ice storm

This past weekend, I spent a glorious Saturday at a high school on the north Florida coast judging the regional Thespian competition. I have been doing the same for the last three years. This was my favorite session, containing the opportunity to watch and critique nine straight hours of a total of sixty-one scenes having a cast of two.

After a 5AM caffeine-induced musically eclectic back roads trek, I arrived at the heavily populated and intensely hormonal grade school and made my way to the sign-in area. Immediately I felt the tailored shoulder of an old friend, as he leaned in to me with a good ol' dude hug. This particular guy has been sadly distancing himself from me since the predictable aftershocks of my divorce. We have a bevy of under-resolved issues that might not be worth pursuing. On his coattails was another long gone close friend whose level of disrespect over time still reeks in the occasional air we share. He and I had a total of seven words.

The day also gave me the chance to become completely enthralled by two teenagers doing great justice to a five minute scene from Angels in America, in what my panel deemed the best piece of the day.

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cropped life

The old psychological query ponders whether we first see the forest or the trees. I have often felt myself capable of doing both in equal measure, craving the intimacy of the details but enjoying the manner in which all of the distinctive pieces fit into the whole. Art can easily be cropped life, as information is isolated to draw the eye and trick the mind into focusing on specifics.

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gimme shelter

Find your safe harbor.

(39)

rear window

(38)

family relations

The holiday season seemingly returned as Black Friday warmed its shadow across casseroles built around leftovers and all things commercial. Somehow it is now suddenly December the 12th, or a mere thirteen days until Christmas. Out of the haze came the displays, the music, and the financial demands, and like the ethereal village of Brigadoon, it too will pass. This time of year only gives us a small fragment of time to enjoy its splendor, as it hustles on by our collective windows. We must find our way to harness its genuine gifts, opportunities, and cause for celebration.

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lonely avenue

A good family friend once told a story about a road trip she had with her mother when she was a child. Along the way they took enough wrong turns to become lost. When she became frantic and upset about the situation her mom pulled off to the side of the road to talk with her, reassuring that they weren't lost after all since they were right there.

I feel we could all benefit from that perspective.

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earthbound mystic

Can't keep my mind
From the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted
Just an earthbound misfit, I
-"Learning to Fly", Pink Floyd

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hidden treasure

The trouble with living life by guided tour is that there are never surprises.

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snap peas

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
~Dr. Suess

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altered ego

There is astounding power in reflection.

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fragile frame

The Back to the Future films evoked a sense of home, a sense of wonder, a sense of dread, and so many other things by its simple framing of a car-lined street burrowed under a canopy of trees. Our lives offer us innumerable places with similar emotional arcs, whether they are the street we grew up on that no longer extends to oblivion, or the old workplace that has made way for a condo village, the neighborhood you've lost visitation rights to, or merely the crossroads in your daily commute.

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super 8.

move·ment (n.)

• an instance of moving; a change in place or position
• the suggestion or illusion of motion in a painting, sculpture, or design
• the progression of events in the development of a plot
• a self-contained section of an extended composition
• a mechanism, such as the works of a watch, that produces or transmits motion

Movement.

The word flows through your lips with such power, only to be unceremoniously scrubbed at launch time. Its lifespan appropriately works in similar starts and stops. It is a concept that comes to my mind quite often. My soul was born at the wild intersection between artist, gypsy, drifter, dreamer, and being relatively undefined.

I remember a hastily assembled piece of prose I wrote for my sixth grade English class about my life at thirty. It was etched in the penciled shorthand chicken scratch I used to convey my ideas at the time. It involved a world far from the one I was presently living in, due changes in time, location, status, and level of hope. The actual details don't stand out this far down the road, but it brings to mind a level of longing I have always had. Not coincidentally this was the time that my passion for writing, filmmaking, music, and sex were building up momentum. My tastes were more fully finding foundations, and my sensory development was enhancing.

June 10th of this year, J.J. Abrams new film Super 8 found its way to theaters. My girlfriend and I dropped in on it during opening weekend. Wrapped in a veil of Spielberg worship and with throwaway thrill ride sequences that recalled Cloverfield was the story of innocent burgeoning filmmakers trying their hand at the craft in the brilliant beige of 1979. It was unexpectedly a great work of cinematic entertainment and one that touched me deeply.

Dreams grow old with us. They evolve, find better music tastes, have children, lose aspects of themselves, but never fully disappear. Unless we do.

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all personnel

RIP Harry Morgan (1915-2011)

Some actors live and breath life into characters so eloquently. For me Harry Morgan was Colonel Sherman T. Potter, the dignified, stalwart commander of the 4077th on those later seasons of M*A*S*H, and in digesting that show at such a formative age he became such a key figure in my personal development. I am truly saddened by his passing.

(*)

to simplicity

Recently I discovered the second season of the Bravo reality show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist which follows a group of artists as they create art brought on by a variety of jumping off points and with vague parameters. On a recent episode, each of the artists attempted to create pop art (Andy Warhol's awkward adopted baby) for the modern age. As I have been traveling through my spontaneous blog picture-taking voyage, I have been thinking a lot about a quote by Warhol about why he originally painted the Campbell's Soup cans. Basically he said it was because it was what he had for lunch. Who says one needs to plod off halfway around the world to find inspiration?

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born free

Artistic endeavor has been on my mind lately. I have innumerable artistically driven friends, who pursue it professionally, spiritually, or simply on the side. I consider deeply my youth born passions toward creative expression of all sorts as a gift first and a curse only in the occasional retrospect. If there's one truth that continually surfaces, it's the edict to know your limitations, but to always do your craft in spite of them.

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rough edges

We know them by rote. We can see them coming from a fathom away. Their absence often becomes the litmus test that sets the standard between friends and acquaintances. They are other people's perceptions of us. I have been quiet or I have been brooding. I have been anti-social and I have been weird. And I have been referred to as rough around the edges.

Though none of these get at the heart of the matter and have been based off past knee-jerk reactions, I have found acceptance of the latter. I need not wear any tag others may don upon me, but I am quite comfortable being an odd-shaped peg ill-equipped to fitting into that geometrically accurate hole most of the world eases themselves into.

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parallel universe

NASA discovered an eerily Earth-like planet in another solar system this week. Why am I not surprised?

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snap shot

Life can be difficult to alter or manipulate, especially given its great ability to become strained by monotony. It doesn't have to be, so find new glory in the familiar moments and discover hidden treasures off the beaten path.

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perpetual motion

You can ponder perpetual motion
Fix your mind on a crystal day
Always time for a good conversation
There's an ear for what you say.
~Creedence Clearwater Revival,
"Up Around the Bend"

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'73 spirit

Happy Birthday, lover.

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this corrosion

Places don't change. We do.

(22)

game day

I often must remind myself that art doesn't appeal to everyone.

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open window

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inside out

Everything is beautiful
in its own way.
-Ray Stevens

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techno fever

The stranglehold technological has over society often drives me crazy. Even though I sell consumer electronics and know far too many seemingly useless tidbits about the ways and means of it all, I care very little about shiny toys and the advances in cellphones and their compatriots. The Florence & the Machine concert my girlfriend and I saw during this past summer was visited by a pseudo-fascist uprising of the smartphone brigade who simultaneously felt the need to video the proceedings for seeming prosperity. The cold glow from the audience resembled a roomful of old school Cylons preparing to overtake the humans en masse.

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