violence and romance in play

Unrelated note: Nihilism can be a joyful relief from reality.
-response to NYTimes review of Will Eno's latest play.

I've been fascinated by my observation that violence is an accepted aspect of childhood play but romance is a strong taboo. Children are drawn to play at both, probably out of a combination of reenacting behaviors they encounter and relatively unmediated emotional expression.
For some time I've thought that this disparity derived from the relative dangers--while violence in its most extreme forms can lead to permanent damage and death, the most extreme expressions of romance lead to more present lasting effects. Death and scars become norms but babies reassert themselves moment to moment. Of course the psychological scars of violence reassert themselves as well, but they're less prominent.

In my work with my students I've cut out almost all romance. It gets referred to but the highest level of involvement will be an arm over a shoulder or linked arms or hands. The violence remains prominent and much of it happens offstage, but I've been shaken by the real potential for injury in even the most carefully staged combat sequences. Clearly violence is far more dangerous than romance, yet there's no question of increasing the degree of romance in the work. Therefore I think the taboos may have more to do with emotional vulnerability. In play children experience much less emotional vulnerability in peer-associated violence (particularly in the context of play rather than effective violence) than peer-associated romance. Why this seems to be the case I'm not sure. I suspect that the line between play and reality is pretty thin for children (which is why they are both the most demanding and most fulfilling audiences) and that this plays a role in the discomfort. Certainly there is a developmental aversion to romance and proclivity for acting on emotions--even love, though no romance. I suspect there are significant societal controls on expressions of love as adults struggle to differentiate between love and romance and that these controls also factor in the taboo.

I imagine others must be noticing these things and asking these questions as well. In the meantime think I'll cut back on the stage combat till I hear the results of their research.

Not My Car part 2

Things come up in my weekly meeting with the boss. The latest was the observation that for all the family-focus in this town almost all of the theatre that's appropriate for kids under 13 (in my book--which is under 21 in Sunhole years, and even then you're going to hell) is performed by kids. A ten year old whom I know wanted recommendations for a play acted by adults--not a musical (there's plenty of squeaky-clean musicals on the boards) and all I could find was The 39 Steps at my theatre's crosstown rival. There are at least two other theatres that create shows for kids by kids, but no high-quality productions for kids and families. The notion that children's theatre doesn't have to be high-quality theatre enrages me a bit and it's a hypocrisy that's not specific to Sunhole. It almost makes me want to kick around here awhile to put together something to change that story. Of course kicking around Sunhole for the long-term is not an option. Maybe the modified truck and the children's theatre are a match. The road is out there and I'm getting increasingly mobile...

arrogance and insecurity

I was recently reminded that when I moved to Sunhole I demurred at the potential for dating here for several reasons, perhaps chiefly my fear of being some girl's "ticket out". I was reminded of this recently and take some pride in having achieved enough perspective to see the astounding arrogance of the thought. I think I recognized the arrogance at the time--I felt a bit sheepish saying it--but I felt the sentiment nonetheless.

--

I've been thinking about the importance of teaching students how to deal with failure. A lot of the problems I see, especially in disempowered communities have to do with the ways that people deal with prolonged disappointment.

We all grow up with images suggesting what our future may look like and while a white boy has a variety of images and, depending on his class, these may even be over-inflated, a black male's images are largely negative and extraordinarily daunting in comparison with the images that dominate the media landscape (which are those of the wealthy and privileged few who can afford to make such image-creation economically viable).

You know this, but most of the responses to this situation that I see focus on inflating the sense of possibility in the disenfranchised. This could be a great strategy in a socialized system but in a tenaciously capitalist system most people are not going to be number one most of the time and popular images will always portray number one because that's what everyone wants to be, even if we're told (by our life circumstances or media images) that we can't ever be number one.

It strikes me that a more effective strategy would be to teach methods for dealing with disappointment, rather than inflating egos. This is as true for the over-privileged white kids I teach, whose parents let them quit when they're disappointed with the size of their roles (a thankfully rare, but sadly real situation) as it is for underprivileged children and...you know...me. This is not to suggest that we should teach people to be satisfied with not being number one, but rather we need to help people to find ways not to discount themselves before making an attempt. There's a fine balance there in that we also need to teach people risk assessment, not to throw themselves off the cliff. The trick is in determining what's a cliff and what's just the blinding light of possibility.

I hadn't fully appreciated how personal this problem is until my sister pointed out that she doesn't think about her chances for success, only whether or not she wants to do something. With that attitude she's been quite successful--not consistently, but sufficiently and certainly more often than not. At the moment I can't conceive of what that life must be like, but knowing it exists, and exists for someone with whom I identify makes it very real.

This is part of why I haven't become an actor.
Big project. Good to be able to articulate it, especially in the context of hearing my line about being some girl's ticket out of town with new ears.

Arrogance and insecurity. It's a hit to the self-esteem to say it but they're two sides of a coin I've been holding tightly for a long time.

my theatre, not my car

There are many uncertainties in my life right now and many visions. For quite a few years one of these visions has involved taking theatre to people. I want to drive into cul-de-sacs, unfold a theatre out of the vehicle and do a show, travel around the country performing wherever there are people. I've thought a lot about what this vehicle would look like. It could be animal-drawn--anywhere there's grass there's feed and the animals themselves would draw a crowd. It could be an antique--also a good way to draw attention. It could be a trailer that can be set up and left in place for awhile.

Theatre is temporal. I'm leery of permanence in theatre. I want to perform on the roadsides with sets made of ice and denouements determined by the early edition of the next day's paper.

There was construction going on at work today and I was quite taken with the extendable bed on the contractor's pickup. It got me thinking, why not just use a pickup, if a ladder rack were strong enough it could support a stage and actors. So now I've found such a ladder rack. It would put the stage a bit higher off the ground than I'd like but it could easily be set up to perform in seconds or carry material to open out more grandly with more stage space and more possibilities for performance. Suddenly I find myself looking at pickup trucks. This is far outside my identity.
And it's a bit down the pike as well, but it's a start.
The world is full of possibility.
I'd better get on the MFA apps. while the feeling lasts.

Social Justice Protest Song

This may or may not be finished, but it's a resting place at any rate.

All The Fighters Have Left

If I live to die an old man
Will I have lived my life in vain?
Could I have lived for something more than
Just to see the sun again?

If you fight hard enough to help the powerless
Those who have power will see you dead
If you are meek, minding only your own business
You will inherit all the fighters have left

Come join in the struggle
When all of the others
Agree to peace
And sharing the best

A new world is forming
You’ll wake up one morn and
Discover all
The fighters have left

I don’t trust permanence or institutions for
Self-preservation is their only aim
Money and politics stay out of governance,
medicine, art, education and faith.

If you fight hard enough to help the powerless
Those who have power will see you dead
If you are meek, minding only your own business
You will inherit all the fighters have left

Go to the cul-de-sacs
Go to the mountain shacks
Go to the places
That Fear calls home

Dare to stay single
Find faith that everything will be
All right when you find
You’re fighting alone

If I fail fatherhood can I still be a man
Making no children to roam on the earth?
If I never marry will I always carry
The stigma of never learning to care?

If my love is strong enough to help the powerless
Will I have anything left for myself?
If I am meek, minding only my own business
Can I do good for anyone else?

Dr. Update

I think I got dumped by my doctor. A message on the answering machine said I should call the Dr.'s office. I never did get ahold of anyone who claimed to be the person with whom I should be speaking, but they all seemed to know that I needed to pick up some files.
Some files?
I got there this A.M. and there was my entire medical record. Why am I receiving this? No one knows. I think maybe the Dr. decided that, since I might be splitting town in a year there was no point in his holding on to my records any longer.

I put the file into my satchel and continued on toward work. I began to feel as though I'd had a spat with my girlfriend one morning then came home to find my furniture and dirty laundry on the sidewalk.
The file feels like that egg I carried in 7th grade to learn the responsibilities of child-rearing and to scare us into safe or no sex. There's this delicate and important thing living in my much-abused bag, the shoe leather of my intellectual existence in which everything else is transported.

I took a few moments at the office to look through the file. There were few surprises, some astoundingly bad handwriting, the whole lengthy story told in reverse. A few scattered notes of tests and updates with scribbles about career developments and a dearth of health insurance in the margin, then a sudden crisis starting softly, pleased at the recovery progress leading back to the surgeries themselves, like watching a feather floating up off the floor. Then the surgeries with a eerie lack of crisis, though the notes to captures some of the malaise and depression between bouts with the scalpel. Then a long, drawn out, growing hope out of the despair and certainty--the word inexorable was applied to my condition at one point. Then scattered notes on inoculations and vaccinations.

When the uber-diagnosis's term first appeared (in standard chronology) there were several articles on the condition collected by a curious doctor unschooled in its ins and outs. One examined a suggested connection between the diagnosis and schizophrenia. The article described a study that found no link between them but suggestion has its power and my moments of troubled mind seem all the more sinister.
The troubled mind denies all hope. With a troubled mind where can there be love or professional achievement?
The study found no connection, and yet...

The language of the medical file is strange: "patient denies...", which suggests to me that I'm hiding something.

--

My closest chum has reexamined his career choices. He and his wife are in different branches the same obscure field, both finishing up their dissertations while attending to a five month old. Jobs are few and the politics around them is rife, and he basically thinks his branch is awash in bullshit and doesn't want to play the game. So he's done his research, identified what he wants and needs in a job and has decided to become an actuary.
I can't fault him.

I know what I want/need to do, but I don't see how to get there from here. It requires either a PhD. or MFA. I don't want to do the politics of the PhD. and I can't see how I can acquire the prerequisite of three years' professional experience to get accepted into an MFA program.
I feel like I'm in the only job for which I'm qualified. Is this it? Is this the top of my career? Is there nowhere else to go?

Pieces are coming into place that may allow me to finally stage something. The production values are miniscule. I could do the thing on my own but would prefer to do it with others. Others may be on hand.

We shall see what comes of this.

Another Lyric

My head is much more in protest-song land right now, but revisiting something sweeter is a pleasant respite.
This came pouring out of the uke at the start of the summer.
I still like it.

Come To Me Tonight

There’s a cream of wheat moon breaking the horizon
Porch-light melting into sweet cream butter
All the whole wide world is hoping
you’ll come to me tonight

There’s a cross-town bus blowing on the meadow
Reminding us of all we left behind
You can taste its tang against the cool
If only you will come to me tonight

Fireflies are dancing in my eyes
Drunk with dreaming I’ll procrastinate the sunrise
Meadowlark is singing in the dark
I'm afraid that rooster’s got my number

Yes, I’ve tried my best to fathom your address
Touched each doorbell and dialed every phone
Come to me or I will be
Alone--forever yours--all my life
So please
Come to me tonight

the battles never end

Seeing the Dr. yesterday left me...
Embarrassed for one thing, as I made lame excuses (are there any other kind?) for my weight loss. Ten pounds over a year and a half may seem like nothing to others but my minimum just-got-out-of-the-hospital-and-resemble-a-skeleton is 140 so 155 is not so good and, admittedly the cheeks look a little hollow.
How strange to worry about weighing enough in a society of obesity, where my boss, who looks healthy, is obsessively judgmental of weight in others and herself. Luckily I now have one colleague who is also hideously thin, but she's getting past a history of eating disorders. She says she's past it. That finality seems suspect.
--I once came to tears in an acting class because I thought I'd gotten past being "in my head" and the instructor had used that exact term to describe me. When I gave the reason for my sudden flush of emotion she said, "Frankly, that's terribly naive." Ah, acting instructors, such delightful sadists.--
The question of why I'd lost ten pounds stuck on me bringing up memories of an anorexic ex-GF (it's not about appearance, it's about control) and my needs for control, the distance I've retracted from the peace and ease I had following the four week acting intensive this winter.
I've forgotten how to be human again. I resemble my father more and more--awkward, tightly wound, flailing out in inopportune moments, living in the world inside my head, disconnected from everyone else's perception and experience just enough to be off-putting.

I had been thinking I'd quit ragging on Sunhole--good practice. Truth be told I can't tell you today what those significant differences are between the cultures of the east versus the west, but I know they're there. Dr. gave me the big test on that, first question: you're new here, how are you liking Sunhole? I tried to be relatively positive but failed. Ten minutes of conversation about Sunhole culture and he says "I really think you should stay". It makes me angry. I can understand civic pride, but why force it on others? If I could understand that evident need in this town then maybe I wouldn't be so angry when faced with it.

The curious discovery in all this (though I've known it for some time I haven't fully appreciated it before) is that I like the next town over quite a lot. Gattaca's tiny, overwhelmed by its university. Why is it more appealing? Does it have to do with the fact that downtown Sunhole resembles nothing so much as Disneyland? That even the river can be turned off and on--currently off for renovations--they're building artificial rocks to change the low-water season flow! Gattaca does seem more real--surreal maybe, given its moonscape of a landscape. It doesn't put on any airs whatsoever.

Let's wrap this up neatly and suggest that, despite my intense focus on integrity I still go in for a lot of image control. I'm not past that yet. Being more like Gattaca and less like Sunhole is a life's work. We never stop being (anorexic, alcoholic, in our heads, our father's sons) we can only hope to stop doing by doing something else.
Maybe that's too facile but I've got wrap this and get to work.

Off-Day

I feel like my personality does not help me achieve my ends. I fear losing my identity in pursuing my visions and dreams. This reminds me of the claustrophobia in my longer relationships. Perhaps losing myself is necessary to allow the relationship help me be a better person.

On the other hand
Context:
This morning I talked to a new colleague as I often did to my recently departed colleagues, spewing updates on my life, observations on the world and my responses to it. Her response was “wow, I’m getting a lot of judgment and bitterness” said in her usual valley-girl voice. I had a strong negative response to this.
I feel like judging a statement as judgmental has become the only unimpeachable opinion. I don’t buy it.
I judge judgment. I think people who identify judgment are frequently judging it in their too-noble and enlightened voices, temple bell smooth and lush in tone. Why can’t I have an opinion? Why can’t I have an overtly negative response? Why is that not allowed? Why is that judging and why is that bad?
There are things I don’t like. I don’t want to participate in those things if I don’t have to. I don’t like your town. This doesn’t mean I don’t like you. This doesn’t mean I think you’re less of a person for liking it. I judge this to be not mine.

Another Purpose

This blog lacks focus.
This blog lacks updates.
This blogger lacks follow-through(?)--initiative(?)--persistence(?)--commitment(?)...
This blogger lacks a thorough understanding of copyright and the means for attaining it.

Therefore
a new vein.

I've been doing a lot of songwriting.

Music was part of the family story but not part of family life. The guitar didn't see much action, disappeared in a robbery and wasn't missed. My grandfather and great grandfather were said to value music but no one ever played.
I grew up with a piano in the house. I have vague recollections of a piano being moved up the 72 steps to my childhood home. At some point that piano was replaced by a smaller one from my grandparents.
--
I wonder what happened to the old one--I never did understand what happened to it, only that my mother insisted that the replacement was better. Could it be that we sold the old one in hopes of shoring up our then shaky finances? I never liked the new one. It had an odd buzz in it and seemed small and unimpressive compared with the old one.
--
My sister took piano lessons sporadically. I picked out tunes for a couple songs by ear. My mother annually peeled back the cover and painfully plunked out Christmas carols, but the piano saw little action.
I took recorder lessons for a while, but never learned to read music. I never even learned to associate finger positions with note names, just relying on my ability to play by ear and memorize the playing patterns to avoid admitting my ignorance or struggling to learn something hard--a life pattern I'm working to change.
I took up the tin whistle and played joyfully and primitively (without instruction) but alway aspired to more.
I took a semester of piano lessons, facing my embarrassment at sounding stupid running scales and making mistakes in practice and at having skills contemporary to a pre-teen. Ultimately that embarrassment defeated me--I refused to perform at the recital and quit.
I sang a lot--in an internationally touring boy choir, in high school choirs, in college choir (till the high bass line of Beethoven's Ninth led me to quit in frustration). I took voice lessons, tired of being stuck in the chorus, determined to solo. I took music theory, but quit after scoring in the 40s on the first couple quizzes.
I worked at a theatre at the turn of the millennium where a colleague learned to play ukulele for a show. The uke made sense, like the tin whistle which had holes for the fingers where the fingers naturally fell. The six strings of the guitar made no sense to my four fingers.

Seven and a half years ago I went looking for a protest in response to our invasion of Iraq. Unable to find one I stumbled upon and into a music shop. The first thing I saw was a tiny banjo with four strings, a banjo-ukulele. I touched it and something in me responded to the sound. I couldn't stomach the $150 cost there and then but returned the next day to buy it and was playing songs in no time.
I'd written songs since my teens, a kind of heightened poetry with a strong tune. I wrote several songs while trying to live in NYC following college. I wrote songs driving to and from my first serious girlfriend's house. I wrote songs during grad school, inspired by a novel and with half an idea that they might form a musical theatre adaptation of that work. I wrote songs while teaching at a remote boarding school, and now I'm writing songs here in Sunhole.
Last Christmas, at my sister's request, I laid down a few tracks on the Mac app. Garageband and gave CDs of those tracks to family and a colleague whose taste in music was impeccable. The colleague's husband, a harmonica player, liked the songs and we started playing together. I hit a few open mics, built confidence. I keep writing songs.
So now I think I'll lay down some lyrics here. Maybe I'll mention some backstory.

One of the better and more popular numbers is something I call

Sprague Ave.

Standing on this railway platform
cold wind blowing down the track
Don't know where I'm going
hope I won't be back
Got to get around these wives,
husbands, children, little lives
are calling me
to join them
Calling me back now

And every little town I pass
looks exactly like the rest
Factories, broken backs,
a riverbank palimpsest
Every railside face I see
seems to say that same thing
they're calling me
to join them
Calling me back now

But a one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again

Trust the good in everyone's
the hardest lesson I have learned
Best intentions come undone
cruel-hearted fools leave you burned
So many I have loved and hurt
for fear that they would hurt me first
but still they call
me to join them
Calling me back now

A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again

Can't you hear that bell a clanging?
Can't you see that flashing light?
Drifter's dreamride gently fading
in the arms of this good night
Got no reason left to rage
the curtain falls on my seventh age
Rhe light will die
and I will join them
Going back there now

A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tonged promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again

written fall 2009

Meanwhile in Delaware...

Moments ago I submitted a friend request on FB to the husband of the Big One, the girl who sent me spinning, the one I never really got over. I genuinely liked the guy when I knew him. I admire him for being able to be married to her. I often say that I hope they're happily cheating on one another as they had on various others in the time that I knew them both, but I don't think I mean that. I feel more comfortable hoping that they're happy. I don't know why, maybe it's the baby slung to his back in his profile shot.

A week or two ago I watched American Splendor for the first time. I'd wondered about the guy in the obits., friends had the movie and insisted that I'd love it. They were right--frighteningly so. So much of it was so familiar--the irascibility, the gloominess, the hopelessness, the desperation, the cat. I take hope and pride in the fact that I'm not as messy as Pekar in his film portrayal, nor (I like to think) quite so judgmental or quite so irascible.
--I recall listening to a Studio 360 interview in which Anderson and the author he was interviewing used the word irascible with such specificity and frequency that it became euphemistic. By irascible did they mean that the author's father was abusive?--
Of the many familiar moments and qualities in the film the one that struck most keenly was one of deepest despair, as Pekar looks out over the freeway wondering at the value of his persistence, wondering why he isn't hit by a bus. It's not a suicidal moment, there's no motivation to act. It's more of an existential fatigue touched with an illogical will to set the teeth and go in for another round, dodging the angel's touch that brings that magnificent defeat. I know that scene intimately.
In the film the scene cuts to the words "Meanwhile in Delaware" and the story turns toward one of its more hopeful twists as Pekar finds love--or something akin to it. This is not causal. For all the times I've stared at subway tracks and oncoming buses and cataracts, and longed for rest Meanwhile in Delaware has not followed. Yet, the scene--the whole movie, in fact--left me feeling as hopeful as I have in some time--as predicted by the friend who lent it.

I feel like I've lost the ability to feel romantic love, to find women attractive in more than just the abstract and objectified way of seeing the pretty or the beautiful, but rather in the electric intimacy of possibility. Then I remember that I live in Sunhole, an alien place where I doubt there are any attractive women nor any unmarried of any appearance over the age of 25.
I believe that location is not the entire problem. I believe that changing my behavior can alter my experience, but I prefer to use my money to advance my career and prepare to return home, rather than put myself in places where I might encounter people. In the town of Sunhole this seems like a solid investment, a smart bet.

Facing the uncertainty that dominates the long view of life--and even the momentary, as with the woman in Pittsburgh who happened to be walking across a grate when the transformer beneath it exploded in a fireball--we latch on to plans and strategies to provide leverage for our hopes. I suspect that most of these strategies serve nothing more than to help us sustain hope between fecundities. I don't know that focusing on what I want, rather than what I don't want or what I've lost will change anything. I don't know that changing my location or going to events will revive my ability to connect with another person, to conflate our concerns and dreams. It's even possible that doing nothing is a viable option.

I wonder if reconnecting with the Big One, even through her husband, will change anything for me. I guess I'd like to love them as a couple in hopes that I'll feel no more aggrieved than I do at watching my friends marry the wonderful women they've met--where was I when they met? How have I not met these women--or how did I let them slip past me and into others' arms?
I know that forgiving the Big One is a one way street--at least I think it is. I don't think she needs to participate for it to ease my heart, but I prefer to have a connection rather than hermetic peace.

I've taken to railing against marriage, taking Benedic's defense--if there'll be no women in my life then I'll decry marriage and deny that love has sufficient pleasure. But it's hollow, another strategy to make persistence tolerable, to cope with unfulfilled hope, an alternate form of patience. Who knows; my bachelor days may be numbered. I'd do well to take advantage of them now.

I've been thinking about movement

An audience enters a tiny, dark space.
They are encouraged to continue packing into the theatre.
They are told that they may leave the theatre at any time by telling everyone their name, saying “My name is _____!”.
The walls slowly expand as the audience fills the theatre and presses against them.
For a time the ceiling grows with the walls.
Around the time the last of the audience enters the theatre its walls close completely around the audience and the ceiling begins to lift away but the darkness remains.
A couple begins to kiss. They continue for some time. They grope.
The space continues to grow and changes in shape.
A cell phone rings. Its owner attends to it.
A spotlight comes on. Someone is standing under it.
Someone else begins to speak a speech.
The speaker stops.
Someone else begins to move. Perhaps this person spins, slowly at first, then faster.
Someone moves to interact with the moving person. Their movements slow down, leading them toward the light and they begin a conversation.
The conversation is becomes more and more interesting. The speakers move out of the light and over to one side of the space.
The conversation grows more interesting; it also grows quiet.
An image is projected on a wall opposite the conversation. The image may move.
The image tells a story.
People walk in front of the image.
People near the image sit down so others can see.
The image disappears.
It appears again somewhere else, continuing the same story.
Music plays. It makes people want to dance. The space is large enough to allow the audience to dance easily.
Some people dance.
The space changes shape. It may grow smaller.
The music gets louder.
The space suddenly expands and lights come up. The play becomes a rock concert.
The music ends.
The bandleader says “Thank you very much!”
The performance is over?

PhK the PhD

Well, what has happened here?
I had a big, linear, mechanized plan for setting my teeth and making a real go of it at the PhD apps. There was a lot of disenchantment, there was the back and forth with Northwestern about my interests and my inability to understand why they have an interdisciplinary PhD in theatre and a PhD in perf. studies. JZM reinforced my disenchantment with his academic surface analysis of the perf. studies world. Nothing was speaking to me loudly or clearly.
Then Mom suggested (as she has in the past) that I consider an MFA in acting.
Terror.
Almost nothing scares me like the prospect of applying to Acting MFA programs. I take this as a good sign, this is something I need to pursue, but my confidence is so lacking I won't dare so much as peruse a major market school. So I spent quality time checking out Iowa, Wayne State and UConn. Iowa had an interesting progression, UConn has a puppetry program at the same campus and I know a prof., also it's in the hinterlands of the megalopolis, instead of just hinterlands. I will likely apply to UConn just to pay heed to my terror, but I have moved on some more.
The mission statements for the acting programs engaged me as little as those of the PhD programs. MFAs in acting are for people who've decided to dedicate their lives to acting. To that end there is a bit of financing, but otherwise, what utter bullshit! If one wants to act, one should act!
I want to teach college students and adults and make theatre, acting and producing and directing. So I'm looking at directing MFAs. And what's nutty about it is that I feel enough confidence to apply to major market programs (with some backwater-ish safetys). The process is nascent but already vastly improved on the PhD./Acting MFA scenes.

All that said, college profs. I know often have acting MFAs. I'm not sure I understand this. Most of what they do involves fostering actors and directing shows. It is useful to understand acting inside and out but what they actually do has more to with directing.
I do have personal needs an Acting MFA might fulfill. I want to better understand why I find it so hard to show up as an actor, to bring my A-game. There's stuff within that struggles to make it out. I want to release it as an actor and I don't know how or who might help me.
Directing MFAs have the breadth I desire. I want to go a step beyond Tadeusz Kantor, I want shows conducted, let the conductor follow the interaction of the actors and audience, cueing the SM (yes, still have an SM, who can shout and roar and problem solve in an isolated booth), bring the pulse of the show back into the activated space of the proscenium line, let phones ring and music grow out of the walls, here, now, in this moment.

The application requirements for directing MFAs excite me, they don't terrify me (though they do scare me a little). So let us go forth and make essays in cyberspace On Directing!

another day in the shadows of uncertainty

It's been a curious week in confidence and intentions.
I've been puzzled by the distinction between theatre studies and performance studies for some time, all the more-so given the explicitly interdisciplinary nature of Northwestern's theatre studies program. So I wrote to both programs at Northwestern asking for clarification, contextualizing the question with a brief description of my interests. Theatre studies responded by saying that she was passing my question on to the dept. head as it was beyond her ability to answer. Performance studies responded by saying I needed to narrow my field of inquiry considerably before an answer would be possible. I responded to perf. studies by restating the most pertinent aspects of my field of interest: the interaction between performer and audience. No response to that, but I'm trying not to let it bother me.

That said, I have a loosening grip on my confidence regarding the PhD apps. The day after the responses from NU a mentor wrote responding to my semi-annual update questing why I'm going after a PhD. given the saturated market and all the other questionable aspects of academia--"closed and venal" as my mentor put it.

I must admit that there's a degree of occupational default associated with the PhD scene. I know that I teach, that I create productions and that I am more fulfilled working with older students. Teaching in a community college would be fine--not that a PhD would hurt for securing employment there, but it's not strictly necessary. I don't want my work defined by research but I definitely want to do some research, mostly in a practical manner--productions as clinical examination based on critical analysis. If I had the financial wherewithal I'd wait tables part time and spend the rest making stuff and playing with theatre.

Add to that some nibbles on the acting front via the start-up talent agency I signed with this week (can't ride a horse so no Japanese mini-series for me) and the vocational future is both terrifying and full of possibilities and uncertainty.
For now I'll continue pushing forward on all fronts, one foot before the other (or maybe three feet in front of their mates) hoping these paths, together or one alone, will lead me to employment that is personally satisfying, sufficiently paid, allowing me to live in a community where I feel at home with a family of my own.
Is the fulfillment of that hope asking so much?

fleeting romance

Last night as I sat on my bedroom floor, checking the expiration dates on a pile of condoms, I found a pair of women's reading glasses sheltered in a cavity at the bottom of the pile of books I've been starting to read since I moved in. The last time I recall having a woman in my bedroom was about a year ago, and I don't remember her wearing glasses, but for a moment my life was full of romance again, imagining they were hers. Then the moment passed. I realized that the glasses belonged to my cat-sitter and I tossed out all but three of the condoms.

This thing of darkness / I acknowledge mine.

A new beginning after a long new year.

I've returned to my life from a retreat into my home turf, a room full of self-reflection, blind endeavor, and vulnerability. I've no clear plan, in this writing or the rest. This is all part of the new beginning.

Integrity--integration--is no longer my obsession. I face it with skepticism, or at least a question. Integrity can paralyze--not that action is always the solution, but the paralysis is untenable. To a degree the old life must return. My habits keep me from collapsing in a paralysis of disorganization and self-involvement. Still there are pieces I can remove even while allowing myself to fit back into certain grooves.

I will not let loneliness own me.

I will not wallow in the internet when I crave human connection.

I will set goals and achieve, instead of losing my life in procrastination. I will free my jaw and smile.

My shocking revelation of the day: I don't need to save the world anymore. Suddenly I'm old, but without the benefit or excuse of parenthood to justify my tarnished idealism. In fact I still have my ideals but I think I may have lost my hope and my belief that I can create the change. I can do the actions but I can't do it alone. The cat, though wonderful, will not provide what I need to be able to get up each day and face a hostile environment, to do my mission, to speak peace, acceptance, awareness, love and liberation in a place bound by rules, intolerance and proselytizing of those rules or a wasting into abuses.

Five years ago I'd have leapt at this job with zeal. Now I'm ready to move on, but the clock lags behind.

And love? I am free of love. I am free of judgement--or getting closer. I own my failure to fulfill my intentions. I own the barriers between me and my attempts at love. I don't want to have them always, but right now, with her, I feel fine having them. I might have gotten off the train many times before; I'm proud of her for making the stop and I have no regrets though I can see how I might have acted more kindly, with more compassion, more honesty.

Her last email was blameful and angry. I'm not responding. My time can be better spent.

The world is alive with possibility.