Merry Christmas, Baby

I know, I know. I referenced one of those most obnoxious yuletide (Look out! The yule tide is coming in! Kids, get away from your fruitcake castle!) songs. I like the Boss, I really do. But damn. Enough already. Between that and "Feliz Navidad," it's miraculous we don't have a few more cases of holiday homicide...at least amongst the disc jockey set.

I am typing this up on my Mom's computer, which is cobbled together from various archaic components (the CPU isn't so old, really, but the monitor weighs enough to bow the hardwood shelf it squats on) and dialed up to the interwebz via something called a "phone line." I don't know why phones need a "line." I think it has something to do with the Nixon administration. At any rate, I am home for the holidays. And no, the appended picture is not of me drunkenly shrinking because I drank from Santa's special reserve of champagne, though I inevitably feel just that gluttonous after our family's Christmas dinner. (It's a photo of my performance of Lloyd Schlemiel, a silent-film style improvisatory clown, from dear Melissa's benefit for her dance company: Kinesis Project.)

So: I have survived another season (assuming that ham wasn't cured with strychnine). It was a highly successful one, if but a bit lonely for yours truly. But lonliness is easily overcome when people appreciate the gifts you give. I swear there's few greater pleasures I get than watching someone open a gift I've prepared for them. Don't think it's like I'm naturally beneficent or anything, either. It's like performance art for me. It's manipulative, actually. I love to toy with people's perceptions and expectations. As an example, one year I was dating a girl who was, shall we say, used to the finer things. I was young(er) and madly in love (it's the only way to do it, really), but also aware of how this girl (let's call her "Bertha") had learned not to get her expectations up too high for me, at least as far as material rewards go. We had an ongoing debate about why we should/n't get a cat, with me taking the typical male perspective, i.e., Cats Are Evil. So for Christmas, I bought her a pure white cat puppet. "Surprise, honey! It's a compromise for Christmas!" She was, shall we say...nonplussed. So I continued, "Oh, but it's not just a stuffed cat. Look! A puppet! Try it out!" The sweet kid, she played along, barely containing a rage I'm glad I didn't have to confront. At that point, at any rate. And wouldn't you know it, when she pulled out her hand, there was a Tiffany's box with a pair of platinum earrings within.

(This kind of game can backfire terribly. For one of Bertha's birthdays, I set her on a sort of scavenger hunt about different spots we had shared in the city. But I made the clues too hard, and received a tearful phone call whilst I sat at the end of the labyrinth. Poor Bertha. She played that through, too, inspite of my ridiculous gaff.)

These plans we draw, they can go in any direction at any time, and perhaps this is the resonance I find in performing improvisatory theatre. Even from a botched scene (or entire play), we can say we learned a new thing or two. Interestingly enough, one of the activities my family enjoyed for the New York segment of our holy daze was to see a Moliere play, School for Wives. Now, as any self-respecting BFA recipient will tell you, Moliere was heavily influenced by the Commedia dell'arte traditions, and most of his plays are drawn directly from such scenarios, or at least such stock characters. School for Wives is a brilliant example of this, and a value pack of Kudos(r) to the good people at The Pearl Theatre Company for including a "Commedia Coach" (Christopher Bayes) in their roster of hard-working artists. The entire cast was solid--one of the best overall casts I have ever seen, anywhere. Not a weak link among them. (I particularly want to note Hana Moon and Bradford Cover as exceptional actors [willfully acknowledging that such notice is easier to achieve the funnier the character is written] and T.J. Edwards as well, who demonstrated a stylistic ease between two supporting characters.) The play was performed in nearly pure commedia style (only masking the Pantalone and Dotore characters would have topped it [and no doubt scared the shit out of the audience in the process]) including some improvised dialogue and much direct address and asiding.

{I aside; you aside; we aside; they aside; we have asided; you are asiding...?}

{Here we go a'wasailing, a'wasailing are we..."}

Particularly when we are with our families, I think the ability to improvise is a valuable skill. Having only lived this experience from the aspect of son (and brother), I am remarkably narrow in my view. Nevertheless, I think most of us can agree that reuniting with any group with whom we once--and now no longer--spent our daily lives is an exercise in subconscious revisitation of our former selves. That is to say, you can take the overpriviledged kid out of the suburbs, but you can't take the suburbs out of the now-rather-less-overpriviledged kid. We return to the group, and there is a natural tendency for everyone to resume where they left off. In this context, there is no better refreshment than being able to really listen...and maybe throw in a curve ball when your loved ones are least expecting it.

But just drinking a lot of eggnog is another option. I'm off to frolic in the yule tide. The water is unseasonably warm...

Times of Giving

Short post today, folks. Lots to do. LOTS TO DO. MUST GET DOING DONE. MUST ARRANGE LOTS INTO LOTS.

Christmas (or the choose-your-own-holiday period) generally stresses me out in a very unique way. I mean, Anxiety and I know each other pretty well (there was even this night in Paris, but Anxiety and I agreed never to speak of it again), yet this particular time of year really cranks it up a few notches for me. Socially speaking, I am not High Functioning Jeff(tm). I have about the conversational skills of a Tickle-Me Elmo. But, correspondingly, my wherewithal for and interest in doing crafts is enhanced exponentially.

I can not help but wonder if the two might be related.

Anyway, Christmas comes early this year (OH MY GOD OH MY GOD) for me and mine. Jenny has to work at the hospital on the 25th, so my parents are coming into town in a matter of hours to celebrate here, now. That's the kind of parents they are. They rule. Plus, they already set a precedent for coming to see my shows in the most remote ends of the earth, so not working around Jenny's work schedule for the holidays would have sunk them in deep, deep tinsel.

I'll be traveling again, after the wrapping paper has flown and the Moliere has been seen. First down to Hagerstown, MD with my parents, then off to northern Virginia (NoVa) to see friends. There's a fairly big reunion of people I knew (and actually liked) in high school planned, and I surprise myself by my desire to attend. It's not that I am surprised to want to see old friends, exactly. It's just that reunions are another thing that fill me with anxiety.

What is this thing that makes me so wary of good possibilities? I put it to the universe. Universe, call me sometime. We never talk anymore.

I've got to run. Much wrapping and riddle-writing and packing to do yet. Avanti!

Fear of the Third?

Yesterday, amidst the bustle of an office desperately trying to resolve its business before the impending holy daze, I got a call from my roommate, Zoe. (An "umlaut" goes over the "e." Let this parenthetical represent "umlaut.") Now, I am a master of silencing my phone, particularly at work, but I try to make a point of answering calls from family or roommate if I'm possibly in a position in which I may. It turns out I was, at that moment, available (doing nothing but musing and typing away over some silly 'blog) and I answered to discover that the call had nothing to do with the heating, a bill or me leaving my stuff out like some kind of domestic endurance course between the work room and the kitchen. No, Zoe (an "umlaut" goes over the "e"; let this parenthetical represent "umlaut") needed help of a different sort altogether.

Zoe (a"u"got"e"ltpr"u") and her partner Dave engage in a rarefied profession, coined "acro-salsa." Under the guise of

Paradizo Dance

, these marvels of modern physicality travel the world, performing and competing with their unique synthesis of movement traditions. They rock. Seriously. I don't know performers personally who are as strong and dedicated as these guys are. I met Zo(a"u"got"e"ltpr"u") through Kate Magram, who founded a circus-dance-theatre collective called

Kirkos

. Anyway, one of Paradizo Dance's new ventures is to put out a series of instructional videos in their approaches to salsa and

acrobalance

. Last night they had space booked, were all set for another filming, and Dave's back got sprained.

Hence, the phone call to me.

Now, I'm the sort of chap (don't restrain from hollering if you hear me) who spends a certain amount of his day planning out his evening--at least on the rare occasion when that evening's activities are not otherwise prescribed. This becomes a particular priority to me in times of flurry-ous activity, i.e., the week before Christmas. At the time Zoe(") caught me in these machinations, I had a good plan all well and settled: 1) visit Geoff at bar (Live Bait) and deliver Xmas present, have dinner+beer(s); 2) wrap-up Xmas shopping; 3) go home and start laundry; and 4) catalogue footage from film-making class. All-in-all, a nice little stratagem, sleekly designed to annihilate a certain amount of holiday stress. To top this off, about a month ago I injured my groin, or, in medical specificity, my

ballular area

. (What can I say? My sister's a nurse.) And so, when Z. proposed my presence as a base to her flyer for the purposes of posterity, I had a moment.

One of doubt.

Perhaps more anxiety than doubt, or inconvenience, but all roads led to doubt in the final summation.

I changed my plans. I went to

BAX

and helped out. Nothing spectacular happened. My groin did not 'asplode. My list of things-to-do remains precariously heavy. I'm so glad I made that choice.

Now for something completely different.

My dear friend,

Patrick Lacey

, began a project right around the autumnal equinox called

The Traveling Muse

. He began it by distributing three masks of his own making to the fellow members of our little group, The Exploding Yurts. (No, it's not a yodel-rock band from Sweden, it's a creative collaborative from the five boroughs.) The assignment was, amongst other things, to hold onto the mask for a month, then send it on. There's a lot that goes into it, but as I understand it the basic idea was to create something, send it out into the world to exist on its own and affect people as it will (though I'm pretty certain Patrick hopes it will inspire change for each person, be it in smaller or larger ways). Great idea. LOVE IT.

Loved it so much, in fact, that I was guilty of hanging onto the Muse for nearly three bloody months. There it sat, on the wall opposite my desk, boring its non-existent irises into my back. For me, it served as a reminder of all the things I'd rather be doing--indeed, feel I

ought

to be doing--if only I were in a demographic with more time for such things. It's possible it even inspired me to make more time, somehow; eke it out of my already jam-packed Third Life. All the while, I dreamed about when and to whom I would release it, and what effect it might have on him or her.

I got the most unexpected result. The person I sent the Muse to received it with enthusiasm, but when I explained to her about its purpose, she declined to engage in the project. The Muse will soon be winding its way back to Brooklyn.

There could have been any number of reasons. Perhaps she was too busy to be bothered, or maybe the project didn't make sense to her. Or, if it did, maybe it just wasn't something she could find the value in. There must be hundreds of reasons along these lines

not

to do it.

Yet it inspired in me a new idea about how a person might react to the kind of invitation the Muses are extending them. That reaction is: Fear. (A kissing cousin with Doubt.) Some people might be frightened by an excuse to step back and examine their wants, wishes, desires, dreams. Some may view their imagination as a place fraught with danger, unpredictability and disappointment. And, you know, I believe such people are right. It is dangerous in there. It may be where you got to make out with Angelina Jolie, but it's also where insanity sets its roots, and where Brad Pitt beats you down...and not in that nice Fight Club way.

I was reminded a couple of months ago of what an act of bravery any creative examination is when I had the opportunity to listen to Neil Gaiman speak during a tour promoting his new

book

. (It's a great read, as is his 'blog, which he writes in daily.) He talked about a lot, but what was striking about it all was to sit there and take in a person who had made his entire life about his creations, stuff purely from his mind and its collaborations with other minds. I thought, "God. That takes balls."

It does. Now, I don't know if my friend who is mailing back the Muse had this reaction. I can only guess. But the events of the past twenty-four hours add up to remind me that

The Third Life

(tm) is a high-stakes game, and playing it for too long can make one a little jaded to the feelings of others who may not be as involved in that particular game. Every act of creative examination is a very, very brave thing.