Four (or Five) Weddings and a Funeral

I've been thinking about death a lot, lately. Not in a

goth

way, I assure you. (Remember goth, the old

emo

?) Although, I

am

pretty goth, without even trying, so it may be more goth than I am aware, my thinking, surrounded and filled by gothness as I am. I mean, I wore nothing but black clothing throughout high school. "

That, my friend, is a dark side.

" The subject of death has been brought up repeatedly by Yours Gothicly here at the Aviary;

twenty-two times to date

(not including this-here entry), to be exact. I've waxed a little philosophical about the subject, but for the most part my addresses to the final spectre have to do with how I believe it relates to comedy, and the laughter impulse. In brief, I believe most of our spontaneous laughter arises from reminders that we are mortal; that some day, each of us will die.

Told you I was goth.

Be that as it may--or may not--my belief in it has gone a long way toward helping me cope with the idea of confronting my own death. Now, I've never even been close, by either disease or incident, so far as I was aware. So the next is to be taken with a grain or two of salt. I've been thinking lately that our awareness of death is also a big part of what drives humans, what makes us so

ambitious

and, often, so anxious. I think you'd find a corollary between people who are generally anxious and driven, and those that are philosophically engaged in resisting death. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that whatever Zen-ish approach I've mastered for my own life is a direct result of diminishing my own fear of death. Or, to give myself less credit, perhaps it's a result of living in a more complete ignorance of my own death. As I get older, and my eventual death becomes more conceivable to me, I have to relearn to accept that idea, over and over again. And in many ways, I feel much more driven now that I've gained a little more perspective on how quickly I could exit life's stage. When I was younger I tended to dream bigger, but none of it seemed especially urgent. It would come eventually. Now I dream (a shade) more realistically, but it's got a greater sense of urgency. Because now, I only see one thing as truly inevitable.

In the coming six months or so, I'm involved in no less than four weddings. It's true. I've got ones to attend in September, October and January. Oh, and one in November that I ought not to miss, either. There are even more going on than these, others in my extended circles of friends, at the same time. I don't know why, but these things always seem to come in cycles of density and naught. (We certainly didn't plan it that way.) Marriage is one of those things that it seems to me each person comes to in his or her own time; kind of the most amazing collaboration possible. It depends upon a convergence of so many factors that it's a little amazing to me that it ever happens, much less happens so often, now-a-days. I mean, we do get a better deal on taxes and such, but marriage isn't necessary to the common person's survival the way it historically has been. Apart from some antiquated societal expectations, marriage has very little excuse for being anything other than an independent, individual choice. There's virtually no reason for a fairly stable person to get married into any situation that's short of perfect for us. We can hold out for love, looks, money, sexy English dialect -- whatever your criteria. It is in no way assumptive, or inevitable. In this way, marriage becomes even more meaningful; it is a matter of choice.

As in all exploits human, marriage is motivated somewhat by self-awareness, and death. No one wants to die alone. Even if that last walk is ultimately up to you, you want someone there holding your hand just before you take it, if possible. There are many human relationships that can buy one insurance toward that circumstance, but marriage is the most likely gold standard.

This Monday, a funeral will be held for someone who was very dear to me. Her body relented to a long battle with cancer last Monday morning. She was the mother of an exgirlfriend of mine, so my connection with her and her family is not the most frequent. It's a rare and valuable connection for me, though, in that in spite of the disappointment and pain of the romantic relationship and its conclusion, my relationship with the family continued in a spirit of mutually cherished love and respect. They're a family strong in Christian faith and, though I don't see everything the same way that they do, I know their faith in God is part of the reason I have had a continued loving relationship with them. Particularly with the mother. She was a shining light. I know that sounds like something everyone says about their loved ones lost, but I couldn't mean it more specifically to her. Judi's sole motivation during the time I knew her, it seemed, was for the joy and sense of love in absolutely everyone around her. She was loving, warm, funny, a believer, and though I've no doubt she's gone on to that place she believes in, to be unified in that same spirit of love she embodied, it's just not fair that she's left us.

A little over a year ago, I saw Judi again for the first time in years. The occasion was her daughter's wedding, and I ended up having to really bust-ass to get down to North Carolina for it. My flight got cancelled at the last minute, and a mutual friend and I ended up renting a car in Astoria ("Will you be staying within the tri-state area?" "We'll try.") and driving fourteen hours with traffic and weather issues. A lot of people questioned the wisdom of my actions. Not the rental car, mind you -- no one knew about that until afterward. No, it was the idea of attending an exgirlfriend's wedding. There were no qualifying factors to her "exgirlfriend" status in my life: we hadn't been friends first; we had been a serious, long-term relationship; the break-up had been painful. I was surprised to have been invited, and I gave serious consideration to graciously declining. To my memory of it, Judi's struggle with cancer began in the interim between her daughter's engagement and wedding day, so I knew of it when I got my invitation. She's the first person I had known with malignant cancer. I wanted to see her and the rest of the family again anyway, I admit, but I wanted to see her more upon hearing that news. It was a good justification for my actions, but I had no experience to apply to the concept that her life was truly in danger. To put it another way, I made a good decision almost by accident, because Judi's death did not at the time feel like a real possibility to me. When I did see her at the reception, her voice was just a whisper--a result of the extensive chemotherapy she had been undergoing--but she was softly ebullient with joy, for her daughter's marriage of course, and also, somehow, to see me again. We didn't talk much, but we had ourselves one hell of a significant hug.

We never know when we might be seeing someone for the last time in our lives. It can be easy to forget that, in this day and age, with all the myriad ways we have not only of staying "in touch" but "reconnecting" with people from our past. It can also be easy to remember it, and allow it to drive us into anxiety and a useless blind-fighting of inevitability. Perhaps, though, this awareness can allow us instead to appreciate our hellos and goodbyes a little more. Maybe we can come to never take a hug or handshake for granted, or to reject the notion that anything is done for us, or obligatory. Every action in our lives, every person we love, can be a choice. Hopefully, a true and meaningful choice. That's what I'm going to try to remember. Judi, I think, would appreciate that idea.

Murderous Clowns

In honor of MY NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE

THE DARK KNIGHT

FOR DAYS AND DAYS

, I thought I'd finally get around to writing the sequel (heh heh) to

this little gem

of an entry. I wasn't sure if I'd ever write about this. It's a difficult entry to justify in the ethos of the Aviary (because I've been

so

dedicated to my mission statement to date) except perhaps to say that: 1 - my doing clown work makes for a very real interest in the sociological implications of any clown identity; B - my early cultural influences have untold ramifications on what I choose to create today; and * - it's

BATMAN

weekend, people! And I've got to be a part of it!

Really though, it's Joker week. That's the big excitement over the movie and, I'd wager, would be even if it were not for Heath's untimely exit from the stage. The Joker is almost as iconic a character as Batman himself, and certainly as graphic and emblematic a villain as has ever risen from popular media. He may even indicate that a pervasive fear of clowns has been around a lot longer than some of the current media we have to propagate it. Before

The Dark Knight

, or

Batman

, or

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

, or

It

, or

John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

, or the original appearance of the Joker in Batman #1. Maybe it's always been around, pre-

Punch

. Maybe the fear was first, and the laughter second. That's certainly in keeping with my general theory of humor. [Laughter = self awareness * inevitability, squared.] And for those of you who consider the Joker a relatively trivial source of terror, consider this, too: In his first dozen appearances in the comics, he averaged about three murders per issue.

In my deep, unending and intricate research into

coulrophobia

(sp?) I have discovered some amazing things. Unfortunately, I can not share these things with you, because they are far too intricate, deep and, uh, unending, to . . .. Okay. I haven't exactly been to the library yet. But I've spoken with people about it, and I'm amazed by how few people know who John Wayne Gacy, Jr., was. (He was executed in 1994; one less clown to deal with, coulrophobes.) I thought he was sort of a household name, right up there with Dahmer and Manson, but I only spoke to one or two people who even had an inkling of who he was. Well, he was a seemingly pedophilic mass-murderer with a penchant for imprisonment and grisly dismemberment, who apparently can't even properly be classified as a psychopath. He also enjoyed moonlighting as a birthday clown. Pogo the clown.

So it's difficult to discount coulrophobia as absurd or irrelevant. It could even be a pretty basic survival instinct, as some have suggested. Some of the most ancient human rites involve masks and grinning figures that don't necessarily mean us well. The Joker's white face may as well be the clay pasted to an aboriginal witch-doctor, or the bleached skull an African shaman paints on his face. And death is absurd, too. Well, it seems absurd to the living, anyway. Living is to some extent based on ignoring the fact that we're going to die. This is such a prevalent philosophy that those who embrace death, or even simply associate themselves with it, are seen as somehow mystic or insane. The skull of a deceased comedian grins back at Hamlet's philosophizing, and when anyone grins, they expose the teeth -- the only "bones" directly visible on a living human body.

The Joker makes a great villain for Batman, and the two sum up a very basic human struggle pretty succinctly, so I have to forgive this perpetuation of the coulrophobic phenomenon. Batman is serious, and the events of his life have meaning -- he's a believer. Hell: His whole "superpower" is a character trait, that of determination. And Joker, well, he stands in absolute contrast to that. My favorite characterizations of him never allow him a moment to regret even his own failure. For him, it is all absurd, all pointless. He's not appetite-driven or suppressed, like Gacy, nor a traumatized child who is endlessly acting out his worst fantasies and fears. The story has no significance to the conclusion because, at the end, all our stories end the exact, same, way. If only he could convince Batman of that, maybe then he'd be able to rest. If only the Yorick had survived into Hamlet's story, maybe he could have made everyone see the folly of their ways.

So how do you tell the difference between the jester, who just wants to make fools of us all, and the joker, who wants to make us all corpses? Well, sadly, you can't. That's part of the dread of comedy, and the thrill of death. You just have to take your chances.

Do Oh

Last night Friend Heather and I performed our much-performed clown duet (originally conceived and directed with

Friend Grey

),

Death + A Maiden

, as part of the same festival

I performed in the night before

. My hat is off to her. She came a long way, through difficult travels, to partner with me in all things theatrical this week, and me with virtually no free social time.

Fortunately, we had great company. There was no way I could have felt isolated this night, let me tell you. Friends

Jenny

and

Dave

were MCing as their characters in

The Maestrosities

, a clown band they developed together, and Friend

Anna (Zastrow)

was on the bill as well, playing her new clown, Hillemo (sp?). We even had friends in the well-packed audience!

Ed Chemaly

, our director for

Operation Opera

was in attendance, as well as Friend

Avi

. Friends

Kate

and

Leah

managed to make it, too, which is always great for audience reaction. Leah's laugh is in constant threat of upstaging any show -- loud and clear and uniquely hilarious.

Heather and I have done this piece many times, in a variety of environments, but there's always something to be learned from it. Without a doubt, this time through contained one of the most gratifying audience reactions to a specific moment that I've ever known. The scenario is that Death pays a visit to a Maiden preparing for a party, intending to dispatch her, but discovering that he loves her. They court, they dance, and about three-quarters of the way through the 15-minute piece, they kiss . . . which naturally immediately kills the Maiden. When we reached this point in our tale, the audience burst into my favorite kind of laughter. It seemed as though they were surprised not only by the turn of events, but at themselves for laughing. I have put forth for some time that laughter is ultimately born from self-awareness, from a fear of death, and this was a particularly poignant exemplification, if you are asking this guy. It was especially effective because it takes a while for Death to realize ("Think slow; act fast." - Buster Keaton) he's killed his new love, and when he does, he has a right heartfelt tantrum over it. The audience was right there with me when I did that scary, emotional bit, it seemed. I felt them pouring their grief in the same dish as mine. That, my friends, is a sharp contrast between the clowning we do, and the clowns most of America is aware of.

What's very interesting about the piece is that, in spite of it being a hit the first couple of times we did it, the ending hasn't satisfied audiences for quite some time. Which is rough for me, because I'm the only performer left on stage (and ostensibly conscious) by that point. When we originally set the piece, it was according to the guidelines of a particular comedy festival in Philadelphia, which specified that all performances must address love and death, and incorporate a

Wet-Nap(TM)

as a prop. This shaped our show, and naturally lent a certain distance to the story. Because the audiences were aware that 1) what they were seeing is a "comedy," and 2) it will involve death, they could take such elements as ingredients more than as profound, empathetic experiences. In processing this piece for other venues, we've used Heather's ridiculous bow in place of the Wet-Nap(TM), but neglected to revise the ending to accomodate our changed audience.

The ending consists of a five-minute sequence of Death failing to finish his job -- carrying off the body -- until he doesn't anymore and walks out with the Maiden over his shoulder, his scythe shoved down the back of his shirt and kicking his cloak along ahead of him. On its own: cute. After an audience has come to love Heather's Maiden, and empathize with my Death: not so much cute, or even awkwardly funny. So there's work to be done on the old stand-by! That's kind of cool.

If only we didn't have so much other work to do just now. But more on that later...

Meat Growth

Now if that title doesn't earn me pornographic status in the various 'blog rating systems, I don't know what will. Right-wingers beware -- I use ambiguities in our God-given language to my advantage. Now:

I am not one who condones senseless paranoia inspired by emerging technologies and based in pulp fiction, but

this

is going to turn us all into zombies. You can see that, right? Even without the abstractly disturbing visual attached to the article, the facts read like the prologue to a dreadful zombie film.

The world thought it had reached equipoise at last -- genetically engineered food sources eliminated hunger, and peace began to evolve from a dream into a standard of living. No one could see anything wrong with the technology . . . until one day, the horrible latent virus in the meat that gradually atrophied the reason center of the human brain reached a critical mass. Panic swept the globe, surviving only as long as most of the population maintained its reason. Soon, however, all that was left of humanity was an awful conglomerate of vicious, shambling undead, feeding on all the live, un-vat-grown flesh they could find.

Or so it seemed. Subversively, on a small island in the North Sea, a group of passionate vegetarians lived and planned an uprising. They had never accepted the practice of consuming meat, despite the supposed lack of cruelty to animals in consuming Vat Meat(TM). Now this pack of loners must gather its disparate groups from around the world and, much like the virus that seemed heaven-sent to destroy the meat eaters, come to life and destroy the new race of cannibals. They may be relatively weak and rather anemic, and they'll have to overcome some certain scruples as regards mammal murder but -- by God -- they'll take the planet back.

Meat may be murder, but these zombies are nothing but vegetables . . . and the vegetarians love them some crudité.

Romero: Call me. I get 20%.

Recovery

This morning I received an email from the playwright UnCommon Cause Theatre had been collaborating with to create

As Far As We Know

, informing those of us who did not yet know that the remains of Staff Sergeant Keith "Matt" Maupin had been recovered and identified. For those of you who don't know, the events resulting from the disappearance of Matt -- in 2004 -- were the inspiration for that show. For years, in spite of a video purportedly exhibiting his execution, his status remained active as far as the military was concerned, and his family kept faith that it could be true. That was the real subject of our play, what really kept our interest in it: keeping that faith and what we may have to lose by keeping it.

I had decided at some point in the process that most likely Sgt. Maupin had died. I had no details, and vacillated frequently on this position, but ultimately it was the idea I came to embrace. He was gone. That was my luxury, that perception. If I learned nothing else working on

As Far As We Know

, I learned that the perspective I was afforded by my distance from the situation was absolutely a luxury. No one who knew Matt, none of his family or the people living in his hometown, no one who had loved ones involved in this war could afford that luxury. I could. I had the distance to decide for myself, regardless of the hopes of others, that the best thing for all involved would be to grieve now, to try to say goodbye.

What I've discovered, with the arrival of this official news, is that my decision to say goodbye never reached my heart. It was just a decision. Now, this morning, I discover that all this comfortable time of mine I had been keeping a candle of faith going in my heart for Matt and his family. I've discovered that I wasn't comforted by my perspective at all. My

perspective

merely quieted my mind. What gave me comfort was that unconscious lick of flame, that nearly unjustifiable hope, which is now just as quietly extinguished. Matt is gone now. He has been missing, potentially and finally actually deceased for years, but now he is truly gone.

I can't compare my grief to his parents', his brother's, his friends'. I can't even compare my grief to my fellow players' and collaborators', some of whom have been to Matt's home and met the people there. It would be ridiculous to conceive of it. I'm just a guy who followed the news, studied the situation and tried to imagine the lives inside it. Yet I'm in tears to learn that he is gone. What was Matt to me? I'm not sure. Probably, figuring that out for myself will be what allows me to let him go. He represented a lot for me -- patriotism, ambition, discipline, the commingling of faith and love -- but representation doesn't tear at emotion this way. No, in some way, without ever meeting him, I came to love Matt for myself. And there is nothing right in this, in his death. No matter what peace it brings, no matter the resolution. His death is wrong.

In one of the introductory classes we were required to take as freshmen in the BFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University they tried to help us understand the nature of tragedy. Actually, of capital-t Tragedy. That is to say, as a form, not simply a vocabulary word. One more colorful teacher asked us, "What is it when a busload of nuns dies?" Someone naturally responded, "A tragedy." (That someone: probably a young guy with a bit of something to prove who valued very highly his own ability to know the "right" answer, and obviously in no way was that someone, nor could he ever have been, me.) "Wrong. When a busload of nuns arbitrarily kicks it, that's a travesty. Now, if it's a king, and we can see it coming from a mile off, but nothing we say or do can change it, and we just have to watch it unfurl into its ultimate conclusion ... that, my friends, is Tragedy."

The circumstances of Staff Sgt. Keith "Matt" Maupin's capture, torment and murder add up to a travesty. Even accepting that Arthur Miller made us see the possibility of a salesman experiencing a tragedy normally reserved for kings, there's too much that's arbitrary about Maupin's story to leave it room in the parameters of tragic action. He was not in combat, but escorting fuel trucks, and they weren't meant to be on the route they took when he was captured. He lied about his personal details on the hostage video that was released, presumably because he felt he had to, and even now news agencies are reporting those, misunderstood as facts. The government had to do everything they could to avoid looking like they were flailing helplessly, owing to how little they knew. It's a travesty.

But. But. Part of what makes Tragedy work is the way in which we come to resist the inevitable outcome. The tragic hero could be someone we would never get along with in life, yet through the journey of the story we come to intimately identify with a commonality: the will to live. "Rage against the dying of the light." We do. We always will, be that light our life or hope for others'. Ultimately, Matt's situation would not turn out well. The more time that passed, the more certain his fate became. We would have been smart to let our hope go, to will it to pass. And yet. And yet.

I -- little me -- will miss you, Matt Maupin. I wish I could hold you and your family up. I hope you all find peace and the space of breath to grieve. The tragedy of this outcome devastates me, but the years of your faith . . . our faith . . . inspire me. May you never lay down, may you always believe.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas