Face to Face

Curious side effect of my acceptance into the Cult of Facebook: I believe it has affected the readership of this here 'blog here. Unfortunately, I am not computer-savvy enough to figure out how to quantify that change. I do know that the readership growth (growth in this context being a very, very relative term) for Odin's Aviary has slowed over the past year, though I attribute that more to Google Reader and RSS feeds than anything related to Facebook. No, the more interesting change -- more interesting by far -- is how many people are now reading my thoughts who haven't been privy to them for five, ten, and in a few cases even twenty years. I could no doubt increase this number by "tagging" friends for each entry, were it not that I'm pretty lucky to get as many posts published as I do with the time I have, anyway. The point is that my audience has had an intersting development in quality lately, in spite of a seeming falling-off in quantity.

Now, I'm not trying to imply that people I already know who read my 'blog are in some way better than them what don't. By "quality," I mean the overall identity of my audience. (An "overall identity" is a pretty interesting-slash-meaningless concept, but you get what I mean. I hope.) When I first started doing shows in New York -- which is as much as to say, when I started being a true professional actor -- I quickly became fascinated with the relationship between audience and creator. This fascination existed in a very immediate sense, not some theoretical or academic speculation, and it continues for me today. Just who are these people who are coming out to engage in theatre? And, perhaps more interestingly, who are the ones that no one on the production side knows, and what do they come seeking? Odds are, when you're sitting in the audience of an off-off-Broadway show, most everyone around you knows somebody involved in some respect (so watch what you say) but there are always at least a handful who don't, who are there for an evening's entertainment, or for something they don't even know yet. Maybe this isn't as curious as I find it; after all, in big productions all sorts of strange people are filling the 1000+ seats and looking for something other than seeing their friend on stage. Still -- to my audiences -- who are you, really?

So both are interesting, friends and strangers. Hello. Welcome. Try not to rely on this 'blog for too many of those promised fart jokes.

Wife Megan

and I have had several conversations lately about people we feel we know who don't know us -- Neil Gaiman, mostly. It's a very Gaiman-y season. I recently re-read

American Gods

(and I rarely re-read books) and rented

Beowulf

. I just read and loved his two-shot Batman comic "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", we're seeing the musical adaptation of

Coraline

this Sunday and seeing the man himself at a talk at Used Housing Works Bookstore in the latter half of the month. May is positively Gaiman-esque. And it's funny, because we both feel awfully close to the man, and he has no idea about us. Really, we have no idea about him, personally. It's just that his writing has influenced us so, kept us company, driven away boredom and provoked thought and emotion in us, that, well . . . it's hard not to want to make the man breakfast the next morning. Oh, you're up! How do you like your eggs,

American Gods

? I have cleaned and pressed your trenchcoat,

Anansi Boys

. Please,

Fragile Things

, don't bother about the bed. I need to change the sheets anyway.

Yes; I acknowledge that analogy as just this side of creepy. Alright: Way over here with me in downtown Creepyburg.

What does this have to do with showcases presented in under-99-seat theatres, or a 'blog that gets in just over 50 hits on a good day? I suppose what I take from it is that we extend farther than we may be aware, we influence more, touch (perhaps at times inappropriately) many more lives than can be evident, even with the aid of all things TwitterFaceSpace. It's a reminder I value. It reminds me, in fact, of a big reason for doing this stuff -- all this exploring, communicating, connective stuff -- in the first place. Because it matters, to people we know and those we have yet to meet.

Unwanted Knowledge

I've returned to my research of corpses, which seems to be endlessly fascinating to me. (This return is in the hopes of generating new [more gooder] material for

my play-in-progress,

Hereafter

.) I think the fascination stems from the fact that so much of the research is a discovery of items I never even had a hint of before. No one knows, because no one wants to know. I've always had an appreciation for the taboo--in some of the dullest senses--but this is the first time it's struck me as a pointed preoccupation. I love learning about things I ought not to.

Actually, it's not quite true that I've never before tapped this appetite for the occult. As an elementary school student, I almost single-handedly kept the library out of its stock of books on monsters and mythological creatures. It was embarrassing, I remember, but a thrill. The strange is thrilling. Erotic, too, in a way. Remember playing doctor, or sneaking looks at pictorial nudity? No? Just me? Alrighty then...

I feel I'm at a curious stage of writing, too. It reminds me of a couple of my first serious attempts at creative writing. A short story and a short play, written years apart, they both started out as one thing in my mind and were drastically different by the end, largely through the application of heart, of earnest meaning. These were improvements to the work, hands-down, but in both cases I was initially resistant. "No, I'm not trying to make

that

, I'm trying to make

this

." Someday I'll learn that it's more about whatever it is I'm making, and what it wants to ultimately be. In the case of

Hereafter

, this self-made conflict has to do with whether it's a play about what happens to our bodies after we die and how funny that can be, or if it's about how we process the idea of death itself. The latter is, naturally, winning out in terms of dominant content.

It's curious how creative work gets started, and where it can go from there. The ideas that energize our start-up can eventually hinder the process, and the emotions we discover in the process itself may end up being more significant. Well: If not more significant, than more directing, at least. Yet my research today has done more to motivate me to rework the play than anything else in recent memory. In particular, I was learning about the embalming process, and it was really firing up some ideas that I want to get on paper . . . er, screen. Which is ew; very ew. Still, it's fascinating. I didn't know, for example, that you should never investigate the lower end of the coffin in an open-casket funeral. Why? Because sometimes morticians remove the major inner organs and seal them in a plastic bag that gets deposited at the corpse's feet.

YEAH. LIKE THAT. YOU'RE WELCOME.

I also had a wonderful conversation about

Hereafter

and the subjects it addresses with a friend yesterday, which invariably motivates more writing. So that's the order of business this weekend, while

Wife Megan

is away selling swag -- writing more interesting tidbits about the verities of death. Maybe the things I have to share with you are unwanted. Or maybe, it's all just fascinating, and I'm saving people the trouble of admitting it.

A Myth Gone Public

Last night I attended the public The Public reading of

Christina Gorman

's play,

American Myth

. You may

recall

I attended a reading of her "work-in-progress" back in November, and this was that. I feel more at ease to address the play by name, in spite of it still bearing the WiP nomenclature, because this was a seriously serious reading, my friends. The Emerging Writers Group

advertised

, and filled the center section of the Anspacher Theatre (dear God, what a wonderful space!), and I don't want to name-drop here. I really don't. But suffice it to say that there were some very respectable names attached to the acting and directing of the thing. So, Christina, I'm outing you, whatever other work remains to be done on your script.

American Myth

deals with a fictional set of characters, but ones plucked out of the headlines like a

Law & Order

episode (only more insightful, of course). It deals in questions, which is probably my favorite thing about Christina's writing. All plays tend toward argument; conflict, after all, is drama, and vice versa. But there's nothing like a play that encourages one to ask questions rather than deliver a personal judgment, and

American Myth

does this for me. It asks what history is, both personal and national, and what we want or need it to be. It questions the motivations of the supposedly moral, and the supposedly immoral. Maybe it's simply the Unitarian Universalist in me, but I love pondering these questions because I can never be absolute in my judgments of others in my daily life. A play that impartially (hyper-partially, perhaps?) explores all the angles of a moral conflict resonates very personally with me. Plus, the script has all of Christina's usual wit and incisive display of human behavior that I've come to expect from her work.

Actually attending the reading was a sort of strange experience for me. I went by myself, with which I'm normally fine but this time, somehow, felt conspicuous about. Christina was wonderfully and specifically grateful for my attendance, and that went a long way to comforting me; in fact, for the brief moments I was in her presence I felt totally at ease. Yet apart from that, even as I was simply sitting and reading, waiting for the performance to start, I was uneasy and downright riled up. It's taken me a while to put together what could be the source of this, but this morning I realized that it was being so close to so much of what I want . . . and not having it. Of course I couldn't figure that out last night -- I was fully invested in the play and its development. This morning however, as I packed my chattel for

today's workshop in Philadelphia

, I put it together.

As much as I parlayed my feelings of rejection regarding

the

AFAWK

changes

into moral outrage and philosophical questioning, the fact is that I had allowed myself to become too dependent on the whole effort for the wrong reasons. I very genuinely cared about the story we were trying to tell, of course, and felt committed to our work and intentions. All that was not compromised. However, I had in a way come to rely on the show as a ticket to somewhere, and I have to admit to myself that part of my response (or lack thereof) to the casting changes was petulant and careerist. We had a reading at The Public scheduled, and then I felt it yanked out from under me. Yes, I care about that show; yes, I put good, hard work into its creation; yes, it is deserving of a life beyond our Fringe Festival performances and sacrifices ought to be made to ensure that. But I also want very badly to be valued more than I yet have as an actor, and that very visceral urge pushed on me hard when all of that went down. I had another opportunity to rejoin the process shortly thereafter, which I ignored. Maybe it was because of all the reasons I said, to distance myself from the story we created before, etc. But also, I was hurt by my own sense of slighted ambition.

Believe it or not, I do not want to dwell on that episode, apart from coming clean a bit on the whole thing.

As Far As We Know

continues in its development, and I'm very happy to hear that it lives on. It is wholly deserving of whatever success and attention it can create, as are its current creators. In fact,

Friend Nat

is one of those "creactors," which I find oddly comforting -- he's like a God-father for me. I mention it not just to come clean, but also because what allowed me to realize the source of my anxiety last night was that it felt just like an emotion I used to have in high school and college all the time.

I would sit down in the auditorium, or little theatre, and wait for the lights to dim. I was usually by myself, for whatever reason. (Often, that reason was because it was my third time seeing the show and I had run out of folks who wanted to see it.) I would sit and sit, a mounting sense of anticipation and dread occupying my heart and head. Then the show would begin, and I would get wrapped up in its machinations, but one part of me would always be on the outside of that. That part would feel wrapped up tight, strong, full of urge and impulse. And it would only feel more so after the bows were had, and the applause faded from memory. That urge sits there in every performance and whispers to me,

"I want to do that.

"I want to do that . . ."

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.