Dare You to put Your Tongue against the Subway Track...

Breach of etiquette: I triple-dog dare you.

That's also the subject of today's movie-quote quiz. I paraphrase, of course, but if you know it there should be no problem winning today's finsky.

Polar Bear swim at

The Pond

! Last one in is a higher order of human being who doesn't succumb to the pack mentality when it could mean his or her ultimate peril!

Seriously: I want to cuddle with anything with a pulse, in front of a real fireplace, whilst drinking mulled wine and humming

sea shanties

. Instead, I am diligently returned to my day job and, like an early evolution of tiny mammal, merely overjoyed to be within a contained structure that has heated air being pumped through it. On my way up from the F train today I saw a homeless person laying out in the middle of the concourse floor, covered by a ratty comforter. Show me the police officer who would kick out such a person in such weather, and I will beat that officer mercilessly. Because violence solves problems. ( <--IRONY ) Today I had the opportunity to come into closer contact with Mona's clients than I normally do. In point of fact, I had not so much contact with her client, as with her client's soon-to-be-ex-spouse. (I think as long as I don't name names I can't be fired for this disclosure.) Yes, today I actually had to venture back out into the f'ing cold to serve a summons for divorce on someone. This is the third time, in four years of working for the same attorney, that I have been blessed with the honor of this particular sort of task. It was definitely the most pleasant of the three. The individual seemed very nice and was certainly cooperative. You don't get that a lot in the business of matrimonial law. It may seem cold to perform this task under any circumstances, but I like to think that when it falls to me to perform it I have the opportunity to at least make it as painless as possible, whereas when a service service (yeah--that's accurate) is made incumbent to the same thing it is of necessity professionally cruel. That's how I comfort myself. I have no real comfort to offer the people I meet in this role. Thanks to

Neil Gaiman

for suggesting (via his characterization of

Death

) that such a service is necessary and not necessarily vile. Just tough to accept.

An artist's life is invariably an interwoven mess of his or her personal, creative and professional lives (possibly best visualized by a

Pollack painting

). I'm not going to label myself an artist (leave that to the teeming masses) but I believe this metaphor extends to all those pursuing

The Third Life

(all rights reserved pending the apocalypse), and I sometimes wonder about the interrelationship between the elements of my particular pursuit. Today's task being a case in point, as is the fact that all my adult relationships to this point have been of necessity--to one extreme or another--long-distance ones. It doesn't exactly lend one an overwhelming confidence in one's ability to commit to and make work an ongoing relationship with someone, and I mean this both in the context of romantic entanglements as well as platonic ones.

Friend Patrick has made it something of his mission to remind me:

  1. Stability is not necessarily contrary to The Third Life; and
  2. Struggling ________s shouldn't fret over spending time/energy on things that simply make them happy.

For which I am eternally grateful. However, this encouragement has yet to make much of a dint in my wonderment over why the ol' personal life hasn't gone quite according to Hoyle. Not that I'm eager to attribute it to forces outside of my control or anything, but occasionally I have to wonder how best to make it work. And that's on good days. On bad days, I wonder if I've lost every chance for a long-term, meaningful relationship with someone by merit of prioritizing the career to the extent that I've had too many relationships fail not to have become jaded and absurd.

I try hard not to whine about it, but I am frustrated. The simple answer is, "Let go of the acting." You want a family, choose that and let the rest go. No dice, Cochise. I get about as far with that as I do on solving a

Rubik's cube

. It's not an option, and when I try to force that square peg into the round hole (minds: kindly remove yourselves from that gutter) it all goes to De Moines in a hand basket. Of course, there are varying degrees of compromise on this topic, and I've tried to explore them. Again: Rubik's cube. (I'm going to invent a "rubrics cube"; it can only be solved by speaking parenthetical advice at it until it suffers a system error from trying to process it all and catches fire, burning red until it's turned to slag...anyway...) Somehow I'm not yet ready to get a "real job" and practice community theatre, nor to apply to grad school and channel my creative energies into directing the senior class' production of

Angels in America

. Nor any of the other possibilities that spring to mind.

Yesterday I celebrated Friend Kira's thirtieth birthday with her. This March, the girl I moved to New York to be with is finally having her dream wedding. When I got out of college and was touring with children's theatre to save up enough money to move to this big city, I set my thirtieth year as the absolute, no-holds-barred decision date for hitting it, or quitting it, as regards pursuing a conventional family life. My thirtieth is impending, occurring in early June, at which time I will hopefully be in Italy, performing a clown piece in

Piazza Navona

. (Hear me, big G? For

reals

, yo.) So much has changed for me in the past seven years, I'm no longer assured that deadline was a good call. Nevertheless, it weighs on me occasionally. Okay: more than occasionally. RATHER FREQUENTLY. Yeah. That much.

I would like to go back and delete the last two paragraphs there. If you know me, it probably sounds like whining. If you don't know me, it probably sounds like relentless self-justification. Wait: Maybe it's the reverse. If you

don't

know . . . aw, to hell with it. It makes me vulnerable to admit that stuff, but come on. All you have to do is observe me for a short while for all of the above to be self-apparent. I'm not fooling anyone. Well, maybe Santa. Because I have yet to get just coal. Though I often wonder if generic electronics might not be today's equivalent.

What might be really hard to deal with is the fact that, of all my fantasies about how my life could go, which is my fantasy for this milestone of three decades?

In Bocca al Lupo

. Acting for spare change in a city in which I don't speak the native language. Not the fireplace. Not the Willsian progeny. Hat tricks and laughter in a piazza in Rome, which is really just a kind of New York with about two more millennia of history.

So there's no simple answer. Except, perhaps, to say that life is full of surprises. I figure if I can avoid choosing to apply my tongue to sub-zero-temperature alloys, then I'm still making reasonably intelligent decisions. So: I'll see you guys at 5:00 AM tomorrow morning at The Pond!

Sticking Up

A little something from my passive-resistance, anti'blogger friend (see

1/7/07

for said friend's impressive dramaturgy), who met a young actor at an educational gig:

"C____ was actually a really interesting guy, who had only been acting for about four months, and had already had a speaking part in the

upcoming Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe movie

--Russell Crowe pulls a gun on him. So awesome! But he used to be a stick-up kid. He talked really honestly about it later when S___ and I were walking back to the subway with him. He also said that he felt the need to pursue acting because of what had fallen in his lap--that from talking to other people on set he had begun to realize and appreciate how hard it is to do that, how hard the life is, and how hard it is to work to perfect the craft. He felt that to honor it--the opportunities that have been flung on him, and the lifestyle that usually accompanies it--he had to see it through to wherever this took him. So there's something for your blog (make no mistake--I do not condone that sort of thing): choosing this life because in part it chose you. And honoring what you have intrinsically. That there's some idea of a blessing involved, and that giving back, utilizing these tools is part of the respect you pay to the work. I think it's rather beautiful."

I agree.

This is not a perspective I come to naturally, this idea that some people have gifts (or "talent") that others do not. I would even go so far as to say: Most people who say they believe this idea, when pressed or drawn into a need to defend their position, would discover they were operating from an assumption. There are these axioms we are all inclined to accept through the sheer pressure of public opinion. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my sister (who, being a fellow

Unitarian Universalist

, tends also to be a questioner--

1/3/07

) on different subjects, but with the same question applied to them: Why? Why is saving a life automatically the best choice in every situation? Why should there be someone out there for everyone? Why should it be that people have natural talents, rather than abilities that are either cultivated or not?

The Why Cycle is a vicious one, of course. Ever have that conversation with a beebler (read: fully verbal but

very

young child) that starts out with something simple, like, "Why do birds fly?", only to end up with a question equivalent to "Why are we here and how do we, in fact, know we are here at all?" Ah, the birth of abstract thought! Ah, the Medea-complex it can inspire! So let's not build an

Escher staircase

, please. But the question "why" was made to draw back the curtain, show us through the frame to a broader horizon of possibilities, so it's a good place to start.

C____ reminds me of my mother, midway through seminary. (Stick with me here.) (Come to think of it, he reminds me of myself, midway through college [see

1/29/07

]. But my Mom has always been more inspiring, so:) A middle-aged Unitarian Universalist at

Wesley Theological Seminary

(an ecumenical Christian school) studying to become Reverend Wills. She came from teaching elementary school for years, and after volunteering for a year or two as Director of Religious Education (DRE) at our church--

AUUC

--began setting her sights on the ministry. That part of the story's unique enough, but the point (yes, I have one this time) is that about midway through her ten-year tenure as a student of ministry, her peers began to swap stories about their Calling. This is not calling, as in holla-back-shorty, but Calling, as in holla-back-Jesus. (Jesus: I ain't no holla-back prophet, but here's some blessing for the effort. And Haddock. H-A-D-D-O-C-K... [Just a little ecumenical

humor

, all in good fun...Sir...]) Of course all the acknowledged Christians had little difficulty with this in concept, regardless of how it might apply to them in practice.

My Mom, however, had to think about it for a bit. (It's what we do, UUs: think. Alla' time. It's irritating.) She also had to soul-search, pray, meditate and probably do some new age crap that I still respect but is awful, awful crap. Ahem. Sorry, New-Agers. And Wiccans. I do some of it myself. I'm just an upstart UU. WATCH OUT! Anyway--and this is funny--I can't remember what conclusion she came to. Which is the funny. I thought I had a point, and yet I have made a liar of myself. God did it, probably, for my non-UU-ness a few lines ago. Thanks, God. I needed that like I needed another crisis of faith. Anyway, my Mom is indeed Reverend Wills now (she even answers the phone that way; try it: 301-745-6576) so she and God must have gotten right about it somehow.

But how's this for a point: For whatever reason, my Mom is absolutely gifted at being a mother. It's what she was born to do, no doubt about it in my mind. Something silent in her reaches out to you in whatever need you're in and--whether it's by conduit to God or a powerful ability for empathy--gives you what you need. It's a fact of faith for me, and I don't have too many of those (mostly I have theories of faith, which is how we UUs generally like it).

My point, my friends, is that it doesn't matter how we do what we do. The source(s) of our power in the world, be it nature, nurture or divine providence, does not seek to answer the question of "why." What matters is that we do it. Perhaps we were meant to do what we're doing. Perhaps we've just spent a lot of time working really hard at it. I believe it's good to honor something other than yourself with what you do with your life. Any ambition means more, and will accomplish greater things, when it is serving a larger purpose. So honor thy mother and father, honor humanity, honor God, but honor something say I. Though not

L. Ron Hubbard

, please. That was based on a bet. I guarantee it.

There's a lot of banter between actors about the specific "right way" to get into character (it was a much-heated debate toward the beginning of the 20th century; now it's mostly just banter [like religion in the west, more and more people are beginning to see multiple perspectives with the same goal]), with camps that claim success is achieved when you

become

your character, transformed, and camps that insist success lies in the character

becoming

you, essential, real and true. A thousand grays lie between. I, and most peers with whom I've discussed it, see it as a meeting halfway. Halfway in this context meaning a point in time (rather than distance) when the two converge; sometimes the actor has to do more traveling, sometimes the character. I willfully apply this scenario to the question of our choice, or being chosen. And I think it is a constantly shifting ratio. Sometimes we just have to keep choosing and choosing and CHOOSING to do what we love. And sometimes, the love calls to us.

Holla-back, love. Holla-back.

It's kind of Cold Here

Understatement is an unheralded art form. Because it would defeat the purpose of the form, wouldn't it? Ironic. Actually, that's not ironic. It's somewhat self-fulfilling and wry, but irony, strictly speaking, is the statement of meaning opposite of the words one uses. The vilest form being emoticon irony, i.e. "I freaking hate you, you bastard. ;D " Actually, the emoti-wink eviscerates the irony too, making it more of an aside. It would be more apt to follow up the statement with something like " =D " Statements that are merely apt are often swiftly categorized as ironic nowadays. It makes me sad. It wish it were a more remarkable occurrence. Alas, it merits only the amount of remarks I have made prior to the period at the end of this sentence.

:P!

That emoticon's tongue is actually stuck there, frozen to the exclamation point, because it is SO FREAKING COLD HERE. Friend Adam made a good call a couple of months ago, when he predicted we would reap the whirlwind following the balmy start of our winter here in sunny Manhattan. Me, I've ceased to make weather predictions beyond that it will rain whenever I'm feeling depressed. And no, there's nothing Sophistic about that. Why do you ask?

I still remember my first winter in New York. I moved here on the second of January, 2000, an eager-eyed little 22-year-old whipper-snapper, and hardly realized what I was in for . . . in so many ways. One of those ways concerned the effects of a northern city wind. At that time I had visited Chicago, and so thought I knew wind, but the consistency of the winds in Chicago is part of their mythos. Not so with NYC's zephyrs. There should be traffic lights and crossing signals for the gusts that bide their time in The Big Apple during the colder months. I've turned onto avenues before and been mind-numbed by the sudden drop in temperature. It's fun to watch tourists do as I did that first January here, namely walk the steps up from the subway and run up the last three because a powerful gale has hit their backs.

When I first arrived here, I was still clinging to this notion that there was virtue in being colder than I had to be. In part, this was to justify the wearing of my grandfather's fall coat nine months out of the year. (The other part was that mentality so many of us come at a significant challenge with: "I am going to do this no matter how

hard

it is, and it better be

pretty hard

, so I know my efforts are justified!") I loved that coat. Love, I should say, because it still hangs forlornly in my closet, never again worn. It has, to be kind, seen better days. A light, gray-brown tweed coat that comes to knee length, it was actually refurbished by my father (paid for it--not a tailor) one Christmas, and still I've worn it into the ground. There are holes in the lining, and a one developing through the tweed itself in the seat. The button holes are ragged, and the tweed is also wearing away around the collar fold and seam. Yes, I am ridiculously sentimental. Or rather, I used to be. Few things I've acquired since about 2001 have held enough intrinsic reminiscence for me to think thrice about tossing them. Still, I consider it an act of great callousness on my part not to wear the coat anymore, so giving or (NEVER) throwing it away is not an option.

I started wearing the coat in my junior or senior year of high school. I can't remember why exactly, and it was an odd choice for me, since at the time I placed a very high priority on my clothing being as jet-black as possible. (Yeah: That guy. And you're reading his 'blog.) I remember I wore it in a show, which may have been the start of it. I also remember my girlfriend at the time asking me if she could have it to wear, and my deftly giving her another of my grandfather's coats, as though that would settle the issue. (And that one was the heavier of the two; see my supposed IQ in entry

1/6/07

.) It rode across my back for years, and every year I would be eager for the temperature to dip so I had an excuse to wear it, regardless of how ineffective it was as a winter coat. That paragon of tweed traveled with me through quite a lot; more than I can reasonably sum up here.

I've shed a lot over the years since arriving here. It's an important and continuous life lesson--letting go--and nothing brings it to the pragmatic forefront quite like living in a city in which you're expected to change apartments bi-annually. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever actually learns that lesson, or if we just go through times when we're forced to accept its necessity, or choose insanity. That's a regular theme in shows I've contributed to the creation of here in the city, and with little wonder. In the resonance of 9/11, it was natural for

Kirkos

to create

Awake, My Heart

and

Requiem

, and for Joint Stock Theatre Alliance to continue work on

The Torture Project

. We've had to honor so much passing (though not the passage of irony from vogue, as so many were eager to report) that to say we're still grieving is an understatement. I know that I'm still learning about the effects that day continues to have on me as I continue to survive (and occasionally even thrive) through the losses then and since. And the lesson that keeps challenging me is how and when to let go. Because eventually, you have to. Life is growth and movement, and you can't move while clinging to one point, object, person, belief, etc....

Someday I'll give up my grandfather's coat entirely. I've already replaced it with something more suited to me as I am now (I swear to you, on my life, that I didn't intend that pun). My winter coat now is calf-length, and black, of course. It's still not the heaviest thing in the world, but I've learned to layer. I've had it a couple of years now, and the lining in the back has gotten torn at the seams (which I consider apt). For now, I continue to keep my grandfather's coat in my little New York closet. I still need it, somehow. Some part of me identifies with it more intimately than I do with anything I've worn since.

But I'm not really sentimental anymore. ;)

A Year (or Three) in Review

Returning from my holiday journeys just in time for New Years, I find the city the same as it ever was. I suppose it's only natural to feel inclined to review one's year in the face of a new one. I have to admit that 2006 was not a year that I will be dreadfully sorry to see go. It was comprised of amazing highs and lows, both; my hope for the new year is for it to be a little more moderate in its exchanges. I feel a bit guilty expressing that desire, what with professing a renewed conviction in

The Third Life

(tm), but who's to say TTL(tm) can't at times have a nice, steady rhythm to it, rather than a course akin to a

wooden roller-coaster

at every turn?

While I was visiting NoVa, a dear friend of mine who has lived in San Diego for years now was home, too, and threw a modest reunion for certain circle of us from high school. I saw her and several other people I had often wondered about since graduating. It wasn't the typical reunion. Everyone there was really interested in one another and speaking intelligently about their lives--none of that dreadful one-ups-man-ship that seems to be the major export of the Uniting Reunions of America. In spite of how lovely it all was, what I'm carrying away with me, and keep revisiting in my mind, is an unanswered observation an old friend of mine had to say. In response to my description of my life since college, all the touring, traveling, month-long shows, etc., she said, "That sounds like it would be so lonely."

Believe it or not, I had never looked at it that way before. And I

love

to look at things darkly. I mean, I am

dark

. (Do you read the last page of a new book first, just in case you die before you finish reading it?

Because I do.

) Somehow, however, this obsidian nugget of darkness had eluded me. I mean, no wonder I've been the great serial monogamist all these years, and no wonder the pursuit of an acting career can be so soul-evaporating.

It is fucking lonely.

Now I cast back to a Christmas party my friends Todd and Kate had before we all scattered to our respective homelands for Christmahannukwanzica. At this party, nothing was said to shatter my earth. My earth remained intact as I bid adieu, but it was certainly rocked. Three of the guests at the party were a family--young parents and an unbelievably verbal sub-toddler. And get this: The parents were in theatre.

I KNOW! The wife/mother performed in musical theatre, touring occasionally with her son along. The husband had switched to directing after being an actor for several years and was having what seems to have been a very good time of it. Now, it's not that I don't know that such people exist. They must, else we'd never have these celebrities with stories about how they learned everything from their quaint, performed-on-Broadway-for-forty-years parents. Right? Right. Somehow, however, coming face-to-face with such folks was a very difficult experience for me that night. There was a lot of envy going on there, and I don't generally get too envious over career stuff. You landed a movie? Congratulations. Your agent says he's going to get you on every CSI they make? Fantastic.

You maintain a career that supports you and have the security and emotional wherewithal to start a healthy family? Come here. A little closer. I NEED TO GO ALL

TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

ON YOUR LIFE!

The thing is, it's not as though I haven't had opportunities to be in a family way. In point of fact, I keep choosing the ol' career over marriage, family, etc. This year has been, in its way, a huge exemplification of that choice. Now, I could argue that the problem has always been that (for one reason or another) somehow the choice always comes up. It's never a matter of someone wanting to be married to

me

, but to the

me I'll be when I get over this acting phase

. I could make that argument.

But I don't, because the question is far more interesting if I don't have that somewhat convenient circumstance to fall back on. So why do I keep making the choice, knowing that it will keep leading me back to questions about my path and insecurities about the ticking clock?

This year I ran around like mad. I moved back to Brooklyn from Queens. I had absolutely

horrible

health (the short list includes something in the area of two bad sprains, teeth problems, four feverish throat infections, and what I thought was a hernia but turned out to be a

chemical epididymitis

instead) but also wrapped the year with enough Equity weeks worked to qualify for six months of free health insurance, starting today. I was in and out of Pennsylvania, and traveled and worked in New Hampshire/Vermont, Virginia, Maryland and Italy. I performed in a satire, a tragedy, two comedies, one work-in-progress and one original debut. I developed a solo clown piece. I danced and sang, fought and kissed, and even got a little writing done.

What is this worth? Where is this getting me, I often ask myself. I view my career in a fashion similar to my spiritual beliefs, which is to say: If I don't question them (or myself) regularly, then I'm not really living them. Questions are not dangerous, unless they go unasked. In fact, I'd say that the darkest times in my life were when I was too certain of an answer to keep asking the questions. So. What is it worth?

The difficult answer (and for God's sake, question even this) is that it's worth itself. And that's all. I have to be satisfied with myself insofar as I need to be to be happy and think clearly. TTL isn't better than the more conventional life, but it certainly isn't worse. Some feel a need to insulate themselves from its danger by observing it and judging. "Doesn't the constant running from show to show seem like an addiction?" "You're not making enough money to make car payments?" Even the classic: "How do you memorize all those lines?" (Folken: What we really hear you saying is, "What on God's green earth possessed you to commit yourself to something so archaic and bizarre?") It is similar to every other priority we might claim without risking such judgment. Doesn't the constant pursuit of more money seem like a compulsion? You mean you just stay at home, all day, in the same home? And how do you forget all those childhood dreams?

We can neither of us judge the other, and I sally forth [insert comic strip pun/allusion here] into the new year eager to continue the wrestling match that is I. Me. I? Anyway. We're all here trying to make sense of ourselves. It's good to be accepting of our different paths; or if that's too much, than at least of our own path. I'm reminded of a conversation I had at the start of college, with my dear friend who organized the reunion and another incoming freshman. That Other asked us why we did theatre,

really

. I said some pretentious, theoretical crap (which I really believed and probably still do) and the guy said something along similar lines, but dear Sarah said,

"I just enjoy it. It's one of the few things in my life that I can point to and definitely [sic] say 'That makes me happy.'"

Well said, my friend. Happy new year, everyone.