sad clown

a song that you listen to when you’re sad

“It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.”

–Carl Jung

Teenagers are typically moody. The transition from youthful innocence and ignorant bliss quickly became full realization that I was caught in the stranglehold of my uncomfortable body and the prison of my household. I wanted escape from 85% of my circumstances, but had zero ability to get beyond the vicinity of my environs much like a tightly chained dog might feel in the backyard as it watches other neighbor dogs exploring and enjoying themselves. From situations like this, one can build up an astounding patience with a reserve for later.

Zip ahead ten years. Real world events create a ripple effect that incites a bi-polar response. The immediate fear, sadness, and rage of September 11th 2001 likewise inspired patriotic union both false and genuine like I had never witnessed before. The prospect of the whole matter was much too hard to harness and everything felt completely out of control. It's that teenager response infinitely magnified.

Though the circumstances are world's apart, each one of us comes uniquely equipped or ill-equipped for each and every step in our lives, entirely contingent upon what has come before and in many ways based on our response at each pot-hole and each proverbial earthquake. Hope reminds us that the negative situations we become enveloped within are not permanent. Positive thinking at its best fills that empty glass for us, whether or not we choose to drink from it.


Bak skyene er himmelen alltid blå.
-Norwegian Proverb, meaning:
Behind the clouds the sky is always blue.

Sadness comes in a variety of packages.

These days I sing too much, laugh too hard, and live and love too intensely to allow myself to get bogged down with much sadness. So, instead of focusing on music I listen to when I am sad, I feel it would be more appropriate to suggest some tunes that I think get it right.

Break Your Heart
And So it Goes
Eyes Without a Face
My Immortal
Holding Back the Years
When it Don't Come Easy
Gloomy Sunday
It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday
A Whiter Shade of Pale
Lost Cause
If I Were Smart
Landslide
All the Wild Horses
Why?

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high hopes

previously published by me elsewhere:

I am adrift, yet again...

This is not unfamiliar territory for me, but my wish is that every successive time I turn a corner and find myself here I'd know better how to handle it.

The news of my show's theoretical cancellation has been confused by several postings on its official website. Those specific season two announcements that have been there for several months remain side-by-side vague references to speed bumps in the proverbial road that just barely explain why we've had reruns on the air instead of the remaining episodes we shot, as well as the ones we didn't.

Did we ever have an audience besides the people related to the show that would require this information?

Predictably I always tuned in, or at the very least recorded it on my primitive VHS device. Sometimes it felt more like somebody's vanity project than a real show, but I knew most of the people in the credit scroll and had privileged knowledge about what never made the final edit and should have.

But that's not all...

I'd been slogging through a mean stomach virus the week I first received the call about the show. I also happened to be polishing up a sizeable application for an important screenplay contest. Those dark comedy moments aside, due to years of perseverance and commitment things were finally falling into place. Right?

Who the fuck am I kidding?

My life is far more like that dark comedy than the serendipitous romantic tale I'm trying to spin. The show's gone kaput and I've just been christened the proud recipient of yet another rejection letter for the cellar walls of my little jaded soul.

To truly survive it you've gotta either have a great fuckin' sense of humor or a masochistic streak a mile wide, or a bargain bin combo pack. I'd prefer to simply leave my proclivities open for interpretation.

There are times when I've felt in control, such as while I was marshalling that loveable slew of deadbeats together to shoot the movie last summer within some complicated scheduling. And then again I'll often wear myself out treading water, presuming that I'm actually waiting for something to happen.

I guess it's a forest/trees, big pond/small pond sort of deal. These dichotomies were not lost on me during my recent visit to the Big Apple.

The nice corner apartment my cousins have has several large windows overlooking several different buildings on either side. For a moment during one of the afternoons, I stood at the center of their living room peering out through the breeze-providing open shades through multiple other windows as other people's lives hung on display like a work of art in progress. I felt like the fascinated, obsessive voyeur Jimmy Stewart portrayed in Hitchcock's "Rear Window".

I was quickly drawn to one of the writing tablets I'd brought with me, inspired toward several hours stream of consciousness scribbling.

Yet one step out the front door the city was in charge. My high-end amateur Sony 5.1 digital camera was no match for the big city, which instantly dwarfed my efforts to capture it as if everything I knew about composition and the like was erased and all I could do was point-and-shoot and hope for the best.

I see this as a metaphor for my struggle.

company secrets

previously published by me elsewhere:

It was about twelve hours into our trip to New York that I heard the news about the television show I've been working on. The word cancelled didn't come up, nor did the less stifling "permanent hiatus", but it appeared that I wasn't going to come back from our trip to another week of racing drama. Sure, we'd been on "break" from shooting for a number of weeks, but it seemed as though we were caught coping with one of those communication breakdowns.

I had joined the show partially on a whim, as well as due to the good graces of one of the producers. As I slowly shook off the shock of several miserable episodes and a concept that hardly sounds like my stein of beer I really took a shine to the work and to the crew I was working with, only to now feel like it has taken the same turn as several other projects I've devoted myself to.

Granted I was only working for peanuts and two predictable meat and potatoes meals. Maybe all I really have to show for my time is a silly baseball cap I wore for protection from the outdoors and swarms of gnats, a couple of blackened toenails, and a deep farmer's tan, but it still felt like something stable and worth my time. It's too bad certain key people had other intentions in mind, which I would gladly go into had I not signed away my life with all of that obligatory legal paperwork.

. . . leavin' today

previous published by me elsewhere:

The distinct stench of Fritos put up a fight against the mint scented chewing gum occasionally sticking to my dental work that I was using to keep my ear pressure at bay. The air conditioner blew what felt like the exhales of every unhealthy passenger that had spent time inside the cabin, or at least that's how my mildly hypochondriatic tendencies see it.

As the flight began its decent into the New York area, I could feel my heart palpitate a different rhythm as I was overcome by childlike giddiness as ant-size New York and northern New Jersey came into view. Through the smudged window I could see the tightly constructed residential neighborhoods and industrial regions with their railroad tracks headed in multiple directions like something out of the original version of SimCity.

Once on the ground the quick paced movement, rather foreign to the laidback Florida sensibilities I feel surrounded by, feels so full of purpose and intent. New York represents regular life, only amplified, and I happily became a part of it as we moved to the front of the line that was waiting for a taxi into the city. As the cab jerked in and out of traffic on the Long Island Expressway (L.I.E.) my eyes were wide, taking it all in since our visit was going to be all too brief.

As we drove into Brooklyn every turn became reminiscent of a sequence from a Woody Allen film, easily imagining the leaves falling behind two or three people immersed in intellectual conversation. Walking along those same streets later on felt exceedingly unreal to me, as if I was stepping along a Hollywood back lot. However, the spuriously blown trash on the ground and the chained up potted planters were recognizably the sort of details Tinseltown tends to neglect.

For me there's such a romanticism, mystique, and sensual allure to city life to the point that I often overlook the very ordinary things that go on everywhere. Even still it doesn't make me feel any less interested in becoming a face in that ever-growing crowd.