improv yourself.

Though the statistic is being disputed in an upcoming book, it's often said that fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I'm not certain which direction that author's research will put the magic number, but I certainly would go up with the offer given how many divorced, divorcing, and divorceable folks I personally know. I even know one couple who hit the judges chambers on the matter just yesterday morning.

I've been there, done that, and got my passport stamped. Mine is nearly three years old at this point. I have noted how we types all seem to flock together, or at least that's the coincidence in my circle of friends. Every Saturday night spent at our favorite pub finds my divorcee wife and I rubbing elbows with a consistent cycle of them. She and I have recently celebrated our one year anniversary. Our nuptials were stacked to the gills with folks who've filed and moved on to greener pastures.

The bright and colorful mystical land of splendor is one possible outcome, but I know a few people who've let the untying of the knot become the bane of their existence, and the source of evermore bitterness. I don't know which is worse, becoming embroiled in the long prison sentence of a stagnant toxin infested marriage or never getting over it. For some it creates intense cynicism and avoidance of relationships of all kinds, for some a continued cycle of the bevy of unresolved issues that marred the previous situation, and for others it allows for unbridled freedom and personal choice.

The key features of an intimate relationship that seem to surface again and again within our culture seem to rely on expectations of overwhelming hard work, petty jealousies, and suggestions that maybe you don't even enjoy your spouse/partner. If these things are true than move the hell on. There's no solid ground to build anything on. It's an emotional sinkhole with no feasible positive result.

The answer is simple, and it comes from an unlikely source: the stage. Sometimes a theatre game, and sometimes the main event, improvisation is a challenging diversion for an actor attempting to hone their skills. Memorizing lines in a script is often the easy part, but going off book and just going with the flow and focusing on the here and now takes far more skill.

The first rule of improv is to never say 'no'. No closes down everything about the scene. It puts up walls for the conversation being conveyed, the joke being set up, or the story that is being told. It grinds the gears to a half. The energy, wit, and creativity of even the weakest playtime improv ceases with answers in the negatory. There's nowhere to go.

The same can be said for relationships. The ground rules of, dare I say, traditional relationships is rife for the planting of the big ol' flag of NO. There simply must be nothing more enjoyable than to limit your partner or yourself from partaking of what life has to offer. This is why marriage, especially, gets a really bad rap. I think it's because most are too foolish and abiding to live it on their own terms, and with freedom, exploration, and a wingin' it regard to what they should do instead of what they truly wanna do. Don't try to control it, don't schedule it, don't set yourself up to fail. Set yourself up to win every single day.

photo finish.

The freaks come out at night 

-Whodini, 1984.

They are everywhere. It becomes even more apparent as the sun goes down. Around every corner, like some sort of stock footage from a James Whale film from the 1930's. Harsh shadows and chiaroscuro emitting from intense low-key lighting. This neo-human race is addicted to their pocket lining lives.

Although I've been providing bus loads of locals with them for years, I only recently took the plunge into the whole smartphone game. Their whole presence seemed to interfere with common direct, daily interaction with others, as every few minutes of seemingly normal connection would become interrupted by a technological commercial break, a phenomena one of my good friends refers to as phone time. For a while it seemed like something I could do without, but I too caved or, as one could attest, caught up to the new evolution of our species.

The cultural edict of today that flushes with so-called smart technology is the need to personalize everything. In the process of marking my territory and mentally pissing all over this new device, I kept coming face-to-face with a bit of a nemesis: Instagram.

Instagram. For some time my initial thoughts were, oh great, look everyone's a photographer now. Take your garbage pictures, then pimp them out to within an inch of their life, using editing tools to give the distinct impression that you've actually got some talent. I know this is territorial snap judgment of artists who are overwhelmed with examples of having less and less meaning in the world, when it appears everyone can do what you do.

I have felt this in the past within all of the things that I value about myself, whether as an artist, a writer, a lover, a man ... or so forth. I know it comes from my childhood, when nothing was ever good enough for the masters of the house. I know it comes from being the quiet one, the reserved one, the one that few have 'gotten' over time and who would define me in those precise, inaccurate ways. I didn't spring from a particularly positive, encouraging environment, but one built on fear, paranoia, and sadness, so I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised what hurdles have existed.

As a kid, I was given the impression that our culture was created from specialists, from well trained, apprenticed folks whose last names echoed their lot in life. As our culture has matured into the twenty-first century it has grown apparent with the expansion of the internet as the key resource in most households that everyone can quickly become an expert in anything. There was once was a time when one actually had to hire a photographer. Now everyone IS one.

Through the nineties there was a big push in Hollywood, by the likes of auteur Martin Scorsese to make sure that the home versions of classic and contemporary films were being properly restored and seen in full widescreen format. I still hear to this day complaints from people about the black bars on the TV, denoting the complete aspect is being maintained.

Simultaneously a perk and a drawback of Instagram is the fact that the final images are perfect squares, so the best part of your pics are seen, which can easily remove key content from your image.

There's a major difference between the photography one might frame above their fireplace in their living room, and the slew of madness that shows up on any given page of this techno application. To a point this is the made for television version of photography. What I have resolved is that Instagram is not photography, in the clear sense of the word. It's a whole other pop art form, a Polaroid instant camera for the current generation. As it's entirely a public space, it's Polaroid without all of the mystique and secrecy. And dammit, if I'm not addicted to it now.