Winging Away

As promised (see

4/24/13

), the Aviary is moving. I had my personal and aspirational reasons for doing so, which have lately been enhanced by some intuition about how Google will be handling their online offerings over the next few years. To wit: They will consolidate. Maybe this only means Blogger will become part of the G+ fold, maybe it means it will be replaced in lieu of a quicker, lighter posting platform. It's not for me to say, but when you add this belief to the priority of gathering myself under one domain, they only choice left is to pack up and move.

I'm a sentimental sort. Even something as pragmatic and insubstantial as changing a blogging platform gives me pause to reflect. We've had some times, haven't we...?

[INSERT BOTTLE EPISODE HERE]

...Whew! Thank goodness you happened to have a meat craving and unlatch this freezer locker, otherwise we would've frozen to death any minute now, for sure!

(You've no idea how much I relish that

Three's Company

reference. Enough, shall we leave it said, to actually [if but casually] cite my reference.)

Mostly I think about many of the themes expressed in my

No, YOU Tell It!

contribution (see

4/15

[-22]/13). Themes such as idealism, naïveté and self-control; growth and transformation; choice and chance. I hesitated to start this here 'blog. The notion of essentially "journaling" at that particular stage of my life and in such a public fashion bothered me for several reasons. It would be revealing, it would be eventually (though hopefully not quickly) outdated, it would be time-consuming, it would be kind of permanent in a new way. In particular, I was aware it meant I couldn't hide or lie very effectively anymore.

That suggests that I was some kind of flagrant and deceptive con artist, and I was not. I was, however, a young actor struggling to make it all work. So I'd say I lied as much as the next struggling young actor, trying to make it all work. My hat's off to those amongst you who found a way to struggle more honestly. I had a sheaf of ready-made lies and excuses for my work, my relationships, and of course myself. Writing it all down in a public journal would make me accountable. What I was surprised to rapidly realize was that I liked being held accountable.

I am embarrassed -

very

embarrassed - by old diaries. These are documents no one can ever read but me, yet all I can see in them is shame for how naïve or blind I was. They seem like records of ignorance, like I always manage to catch myself when I'm stuck or in-between discoveries. Somehow, having an audience for my diary helped me to grow through writing it. To capture my ignorance, yes, but also the realizations and growth that came about out of that blindness. I'm quite grateful for that. It wasn't what I intended.

What I intended was to grab a little corner of the Internet that I could personally impact (as opposed to my then-new, contracted website) and, out of that decision, eventually to create a record of the struggle to live a meaningful life. I suppose it was the twin goals of meaning and honesty that led me to where I am - meaning by purpose, honesty by accident.

This is not the end of that process. I am not yet as honest as I could be. There's meaning yet to be found. But progress is change, and change I must.

So, there will be one more post at this address - a bit of a perma-post - directing you to by all means pore over the back-catalogue, but also follow me over to the new base of operations. Who knows what we'll find there?

Biding a Do: Change and Its...Anticipation

Hwæt: I am considering moving

Odin's Aviary

- which since its inception has called Blogger its home - on over to my

refreshed website

. The reasons are various and sensible; the hesitation largely ignorant and nostalgic. Yet I tarry.

This week I performed, and had my writing performed, at

No, You Tell It!

, which was a much-anticipated event on my part that I used as motivation to get certain of my creative goals in order, post-initiation into fatherhood. I try occasionally to set my own deadlines, but they're never as effective as those applied to me by an outside party.

Anyway, as I frenetically revised my personal narrative for April 22nd, I also finally got off my duff to re-engineer my website for April 6th, when the press for the event would start. When I passed around the new website for feedback, the ever-amazing

Pavarti

gave me a laundry list of "suggestions," primary of which was to get the dang

Aviary

over where I profess to call myself some kind of writer, and

tout de suite

.

There is an interesting thematic overlap here, of the sort I used to often experience early in my acting career. In those days, I attributed it to rather mysterious, quasi-Jungian synergy - a sign of "following the path." Now-a-days, I tend to think of it as me trying to tell myself something, quietly yet persistently, from the background of the daily struggle and strife. Either way, it is that weird sensation of life imitating art. Or whatever whatever.

I took to the revision of my website as something of a workshop in figuring out what in the hell I'd be doing as a creative person who's prioritized the support of his family over unbounded freedom to act like an actor. I took to the writing assignment for

No, You Tell It!

as a workshop in really going for effective and significant revision of my writing. We were all writing to a theme - in this case: "outdated" - and I ended up writing about becoming a parent, the life cycle of a theatre troupe and the regular yet somehow unpredictable rhythms of life itself.

All of this seems very well-ordered, connected and natural. I assure you: I PLANNED NOTHING. I'M MAKING THIS UP AS I GO ALONG.

As I always have. I need to surprise myself. It's at least to some extent a coping mechanism - aimed against depression, uncertainty, insecurity. There's a tension in my life - between a need for order and a need for surprise - that is mirrored in my writing process. I mean, I

have

written from an outline before. Usually it's under duress, on threat of torture by 1) a writing partner, and/or 2) an admittedly limited personal capacity for long-term memory. Generally speaking however, what I enjoy about writing is the surprises the process brings me.

It's not dissimilar to improvised comedy. You have an invisible framework - threes, setup/suspension/punchline, what-you-will - and just try to make poking around in the dark as interesting and relevant as possible until you hit on the hilarious. It is all about the moment, and nothing feels quite as like magic as that discovery. It would be a shame to capture it, mold it, distort what is plainly inspiration into something staid and flat and un-prophet-able.

So has gone my internal justification for not working over my own work when it comes to writing. Revision would squelch whatever was special about the original experience. Prove a dishonor to that inspiration. What an incredible excuse.

So how does someone who has it built into his philosophy

not

to revise, go about revising his life?

Though it seems grandiose to put it that way, it does not feel like an exaggeration. Even if becoming a parent hadn't meant sacrificing certain other creative opportunities, if I had attained a level of fiscal success that allowed me to keep acting up a storm and keep coming home by 5:00, parenthood still necessitates learning how to better order one's life. I laugh, derisively, at my younger self's occasional complaints of a lack of time or occasional boredom. Then I cry just a little bit, inside, before hitching up my (sexy) work slacks and tackling another day.

I did some good work through

No, You Tell It!

, work I'm proud about, toward learning how to effectively step back and revise. And my website looks much better. I count these successes. But: I did not succeed.

I did not succeed because the website, though it is pretty and more functional, still lacks direction - intention - and still emphasizes me as an actor. I did not succeed because my piece for the "outdated" event suffered in similar ways, still written in a voice aggressively eschewing an easy read, and still emphasizing exploration over communication. I still don't know what I'm doing. But I'm on the path, physically and metaphysically, which is sometimes the best you can do.

So there will be more changes coming - revisions, if you will (and whether you will or won't, frankly). Among these:

Odin's Aviary

will be transplanted to live under my moniker, part of the unified-field-theory of Jeff.

Perhaps somehow prescient of this, one of the live interview questions asked of me on stage at

No, You Tell It!

in prelude to my story being presented was about this here 'blog title. I explained about thought and memory, Huginn and Muninn, and how that seemed appropriate for a personal 'blog, without getting into my nigh fetishistic adoration of ravens. One interesting thing I failed to realize until just now, however, is that a primary characteristic of Odin himself is...fatherhood.

There might be something to this "reviewing what we create" after all.

NYTI #1: Personal (Revisionist) History

Image (redacted) by Sha-Nee Williams.

In about a week, I'll be performing on stage again. Twice, in a way. Once performing a reading of someone else's personal narrative. The same night, that person will be performing my own - and I will be sitting on stage while he or she does so (just as they will for my recitation). Of the two, I'm far more nervous for the latter, because I'm not sure I got my story right.

No, YOU Tell It! is a great "switched-up storytelling" event that I came to by way of my participation in Liars' League NYC a few months ago. It combines the experiences of storytelling and story-writing in interesting work, providing a venue not only for hearing your words performed by someone else, but one in which you workshop those words with your fellow performers, a couple of directors, and the NYTI organizers. Accordingly, for the past few weeks I've met with a group of collaborators to hammer out my written contribution to the evening. It's been an ideal situation in which to work on something I generally try to avoid - revision.

But how much revision can possibly be required of a personal narrative, in which the events are all a matter of historical record? I thought gamely to myself, imagining perhaps that I was getting away with a kind of self-congratulatory "discipline." Turns out: A lot. A whole lot.

I believe you cannot call yourself a writer if you don't thoroughly revise. Part of the beauty of writing is that one has absolute control, and can benefit from applying perspective broadened by almost limitless time and objectivity to a single moment of the audience's experience. So why do I avoid it? Frankly, it's painful. I've known writers who enjoy the process, who in fact struggle through the blank page and cranking out letter after letter just in the hopes of reaching the stage of the chisel. All they want is to refine, and cut away the excess. Weirdos.

Every error stings. Without getting too analytical: I think my pain has something to do with a need to be right, smart, and - as you might be inclined to infer - right smart. It is an indubitable personal flaw. Particularly when coupled with my propensity for excessive verbiage and high-falutin' vocabulary. And is it not truly intelligent to apply attention to turning out a finished and considered product? Ah, well. I am an convoluted conundrum wrapped in a non-redacted riddle.

I viewed this No, You Tell It! experience as a unique opportunity to challenge the pain and 1) write a first draft heedless of polish, and 2) revise it, cut it and "kill my darlings" all to heck-and-back. I even revised my website in the process, which was long overdue, and may soon be moving this here 'blog over to there. Consolidation is the key to an awesome thing.

But I had somehow to mitigate the pain of censoring my unbound, inspired genius (IRONY). So I collected the longer or more inspired cuts (read: I hoarded every last deletion) and will present one daily - without any particular context - leading up to next Monday's premiere of my personal narrative: Lost Track. And so, without further ado, I present to you the first in a series of excerpts not good enough for a final product:

"Theatre, you know, is widely considered to be behind-the-times. But it takes a particular appreciation to specialize in a form of theatre that had its heyday in fourteenth-century Italy. That means that when people ask you what you do, you not only have to hope they accept your willingness to invest time and energy into a medium that pays nothing and nobody seems to especially want around, but A SUBSET OF that medium that seems for all intents and purposes to be dead and gone."

No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated" takes place 7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd, at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is crowded so...you know.

Tethered: Cell Phones and Perception

When I leaned over the toilet to pick up my glasses from the back of it, the stupid, hipster, sideways breast pocket of my hoodie released my iPhone into the drink. Without hesitation (but not without some yelling) I plunged my hand into the toilet, pulled out my phone and plunged it into a jar of rice in the kitchen that had been sitting there almost as if it was prepared for just such an occasion. The Internet - though as-yet lacking in reliable and cohesive commedia dell'arte research material - is awfully good at keeping one informed of the restorative properties of monocot seeds vis-à-vis drowned status symbols.

I won't go into the state of the toilet's bowl when the dive and dunk took place. And you're welcome.

And so now, and in fact for the past >48 hours, my phone has sat idly in a soon-to-be-disposed-of jar of rice on my counter. Wednesday night, or perhaps Thursday morning, I will retrieve it, pick the grains from out its orifices, charge it and see what happens and what will never happen again once it is turned on. It's like an amazing game of chance that I did not wish to play, thrust upon me by eccentric fashion choices and erratic podcast-listening habits.

I'm hardly the first to write about being phone-less for a time, and my experience is not new. I've felt a phantom limb in my right trouser pocket, some wisp of a weighty wafer that occasionally buzzes against my thigh, and then is not there when I go to pat it quiet. I've felt lost, and been nearly literally lost in search of a particular coffee place on my lunch break. I've contacted my nearest and dearest in an email out of which I could not quite keep a semi-panicked tone, alerting them of how they could contact me, and of course all of my Facebook influence has gone into making sure my 600+ "friends" aren't confused by the sudden drop-off in visual media in my timestream.

I've also been reminded of something good, now thirteen years gone.

When I first moved to New York, I bought a pager. This was a half-and-half decision. Half was for want of liquid assets. The other half of my reasoning, however (bolstered as so many of my decisions at the time were by the friction of my then-girlfriend's opposite opinion), was that a cell phone would tie me down and make me a servant to its interruptions. This was, mind you, prior to email push notifications and in-plan SMS messaging, though

not

prior to the screening delights of caller I.D. It was just the notion of being called to which I objected.

In under three months, I closed my pager account and upgraded to a cell phone. I have never been without one since.

Those of you who have or do not live in an urban environment may not have a full appreciation of my relationship to my cell phone. I've written a little bit before (see

6/19/12

) about the metamorphic effects that portable media devices have had on society. We could go on all day about the myriad ways in which these glorious, seductive machines have helped us carve out private space in an environment that would rob us of every inch of personal boundary. We'd need another day for how many ways the same tools have connected us with others regardless of differences in time, geography and even language. Just about anyone, anywhere, who has even the most basic mobile phone can at least appreciate the altered landscape of situations of emergency and plain ol' personal agency. For example, pre-info-phone I used to call my friends with desk jobs and ask them to look things up for me when I was on the go. People with flip phones still do that.

What I forgot, and that of which being phoneless has reminded me, is how it feels to be free. I know that's corny. I fully acknowledge that freedom is too abstract to properly define, much less describe as an emotion or sensation, and that anyway what I'm writing about here is little more than a personal perception. What's definitive, and what shocks me, is that I forgot.

I forgot this feeling, this sensation of being untethered, of stepping out the door - any door - and simply not knowing what might happen. Even happily (well: semi-happily) plugged into my blaring iPod shuffle, I am instinctively more alert, aware from a subconscious place that at any moment I will be called upon to be resourceful for myself. That makes it sound a bit panicked, and I admit to a mild thrill, but what the sensation is more akin to is that of arriving in a new country. Maybe even one in which you don't speak the language. All is slightly more interesting, slightly fuller with possibility.

An example: On my lunch break, I wanted to find a small side table for our nursery (finding Mud coffee was a little side-mission I tacked on to this). This table had to fit some very specific dimensions and criteria, and I wasn't sure where to look, and I didn't think of it while I was set at my computer and had Google at my fingertips. So I walked. I walked a lot, at a good clip, and past and through a variety of places, only half of them planned. I didn't find the table. Instead, I learned about options, narrowed my criteria and had new ideas about how to solve a mundane issue. Most significant - I wasn't bored. Nor was I anxious. I was engaged.

It's ironic how much discussion of engagement is involved when we discuss Internet media and marketing. Subconsciously, I've come to think of "engagement" as a kind of rapt attention, a push-button-get-pellet reflex, as whatever twitch has kept me comin' on back to build a quirky little empire in my

Battle Nations

app. But real engagement is something different, something more owned than possessing of us, and the ultimate irony is that real engagement has been my artistic focus for over a decade and I FORGOT what it FEELS LIKE.

My argument for the theatre as a relevant - in fact necessary - form of expression in contemporary society is: It is the most accessible one for carrying us from a virtual-experience comfort zone through to actual experience. Like it or not, we experience the majority of our entertainment (and an rapidly increasing portion of our life) through a window. We are protected, anonymous, insulated, with planned and recorded media for which we choose the time and place, brilliantly lit in a clean frame. Live theatre is uniquely designed to utilize this frame - this proscenium - to transport audiences from twitchy, push-button catharsis to actual engagement with stories, issues and communities.

I am not going to give up on-the-go Internet access. Much as I have flirted with quitting Facebook, I don't see that happening any time soon either (though really: gang: we can do all that stuff

without

their privacy and proprietary bullcrap: I'm just sayin'). What I may do, once this respite from personal technology has passed, is occasionally leave my cell phone at home. I may head out the door to where I do not know.

Many people I know can nurture that sense of freedom and engagement on a daily basis with full access to their technology. (These are often the same people who have no sense of shame about keeping me waiting for ten or more minutes, and who are way more fun at parties.) I can not. I'd suggest you test yourself - wherever you may think you fall on the scale - and see what being untethered teaches you.

To All the Jokers Out There

I don't yet know if it was a killing in any way inspired by the content of the series. It's too early in the news cycle at this point for us to be sure of anything related to the gunning down of 12 people at a midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado. As of this writing, it could be religiously motivated terrorism, it could be indiscriminate or a crime of passion. What's difficult to ignore (for those of us millions who know the movies, and the tens of thousands of them who know the comicbooks that contributed to those movies) is that a man took it upon himself to murder an audience for a story that's laced with issues of copycat vigilantism, violence, morality and ethics. Not to mention: Justice.

I can't effectively weigh-in through one post on any of these topics individually (heck: I can barely suss out the distinction between morality and ethics without a self-conscious Google or two) much less the lot of them, entwined. I mean, does justice even exist? Or is it, rather like "honor," one of those old-fashioned ideals that seems a little too black-and-white to a contemporary society? Are our societal ideals rife with concepts that just appeal to our baser natures? Or are they ideals, in earnest, and we just need to keep striving to conceive of them in a truer sense?

There is one thing about which I do have something unique to contribute. Maybe it's wrong-headed, or too soon, but every so often we each and all have a reaction to something going on in our society that we need to work to process. This definitely falls under that category for me.

I was in college by the time Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their spree in Colorado, but freshly so, and the crime held eerie echoes for me. In early high school, with certain friends, I planned crimes all the time. Those plans never involved murder, but were closely related to new feelings of rage that I didn't know how to handle. I played, and loved, the video game Doom. On the birthday before my freshman year of high school, my mom took me out to get me the black trench-coat I so desperately desired, and I wore it regularly - even in terribly inappropriate climates - right into college.

I also possessed an obsessive love of Batman, the character. I described him as my idol. That may seem unconnected, especially when you hear my rationale for this idolization: That he represents someone who not only survived trauma, but turned it into powerful motivation to excel and strive to make things right. That was an earnest rationale. It just leaves out that I also idolized the character because he could and did powerfully destroy other human beings with his bare (all right: gloved) hands. Is Batman's moral (or ideal) that he take no human life justification enough for his methods of achieving "justice"?

One thing I greatly appreciate about the recent trilogy of Batman movies is that the writers and director seem to be aware of the moral ambiguity of one person deciding what is right, and using violence to achieve that determination. They utilize and glorify that for our entertainment, but I appreciate the awareness nonetheless. After the first film, the media was already drawing comparisons between this Batman and American foreign policy in general, George W. Bush in particular - "You tried to kill my daddy, I'ma come out there with all my wealth and might and end your reign. Means and United Nations be damned." And in The Dark Knight, Batman literally eschews international extradition law. The writers then up the ante in the film's climax, showing our hero as a hunter willing to massively violate the rights of citizens in order to catch his prey. It seems to me they know that this is what they are doing, and that they want us to experience ambiguous feelings about it.

I suppose the great dichotomy between the iconic hero and villain of these stories - Batman and the Joker - can be a confusing one. Both are vigilantes, both rely on fear to achieve their ends, and both are flamboyant as all get-out. One is supposedly moral, the other amoral, but I've already pointed out that their ethics are not nearly as easily distinguished from one another. That leaves us with order versus chaos.

Who doesn't love a little chaos? I suppose for me it's been something of an acquired taste, but it's one I've definitely acquired as a performer and an audience member. Chaos can seem more sincere, frankly. Life does not readily present us with reasons - much less reason - and particularly in the contemporary age there seems little justification for a belief in a greater purpose, much less power. Purpose itself seems a hollow construction, under these circumstances. So, there are those of us who embrace a character bold enough to take that notion to the logical absurdity. There are some who just want to watch the world burn.

I'm not implying that the man who committed these murders was in any way inspired by the character of the Joker. Lord knows, we're likely to have more than one piece of unoriginal news coverage in the coming weeks that points out connections between this criminal and Joker's callousness, or Bane's paraphernalia (never mind that the cosplay an opening night inspires is a perfect cover for someone who already has destructive designs). What I am saying is that these characters have come to represent certain perspectives and behaviors of contemporary Americans, the same way the character of Batman has, or any ongoing archetype. The causation of it can not be sussed out with a few Googles, and odds are that culture in general exists as it has for all of human history: a sort of feedback loop between how we are, and how we portray ourselves in media.

So, causation aside, who has the right idea? Are human beings meant more for order, or chaos? Is it all so meaningless that the only true justification for action is how it affects the individual, the self? I acknowledge the possibility. Maybe we're all just too frightened of it to face it.

Maybe. But I'm disgusted, both by the incident early this morning, and the notion in the abstract. What utter selfishness. What a nauseating disregard for or ignorance of anything outside of one's own perception. Little wonder that we are eager to ascribe part of the cause for such actions to youth and/or mental illness - these are the two handiest explanations for such inward-obsessed, disconnected personalities. Regardless of the cause, and even regardless of the question of chaos versus order, even the Jokers of the world must admit that theirs are essentially selfish acts.

I have one argument to make to such people in such a debate, one thing to suggest that they're fools beyond even the kind of fool their worldview suggests they ought to be. If none of it matters, if life is indeed as meaningless and people as insignificant as in your philosophy, why do you have a purpose? Why must you do what you do, be it for personal gratification or illuminating the rest of us to your perspective?

You might just consider the possibility that your commitment to nihilism is best expressed in the same direction as your attention is. On yourself.