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.

dirty laundry.

I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn
Shake it out. Shake it out,
Shake it out... Oh-woah!!
  ~Florence + the Machine (2011)

When I was just shy of six-years-old I propped myself up on the counter of the second floor bathroom of the family's townhouse. Taking scissors in hand, I did my damnedest to straighten out and clean up what I perceived to be an unkempt mop atop my head. In the meantime since then I have spotted only a mere one or two ugly images from then bearing evidence that foretold of the sophisticated British hairline I would later develop.

Although these are hardly concerns I bother with given the '70's rock star beard and tresses I wear about town these days, the simple fact about hair cuts remains the same about many other aspects of life: there's no taking back too much.

The bane of the social media explosion of the past ten years is that of a pulpit open twenty-four hours a day. The expense of self-expression that unlimited is the construction of endless entitlement, whereby your concerns must be my concerns, your woes are now my woes, your sadness and dwelling shall be my cue to remedy, and so forth. I'm not above being there for a friend truly in need, but there's a harsher judgment to be shown toward those who have no ability to hold their tongue and must air out every thread of their laundry, no matter how snotty, how stained, how bloody, or seriously none of my business.

I take my art creation and consumption to visceral extremes, seeing the daring of new and unsettling exploration. I am not one to be easily offended by these things, but instead find the challenge invigorating. There is certainly a contradiction. I spent part of my morning performing an autopsy on our Amana clothes dryer trying to conclude what killed it. Maybe it's not so much what you do with your dirty laundry, as much as how often.

drama mama.

“Insecurity is love dressed in a child's clothing.” Gaelic Proverb

I have played on both sides of the fence when it comes to interpreting the distinction between the world before social media and the one we live in now. Surely I've been one to say that people act differently, or how my preference leans one way or the other. It seems so easy to plague the current generation's major communication form for abbreviated and harsh fashions of dealing with one another, but I'm actually thinking more and more that all it does is intensify what already exists.

I know someone with extreme esteem issues will likely spend every third day updating their Facebook status to its full character length with a long, meandering, rambling statement. It will be something welcoming pity and craving attention, and may often literally state these are not what are being sought. The begging and pleading for note and presumed advisement will be a lost cause by day's end, since the quick fix of interaction will not have had much effect at all and some variation on the same theme will show up periodically for time immemorial.

I believe it's a human imperative to go through awkwardness and discomfort about the flesh we wear. Without something to fight against, we often have no room for growth. But full grown adults should know better than to zip about the world dropping grenades along their tracks like breadcrumbs to etch out a trail of where they've been. Our problems are ours alone.

There's a concept that I realized without a phrase early on in my life, but discovered words for it about fifteen years ago. The world is populated by what spins in the new-aged pop psychology under the term energy vampire (also emotional vampire or psychic vampire). Whether or not your belief system allows for the concept of real world vampires, you can likely think of people with whom time spent is extremely taxing and after which you feel completely drained.

These folks do tend to bring a lot of drama and, in many cases, passive-aggressive tendencies. Over time I have disengaged myself more and more from these sort of people, using the block feature on my Facebook and literal distance in my real world approach to them. Unfortunately one can not always take a legal standing against such folks.

For one thing, I have a full time job with one such person. Recently our workplace was expecting the big-big boss to show up, to assess, criticize, and drop some whoop-ass. Despite my full support for the venture, this procrastinator had the audacity to drop some last minute panic in my lap in a text that culminated with: I am so totally screwed. Oh, well.

OH, WELL. There are few better bombs dropped on the English language than this phrase. What a brilliant way to give in and shoot up the place in a barrage of blame all in the same breath. It has taken me a long time, but I have found better ways to navigate my interactions with people like this. One thing of import is the ability to ignore the distracting bullshit conversations with them tend to get riddled with, and to instead focus only on what might be accurate.

I tell you, If anyone hates to be ignored, it's those blessed with this terrible disposition. They are quick to dive into the murky pools of resentment and insecurity. If you let it bug you, it's ugly, it's distracting, and it's all encompassing. These people become the conversation if you're not careful. They splatter their poison on you, even when they're many miles away. They want a reaction. Their air of self-importance and entitlement absolutely demand it.

Of course yesterday evening would close with an email containing these cherished words from my pop:

There are only two people on earth who have known you longer than you've known yourself. Your Mom and I. No news is very mystifying, if not downright scary. Please communicate.

As the writings in this blog can attest, as can those who know me best, I have never been particularly or consistently close with my parents. We have often done a dance of curiosity in an attempt to balance our extreme differences and our surprising sprinkling of similarities. I have spoken with them sometime within the last four or five weeks. Given history that's pretty damned current.




Ah, well.

muscle flex

There are a few distinct tribes of people with whom I have relationships.

The most obvious to me are the ones to which I feel the most commonality, and who have been explored the most consistently during the course of this blog, so it should come as little surprise when I reference them. They come with very little introduction, and often very little cash. They are the ARTY TYPES.

The second group of people sound a bit like some carnival of artists' side project experiment. These subjects are given high likelihood to wrecking havoc, having it drenched upon them, or seek out the worst possible response to a difficulty in order to create future episodes of misery they can weep about in overwrought prose on social media. These are the DRAMATICS.

Then there's the third. It's the place either of these types go when they're done with all of their playing around. They leave behind all of their lofty hopes and dreams, and all of their sleeping around and fucking things up royally for a life of the expected basics, and little hope for the future but the vicarious thrills that come from their crazy friends and so-dubbed precocious spawn as they wax poetic about the old days. These are the SELL-OUTS.

Yeah, I know. This is a brash generalization, but even still, you have been quickly able to pick someone you know who'd fit in one or the other category. What about yourself, though? Why is it that we often know others better than we know ourselves?

Now that I've ferreted my way out of the seventy-five hour work weeks, running a retail mart for a company to whom I have a hate-hate involvement, I can set back to some good ol' soul searching. Getting caught up living someone else's life, even if it's one determined at distance via channels of policy and overly measured purpose overtakes so many parts of your sense of self. At least that's the threat.

Let the type of person you are, and the type of person you want to be act as a gauge for what muscles you work out.

spreading joy

 (233)

blame less

I didn't do it.

I inherited a ship of fools nearly two months ago. Just as personality clashes and mental tensions were becoming unbearable at the Ghetto Shack, I was offered a vaguely spelled-out store manager position at the Brigadoon Shack. Due to its proximity to my home and its distance from all sorts of malicious intent that were urging me postal, I decided to accept. Flight or fight mode was triggered, and I took the leap.

The highers knew I had put in for extended time off for my wedding and honeymoon when I said I'd give the captain's wheel a spin. The first couple weeks were a grand assessment and overhaul period. The longest there had survived the asshole control freak manager and the kickin' back playing games on his phone manager, so my vibe was something new. They were not used to someone who actually worked, got things done, and expected them to as well. But they also were putting up their fight against change.

I left the store like a teacher would leave the place for a substitute teacher, with detailed assignments and expectations. It was a gamble. And unfortunately the dependability of the whole crew as well as the local managers I asked to oversee can easily be questioned. When I arrived back, it barely looked like I had been there in the first place. I checked in with everyone about their progress through their tasks - that they never signed off on, despite my clarity - and fault was thrown around every which way.

(225)

twisted fate

(222)

act two

The more you are motivated by love,
the more fearless & free your action will be.
◊ Dalai Lama XIV

The last show I directed premiered one year ago, last night. Each and every aspect was a struggle and a fight, that left me longing for a different venue, another collection of board members, and some goddamned dignity. The core group of artists who did ultimately wage the waves with me without jumping ship command my utmost respect.

For a short time, I contemplated submitting a show for the theatre's consideration. Over the past nine months, in fact, I was asked time and again: Are you doing anything next season? What are you directing next? What's your next show? I thought about submitting something partially out of habit and mainly out of yearning to spray my creative juices all over something else.

After the mistreatment the general populace of the behind-the-scenes hacks offered the brilliant piece of theatre I assembled last time out, it appeared the only way to garner their attention and notice was to play it straight and way too safe. It seemed that grit and perversity were much too worrisome for their little minds to take on.

I thought about a few shows that their high school esteem could cheerlead behind that I could likewise add my own particular brand of spice to. I also had my moments of fuck-all, as I reconsidered shows like the unsettling 1979 work, Bent or anything that no one else in this town would have the balls to attempt. But there was nothing I could concieve of putting my blood, sweat, and tears into that wouldn't feel like I was wasting my time for a bunch of amateurs and a likely tainted prospective audience.

Oh, and I suppose there was the little fact that I was getting married. As the year passed, I came to realize such an event shares many attributes with putting on a show.

• BUDGET ($$$) - Whether you love it or hate it, money is a key component to any major undertaking. On previous plays I have done, the above theatre in question offered a reimbursement amount between 200 and 250 dollars, which would presume that a quality show could be put on for that precise amount. I have always disagreed. At ticket prices of ten dollars a pop, I don't believe that amount of moolah can put together squat which would warrant such an entry fee. I was able to pull off the last show for somewhere in the realm of 850 dollars, but the actual retail value far exceeds that given how many things were given to it pro-bono, to say nothing of a fair amount of DIY, which seems the proper buzz word for putting a little freakin' pride into the proceedings. I highly recommend putting yourself into everything you do, regardless the available funds. This is certainly the direction my bride and I took our nuptuals. It doesn't hurt, either, that we are both highly creative individuals who are also really good with money.
• LOCATION - As a wedding is essentially a limited engagement production, finding just the right scene for the folks in question is key. Working the theatre I have for so many years always made the choice an obvious one, but now that things have changed finding another option takes a lot more fore-thought and internal examination. I remember watching Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece Boogie Nights in a dingy, piss smelling, grungy dollar theatre that made my boots stick on impact. It was the right place to experience that grimy flick. The choice of venue for a wedding can easily link hands with the tone of the show. We took the better part of our eight month engagement to discover just where our show belonged. Ultimately we decided upon a ceremony venue that accepted our unboxable religious and spiritual belief cornicopia and lent itself to being a place embraceable by each person in attendance. Our reception space was the harder fought decision, which quickly became the obvious answer to the query. We decided on our favorite pub, an establishment with a history itself and for us, positioned on a street corner of much significance.
• PROMOTION - What's the point of putting on a show if no one knows about it? In this new speak age of Facebook and the changed dynamics of social interaction, the release of relevant information was highly considered. In ways we are quite old school. We quietly became engaged and shared the information with close family and friends before presenting the big reveal on the social drone machine. After that we dropped zero hints about any ounce of wedding planning or other adventures we were having, so the few handfuls of people who received our inventive invitation package in the mail by July were understood to be an exclusive lot, and the one-of-a-kind invite was in limited supply.
• CASTING - One can never spend too long in casting. I know from being involved in poorly cast situations. From the month of our engagement until the last few invitations were licked shut and mailed, my fiancee and I toiled over the guest list. Having been harshly shown the true colors of so many so-called friends over the years, we were more assured of the value of people who could see through all of the filth, all of the lies, and were worthwhile participants in our life ahead, as opposed to pawns for someone else's agenda or disingenuous soulless duds. A few additional flies would ultimately drop from view once it became time for the processional. The people who showed up, and gave it their all, and the ones who could not be there but certainly were felt from afar are the ones who continue to hold an invitation to the exclusive inner circle. The rest can sod off.
• SCRIPT - As a self-professed writer, words are significant to me. The tone of a script is often what draws me to material that I would like to share with an audience. The words are important, but so are the spaces between words that draw moment for reflection. Standing in front of our friends and family we heard more than a few people say 'wow' or the like. And there were even welcome moments of levity. The overall response was powerful.
• MUSIC - Music makes all the difference. I don't know if it's related to the choice of music that plays within a movie, at the workplace, in the car, or at a party. If the tone is set inappropriately or arbitrarily, the choice will be the production's undoing.
• COSTUME - If I learned a strong lesson from my first play, I say always have a costumer. Make sure it's their only job. I would certainly contend that my bride and I were the snazziest looking folks at the wedding. It would have been a disappointment if that were not the case. We set down ground rules after that. Everyone needs to wear what they're comfortable in, with the expecation of Florida weather and dancing. Without fail everyone looked like themselves. So much of what goes on inside of each individual was exhibited in their choice of attire. And humorously no one looked like they were going to the same place. The last show I did demanded the actors in essence dress themselves. They were advised to dress like their characters. They were concerned they'd just look like themselves, but in truth they found parts of themselves in their characters and wore that.

(219)

getting hitched

I would climb any mountain
sail across the stormy sea
If that's what it takes me baby
to show how much you mean to me
And I guess that it's just the woman in you,
that brings out in the man in me . . .
  "Feels Like the First Time" (Foreigner, 1977)

(218)

pure morning

When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
~ from "When Harry Met Sally" by Nora Ephron

(214)

sky light.

All of my years spent living in apartment complexes have never resembled the situations you see in movies and on TV. Sure, the space itself has a similar structure to many of them, the appliances are temperamental, and the walls rumble with some semblance of the story unfolding next door. But neighbors in reality are rarely like those who seem to have captured back story and current thread of those residing adjacently, nearby, and betwixt.

So, it certainly stands out when an airbrushed couple unloading a rental moving truck jump at the chance to introduce themselves to myself and my sensual partner in crime. It was primarily an exchange of names and acknowledgement that we'd be sharing a wall and an approximate floor plan. For the one bedroom shadow of an apartment they were moving into, their truck held a lot of goodies. That and their jumbo pick-up truck seemed filled to the hilt with the sort of sundry bits kids accumulate at their age, apparent spoilage, or low level of credit card understanding.

Though on the shallower side of their twenties, they were an attractive duo, in that young Hollywood sense that made my woman's and my brief interactions with them seem akin to the tolerable early moments of the fortunately panned TV series Swingtown. There was tightness and tone to their overtly tanned bodies that drew much suggestion from our combined wild imaginations, as to their going-ons and presumed willingness.

Newness takes time to create routine. On the one side of our building, we can hear what has always seemed like clumsy poltergeist activities involving furniture on every third day of the week. Their tiled floor could only have suffered in umbrage and physical damage unrepairable. Somehow their dog who we see much of, outside in person and in poop, seems to keep it down to a whisper inside. Their television and bass heavy instrument playing is far more notable than a peep, bark, or growl.

Moving into a new place brings with it desire. There's the desire to get settled in, by solidifying a home space as swiftly as feasible, and a desire for a couple of hot, sweaty folks to get their freak on in as many new spaces as possible. I think it's written in our DNA. I can only guess the amount of caves whose stalagmites may just hold some primitive love spray within it's glimmering layers.

Think about that the next time you're spelunking.

In anticipation of creating a home from nine cracked bare walls, I have found myself hammering a thing or two in the wee hours of the morning, if only to cover up that intrusive water stain. Unpacking can go long and extensively depending on just how expansive one's collection of trinkets and whatnot might be, to say nothing of the heightened energy level brought on by change.

On the one hand, the sounds on the other side of their wall at 3AM were indicative of the well chosen placement of a few framed posters, likely black light-ready or otherwise raised up from their origins from that art sale at the edge of the gas station lot. Or, on the other hand, the sounds were representative of the flushes of steady pounding, human racquetball in their final sticky throes. The disturbance was brief but noticeable. For a split second the noise seemed warranting of a walk through one courtyard and along a stretch of sidewalk to suggest our new neighbors keep it down. But when new people move in, it takes a few weeks to tap into their rhythms, so we thought it an isolated incident. Plus, we're the last two folks to be the proverbial asshole neighbors. So, we drifted back to sleep.

That was the last of that.

Several days passed and we heard through the grapevine that we had been in earshot of a late night B&E. In spite of the substandard parking lot that we lived with for so long, or the questionable gunshot pops in the middle of the night, and any number of other stereotypical details, this is an uncommon circumstance for this complex. Not that it makes it right, but it doesn't surprise me that some young kids moving in with some fancy, new shiny things in broad daylight who then left for a week long foray somewhere else would be a shout out to local chaos.

They were, as they say, asking for trouble.

The following weekend, after a fantastic evening at our favorite pub, my lady and I pulled into our lot. We stepped out of the car, in a likely too-buzzed-to-drive, getting-a-bit-handsy-and-frisky-to-boot condition. Out of the shadows stepped a dark figure. We could hear the leaves rustling and saw the whites of his eyes before piecing together that our community evidently had stirred up a quick fix security guard to man our dark corner of the rental kingdom.

And boy could the guy talk! Maybe he talked too much. He was going on about all of the apartment's efforts to remedy this singular situation by planting him during such and such hours, by considering putting up barbed wire of all things, and every other detail that maybe isn't necessary to go into with every person encountered. How awkward, though, to have some stranger lurking outside our windows with quick chatter on his lips and gun on a holster. I have never been one who enjoyed the thought of living in a gated community, so the thought of local security never really drove me wild either. Fire begets fire. You get what you give. You see, I feel people have more control over their own lives and what disrupts it than most could digest.

But there he was: our regular welcome home greeter, as it were. It was damage control. It didn't make me feel any more comfortable. Then again, I wasn't worried that it was suddenly an epidemic. I feel that's a lot of people's first thought. Worry. Fear. Paranoia. It's weaved deeply into our culture.

Jump forward a month or two. The security situation is becoming more and more unnecessary. I suppose it must have started to be a monetary and superfluous burden on our complex, because as swiftly as the security team showed up, their disappearance occurred equally fast.

In their place sprouted a big wooden pole, amongst our comforting tree canopy. Then out of seemingly nowhere, a street light companion grew out of it, like an unexpected social glom. Suddenly there was a UFO in constant hover mode above our ordinarily darkened courtyard, emitting an off-color disconcerting orangey glow that began spending the evening, night, and dawn with us. It was no doubt some small panel's answer to our local crime, but an insulting eyesore and interference to enjoying any outdoor ambiance. Screw our string of comforting blue lights, or multi-colored strand, or even candles. Hell, our front porch light has become obsolete! Our enjoyment of our courtyard is now restricted to daylight hours and in anticipation of the cooler weather of the same.

The punishment certainly doesn't answer the crime. I'll tell you that.

(206)

heart strings.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.  ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Inpiration comes in many forms. It blesses the world in as many facets as we find creativity. From the rhythm of sprinkling on an array of spices in your daily culinary pursuits to arranging the pillows on the bed at the end of the night to how you display all of the disparate items that clutter up your desk, everything has a measure of art.

Everything.

I have held these inclings in my mind for a long time. Born the observer of my bunch, for a time I thought my quiet, contemplation masked emptiness. But in truth it was always a stirring, a percolation of my soul. My need to create is loud and brash. It's all around me. Lightbulbs of inspiration are burning out and being replaced all the time. And for this I am thankful.

(203)

une fusion

a song you want played at your wedding

Last year when I undertook a music-related blog challenge, I constructed my own list from a variety of sources. One trigger that kept coming up while I was searching for ideas was a song you want played at your wedding. Truthfully I can't even think why it didn't make the cut, but I know everything has its proper time. I am getting married in less than two months. We have actually been talking about the music for it quite a bit, since our DJ wants a very detailed playlist from us.

After my lady love and I met, it didn't take us long to get stirred up in the power of one another's intensity. There was a kinetic energy and sensual passion to our earliest connections that was unstoppable. Our magnetism was palpable. And few of those who knew us during this time expected it to last. It's just a matter of opposites attracting, right? They'll get over it. After all, it must have been little more than a rebound from our now defunct fourth grader aged marriages.

Often one of the tell tale signs of being held back in the moving on process is going after a partner with similar characteristics as your recently estranged. My newly discovered pursuit could not have been more different than her. If she was like anyone, she shared commonality with a woman with whom I'd played around some nearly fifteen years prior. This new woman had striking depth of character, a twist in her humor, a darkness she wasn't afraid to explore, and a beauty befitting European erotica.

I was smitten, and I refused to let anything or anyone stand in my way. Take that christianmingle.com and the rest, I found my match all by my lonesome! It only took a lot of wrong roads to get there, for the both of us, but there we were facing the future together. This is a mighty powerful revelation when opportunity like this strikes precisely when the world is expecting a different reaction. We'd both stumbled along in our ill-fitting relationships, like actors playing the same tired roles year-in, year-out, speaking those same words until they had no meaning and our lips were numb. The details were different, but the outcome quite similar.

Have you ever been to an amateur dance class? There's a room full of mostly strangers who pair up and rotate through different pairings, attempting to learn the steps. Every rotation takes a new adjustment, and it's awkward and it's forced. That's what it used to be like. For a long time, I thought it had to be. Just when I thought reshuffling the deck one more time was going to do the trick, when starting with a fresh one was the answer. Everyone involved is so much better off! The new world that erupted into being when it was all said and done is a far superior place.

She makes sense to me. And I make sense to her. We've had strong rhythm since the very beginning. As I understand it, through experience, through knowledge of others, what we have is rare. We flood one another with a youthful enjoyment of everyday. Together we can be daring, and naughty, and take risks. And we function so freakin' easily! Sometimes I can't believe it's my life. I wake up every day pleased as punch.

And now we're getting married. And the guest list is really beginning to sparkle. But they're coming for the vows and staying for the party. So we need music.

There's so much. I'm going to go off the top of my head with this one:

• Endless Love by Lionel Richie & Diana Ross (1981). I will attest to this being one of my most favorite love songs of all time. Sure it was the theme song to a long forgotten Brooke Shields vehicle. It was recorded very quickly, and the final recording is said to be the first or second take. Yet the passion and unity between the voices is what really grabs me, as each shares or borrows phrases from one another, in a vocal dance of sorts.
• White Wedding by Billy Idol (1982). My brain seems to automatically be seeking out the early 80's. Perhaps it's related to something quite formative. Perhaps this is the most obvious choice of a wedding song. Any old wedding. I choose this one for many reasons. All of which are multi-layered fun! And no, I'm not letting on.
• Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads (1980). You may tell yourself - this is not my beautiful wife...How did I get here? -- Need I say more?
• Everlong by Foo Fighers (1997). I've waited here for you - everlong.... From the remains of Nirvana, Dave Grohl's seeming pet project created brilliance and their signature crowd pleaser with this one. It encapsulates so much romance, in all of it's varied hues.
• Cruisin' by Huey Lewis & Gwyneth Paltrow (2000). Speaking of duets, this Smokey Robinson cover is one of my favorites. It doesn't hurt that this song originates from Duets, a moderately enjoyable Hollywood peek into the world of competitive karaoke. As a karaoke enthusiast cum officinado (or at least more enthusiastic than previously), it's nice to have a touch of validation from the movies. Second only to that is the somewhat disconcerting fact that the characters in the movie are father and daughter, who share these empassioned phrases.
• Lucky by Bif Naked (1998). A quiet, reflective, nearly somber ballad which made its premiere on the cult classic TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Indeed, we are the lucky ones.
• Shelter by Ray LaMontagne (2004). Speaking of contemplative beauty, this man is the Van Morrison for our generation, to the chagrin of any number of whiny, indie poseurs whose souls are often phoned-in. You will shelter me my love. And I will shelter you.

Amen.

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an in

I was recently told a theory on memory. Pick a year from your life. Now try to recall x, y, z details about it. Each recollection is said to unlock another piece, until you really start to uncover key parts of the story.

Sure, not all of life is worth reliving. At least not our own. There's too much pain, too much uncertainty, too many dead ends, but living it secondhand through the words, images, or sounds of those works that we return to again and again. That's not a problem. It's vicarious living. And it's safer.

I am sure you've done this. You've found yourself flipping through television channels, stumbling upon a familiar movie well on its way. And then you get caught up. You might have even been watching something else, currently on a commercial break.

A story well-told unfolds in such a fashion that each piece overlaps the last as well as the following. The mosaic it paints makes so much sense that we become enwrapped within it. This is true of books, movies, theatre, or even within our favorite music. Each time through we begin to recall how perfectly the next part follows.

The pieces of our life make similar sense, in retrospect. Each event eclipses the next. Over time, the more we look inward, the more noticable the saga becomes. If the universe can be expanding then the same can be true of our human lives. Personally, I can see it on my slight scale how each piece of my life has led to the next. Even simply reading back through this blog, new things reveal themselves. What's revealed and what's absent certainly tells quite a tale.

One of the key shifts I've recognized is a change in dynamics. Each person who enters and leaves our life readjusts the tone of it. We all can have such great affect on one another, whether positive, detrimental, or somewhere in between. Like attracts like, separating the honest from the false. Old friends return, holding new meaning. New friends are created as families expand.

And thus, we enter a new chapter.

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attention whore

Babies don't know any better. Everything is new and scary to them, so they make the three noises that they've figured out at the two distinct volumes they've discovered. It's not their fault when their voice shows up in the middle of a movie, or a flight they shouldn't be on, or from the corner of a low-toned dining room.

Children who develop a scene in the checkout line between a irritable sibling or because of a wanton candybar haven't been shown a better resolution to their seemingly serious issues. These temper tantrums are normal, at least for a short while. Eventually we're supposed to grow out of this phase. The drive to push at the boundaries until the punishment in return is extreme enough that we stop is supposed to end.

Some adults simply don't let it. In the movies, they are often the show-offs, they are the people who sing their praises louder than everyone else, they are the people who need to prove something. They are the character we love to hate.

In real life, though, they are often two faced folk, full of sordid excuses for their failings. These weaknesses, whether directly noted or not, are always the fault of other people: parents, exes, siblings, friends, the government, or the cops. Someone else was always in the wrong, whereas they just sat there and took the beating in peaceful response like the perfect specimen that they are. After all they are never ever doing harm unto others.

The emotional environment and dramatic tone of any given place is always altered for their display. These big babies overfill their messy diapers with discontent and call for attention and admiration. The are overactors who need to have all eyes on them. They demand it, not command it. It's not since they're all that special. It's because they're twirling around that proverbial idiot glowstick in the middle of a darkened venue. And for some reason we're supposed to give them a pass.

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no anchor

Drama.

What a loaded phrase: drama.

It lies there as if in all caps, screaming its way through our walls, dripping discontent into our breakfast cereal, and coming out our very pores as the day burns on, sploshing onto the heels of passersby.

DRAMA.

It's a TV Guide descriptor for 57% of everything fictitious. Here we have common life, love, and war in a nutshell. Ta-da, it's drama. The stage is rife with passing out it's pamphlets. And the news. You guessed it: real-life drama.

It makes for terrific viewing. Yeah, most especially when it's not yours.

I used to warm myself by it's fragrant campfire. It was all consuming, overwhelming, and a ritualized madness. It travels in packs, spreads like a virus, and is predictably the drink of choice of lovers and sexually frustrated strangers. And if you're not careful, it'll get on you. It's something to be decoded and navigated.

It's often complicated.

That's the phrase that gets bandied about these days. It becomes the euphemism for the ill-equipped to move on, too lazy to move out, still fishing for apologies, tentatively expecting some leftover guilt-pussy, or whatever other unhealthy activity behooves one or both parties in this former relationship. The remains of this thing, or this fling, gets dragged about like gum stuck on the bottom of a shoe from seventeen and a half feet ago. There's just a vague suggestion of connection. But the truth is it's just dried spittle stretched dental floss thin that only looks like the solid entity you thought you saw.

These dramas swirl around the worlds of my friends and compatriots. And it's hard to miss, whether or not I'd like to tune in.

It's so much more important to not mourn the relationship, but to celebrate the freedom, the chance to strip off all of the layers of regret, disappointment, selling out of yourself, your character, your every desire that got overshadowed by the ill-shapen object that was this failed memory. Something dies when a relationship ends. Great. Let it.

It's best to rocket off to a place of healing. Don't get messed up at the bottom of a pint of Ben & Jerry's. The end was nigh for far longer than most people give themselves credit for: it's the rote memorization of the things to say, the empty feelings you have toward anything they have to say, the overall boredom, or the guilt feels for leaving them alone with your friends. Don't make a career of it. Get out!

I've known people who never got over their ex, that one ex. They never let themselves get caught up to the present day. They continue to leave that door open for them to re-enter: a year, five years, ten, or more down the road, thereby continually rotating through the same cycle, meeting the same failure, again and again.

Why do we of the human persuasion continue to do it? Why does it take so much time, so much effort to realize that being honest with ourselves is key? The rest will follow.

Just let go.

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dangerous beauty.

But there is balance in all things . . . .

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. ~ Erica Jong

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calm warning

When I was solely focused on filmmaking as the end all and be all in my artistic life, I would collect quotes and advice from writers and directors I admired. Pedro Almodovar has been making brash, beautiful, brilliant cinema for several decades. I once read an interview of his wherein he said, "I think it is very important to be born in a place that you don’t like, because it establishes very early on the things you are going to confront in your life.”

My sister wages this war well. She puts up her dukes, unearths and exploits her past again and again, in literal terms. I go about it differently. I'll grant her the means she battles her rival. I have found my own method of weaving strands of this pain into what I write and what I create.

Everyone needs a nemesis.

We all need that something else that runs counter to us, assuring us where we stand. Democrats need their Republicans just as vegans wouldn't be the same without their meat eaters. Lovers need their exes. And Kurtis Blow needs his breaks. Britney defected against the music and CBGBs took things out on the disco ball. From our opposition we stand. We can't fit everyone into our bubbles, and buying the world a coke isn't going to remedy a damn thing. From it all arrives some truth, though. The things we loath and the things that challenge us the most are also what bring us most fully out of our shell and into focus.

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re: born

Today I turn thirty-five.

I have never been older.

The way it's told, the night I was born 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operatic trippy science fiction flick by the incomparable Stanley Kubrick was broadcast on TV. Fault it however you will in spite of its tempered pacing and ennui inducing overture, but little can conflict with the edict that it stands as an influential classic. I've always supposed there must have been something in the water that night, since the drooling babe born in that Jersey hospital with my likeness would be drawn to film, music, and science fiction as well as dream of becoming a renegade filmmaker who dissects the eternal struggles of the human psyche. It never surprised me that I finished writing my first feature length screenplay in the year 2001.

We all come from somewhere.

And I don't mean the seemingly unsexy by-product of the end credit scroll of some roll in the hay. I simply mean that our physiological oak tree was once but an acorn. The ways and means the evolution comes about fascinates me. I think of the television series LOST, which my fiancée and I recently re-watched in its entirety, upon receiving it as a Christmas gift. Without the distraction of poor choice of company and interfering personal dramas that belied our respective first time viewings, so much more surfaced within this multi-textured program.

With much of the plot line being shrouded in mystery for many of the early seasons, there is a satisfying turn when some of the gnawing questions begin to find answers. I think life is like this. I think about turning thirty-five. There is far more power in that than there was at thirty or twenty-five or twenty-one or eighteen or any of the other key ages of yore. There's something truly exhilarating about seeing behind the curtain for longer stretches at a time, to catch a glimpse of how things work and what makes life worth living.

Deeper meaning rears its mischievous head right on schedule, every time. You just have to guide your vision a tad closer to see it. Show me a series of broken dishes, and I'll show you the excavation of the dashed dreams and cold conversation nibbled on at their side.

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