An Open Letter, A Frank Admission

Loyal Reader:

You may have noticed that I disappeared for some time and, upon my return, posted a mere single entry. It was even about a "special interest" that you may or may not share (as opposed to my usual, mainstream, populist fare). I apologize for the break in ma'blogging. The reasons are myriad, but primarily it has to do with 1} leaving June 29th for Italy, for a month, and 2} el jobbo del day

freaking 'asploding

in the process. Not as in disappearing in great, orangey fireballs -- oh no. More as in becoming a flurry and confusion of paperwork, urgent need and confused requests. I am John McClane here, armed only with a three-hole-punch, barefoot, and confronted with a floor full of shattered protocol.

And I have missed you, Dear Reader. Issuing these missives on a regular basis is a sort of regulatory function for my psyche and, even when rather few comments come irregularly rolling in, I trust that every so often someone out there is getting something out of my rambling as well. (A what-not-to-do warning or two, at the least.) Hence this letter -- to reconnect a bit, explain this and potential future delinquencies, and of course to catch you up on what's gone down in the interim. Hopefully this will not take as long to compose as

my last entry

did, continually interrupted as it was. Truly, once in Italy I will be armed with

Gracie

, and hopefully a wi-fi connection, and then you will be in for 'blog entries

GALORE

. I will leave it to you to maintain your composure during that thrilling month.

Apart from work, things have been otherwise eventful since Camp Nerdly. I've continued revising

Hereafter

when I may, maintained my attendance at

Friend Cody

's aerial silks classes, conferred somewhat with

Friend Andrew

over an exciting little project and even participated in

a staged reading

with

a new company

(new to me, that is). It was really a terrible weekend, though, as Friend Patrick suffered

a painful and sudden loss

. I was lucky enough to find out about it quickly, and talk to him a very little, and even see him on Sunday. He's off to his hometown now, and my heart goes with him and his family; he's sharing a lot about his brother James at

Loose Ends

, and I wish I'd had a chance to meet him. And finally, amidst a blissful absence of fanfare (unless repeated text-message vibrations count), I turned 32 years of age on Tuesday.

Wife Megan

and I celebrated with a quiet dinner at a favorite Astoria spot, and the rain magically held off for a day, so we enjoyed it outside.

Life, she does not stop. Not for nothing.

It's funny how quickly we can lose track of ourselves, most especially when we're busy. As Patrick will attest, "busy" is my favorite state of play, yet lately I have been wondering if I'm not losing sight a bit of some of the more important details of my life. Little things like moods, and daily thoughts, and daily actions. These are the minutiae that make up a life as much as the bigger issues (work, relationships, society-at-large) and they're most definitely getting away from me just now. In an effort to corral some of 'em, I've been trying once again to shed my chronic onychophagia for the past week. This is a little bit like quitting smoking, in that it occasionally makes me want to PUNCH EVERYBODY. So perhaps it's not all that helpful to my mood as such, but you have to start somewhere. Next up -- somehow diverting the instinctive, murderous rage I feel when blocked by people on the sidewalk/stairs/subway platform.

And so, Most Sweet Reader, no profound insights into the nature of art and life today. No, just a little address of things in general and a wish for your happiness. If I see you in person in the coming weeks, please forgive any distracted behavior, or general slip-ups on my part. I am happily busy, but June is a wild month so far. Just smile and nod, and maybe give me an affectionate chuck on the shoulder. Say, "Atta boy, Jeff. Just keep swinging."

But if you see my fingers rise to my mouth, you punch me. You punch me right square in the oral fixation.

Required Reading

Friend Patrick

's going to kill me for this one.

I just realized, referencing

Library Thing

(an online resource I do

not

endorse; I'm just too lazy to switch to something else just yet), that the last four books I've read have to one degree or another been arduous experiences for me. If you're reading this relatively recent to when I wrote it, and actually from my 'blog's site, you can see for yourself which books these have been in the widget ovah he-ya:

<--go left and down a ways

I should

say "have been and still are," as I am bound and determined to finish

Love in the Time of Cholera

. It is a book I might've enjoyed under different circumstances. Say, oh, when I'm spending my days floating on an inner tube out on a very placid, contemplation-encouraging lake, perhaps drinking a lush and fruity beverage. But somehow, in the midst of New York's hubbub, all I can think while reading it is:

Gabriel - GET. ON. WITH. IT!

This might inspire a lesser man to put the book down. (Read: smarter man.) But not I! Nay! I shall be able to say that I read the book and, in addition, that I did not enjoy it! And what a proud day that will be for this great, stupid man, indeed. I think it's a great book, actually, and think the same about

The Road

, and

Revolutionary

Road

. I have no explanation for why roads are good right now. They just are. (And you may notice that I'm rather damning one book by way of omission, which is entirely intentional, I assure you.) The hard, cold fact is that a book can be very good indeed, and yet one may not personally appreciate it.

In fact, the last book that I read and truly enjoyed (I measure enjoyment largely by how eager the book makes me to climb into the subway) was one I've read before:

American Gods

. I daresay I enjoyed it more this time around than my first, too. It was also the most intentional book I've read in a while. I meant to read it. I chose it. I chose the others, too, to one extent or another, but they all also came my way by circumstance.

American Gods

is the only one of the group that I actively sought. Of course, I knew I'd like it somehow, given I knew what to expect. The opposite thinking is what's behind my usual strategy of reading. By following a course of coincidence and circumstance, I stand a better chance of being surprised, and taking in new ideas from moment to moment. Alas, this approach can backfire, and here we are, with roughly five weeks of unappreciated reading behind us.

My plan is to apply a little more intention to my reading, and I naturally welcome any suggestions from you, Dear Reader. As to what my intentions are, they are of course entirely honorable, I assure you. My first priority is to find novels that compel me to read on. I feel I owe my psyche this after four books that having required some psyching-up before each read. (Patrick is banging his head on his monitor right now. Patrick, I can hear the thudding from 31st Street!) That can be a difficult basis for choice, however, so my second criteria is a little more specific. I want to read novels either in the general style of, or dealing with the general subject matter pertaining to, the writing I keep trying to make time to do. That means good fantasy or magical realism stories, and books about cadavers and death. What I lack in style, I certainly make up for in viscera.

I have a real inclination toward imitation-of-style (read: outright theft) when I'm writing, so what I'm reading at the time invariably influences me. I've not found this to be true of writing dialogue for a script, but I may simply be lacking perspective enough to perceive it. Or perhaps that work is more influenced by conversation than by what I read. In which case, while my promised werewolf story is in present danger of ruminating at great length on complex, plot-grinding character studies, the

Hereafter

revisions are currently threatened by the possibility of very, very dry and official administrative speak. This, I think, is ample justification for going out and having really fun and surprising social interactions this weekend. It is required!

And Some Days, the Bear Gets You

Bleaaaaaaaghhhh . . .

It's been rainy here in The Big Apple, and is slated to continue various levels of gray dampness right through to the weekend. This, amongst other circumstances, has led me to about three days of feeling like a cold was coming on. I think I'm pulling out of it now (fingers resolutely crossed [you should see how I'm typing]), but even this morning there was no convincing myself to repeatedly push-up from the floor, much less jog through the moist grayness. In fact, starting with Saturday, the past few days stand in sharp contrast to the energy and motivation that were driving me last week. Lest I ever doubt seasonal depression . . .

Trailing off is rather what I've been doing lately, in most things. That is, perhaps, not giving myself enough credit. I have been working like a dog (that is to say, confusedly, but with enthusiasm) at el jobbo del day, and there has even been the odd acting assignment and social assignation thrown in, too boot. Good and bad. Yet the end result has been, regularly, a certain sloping down-current that ultimately results in . . .

That. Bleagh.

I demand exclamation points! At all times! Bleagh!

That is all. Whoops:

That is all!

(Oo-oo-oo . . .

italics

. . .)

"Inebriate of air am I..."

That's a rather embarrassingly romantic line I copied in my journal right around college, freshman year (1995 or 6), I think. I say I'm embarrassed by it, but it has stuck with me and popped up every now and again, seemingly unbidden, in my memory. I had to look it up again to discover it was Dickinson and -- as though prescient in my "tweet" of yesterday -- remind myself that I didn't come up with it. Yes. I subconsciously tried to purloin Emily Dickinson. In my defense, I'm certain I'm far from the first, and I'm definitively certain I'll not be the last. Miss Dickinson's poem, in its entirety:

I taste a liquor never brewed,

From tankards scooped in pearl;

Not all the vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,

And debauchee of dew,

Reeling, through endless summer days,

From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee

Out of the foxglove's door,

When butterflies renounce their drams,

I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,

And saints to windows run,

To see the little tippler

Leaning against the sun!

Odd to imagine a famous shut-in using inn and pub imagery, drunken bees or no.

The line recurred to me this time because I was thinking about my recent acceptance into the cult of

Twitter

, and my choice of moniker there: AcroRaven. I hesitated to use it. At first I was trying all different permutations of "Jeff Wills," as it is my brand name as an actor. Alas, I arrived on Twitter too late for such luxuries (I still owe

Expatriate Younce

a big 10-Q for getting me on to Gmail early enough to claim my address there) and I've just never adjusted to the idea of numeral incorporation into naming. Hence, AcroRaven. Right? Of course right.

Of course wrong. Both my embarrassment and my desire to use that name have quite a bit more to them than pragmatic consideration, or mere awkwardness over labeling myself using a species of bird for a site that claims all non-mute birds as its mascot. (Someone needs to get on some flightless bird sites. Cluck-er? Crow-er?) The fact is, I love ravens. And I've never seen one in person. The fact is, I call myself an acrobat. And I still can't stick a one-minute handstand. And the fact is, "AcroRaven" sounds like a really bad superhero, if you can even figure out how to pronounce it, and

that's part of what I love about it.

There. I said it. I made up that name because I love big black birds and acrobatics and seeing myself as a superhero.

The line from Dickinson spoke to me and I isolated it from its original context because it reminded me of how I imagine being a bird would feel. Maybe birds hate flying -- how would I ever know? I find their flight beautiful, however, and it reminds me of breathing deep and loving it. Exhilaration. There's a lot that feeds into my appreciation of birds, and ravens in particular, but suffice it to say that it's an animal that has come to symbolize for me my aspirations, turning my vision of who I could be into who I am. I may never be a bird, or renowned acrobat, or a superhero (in fact, the more I examine the reality of vigilantism, the less appealing it becomes, super-powered or no) yet a few years ago I never imagined I would know how to lift people to my shoulder, or have friends in Italy. These things came about because I can identify with the possibilities my dreams present.

Part of what finally launched me into the Twitter-sphere was a possible collaboration with a good, old friend of mine (one who dates back to my days of first admiring those crows that are the closest things to ravens Burke, Virginia has to offer). We're talking about creating a performance rooted in the ideas -- and maybe even the devices -- that allow us to have a creative collaboration in close-to-real time between East Coast and West, so naturally Twitter came up. As with any collaborative effort, not to mention plenty of the solo ones, it's difficult to say if anything will result from it. All the same, I'm looking forward to throwing those ideas out there, across the atmosphere, to see what sinks and what flies. Inebriates of air, aren't we all?

A Room of One's Own

I'm getting to be a bit discouraged in my hopes of revising

Hereafter

.

Writing the above is something like saying aloud, "I wish I sang more," instead of singing it.

And the impulse here is to explain myself, to offer reasons and excuses for why more writing hasn't gotten done, but those would just be excuses and not get me anywhere. I could also spend some time discussing the ins and outs of my psyche as it relates to this work (lucky you!) in the hopes of working out some pat answer to the question of why revision is so difficult for me. But where would that get me, but to pat-land, an area noted for its stultifying effect on progress? No, something else needs to happen here. I started this post because I wanted to warm-up my writing brain a bit, without getting distracted into another project, one what is fresh, and new, and thereby relatively problem-free.

The title of this post of course refers to Virginia Woolfe. In trying to address a lecture regarding "women and fiction," she can offer only this minor-point opinion:

"[A] woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved."

It's

a pretty brilliant essay

, and I'm grateful to whatever college-level English professor assigned it to me. I am not the world's biggest fan of Virginia Woolfe -- I could have spat in the eye of whoever assigned me

Mrs. Dalloway

to read -- but I can't deny that she was very intelligent, and very, very good at writing. Although in this essay Woolfe is writing specifically about the problems presented to female writers of her day and age, it resonates for me. I don't have a whole lot in common with the women of 1928 and I don't mean to suggest that I do, but I identify with the day-to-day struggles involved in creating a space within which one can expound and expand one's creative life.

By "space," I mean both environmental and plain ol' mental. One of the 'blogs I've been enjoying a lot lately is

Lifehacker

. They've had a segment for a little while now that showcases particularly beautiful and, for the most part, home, "workspaces." Every so often, a photograph of a really appealing place to sit and write drops into my Google Reader subscription bay, and I stare at it, longingly. After I've wiped away the tears and drool, I return to the reality of my cubicle, or my corner of our one-bedroom apartment's main space, and recommence paying bills or emailing potential

In Bocca al Lupo

students or whatever else it is I'm doing that isn't revising my script. Most of the work I've done on

Hereafter

has come in spurts of free time coinciding with some inspiration. Now, you can write a first draft that way, eventually. Turns out that doesn't work so well for revision. No, with revision, you have to sit there and acknowledge what you've done and accept -- nay, seek out! -- every little thing that's wrong with it.

I have probably psyched myself out in more ways than one with this. I've spent a lot of time ruminating, and not a lot of time just doing, and that can easily lead to a declension of momentum. One gets to the point at which one can see nothing but problems, and one never intended to write the durn thing in the first durn place. That's all rubbish. I get really rather T-O'd with myself for that kind of stinking thinking but, like most thoughts of that nature, it's tough to defeat when it really gets going. Such thoughts are like classic Romero zombies. You would THINK that they'd be easy enough to defeat, what with the shambling and the non-tool-using intelligence, but before you know it, and probably because you underestimated the S.o.B.s, you're trapped in a rickety old house without your shotgun and your constipated brother's there starting to twitch and crave "b-b-bran...". Psychologically speaking, of course.

Huh. A zombie

Orlando

(in the tradition of

Pride and Prejudice

)

. It's time, I think.

Anyway, my point is merely that grappling with revision is a bit reminiscent to me of what it's like to be in rehearsal, and just...not...GETTING IT. There's the problem(s), right there, right in front of you, and you just keep trying different things until at long last something fells like less of a total failure. Then you try some more. It's a weird place to be, because you need the desire (and resulting frustration) to some degree to keep you motivated, but you also need to let that go entirely to get anywhere. That's part of the silent magic of a rehearsal room. It's the place to make mistake, after mistake, after mistake, a place of unspoken agreement that everyone there is going to repeatedly fail, spectacularly, for the chance to make one or two moments of bright, shiny truth -- diamonds formed from compressed failure. That's what it's like at its best, anyway. Occasionally you get a director who's only interested in seeing immediate final product. Just like sometimes you get drafted into a senseless war, or are hit by a semi truck. Just like that.

Creating a space of time, thought, feeling and, of course, SPACE for writing is essential. Money helps with that. Not just in buying a nice desk and affording supplies, but in creating a lifestyle that allows some niche into which we can squeeze ourselves, and expand, until it swells into enough space to move around in. Money might have fixed up that rickety, zombie-at-baying house of ours. Money is good and essential, yet money can never replace the will and ability to make a little mental room of one's own.