Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Inbetween Days

It's just about mid-summer, so it's an appropriate time for me to think about my own intervals. Mine is a heavy transition period: between jobs, between shows, listening to so many people complain about turning 30 when I've been past that for years, waiting on family, and being in the process of figuring out what to do next. As seen from earlier posts, I'm a big fan of nostalgia, especially since I'm transitioning right now. It's good to look back and think happily about recent history. To think of past and present, I'll occupy myself with text analysis of a contextual work in order to practice for the upcoming school year. Here's the opening stanza of a piece that I've liked for many years:

Yesterday I got so old
I felt like I could die
Yesterday I got so old
It made me want to cry


Text analysis: this piece is moving back and forth through time. Notice that the author says "Yesterday I got so old," meaning yesterday was the first day of getting so old that there's such a feeling of grief. There's the disconnect between the time of actual aging and the experience of aging. Feelings of yesterday and feelings of today can be radically different. Regardless, this experience creates a strong emotional response. For me, getting older is a process of letting go, something I hate to do. Youth, friends, possessions, expectations, philosophies, and many other things leave us through time. Getting older is about both growth and loss. Could this piece be a simple matter of acceptance or is there something more? What caused this sudden knowledge of age, and what will the feelings of tomorrow be? A later stanza of this piece shows more grief of loss:

Yesterday I got so scared
I shivered like a child
Yesterday away from you
It froze me deep inside

We're still moving through time while talking about what happened yesterday. The author, while getting older, still feels the extreme fears of youth. Older, wiser, more experienced folk still shiver like children. So some things remain constant through our time. Past and present can still collide violently. We're also introduced to the "you" here. The loss of "you" (whatever that may be, person, place or thing) created this longing, and this loss may have come from choice, or perhaps a series of choices. Other stanzas talk about decisions and longing:

Go on go on
Just walk away
Go on go on
Your choice is made
Go on go on
And disappear
Go on go on
Away from here

Come back come back
Don't walk away
Come back come back
Come back today
Come back come back
Why can't you see
Come back come back
Come back to me


The contrast in these words (go on, come back) all feels familiar to me: fear, longing, looking back, coping with aging, hoping for a greater future, and so on. The remaining stanza helps give clarity and specificity:

And I know I was wrong
When I said it was true
That it couldn't be me and be her
Inbetween without you
Without you


There's a confusing line to follow here: "What I said before about how I couldn't be without you and have 'her' between us and something else: that was wrong." In my mind, the author is saying, it was wrong to think that I needed something from the past with me as I go to something new: I can make the transition to the future without holding on to everything from the past. At this point, I'm left wondering what "her inbetween" refers to. Could this "her" also be the "you?" How else could this piece be interpreted? Are "her" and "you" people or something else? These questions would be the homework assignment. End of lesson plan.

Yes, that's the song by The Cure (a past favorite of mine in 1985, a very good year) somewhat out of order from its original format. I'll happily use The Cure or whatever else for text analysis in my class. We can read Plato, Shakespeare, and Hemingway any time. The classics have their worth, but so do many contemporary works of multiple genres. The past and present both have their place. So does the time in between.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Pulp Friday Actually on Friday (PF9)

I may actually stick to the Fridays, but we'll see. Pulp episodes continue...

Previously on Pulp Friday:

PF 1
PF 2
PF 3
PF 4
PF 5
PF 6
PF 7
PF 8


”It’s the last thing you did in Maui.”

H.P.’s words are still ringing in my head as he and the goons leave the court. I’m still not quite sure what he means yet, but I’ve got a nervous jitter in my veins that says it’ll come to me soon.

I’m still thinking about this when something obvious jolts me out of my reverie. As I watch H.P. and the goons walk across the baseball fields, it occurs to me that I should follow them.

I leave the tennis courts and walk toward my apartment and then stop behind the largest tree near the courts, hoping I’m stealthy enough.

I look out from behind the tree and see the three figures heading toward the gym parking garage. I walk parallel to them, but away from the sidewalk. The dusk has settled deep enough that the purple-pink glow from the sidewalk lampposts becomes the only available light in the park. I hope this will keep me unnoticed.

Keeping what I think is a safe distance from H.P.’s group, I follow for several minutes toward the gym garage. As they reach the garage, the three trench coats disappear into the stairway entrance. This allows me to make up the distance between us. I run up to the garage and enter through the vehicle entrance, running up the exit ramp as fast as I can.

It’s times like this that I’m thankful Jenny made me quit smoking. My lungs only burn slightly as I head up the first floor ramp to the second level. I listen for the stairway door’s echoing slam that’ll tell me when H.P.’s group has re-entered the garage. Hearing nothing yet, I decide to head up to the third level.

Seconds later, I hear a resounding creak of door hinges on the floor above me. They’ve moved faster than I expected. I move as fast as I can up the ramp to the third level.

As I near the top of the ramp, I hear the boom of the stairway door on the opposite side of the garage and the clopping of what seems like three pairs of feet. I get to the third level and head for the concrete dividing wall between the entrance and exit ramps of the garage, trying to tread lightly.

I reach the dividing wall in the middle of the garage and move quickly to the opening that will allow me to get to the entrance ramp on the other side of the garage where H.P. and his goons are. This will hopefully allow me to see where the getaway vehicle is parked.

Sure enough, I peer through the opening and see H.P. and the goons walking along the opposite wall of the garage. The parking lot is mostly full so I have plenty of vehicles to shield me.

There’s two lines of cars between me and the goons. I crouch low and follow parallel to them as they make their way to the corner of the garage. They stop at a glossy black sedan and H.P. takes keys out of his trench coat. I cross over one line of cars toward the group as H.P. fiddles with his very large key ring. I take up spying position a few cars down. Finally, the sedan gleeps twice at H.P., its slitted red taillight eyes flashing in sinister greeting.

Then, the car starts to lurch from side-to-side in a gentle rocking motion. The goon with the heavy, inexplicable accent barks out a laugh.

”I gersh that she’s avake nuw.”

”You’ll have some lively company for the ride back, then,” H.P. says in his soprano tone.

Weird Accent Goon opens the left-side passenger door and a pair of bound feet immediately appear through the opening. I can’t tell if they’re the same feet that were being dragged through my apartment door earlier today, but it seems like a safe bet.

I watch Weird Accent Goon palm the heels of the thrashing feet and gently lift them back into the car as he sits in the passenger seat. H.P. gets in the driver’s side and Lispy Trenchcoat enters the car opposite him. The three car doors shut simultaneously with a muffled thump and the black sedan is still.

Then the red slitted taillight eyes come to life again as the engine roars. The sedan whips backward toward the line of cars shielding me. I expect the sedan to come to a stop and make its exit. Instead, the sedan accelerates and smashes into the car parked in the row behind it, causing significant damage. Moving forward, the sedan takes a wide turn to the left as the accelerator roars again. The turn is wide enough to clip two more cars, leaving scratches and glass in the sedan’s wake.

As the sedan speeds off in a semi-straight line toward the exit ramp, I look at the license plate. There’s only three red numbers on the white plate: 924.

Normally, a license plate with only three numbers would be unusual, but not altogether strange. Instead, I ponder the weirdness of those three numbers being the same street address numbers of the apartment that Jenny and I bought just before we married. As I make note of this, the nervous jitter in my veins turns to a full jump when I realize what H.P. meant in his parting words to me.

The full implication of these words weighs down on me as I make the slow walk to my apartment, trying to decide what to do next.


This will continue…

Monday, July 17, 2006

Show Wrap Up

Bittersweet weekend as the very successful run of GI's in Europe at the Factory Theater came to a close. Boy, did I enjoy that show. One of the best casts I've ever worked with, a killer crew that made everything on stage look good, and nice crowds throughout the run. I'm sad to be losing it. I'll miss the people and the exercise, but this show was a damn fine way to get back into the theater. Appropriate that there was a surreal ending to our celebrations on Saturday: upon closing Chief O'Neill's around 3 AM, all of us stumble outside to see Elston avenue drowning in a sea of bicycles heading northwest. Most likely this was an opening event for the Chicago Gay Games, but I never found out. There was no end in sight to this line of people whirring by. I don't know how many thousand people went past us, but we stood for several minutes while this river of cyclists clicked by at a leisurely pace, stirring the early morning air into our faces. The constant, high-pitched hum of thousands of bike chains and gears sounded almost like water running past. Maybe this was my need for a romantic moment of nostalgia, a unique snapshot to burn an image into my mind so I could hold on to the experience of the past few months and hold the people in my show a little tighter in memory. The evening was a swirl of the heartachey celebration of accomplishment and sadness of moving on to other things combined with quite a few vodka tonics: a guaranteed recipe for heavy maudlin. Still, this was a unique and happy moment, a feeling that moving on from this show is not a loss, and other fun, weirdly composed, and good experiences await. I must have been drinking happy vodka.

Factory Theater's next project: a horror movie on stage called Operation Infiltration. Oh yeah. See a trailer for the show here.

My next project: traveling to Minnesota and a taking a long winding road home through North and South Dakota. The Black Hills, Badlands, and Deadwood await. Then comes the final month of summer, new work for the fall, and who knows what else. I hope my next show comes soon and I'm so glad my spring and early summer were filled with GI's in Europe and the people of that show. There will always be happy memories and I suspect I'll still quote lines out-loud while at work and crack myself up. My co-workers have gotten used to my crazy person behavior of snickering to myself while saying non-sensical things. They know the source and they know why I laugh. A few of them even came to see what makes me laugh. It's enough for now for me to hold the memories and say the lines to myself. I hope there's more soon.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Greedy Hearts

Reading one of my favorite blogs, I noticed my buddy and uber-successful blogger Deej write about greed touching the hearts of all men. Specifically, Deej references the train-wreck show "America's Got Talent" and comments on how the Screen Actor's Guild strike of 2000, the strike's resolution and subsequent writer's strike helped facilitate the boom of reality television. Deej points out some artists believe that network execs are to blame for the dumbing down of entertainment because train wreck reality shows have much lower talent fees since people voluntarily expose themselves to potential fame and/or humiliation. Deej also opines that creative unions and guilds make artists as corrupt as everyone else. These writings come on the blog's "Open Thread Thursday" and I believe Deej may create a fascinating discussion.

Two events in the year of the actor's strike stick out for me. The first was an offer to audition to be a Toyota spokesperson for a cool $50,000 for a few months work. This offer came from an agent who spent two years ignoring me, my work, and my mailings. As non-union talent, I was on a much lower rung, but I suddenly got the attention I'd been craving. After a good deal of thought, I turned down the audition, feeling that I would be less of a person if I took advantage of an actor's strike to further my career. After turning down this audition, I did not get any more calls from any agents. A few weeks later, the second notable event was upon me as I listened to a union actor friend of mine go on his soapbox about the trials of the striking actors. He bemoaned the fact that he actually had to get a temp job to support himself now that he was an actor on strike. I'd been supporting myself on lousy temp jobs for over five years while I tried to get paid acting work. It was a rude reality that I was very familiar with and I didn't appreciate the distaste that this actor showed on becoming a part of my reality. I certainly knew that it was wrong for the entertainment industry to try to make millions of dollars through shady deals and using new technologies like the internet and cable to take revenue away from working talent. However, I had no sympathy for striking actors who told me how awful my level of reality was and told me to fight for them so they could return to their higher plain and I could stay on the unpaid lower non-union rung. Supporting the actors on strike took potential revenue away from me, as well. Still, crossing the line to take advantage of labor unrest isn't something I could do. By the third month of the strike, I had dislike and distaste for both sides. Over the next few years, I focused more on theatrical acting; voluntarily unpaid work without messy labor issues that allowed me to further explore the craft I love so much.

Now, to the point that greed touches the hearts of all men. I've spent over fifteen years trying to find the job that balances the realities of artistic fulfillment and living wage income. I've yet to secure a permanent position in teaching, the job I believe best balances the realities. I would dearly love to be paid for the theater work I love so much. I would happily take paid TV, movie, radio, theater, or teaching work. I'm not willing to use labor unrest to further my acting career, nor do I want to debase myself for agents, casting directors, or the American television public to make a living. I'm greedy for the attention and fulfillment the theater world gives me. I'd love to be watched and adored by millions of people. I want to make as much money as possible, regardless of my career path, and if money and career were being taken away from me, I'd fight to keep it. However, for every single career, success depends on who you know. Every single long-term job I've gotten has come from a personal connection to the company or successful name dropping. So yes, greed does touch the hearts of all, but your level of greed depends on who you know.

UPDATE FOR 2009: I'm happy to say that I've found a theatrical home in the Factory Theater and that I've found some balance working as a writer. No way of saying for sure that these are the final paths and places for me, but for the past two years, it really feels like it was worth all the time (15+ years) spent searching. There certainly has been less personal labor unrest and a great deal of fulfillment. I'm glad I know who I know at the Factory and I'm fortunate to work where I do. Stay tuned.