Converse

In a similar spirit to yesterday's post, I'm writing today about oral tradition. (Where is my mind? Oh yeah, there it is: in the gutter again. Besmirched.) Yesterday I wrote about how important it was to continue our habits of learning from people directly, sans email or books or carrier/passenger pigeons. One of the ways to maintain this kind of good habit is to make as much conversation as possible. This, I recognize, is a tricky proposition. New Yorkers may think it's particularly dangerous for them, what with all the hurried, irate and/or insane types we have smunched (is SO a word) together. I would argue, however, that there's a trade-off there. New Yorkers are more accustomed to having regular contact with strangers and psychos than some, and we learn stronger coping methods for dealing with them. Plus the psychos are generally easier to spot here, I think. Not that a psycho can't look average, but here you can at least rule out a certain segment of aluminum-foil-hat-wearing sorts as being perhaps not the most coherent conversationalists.

Friend Chris

once suggested to me that wherever I go, I should talk to people about what they do. Post office, elevator, subway, etc., every day we come in contact with professionals, and most of them are pretty eager to talk about something they can be an authority on. Get in the habit of talking with them, and you both benefit -- a report is established, greasing the wheels for any other transaction, and you may learn something to boot. I try to remember to do this. It often backfires. I don't have the most unimpregnable ego in the world, and when I get a negative response from someone I don't know, I'm more inclined to let the talk drop than pursue it. The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that a negative response is often a stock response, and can be wispy-thin. Get past it, and there's every possibility that you'll find something interesting or moving on the other side.

I also find that everyone --

everyone

-- is sending out invitations, all the time. There's so much information coming off of people that it's amazing. Even without eye contact with someone, you can start to form an impression of what they most want in terms of communication, be it sympathy, enthusiasm, agreement or something wholly unique. (And with eye contact: forget about it.) The tricky part for me has always been balancing what others want with what I want. When I was younger I had this problem a great deal more often, but it still happens to me now and again. Now its not so much that I blindly subserve to everyone (is SO an expression). When I was younger, I would often get into this conversation with my friends:

"Whatcha doin', Jeff?"

"Building a canal out of a single cinder block."

"Oh. How's it going."

"Well, it's okay. It's kind of hard, though. And slow going. And I'm not sure what purpose it will serve. And I was supposed to go play Dungeons&Dragons(TM) with some other pubescents today, but I guess I can't now."

"Oh. And why are you doing that?"

"Because someone I only just now met wanted it done."

"Oh."

"...what?"

Now it's more a matter of not quite getting across (to myself as much as anyone else) just how important the really important things are to me. So I do a lot less painful self-sacrificing, but every now and again I'll get to a point in something at which I'll suddenly explode. "Why am I not getting what I want?! Why are your wants automatically more important than mine?! Why are you doing this to me?!

Oh!

I never

told

you what I want?! I ... I didn't, did I? Oh, ah ... whoops. My bad. Sorry for spitting on you just then. Um. I can't do anything for you, can I? Build you a canal, perhaps?"

It's taken me a long time to learn, and it's a continuous "practice" for me ("practice," in this usage, as in the yoga sense, in which "practice" is a nice way of saying "something I can't do

at all

yet, but just keep trying, anyway") to remember, that everyone's a little bit psycho, in their own way. We all occupy worlds inside our individual heads that have nothing to do with the rest of the world, try as we might to deny it. And it's scary, the possibility of tripping upon someone's inner world. It may be less a fantastical trip to Oz, and more a nightmare ride down the rabbit hole. There's just no knowing.

The thing is: The more you risk that, the more you're living and learning. Be it Oz or somewhere

really

weird, at least you're going somewhere. No one wants to go nowhere; not if they really pause to consider what that would mean. Having the courage to really talk and really listen is supposed to be what actors are all about. Lord knows, I'm not the best at it. A few months ago I was sitting around with a cast at NYU, waiting in their luxurious lobby on the seventh floor for our director to show up. Two of my fellow cast members struck up a conversation. It started out a little irritating -- "Who do you know?" "You don't know him? How can you not know him?" -- but they eventually got to matters un-network-y, and began talking about the city. One of them, a rather young woman, said, "I don't understand how people can just walk around all day, plugged in to their earphones. That's just stupid. They're missing so much." I discreetly attempted to shove my iPod deeper into my coat pocket. "I know. Why would you live here, and shut all of it out?" So I'm trying to engage more with my fellow man. It's good practice.

But dang it, on the subway I'm keeping my earphones on. It's not that I prefer

The Mars Volta

to my fellow man, but . . . well yeah. It kind of is. Practice, practice, practice!

My Clown Film

This is not what I mean.


But my hat's off to the guy.

Reading Loud and Clear

Hey! I've got work for you, Jeff!

Awesome! I love work! When are auditions?

You don't even have to audition!

I don't? That's unusual, but far be it from me to complain. I mean, I have been at this professionally for over a decade, and there's a few places for people to see my existing work. Plus, maybe a decade in New York solidifies your reputation with enough people who matter that you can be taken on recommendation. Sweet. What does it pay?

It doesn't pay.

Oh. Erm. It doesn't?

No. Are you so rude as to demand payment?

No! I mean: No. I'm not "so rude." It's a pretty reasonable question, I think, where my time is involved.

But it'll be fun.

I'm sure it will, yes. But, you see, I can have fun for myself. I don't need other's help for that, necessarily. And if I do, I have friends that fit the bill nicely and generally want to do -- if not exactly -- approximately the same things I want to do. So, you see, I'm doing okay on "fun."

Are you working on anything right now, acting-wise?

Well ... that's a complex question. I mean, I have auditions coming up. And I need to get my headshots to a new agency I'm freelancing with. And I've got a sort of film outline I'm in the process of writing for myself. And I help develop plays over at NYU, working with student playwrights and professional directors and actors. And I read plays. All the time. Plays, plays plays, nothin' but . . . okay. I have no show.

Well, we provide meals.

Oh! It's a film. Great; you should have said. I badly need reel material. That'll be worth it.

It's not a film.

Oh.

But there'll be very little time commitment.

Okay...

And it's local.

It's work here? In New York? Something people who make a difference to my future work could conceivably see?

Sure.

Well okay. That sounds ... doable.

Great. We'll see you at 7:00 on Tuesday.

Seven o'clock Tuesday? Don't I even read it first?

Read what?

The thing! The thing we're doing, whatever it is!

Oh. Well, you can, but there might not be much point.

Not much point? What is this?

I just mean it's subject to drastic change, the play.

The play I'd be working on might change drastically while I'm working on it?

Yes. Potentially overnight.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Non-paying local work I don't have to audition for, with a short rehearsal time, that's not a film, that's subject to change in its entirety the night before we perform, and you're offering me food as payment? This ... this is a staged reading, isn't it?

How did you know?

*&^$! (_*&

(%^$#

, ^%$#

*%^#

! A staged reading! Always with the staged readings! I swear to God, if I never stand behind another school-band music stand or sit on another backless stool again, it would be too soon! I love it! Do tell: Will it be just us, and the playwright, all at a table or in the basement or both, somewhere, poring over each line while the playwright moans at our delivery? Or will it be for a large audience of everyone else's peers, where I will be the only stranger, and all the bits everyone finds funny I have no idea about because I don't hang out at the same water cooler? Or, OR, will it be for a

Producer

, a backing audition, and, well,

I'm

not really right for the part, owing to some minor detail like being twice the age of the character, but just maybe the

Producer

will be

producing

some other project and see me and think, "Eureka!" Oo! Can I actually

hold

my script while I act, allowing me to

turn

toward the person I'm speaking and

move

my body as I like, or will that break "the style," so I should leave that script ON that music stand, not even daring to lift it when I turn pages? Tell me, do: Will I be supplying my own costume? Will I be paying for the privilege of traveling to the rehearsal(s) and "performance"? Should I get a haircut for this one night? Or is it taking place in the middle of the day, and I should get my fingers and toes shined, too?

So, you don't want to do it?

Of course I don't.

We're serving wine.

I'll see you Tuesday.

Three's Company

This entry is not about the formative experience that watching the above-mentioned situation comedy was for me. Nor is it about using proper punctuation in titling. It is, however, about company. Or rather, companies. Or rather, theatre companies. And threes are just funny, as any self-respecting reader of this 'blog by now knows.

I have been a part of several start-up theatre companies at this point, and I have been in-on-the-ground-floor-ish of several original shows, the which is a bit like being a part of the beginning of a repertory company (just one that is guaranteed to disband at some point [probably a month or so from the first rehearsal]). I'm sure there are many who have been a part of more over the course of a decade, but I've had my share. A brief history:

1. Just after junior high (which is 7-8 grade in NoVa), my drama teacher at Lake Braddock started his own summer theatre camp, producing children's plays he had written, which were mostly adapted fairy tales or adaptations of existing plays. I attended two summers, the first two, and looking back I'd say it was safe to suggest that he had very little idea where to begin. He just began, and it was begun. As far as I know, that "company" disbanded when he switched to teaching high-school theatre at a different school.
2. In high school, every show was like a company beginning and ending, in the compressed nature of intense teenage experiences. The one we really felt we owned, however, was our competitive improvisation troupe. That one ended, for me, in graduation, but as far as I know continues on through the years at good ol' James W. Robinson.
3. In college I fell in with a group which eventually came to be called Lacquespace (sp?) Enesmble, or Theatre, or Productions, or something like that. It was essentially formed from the frustrations of a writer who wasn't getting what she wanted from the curriculum and actors who were tired of not get cast, either for grade restrictions or simply because they went unnoticed. The group put on several well-meaning, hard-working productions. I acted in the first and wrote something for another. At a class meeting (read: me: geek: I was '99 theatre class president), I suggested that we needed to get involved to keep Lack-space alive after we garduated, and the woman who got it started misinterpretted it as an attempt to wrest control from her. Still, I believe it continued beyond our departure. When I graduated, a younger woman was at the helm, steering it toward geurilla theatre.
4. It took me a while to get settled, upon graduating college and moving to New York, and for some time there was no possibility of knowing enough people to strike up an organization. Then, about a year into my residence, the seeds of two such start-ups were planted. From the group that produced a show entitled Significant Circus would eventually come the circus-theatre troupe Kirkos, and from my work with David Zarko on a farce entitled Der Talisman I would come to be included in the formation of Zuppa del Giorno, the contemporary commedia dell'arte troupe. Kirkos enjoyed a few years of productivity, but now exists more as a talent-funneling organization than anything else. Zuppa del Giorno, of course, is still going strong in Scranton--as well as annually in Orvieto--and for that I am grateful.
5. UnCommon Cause (formerly known as Joint Stock Theatre Alliance) began the process that would eventually become As Far As We Know almost four years ago, and nearly three years ago I was invited to join it. This does not a company make, but after two-odd years of working with a group on a single project, one does develop a certain sense of family.

Recently I got an email from Friend Nat, one he had sent to about a dozen theatre folk he is familiar with, testing the waters for the enthusiasm people would have for starting a theatre company. Shortly thereafter, Friend Avi contacted me about the possibility of collaborating together (in spite of his current busy-ness with grad school) on a script or show. Avi and I have already met and agreed to do mutual research. Getting together with Nat (Hi, Nat!) is like trying to barter for clothing in a refugee camp (totally a mutual difficulty [Hi Nat!]). Finally, prior to both offers, I was contacted by David at The Northest Theatre about the possibility of joining in an effort to set up a resident theatre company there starting next season.

For most actors like me--that is, who dig "straight" theatre productions and are of not-too-great fiscal ambition--the idea of becoming a part of something like a permanent company is awfully tempting. "Repertory" theatres, as they are often called, are scarce in America these days, at least in comparison to how many there used to be. Now, every actor is a sort of "free agent," every theatre an economic liability that relies on celebrity draw and its elder community for staying afloat. (You notice I'm not backing this up with anything--this ain't wikipedia--and you are free to disagree.) A company, or even a single venture, with any staying power (and staying-with-me power) is very appealing to me. This is part of why "university theatre," or the track of going back to school, teaching and eventually getting tenure, is so sought after. It occupies more and more of my thoughts these days.

However, I am also a little gun-shy about starting something new, about doing it all over. That's understandable, I think, given one perspective on the past twenty years o' life. In some senses, how far have I gotten? Where am I now? Many people--myself occasionally included--look at my life and wonder at why I should be in such an insecure, unestablished place at my age. It's not uncommon for me to be written off in a lot of people's opinions as anything from undisciplined to inconsequential. Ah: But. In the past twenty of my years--and especially in the past ten--as an actor and creative collaborator, I have had experiences I wouldn't trade for a 41" flatscreen TV. Through all the beginnings and endings, misunderstandings and perfect chemistry, I've created my own work in little communities of people who care, and it has made me a better person. I have no doubt. Whatever is the next, best choice for me and my life, it will be a choice that leads me to as much of this sort of experience as I can handle.

Take a step that is new, y'all. Take a step, that is new . . .

Going Out with a Bang

I usually prefer a quiet celebration of the New Year. You know: a few friends, some laughs, feeling self-righteous about not subjecting ourselves to the cold and hassle of watching the ball drop in person. That's just how I was raised, really. In NoVa, that seemed like all there was to do on such a holiday. Stay in.

Maybe

go over to a friend's so you can feel sociable. Drink that really cheap champagne that makes you wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to drink champagne on a regular basis. Count down with everyone until you get to pretend the words of

Auld Lang Syne

actually mean something to you. Then you wait a bit--because of course no one else out reveling will think of waiting a bit--before driving home.

This year, I will usher in the new at the

Hammerstein Ballroom

, enjoying the dulcet tones of Velvet Revolver. For those of you unacquainted with this hybrid band, I understand it to be comprised mainly of the members of Guns n' Roses (plus one guy from Suicidal Tendencies), but with Scott Weiland--of Stone Temple Pilots fame--fronting instead of Axl Rose. They are, in short, a rock band. And in a matter of ten hours or so I will be hearing them live for the first time through newly purchased earplugs.

There's no shortage of contradictions in life. Paradoxes abound. Every time I find myself at a concert that requires earplugs, I also find myself wondering, sometimes even aloud, "Why the hell am I here?" The absurdity of the situation is inherent. Some argue that they want the music to be loud enough to feel the bass in their chest cavity, and I can appreciate that, but I'm also aware that all that really requires is a decent subwoofer placed on the floor. It does not necessitate creating the decibel equivalent of a breaking subway car. But that's rock and roll for you. No one said it ought to make sense.

In many ways, this is an increasingly appropriate way of spending my New Year's. Maybe it was just turning thirty this year, but a lot of the good parts of it have been spent in reclamation of things of my past, trying to make good on promises to myself and reconsider what's truly important to me. I came into the year as uncertain and detached from myself as I've possibly ever been and I leave it with, if not certainty, a very surprising yet somehow familiar intimacy with myself. Reclaiming one's life involves a lot of confrontation: confronting perception, confronting contentment and, perhaps most strange, confronting assumption. There are many ways in which I did this, quite subconsciously, this year. I attended Camp Nerdly (see

5/7/07

), which I never would have thought I'd find myself doing, right up to my arrival there, I returned to Italy (see

6/12/07

), which was a touch-and-go promise right up to the flight, and I managed to push myself to a fairly new physical dimension for

As Far As We Know

(see

7/12/07

), an objective I'd long held and never before dared to commit to.

But the most satisfying illustration for me of reclaiming some of my favorite parts of life, chewing over where I am and where I want to be now, comes from music. You can see over on my Library Thing widget that I recently read a book that had a lot to do with mix tapes. This inspired me to try and make one again for Christmas. For a few years now I've been mailing out what I call "MiX-mas" CDs to close friends, which are compilations of new (to me) music I have on my computer that has meant a lot to me over the course of the year. Processing my music through the computer has had an interesting effect on how I listen to it. It and my iPod urge me toward new music all the time, and I come to appreciate songs over whole albums. I love the access and maneuverability of the format, and it quickly usurped my CDs as the source of my musical accompaniment. When I first became capable of MP3 audio, after importing maybe a third of my CDs, out of a concern for space I stopped. It has, ever since, been an intended "when I have the time" project of mine to crack open the CD binders again and import more music. Just the good stuff. Some day.

In deciding to make a mix tape, I had a lot to do. I actually had to purchase a CD player with a tape deck. I have been using computerized music for so long, I had found my boombox fairly neglected a while ago. If I wanted to listen specifically to a CD, it was usually a mix someone made for me and I'd simply play it over my DVD player or alarm clock. So I bought the cheapest boombox (more a toot-orb) I could find, and felt a certain sense of relief upon finding that, yes, people still sell blank audio cassettes. Then I cracked open the CDs and sort of just gave a listen to anything that I hadn't heard in a while.

I remembered some simple things, like using the "pause" button between changing CDs and keeping an eye on the amount of tape left on the left-hand reel. This is why I was so surprised to be reminded of some other aspects of mix-tapery. I mean, I had been making mix tapes for over a decade before switching to the seductions of laser-guided lyric lathing. Yet it took turning the pages of forgotten albums and the engaging mechanics of an actual tape player to bring back certain things. The main thing was how differently I listened to the music when it was relying on me to cue it. A lot has been acknowledged about the flirtation involved in passing on a mix, but few (to my knowledge) have exposed the complex back-and-forth between music and a mix maker when it comes to real-time recording. For example, does music these days tend to use a fade-out less? Or is that only my perception after making this tape of predominantly 90s music, as I would perk up at any diminution in tone or volume on the songs I was laboriously copying to cassette? I forgot how I would turn the volume all the way up at the end of song to be sure I captured the end of the diminution, and the rush to depress the button before the next song leapt into the speakers. And remember that? "Song"? Not "track," but "song"?

Anyway, I'm not calling for a return to tape format, or anything like that. What I am calling out is myself, as someone who too often takes progress for granted. I do it in two ways: assuming that as it happens, it ought to happen, and I take it for granted in the sense that progress is a given. Time proceeds, progress is made. It isn't so, but it's very easy to fall into that thinking. I had an amazing time making my first mix tape in some five years. It made me remember good music, which was difficult to take for granted in that context, and it slowed me down. I had somehow forgotten how fulfilling it could be to surrender to a song, rather than treat it as a score to my life. I had forgotten just how long 90 minutes, one song at a time, is. You can fit a lifetime of experience in there! Most of all, I was reminded of how it feels to meditate on the moment. It feels wonderful.

I'm glad I didn't know, during the 90s, how much I would miss the music in the years to come. A sense of nostalgia-to-come is akin to a sense of impending doom, and the gift of this year for me has been the opportunity to reflect on old times without nostalgia; rather to approach them as songs I still sing. Back in the day, I favored Metallica over Guns n' Roses, Pearl Jam over Stone Temple Pilots. The beauty of age, I suppose, is in being able to appreciate all of it in some way. It seemed contradictory before. Now it just seems full, and well-realized. And, after all, should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?