Today

I've been waiting for you. We've been waiting for you, of course, for months, weeks and weeks and with rampant research, speculation and apprehensive love. But I've been waiting for you too. I've wondered about you most of my life, imagined you in a thousand ways and continually checked in with myself about whether I'm ready for you. I can't wait to meet you. Literally - I'm failing at waiting, which feels awkward as all hell, given that there's close-to-nothing I can do to speed your arrival. And today's the day.

Well. Today isn't actually the day. Not necessarily. I've made a lot of jokes in discussing your arrival - jokes about being punctual and taking after your parents, and jokes about you getting an early start on your teenage rebellion. (Ok, so really: Two jokes. But I've made them many, many times now.) In actuality, today is just another today. I've gone to work. Your mother's working at home - lucky her - and it's a rather beautiful summer day in New York.

Tomorrow they're predicting storms and a heat index of 103°. So we also expect you exactly then.

Here is another line I've laid out a lot with regards to the experience of you: Childbirth is an ongoing lesson in unpredictability. And: ...And probably will for the next eighteen years. As in: "She's making her mom really nauseous tonight...and probably will for the next eighteen years." We've had to learn a lot about flexibility of expectations over the past several months, from when we yelped in surprise upon hearing you were a girl (subliminally and separately, we had decided otherwise) to our uncertainty about how much room we thought we made in the apartment, versus how much stuff we drove up from the baby shower.

So all I can really do is ask. Throw myself on the mercy of my daughter. Please come out soon. I'm dying to meet you.

I've never really considered it before, but I knew I wanted to meet you before I knew much else that I wanted, before even I was aware that I wanted to act. It didn't take me long, either, to realize that I wanted this for myself; not for the expectations of my family or society, for example. So for nearly my entire life, I've pondered you, hoped for you, imagined you. You've been some pretty wild permutations of a person in my mind over the years, let me tell you. That narrows somewhat once you actually find the mother of your child, but I'm certain you'll still surprise us somehow. Like, as in, say, just for example: By starting this entrance-to-the-world thing right on time.

Some things you should know about me up front:
  • I'm bad with planning, math, organized sports, making the bed and colors. (Your mother more than makes up for the first one and the last two, at least.)
  • I'm decent with words, emotions, imagination and organization. (So's your mom, but somehow in almost opposite ways.)
  • I'm the one who cooks. I've no reason to expect this to change within my lifetime.
  • I am a very deep sleeper, and very irrational when I get much fewer than seven hours. So: apologies in advance for my personality during at least the first two years of your life.
  • I'm a performer, try as I might to occasionally fight it. My best hope is that we can take turns as audience for one another.
  • I am, rather by default, rather high-strung - but I have developed numerous feints and coping mechanisms over the years!
  • None of those feints or coping mechanisms are working for me today.
So you can count all that as fair warning. I am sure you will have your fair share of quirks and idiosyncrasies to share. Hopefully you will not have inherited too many of mine ... though actually, go ahead and take the sleeping thing. That's good for all concerned, ultimately.

As my day ticks on, I come more and more to accept the notion that perhaps after all I will not meet you in a matter of hours. You'll learn that as you mature, that awful skill of dampening your hopes and excitement a little at a time to avoid cataclysmic crashes of disappointment. Just remember that the hope is always there, no matter how successful a dampener you may prove to be. The excitement is up to you to protect, so don't get carried away.

Today there's little danger of my over-diluting the excitement. The promise of you is too great, too inevitable. So I'll wait. And you'll arrive. If not today, then the next today.

Some questions.

For some reason, it terrifies me to state outright what I want. (Apart, of course, from

my Tumblr proclivities

.) I'm not sure why. Fear of failure? Need to please? Neurotic (for sure)? This aversion has even put my toes in the fire once or twice (including one especially memorable high school moment when my girlfriend yelled at me in the hall between classes, "You don't know what you want and that terrifies me!") yet I've not changed it significantly for the better. So when a career survey I was working through tossed a few questions at me, I thought it might be interesting - success or failure - to post the results.

Interesting to whom, I daren't contemplate.

1.) What do I want out of life?

Well, (I love thinking-pauses in text) I want a storied experience. Preferably those stories involve overcoming adversity and making things a little better than they have been, but even failure and disappointment can make for good stories. My personal definition of success has changed repeatedly over time, but coming out of it with stories has always been redeeming. To me that means taking as little for granted as possible, and saying yes to any opportunity I possibly can. I want to create stories, and for my personal story, I want to create a family. That's a part of my story I've known I've wanted for a long time.

2.) What do I want to give to this life?

Everything? I don't want to leave anything undone, or have regrets about the efforts not attempted. There's balance in how much one gives and keeps but in terms of anything related to my life, I see no reason not to give my all: time, effort, aspiration. If there's something to keep, I'd say perspective, or at least sanity. And even sanity is overrated in a number of situations. If I'm going to be as specific as possible in responding to this question, I'd say I want to give love. (Lately I keep thinking of that amazing line from the film

Adaptation

: "You are what you love, not what loves you.")  Sorry to take it down a bit of a golden-brick road, but anything done with love really does come out fantastic, and there's all different kinds of love. I think love is a decent legacy in terms of what one gives to the life they want.

3.) What is it about the world that I dislike, am most bothered by, or hate the most; and would most love to correct, fix, or eradicate if I could?

When it comes to little things, this list is pretty endless. When it comes to big things, I get overwhelmed before the list can become endless. From petty annoyances like people who

rush into the subway without letting people off

, to, you know, War, there's plenty to change. In most of the work I've done for myself, I've aspired to break people out of windows. I see our world as one in which people have become too comfortable with the idea of personal distance and routine, experiencing stories on a cold plastic screen (as though through a window) and ignoring anything around them that isn't a practical part of getting through a day. I hate - in myself most of all - that sort of appetite- and survival-driven zombie-ism. I'd eradicate it if I could. As it stands, I try to create experiences of perception and gratitude to counteract it.

4.) What product or service does my community or the world really, really need?

I'm going to try to answer both of these, to see where it leads.

A service is the easiest for me to conceive of, since that's essentially the role I perceive my theatre work to have been. Theatre creates a communal, personal experience that transports people through an idiom with which they are generally comfortable (audience/performer relationship) into personal connection, imagination and discussion. But if I were to name a new service that my world badly needs, it would be a conduit to this sort of experience - be it theatre or some other live art, church or a wicked karaoke scene. In other words, a service that connects audiences with genuinely new experiences they really want to have. What it means to be a "community" has been rapidly changing, and needs a service that is a new connective tissue.

All of that invariably leads me to my notions for a product. I'm drawn toward technology, naturally, as it fascinates me as much as anyone else within my demographic. Yet I also value artifacts - physical objects that are unique and tactile. We need a product that really exists, without being divorced from computer-based application. An "app" is not enough. It would be very nice to figure out some new and appealing social-networking software, but our miraculous "phones" are still windows, barriers of glass, illuminations of connectivity, and not the community itself. My product would be some kind of compass to community, but one that opens your eyes rather than keeps you staring into your palm.

5.) What is it that I would love to do more than anything else in the world?

Absolutes are tricky, but I most often pass satisfaction into the precious world of fulfillment by way of creating or improving things with rigor and attention to detail, as well as broader implications and effects. This activity most often takes the form of inventing comedies and characters, but also applies to writing in just about any form and other things, such as marketing and entrepreneurship. More than anything in the world, today, I'd love to write and critique and teach . . . with perhaps the occasional opportunity to perform.

6.) What is it that most energizes me? What work most exhausts me?

You know, I think exhaustion has a place. Working on shows usually does both of these, and I think that's part of what's so appealing about it. I believe I'm exhilarated by the innovation and collaboration, and exhausted by the chaos and collaboration. I'm energized by projects and newness, be it work at a computer terminal or bouncing around outside, and I'm exhausted by disorganized, maintenance work. What tires me out is a hopelessness that comes from a lack of direction.

7.) What turns me on the most?

Heh-heh.

Beginnings, effective communication and emotional content. I crave an audience at all times (probably especially when I least wish to) and so working in a group is as wonderful for me as a solo project, so long as what's taking place involves listening and caring - caring about what we're aiming for and caring about how we get there. I'm excited by things that transform people's perspectives, and offer challenge and reward in some kind of accessible balance. Great words and great movement turn me on, and a sense of rhythm (kind of like a sound procedure or protocol) will carry that excitement forward indefinitely. I like ideas. Scratch that. I

love

ideas; I adore them. Amongst people who enjoy thinking creatively, challenging themselves, is hands-down the best place to be for me.

Purpose & Identity

Maybe some of you read here for honest, emotional exploration, for that strangely isolated intimacy and voyeurism you can experience from reading 'blogs. Maybe some others of you read here more for those posts in which I do something unconventional and, for some people, humorous, like, say, have

a conversation with mine own testicles

. I'm sure there are as many motivations to read as there are readers (AN DOZEN), but today the two groups I've named are in especial luck for, today, I'll be dividing the entry into two formats. Those seeking warm, cozy emotional voyeurism (and no balls), read

(A)

. Those seeking a more humorous eschewment (is SO a word) of convention, read

(B)

(no promises about my balls [ever]). And, far be it from me to tell you what to do, it's your life, be your own person, but maybe,

JUST MAYBE

, you

could

mix it up. You know, if you're into that kind of thing. Now I'll begin as I often do, with a mini-narrative that may not immediately seem to apply to the title of the entry, yet will most likely contain the thematic twisty-tie that lets me sum up our little walk together. And so:

A1 - As we were growing up, my sister and I occasionally got into "why" conversations with my parents (Why is the sky blue? Why don't we go to church? Why is that man wearing a dress?) and, to their great credit, my parents always tried to carry through the conversation with something more than a "Because." Probably because of this, my sister and I knew from a very early age onward that a lot of my parents' decisions before and after we came along were based on a priority for having children and being good parents. This was their direction, their purpose in life -- all roads were charted to that course, from their choice of careers to the little every-day decisions. "Having children," was the answer to a lot of our Whys.

B1 - You know that feeling you had when you were barely sitting there in the movie theatre, full of enthusiasm, as the first half hour or so of

The Matrix Reloaded

rolled on by? OF COURSE YOU DO. It was just so exciting, so rife with possibilities. One thing was certain about this movie -- it was going to in some way be gratifyingly unconventional. I mean, the first one gave us a messianic hero-story action movie with philosophy in-jokes and a permeable sense of reality. What

couldn't

the second be amazing about? I clung to this as I sat there, picking it apart with a growing sense of dread, and just as the movie approached its most orgiastic CGI-enhanced puffery in the so-called "burly brawl," I thought I spotted a hopeful light of philosophical promise. Smith begins to discuss purpose. Ah ha! Here is an interesting point of contention! I wonder how the movie will play this out?

A2 - I envy my parents their dedication, their seemingly unquestioned priority. I'm sure they questioned it along the way, and perhaps especially after the fact, but they seem pretty happy with it and I have to say that -- some bias understood here -- they made a good choice and did an amazing job of it. Perhaps because of this lesson, I can't help but define myself by my sense of purpose. This probably isn't the only way to having a sense of identity. You could, I suppose, base it upon heritage, or beliefs, or simply a decision. Yet I can best perceive and understand myself as someone who has a specific goal. That's what makes me productive and decisive and true. (And neurotic and insecure and overwrought, but that's for another time.)

B2 - Of course, we now know how

The Matrix Reloaded

worked out for us (for an illustration of this workout, please view

Speed Racer

) and even what sweat

The Matrix Revolutions

drew from us. That wonderfully promising set-up for exploring a sense of identity and purpose fizzled into a lot of Thomas Anderson waffling about (no doubt drawing quite a bit on

his Winnipeg experiences

there) until getting whipped into shape by his oracle. I guess I have a habit of rather

retcon-ing disappointing movies

, and whenever TNT offers up that first scene between Smith and Neo I wonder a little over the direction the next 3+ hours of Hollywood magic might've taken. Imagine, for example, that the movies drove these questions through every character so that by the end the struggle is not about war, but the existential side of things. Such a movie would never bust blocks, but it would be unique and unpredictable if, for example, Neo and Smith fight themselves to exhaustion with no clear winner and then echo their lines from the first film, "You're empty." "So are you." Their sense of purpose lost. Now

that

would scare an audience.

A3 - Purpose is a terribly abstract notion, but one with tremendous influence on action, and I suppose I like to define myself by my actions (and, it must be confessed, my imagination). Purpose and identity are for me inextricable from one another. As I've been writing a bit about of late (see

5/5/10

) I'm at something of a point of contention regarding my purposes, which means I don't have the most solid sense of identity. Some might think this is pretty normal for an actor, and it is, but I've always valued the ability to distinguish between myself and a character and that requires a strong personal baseline. So I'm

bothered

. What it comes down to, really, is letting go of the definition of myself as an actor. Not refuting that I'm an actor, but learning to define myself by other means, since I want more things now. Including: having (a) kid(s) and being a good parent.

B3 - If wishes were horses, they couldn't let me into movie theatres (because of all the horses). I may as well have hoped for Keanu to suddenly transform into a vulnerable, emotive actor when he was pulled from the matrix. (Wow - how many minds would have been blown by that? [A: At least one.]) Hope, though, is an important part of a sense of purpose. And an important part of Hollywood movies. They come from a tradition of fomenting hope in their audiences, and pure, blockbuster escapism is founded on the promise that all that is good will vanquish all that is evil. I just wish the

Matrix

films had pursued a different identity, and had challenged the programmed, automatic hope that is engendered by the tropes of movies. C'est la vie -- that wasn't their purpose, after all.

A4 - Maybe the solution to the current dilemma lies in

not

defining my identity by my purpose. That is as much as to say, by becoming a little more assured in myself as myself, whatever that may mean from moment to moment, I'll have a more rooted sense of identity. Clown, husband, writer, compulsive organizer, athlete (ha-ha) and maybe someday a father. I'm a big one for questioning everything, so the quest for securing a thing or two, being content with an answer, even for a little while, is a strange one for me. Not unwelcome, however. The world doesn't get any simpler or worth any less by way of decision. Maybe the only answer to all our questions is "because," but that doesn't mean I have to limit myself to being my cause.

B4 - Before I get myself into another unintentional writing assignment, I'll just say that I'm not holding my breath for Hollywood to change its sense of purpose. It's just that neither will I soon let go of that sense of hope when it comes to big, spangly action movies, any more than I will for my own perilously un-Hollywood journeys. Hope is a pretty great lifeline when all other directions and definitions lose their meaning and, moreover, every so often, the hope pays out. And sometimes, it even does so with freaking bad-ass kung fu sequences.