffee shop, maybe. "Absolutely," I said, and suggested the café on the second floor of a Barnes & Noble nearby. We met and read--aloud in the bookstore café--a Dryden poem, "Religio Laici," while close by a group of middle-aged students recited Italian around a book-covered table and laughed at mispronunciations.

She picked the poem because of the day she'd had: the rigors of graduate school are getting to her. We read it taking turns, stopping arbitrarily after stanzas and spinning the old blue hardcover book around. I'm not usually one to read Dryden (or any Reformation poets) aloud, preferring the Elizabethans or modern Americans with that wonderful emphasis on how this stuff sounds, but this one surprised me. I found myself muttering, "Mm," after certain phrases, marveling at those intellectual rhymes.

Also talked about Orthodoxy (of course), and Thornton Wilder and the final scene from Our Town. (See? Bookstore conversations are never a bad decision.) During our talking I asked how old she was.

"Twenty-four," she said, and then I said,

"Huh, I'll be twenty-four this Mother's Day."

"Enjoy it," she said. "It's a good age. It's the last year that you're officially 'in your early twenties.'"

Which, naturally, gave me some pause.

She's a grad student; I'm a working, acting stiff. It's strange to feel so removed from school after only two years. Last night I realized that I could have easily been the one calling a friend in the evening after a crummy day of grad school.

--

Before all that, I read aloud the entirety of Billy Collins' book. Not a huge achievement--only 110 pages with plenty of white space--but it was still good to do. I can't remember the last book I finished in a single sitting. Let alone, out loud.

--

Still working on the Mark Twain show. The rub is that entertaining 400 kids for 45 minutes while reading 150-year-old stories seems so daunting. I scoured the bookshelf at work (mostly anthologies of plays and non-pertinent books about how to act) for inspiration and came upon a sort of textbook called Storyteller, by Ramon Royal Ross, which I had picked up for 25 cents--or less--at a recent library book sale. I scanned the contents and flipped to the last chapter, entitled "Ten. Reading Aloud."

Ross writes:

The oral interpreter has three duties. The first is to the author; and the duty here is to do more than simply read the words without mumbling... The second duty is to the audience, and for them the reader provides not only entertainment but also understanding and excitement--a sense of the meaning of the selection in their lives. Finally, the reader must be faithful to himself. He must choose literature that has relevance to his own experience... He creates, in his reading, a bond between himself, the audience, and the author.

With its lively adventures and youthful narrator, Treasure Island, like Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has found its primary audience among children...

And if you are a teacher... I remember, as a boy, coming in from lunch recess at Springdale School and listening to my teacher read to us from Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Under the spell of those words, stained plaster walls and a blackened wooden floor changed and grew into a deep forest, with the broad Mississippi flowing by...

There's no question that books, carefully chosen, shared throughout the years, create worlds in the classroom that would otherwise be impossible to reach... So, read aloud. Read to your children for a half-hour each day. Read only the finest, for you send a signal with what you read. Read poems. Read long, difficult books--books they'd not read themselves. Read portions of books--"book bait"--to hook potential readers. And after you've finished reading, leave the book in the classroom where it can be read again. And again.

I don't know whether to feel more inspired or intimidated--though the best intimidations always inspire us. This Mark Twain show is going to be comprised of "book bait" (what a wonderful phrase), and so the challenge turns from deciding the format of the show to picking worthy excerpts.

What, then, from Tom Sawyer? The first chapter is dynamic but only involves three characters seriously; the fence-painting scene is popular; the pirate section ought to get a few laughs. Doing the graveyard scene would probably get me into trouble.

But if I was worried about trouble, wouldn't I steer clear of Huckleberry altogether? I've already decided to replace all N-words with "slave," because for the most part it gets the point across without risking offense. Twain would roll his eyes or punch me in the face for this, but you have to pick your battles.

--

Orthodox pray frequently for a "peaceful, quiet, sinless Christian ending to this life," but from what I've seen this is generally how they would like to live, too: in serenity, quietude. It's a very different view--one concerned with privacy and humility--from the evangelical pomp I grew up in.

How many times was I told to "take it to the streets," "shout it from the rooftops," or "praise him with your lungs or the rocks will cry out"? This, of course, translates to a number of things which have become stereotypes of young American Christians: in-your-face, on-the-street evangelism; tracts left on public toilets; asking strangers the infamous questions, "Would you like to be born again?" and, "Have you asked Jesus into your heart?" and, "Are you going to hell?"; altar calls with syrupy keyboard underscoring; electric guitars and full drum sets during praise-and-worship (at one church I remember the praise leader switching guitars and taking solos during a single song); and a kind of motivational-speaker approach to church sermons (wireless ear microphones, stylish but conservative attire, canned gestures) that I can't let myself abide any more. I'm not judging it; the proper attitude would be to say, simply, that God is surely at work there, too; but it's not for me. I doubt it ever was.

Give me, instead, a peaceful, quiet, sinless Christian life. Or, at least, as close to it as is possible in a world of war, chaos, and guilt. Let me light a candle, kneel in the corner, and pray.

That being said, telling stories aloud is something I love to do--on a stage, in a bar, at a coffee shop. The quiet of life contrasts with the loudness of fake-life. The arts of language and theatre have always been fused, for what is a silent language but bird tracks on a page, and what is a wordless theatre but an incomplete spectacle?

I will not say the silence exists for the noise; I think it's the other way around. We please the ears to make the silence deafen. We play at life to make reality better, and we pray aloud for the quiet life.

--

And now, back to Twain.

Toads

"Dmitri says of you--Ivan is a tomb! I say of you, Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand something in you, and I did not understand it till this morning."

"What's that?" laughed Ivan.

"You won't be angry?" Alyosha laughed too.

"Well?"

"That you are just as young as other men of three and twenty, that you are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact! Now, have I insulted you dreadfully?"

"On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence," cried Ivan.

-- Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, Trans. Constance Garnett

--

Saw five old friends in four days and then slept for twelve straight hours. Ate crepes with the ones who came to Cincy, and ate at the Bonefish Grill for the first time with those who came to Dayton. Watched two movies I've seen before. Drove several hundred miles around southern Ohio, chaperoning or meeting up.

Saw a bad production of The Baker's Wife and a good production of The History of Invulnerability, which Philip Seymour Hoffman also attended that very day. (So we are told: we didn't see him in the house, so perhaps he watched in the shadowy stage manager's box, but purportedly he was wearing an orange hat. This story comes so close to being worthwhile.)

Sometimes, it's hard to find "things to do" in your own city when friends come to visit. But with some friends, you don't have to do anything; it's just enough to breathe the same air. That's what happened this weekend.

--

Reading and running effectively stopped, though. In a few hours between visits, I went to a friend's house near the University for a night of poetry readings. Small group, a very nuanced and quiet gathering. We sat on couches and brought-in chairs and commiserated and performed. We had coffee and special applesauce and many poems that ranged from the theological to the whimsical to the deathly. A stack of anthologies became a spread after a few readings--poetry geeks flipping pages hoping a touchstone verse will catch their eye--stacks becoming unstacked, books left open on the floor, some people reciting from memory, others not trusting themselves to be the sole producer of weighty words.

I got to read "The Bells," by Poe, aloud. Something I must have been subconsciously waiting for years to do, and it was a true rush. That last thirty lines or so is thrilling to speak, and as it was near the end of an evening, it was the thing to do.

I'm already putting together a playlist, as it were, for the next poetry night. Many selections are from Reist's classes, but I'd like to think it's because of the poems, not the professor. These are, as Moore would say, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

Last poetry night's playlist:
- "Departmental," by Robert Frost
- "The Revenant," by Billy Collins
- "Anecdote of the Jar," by Wallace Stevens
- "To a Mouse," by Robert Burns (performed in Scottish dialect)

Next poetry night's playlist (suggestions welcome):
- "Poetry," by Marianne Moore
- "Lucinda Matlock," by Edgar Lee Masters
- "Mr. Flood's Party," by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- "Theme for English B," by Langston Hughes
- "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance," by Elizabeth Bishop
- "The Unknown Citizen," by W. H. Auden
- "Musee des Beaux Arts," by W. H. Auden

(among others)

I like poems that are not just good on paper, but ones that need to be read aloud. Poe's "Bells" is a perfect example--on the page, the eye wants to skip over the repeated words, but aloud, you realize the text gets frantic and horrifying because of the repetition. There's a kind of movement you can't really get on a page.

--

Also: Read this.

--

Poetry has jolted me back into literary mode. Friends have brought me back to life (or something like that).

My future is the imaginary garden right now, and my friends are real within it. (I will not call my friends "toads.") Will I seek other gardens? That's the traveler's dilemma--the people, or the path. Granted, there are people along every path, and every path leads to many people, and not everyone cares about being on your path necessarily...too abstract, sorry...but still.

Still.

It's poetry for life's sake that poets have in mind. It's one thing to read, another to speak, and another thing entirely to enact, to incarnate, what you read and speak. Lucinda would have a thing or two to say right now, and so, I imagine, would the Unknown Citizen.

However, it is Eben Flood, drinking on a hill outside of town in the middle of the night and imagining his friends to be with him, whom I fear.

Expansion

"Homer told us certain truths about the Trojan wars and what they did to individual human beings; Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times told us similar truths about wars in our own times. The two Homers, thousands of years apart, were doing the same work. They were adding to our knowledge and understanding. In the end, newspapers must provide both. We are part of the knowledge industry. We can't be a mere diversion from the realities of the world; we must help people to understand that world. Few of us are presumptuous enough to believe that we are offering the readers the gift of wisdom. But without knowledge, wisdom is impossible.

...Every true journalist is trying to add to our knowledge. That is often at the heart of the conflict with the businessmen who had arrived late to the world of newspapers. The expansion of knowledge and the expansion of profits can be compatible; too often they are not."

-- Pete Hamill, News is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century

--

That essay, incidentally, makes for some awesome reading. The guy is so passionate about newspapers and journalism in general. He offers a unique perspective on how the media handled the Clinton scandal and how the then-new Internet was corroding the tradition of reporting.

What Hamill says about newspapers, to some extent, can be said of theatres. The arts of reporting facts and acting out lies seem to be such polar opposites, but they are not. They involve the same purposes, storytelling being the most obvious, and "the expansion of knowledge" and wisdom perhaps less obvious. Common to both businesses, too, is the inherent obstacle--I will not say it's a flaw--of being a business. You gotta sell papers, and you gotta sell ads, and you gotta sell tickets. (I was told once during a callback that I could sell my own shit in a bag, and now whenever a director says to "sell it," that's what I think about: bullshit.)

At least in my experience, the topics discussed in theatre company meetings are not artistic but financial. A room full of artists vaguely trying to make the bottom line bigger. Numbers outnumber words. No one mentions company-wide devotion to the arts, and instead figureheads push employees to make donations to the arts (the incentive for this is not to help other arts organizations, but to increase one's tax credit).

As a professor recently told me over lunch (after I told him I didn't like how acting had become "just a job" so quickly): "Whatever job you hold will at some point become just a job."

--

So much for jobs, though:

With the hope of finding a small gig to keep me busy over the summer (and yes, to earn some more money), I'm auditioning tomorrow night. There are not many opportunities to act in this area if you're non-Equity and still want to be paid. You have to take these things as they come.

When people are in a show because it's a hobby, those who regard it as a job quickly feel aggravated to be in the same production. That is true of any profession.

--

Been watching a lot of the HBO series The Wire. In fact, I spent almost all of this last weekend watching seasons one and two. Great show. It's rare that economics factor so strongly in any TV show, let alone a crime drama series, but when it does, you know you've got a winner.

Reading, too. Finished a short novel called Isn't It Romantic? By way of Jack H., I came upon this solid Nebraskan writer, Ron Hansen, who sets a lot of stories in a much-too forgotten state. Most novels, poems, movies and plays set in the Heartland tend (for whatever reason) to take place in Iowa. Maybe I'm playing my home state as a victim falsely, but I think I'm more than "just biased": justly biased.

(Or something like that.)

--

And how's about a name drop, while I'm at it. The artistic director just dropped by to flaunt an old Cincinnati Opera program which proves, for I had doubted, that he worked with Placido Domingo back in 1967, when the tenor was still just an unknown singer from Spain. Sure enough, there's ol' PD, and then down the page, listed as Choreographer, is ol' Jack Louiso.

"And look at this," says Jack, pointing to another page, "there's his picture. That's what he looked like when no one knew what he looked like."

--

After Liturgy yesterday, I was invited by a fellow inquirer to come to some reader's theatre gatherings that take place near the UC campus. Apparently, students have formed a group whose joining interest is a love of the oral storytelling tradition. It's voluntary, but for those who show up, reading a part is compulsory. It's not the sort of thing that you can just sit and listen to; everyone reads.

It's just the sort of thing I want to do right now: to read, vocalize, perform--for its own sake. Not for the rent's sake, or to cover utilities. For itself. Unto itself. By itself.

--

A few nights ago, some Tom cast members and I went to see our friend in a community theatre production of Godspell. It was enjoyable. Aside from Leslie (who played Jesus--and very well, by the way) there was one actor who seemed especially energetic, very fun to watch. I mentioned him later and was told he is an Equity actor who did this show for fun. Made sense...at least, it made sense that his performance was so good. What didn't make sense was, Why did he do it?

But I think I understand. For a similar reason, I came close to doing a community theatre Our Town a few months ago. You want to keep doing what you do even when your job doesn't require you to do it. It's a different kind of expansion, one that widens your experience and perhaps shrinks your expectations--and, if possible, helps you to forget them.

Awareness

"But me, I'd rather plant a tree
That grows up tall for all to see,
Until I need a pencil,
Then I'll chop it to the ground.
At night falling down,
Will it make a sound?
Should I even wonder what it'd say?"


-- The Ditty Bops, "Walk or Ride"


--


It's Earth Day, according to many Facebook friends' statuses, and I can honestly say I've seen nothing else out of the ordinary today. Except for a woman in a green shirt planting flowers outside my work window.


I saw a sign above a stretch of Kentucky highway that proclaimed this week (April 19-23) "National Work Zone Awareness Week." I'd like to say that as a result I am more aware of the road work going on around my community, but I'd also like to believe I'm generally well aware of it, especially when it diverts my routes to work, the nearest bank, Kroger, etc. Most recently, they've closed the blue suspension bridge for repainting, which adds an average fifteen minutes to my morning drive. I'm well aware of the gas bill.


When I'm told about all these Awareness weeks, days and months, I wonder if this is all because of the college Greek system. Think about it. The lobbyists who get these Awareness periods onto the calendars went to college, and (based on stereotypes of lobbyists and fraternity/sorority members) they go about it in the same way the Alpha Beta Gamma (?) chapter historian might go about "raising awareness" of any number of topics. Obesity, conservationism, whatever.


Not sure where the idea came from that picking an arbitrary period of time and christening it for National Awareness would actually do much good. I guess it's just a symbol, but of what? Did Work Zone Awareness beat out other awareness groups in some kind of bizarre lobbyist competition where the winner got award money and the week of their choice?


Awareness of the elephant doesn't get it out of the room.


--


We have visitors this week. The Cincinnati Opera is using our space to rehearse La Bohème, which we have figured out will be entirely sung in English. Apparently, this new production was a huge hit in London last year.


I'm not too familiar with all the music, shame on me. Some co-workers, however, are swooning in their cubicles as the beefy baritone declaims his jealousy; and just a few hours ago the artistic director informed us, while a formidable soprano rattled the downstairs windows, that this was his favorite aria. When asked which aria that was, he replied with a smug grin, "Doesn't matter, as long as it's in Bohème."


And just a few minutes ago, one of the male singers was in the bathroom, and we heard him singing his strain. "Are they rehearsing in the bathroom now?" a co-worker asked the room.


"No, I think he's just taking a really amazing poo," I said.


--


With only three more shows of Tom Sawyer before my acting career at TCT comes to a close, I've been thinking a lot about whether to audition for summer gigs. Because I'm teaching during the day all summer, they have to be nightly local groups, which limits my options substantially. They also gotta pay.


New gig or no, it doesn't change my timeline. I'll be in Cincinnati until the end of August, at which point I hope to have my furniture sold and my possessions crammed into my Neon. Assuming I'll join the Navy this fall, this could be my last self-planned trip for a while, and I plan to take my time, maybe only driving a few hours per day and making a week of it, crashing at campgrounds or friends' houses at night, visiting wineries and Midwestern oddities by day. I always feel bad on hurried road trips for not stopping to investigate weird places. If anyone knows of anything particularly worthy of a detour on the potential route (see below), please let me know.



View Larger Map


--


Tonight I am going to see Nativity Players' production of Godspell, to see my good friend Leslie play Jesus Christ. Yes, Leslie is a woman, and yes, this is a community theatre, so yes, the small group of us who are paying $10 a seat have already decided to enjoy ourselves.


Last night, some of us went to the Party in the Park, which is sort of an excuse for people in this area to try to get drunk on Wednesday nights. It was fun, though. Flyers appeared in our hands early on, flyers advertising a new kind of "awareness" program. I actually never found out what the group is really about, but they had a photo booth that was mostly unused. We used it five times, for a total of twenty awkward pictures.


--


In Tempest-Tost, a show we did in college, there's a child who brews her own cider (or wine or beer or something). She says you have to wait for "the psychological moment" to open the bottles, and it's one of those strange lines that has stuck with me ever since. Over time, the phrase "the psychological moment" has meant to me many things and the same thing, an expression of something really undefinable.


In lieu of a true definition: It's the instant when you suddenly know, or you smell or see or sense, that the ripening is over; picking is inevitable, the harvest has come; change is upon you. When it's time to hit the ol' dusty trail, to close up shop, to let the paint dry overnight.

The awareness is growing within me of a great psychological moment forming. I now claim the next four months and ten days for my personal awareness of...whatever.

My time in Cincinnati is drawing near its psychological moment.

Tattooed

"All of them were conscious of their limitations; they knew that they never once had turned out an absolutely perfect newspaper, because the newspaper was put out by human beings. But in their separate ways, they tried very hard never to write anything that would bring the newspaper shame. They would be appalled at the slovenly way the word 'tabloid' is now used. They didn't pay whores for stories. They didn't sniff around the private lives of politicians like agents from the vice squad. Even in large groups, on major stories, the photographers didn't behave like a writing, snarling, mindless centipede, all legs and Leicas, falling upon some poor witness like an instrument of punishment. Somehow, they found ways to get the story without behaving like thugs or louts."

-- Pete Hamill, News is a Verb


--

Interesting time at the movies:

Caught The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night at the Esquire. Very good thriller from Sweden, a sort of modern film noir that makes good use of hacking and databases without forsaking good old window-breaking and archives. A disgraced journalist hired to solve a forgotten murder on a private island, an abused (psychopathic?) young woman who gets obsessed also, and so on.

After the climax and about 20 minutes from the end, during the most revealing and emotional part of the film, there was a loud popping sound and then silence. "...and the sound goes out?" asked an exasperated old man in front. "Need some sound," a woman behind me said. "Seriously?" came another voice. Someone chuckled.

A few minutes passed, and it became clear that the cinema staff could not fix the problem, so we resolved ourselves to watch the rest of the movie anyway. Luckily, we had the subtitles to guide us, and before we knew it, we were back in the movie, as engrossed as those early movie audiences must have been in the era of silent films. We laughed at ironic dialog as we read it. And the visual story was well told, too. In a way, the silence had greater impact on us than anything else--people stopped chomping popcorn and sipping the last of their sodas, couples stopped muttering to each other, everyone sat perfectly still so as not to creak a seat.

At some point, the speakers sounded again, but the music was all wrong. It was the pre-feature soundtrack, the joyful elevator music that played under realty ads and pictures of people eating popcorn. Everyone groaned and laughed, and when it went silent again, we sighed with relief.

--

Before the movie started, I had a low, measly feeling that I only get in movie theaters--it's a sense that I really don't want to see any movie with these people. I overhear stupid conversations and roll my eyes, judging the people around me. I prepare myself: These people are going to laugh at every corny joke, those folks will not eat their food quietly, and that guy with the hearing aid is going to keep asking his wife what was just said.


But when the sound went out, so did that attitude. The lack of sound was now an obstacle, and--I'm trying to say this without sounding corny--we sort of pulled together to make it through the rest of the film. Everyone shut up. We were in this. It was on.

I think it's a testament to the movie, which admittedly is not the best movie ever made. But it's good--fresh and strong, something that could withstand a silent goodbye and still leave an impact. For fans of foreign thrillers, see it if you can.

I'm also interested in reading the book, too.

--

Attended my first baby shower party today: a co-worker had her birthday and we had ourselves an outdoor picnic and baby shower. We were told to wear pink.

Two lunch potlucks in two days straight. Spring is here.

And Party in the Park starts tonight. Maybe I'll see a real girl with a dragon tattoo there.

Walks

"On no account," cried Lise. "On no account now. Speak through the door. How have you come to be an angel? That's the only thing I want to know."

"For an awful piece of stupidity..."

-- Lise and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, trans. Constance Garnett

--

Between the two morning shows for schools, the adults in Tom Sawyer sneaked across the street to the Proctor & Gamble park, where we had a potluck. Chicken and potato and spaghetti salads, chips and dips and chicken strips, and I added some break-and-bake cookies. With the sun and grass and tulips in bloom, people took "senior picture" photos of each other. A mother with three kids ate lunch nearby and shot us a dirty look when someone suggested that everyone make a "poop face."

Children's theatre people are, first and foremost, theatre people.

--

Got my tax refund back from the State of Kentucky. I got $62.

The next day, got a notice from the State of Kentucky about auto registration renewal. It will cost $63.

--

Been walking as much as possible from my apartment to the Taft. It's a nice walk, and I like thinking that for the two weeks a show runs downtown, I can act like the other conscientious twentysomethings who migrate across the Ohio every morning. Sometimes, I dress more executively to blend in.

I see women who look no older than me, wearing sheik pantsuits and talking on cell phones, and at once I feel so poor, so out of the loop. What do they do for a living? I used to feel the same way in Hillsdale, when the Kappas (mostly they were Kappas) walked past. What do their parents do for a living?


I tell myself that they're actually in their late twenties, or maybe even into their thirties, and that they look so young because the meaninglessness and tedium of their jobs force them to regain their lost sense of youth through exterior means. But that can't be true, not universally. There's gotta be an 18-year-old genius among them somewhere.

--

Last night, one of our fellow actors was jumped and mugged. He was on a nighttime walk in a bad part of town, making a phone call. He is white; his assailants were black. They came from behind, hit the back of his head, and then kicked him while he was down. He immediately gave up to them the things they took: phone, keys, backpack. (Strangely, they didn't take his wallet.)

The victim is a friend, and he was in high spirits despite the wounds on his face. He joked that they were going to open his backpack only to find two books and a pair of dance shoes. He said when one of the muggers said to take his flip-flops, he pleaded from the sidewalk: "Oh, come on, man, don't take my flip-flops."

They didn't take his flip-flops.

Not sure if this detail is entirely relevant or not, but he is also the only Quaker I know. In fact, he might be the only Quaker I've ever known. He told us he actually went to seminary for a few years before he realized he was spending all his spare time not in the church but in rehearsals at the local community theatre.

Because they took the backpack with the dance shoes, he had nothing to wear on his feet during the show any more. Late last night, I got a text from the stage manager asking if I had any size 9-10 dress shoes for him; I did. This morning, he walked in my shoes.

This is perhaps too ironic, but in the show he plays Doc Robinson, who gets himself stabbed by "River" Joe (can't call him Injun Joe) in the graveyard. He stumbles with his hands clutching his belly and falls onto a tombstone-covered wagon. Upstage and behind some trees, Tom and Huck watch it happen.

We talked about this today. "What I don't get is why Tom and Huck get a big gospel funeral, and everyone just forgets about Doc Robinson, who was murdered a few hours before they disappeared," he said.

I think it's a valid point.

--

In the last chapter I read from The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha is walking to someone's house when he encounters a group of schoolchildren who are standing in a ditch by the side of the road. They all carry stones and are throwing them at one boy, who stands alone. When Alyosha intercedes, he is shocked to find himself pelted with stones--thrown by the boy, not the group. He asks repeatedly what he has done to the boy, who responds by biting Alyosha's finger to the bone. The group disperses, laughing at the Good Samaritan. Alyosha asks one last time what he did to harm the boy, and the boy cries and runs away.

What strikes me about this scene is that Dostoevsky mentions several times that the boy not only has stones in his hand, but that his coat pockets are full and weighed down with rocks, too. The image is one of a victim's hostility: throw rocks at me and I'll save them, carry them with me forever just to throw them back.

The Quaker, mugged in darkness but joking in light; the victim of stoning gathering stones. There are always two ways of reacting to life.