When a Mistake isn't a Mistake!

One of the lines I wrote for the piece we performed over the weekend, was written in the script, and memorized as this: "The thought crept up and jumped out at me like an inebriated joker in a gorilla suit."

What I actually said during the show on Saturday night: "The thought crept up and jumped out at me like an inebriated gorilla in a gorilla suit."  

What I actually said was "wrong," but got a big laugh. It's actually a funnier line.  It worked so well, I decided, right there, in the moment, to repeat it, to repeat the mistake. And by repeating it, I was kind of claiming it, and deciding that it wasn't a mistake at all.

Someone later remarked that was the mark of a true professional.  Claim the mistake. Or as Brian Eno once put it, "Honor your mistake as a hidden intention."

Not sure, about that, I mean, the idea is to speak the words that are written, but this mistake sort of did the trick, and sometimes doing the trick is just enough.

Linklater Brings It!

You work on a project, write it, rehearse it, perform it. And then it's done. How to fill the void, the inevitable emptiness? Find other creative work that inspires.

We did just that yesterday. We saw Richard Linklater's latest movie "Boyhood." It's safe to say Linklater is one of our finest movie-makers working today, and at any time. And "Boyhood," is just a beautifully sublime example of a perfectly realized film.  Made over a 12 year period, it follows a boy and his family thru the 2000's.

Yes, it is some kind of masterpiece. A movie of our lives, our times. It will hit you on all levels. It asks all the big questions, but it does it in a subtle, almost invisible way. One of the finest movies I've ever witnessed. Reviews or descriptions don't do it justice, it must be experienced.  Loved it. Love it. It's sort of sublimely devastating, and renewing, at the same time.  Linklater brings it. What a great, great film. A must-see. Transcendent. Inspiring.

Abbie Fest 2014: Day Three

If your show came off fairly well on Saturday, and you stayed out late basking in the vibe, and watched some other cool shows into the wee hours, you are tired Sunday for the last day of Abbie Fest, but at least it's a sort of satisfied tiredness.  That was the case for us yesterday. Better than if the show came off badly... then you are just bone-tired, and you are kind of kicking yourself over lost moments and opportunities.  Not a good feeling.

So, yeah, anyway, we were tired yesterday, didn't really catch up, but felt good about the debut of our show the previous evening, so we could sit back and relax for the last day.

I pretty much laughed the day away. The highlight for me was the insane wackiness of Hobo Junction. I hesitate trying to even convey what their show was about, it was silly, stupid, ridiculous, over the top, insane, funny. Very funny.  

And The Resonant Authority. "Trust Only Us... We Are They!" Brilliant! Again, I don't have the energy at the moment to describe this show.  It was the best. So funny. Profound too!

And don't forget The Abbeys. Close harmony singing. Lots of Everly Brothers. Two voices, two black Gibson acoustic guitars, and a standup bass.  Pretty cool in a sort of uncool way. They've been singing together for 23 years.  The real deal.

We ended the evening late at the Horizon Cafe.  Family cooking. What a great little family diner! I ate a spinach/feta omelet the size of my head.  It was perfect, and delicious, and I ate the whole thing! 

That's it! Abbie Fest 2014! Put it in the books.

Abbie Fest 2014: Day Two

This was our day. We premiered our new piece called "Shimmerings." I blanked early in the show. Got to a line, and then blanked.  I know it happens, but it hasn't happened to me very often. I knew the script. I was well-rehearsed. The lines were in my head. Somewhere. But I got to a line and then stopped.  Dead-cold. My head was completely empty. I turned to my partner on stage, and luckily she bailed me out, started to do an action that triggered the line. I didn't jump, didn't panic. I righted myself, the line came, and then the rest of the show pretty much rolled out without a hitch.

The audience was with us. Surprise! It was first night. And maybe the last. That has been the pattern. We do a show at the Fest, it sees the light of day, and then vanishes.  It's a sort of Zen-type thing. It's our special brand of r&r theater. 

Before the show, I sat in the dressing room, facing a large mirrored wall. It was sort of like that scene from Raging Bull, Deniro channeling La Motta.  I tried to meditate, tried to ground myself, the waiting really is the hardest part. I couldn't help looking at myself in the mirror. It's not something I often do anymore.  I usually just check to see if I'm still here. But don't really want to linger on the details.  The years, the scars kind of accumulate. So, anyway, I looked in the mirror, and saw my father looking back at me. I realized, for the first time, that I really do look like my father, the way I remember him.  The same eyes, the same facial structure. But it was more than that, it was like he was with me, in me.  I really felt inhabited. It's been 8 years since he died. He died in August. And there he was, with me, in me. That was another surprise.

Oh yeah, we saw a few amazing shows last night. 

Mary Arrchie did "Hellish Half-Life" Shorter works from Samuel Beckett.  Powerful, disturbing, perfectly realized.  It was almost too real, too good, too perfect. Elemental. Hellish. Oh yeah, it's about us!

The Living Canvas presented "Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Skins." What to say? Breath-takingly great. Amazing. Beautiful. Captured the spirit and embodied it! So good. Words fail. 

Abbie Fest 2014: Day One

You can't dip your toe in the same river twice.  You know, you're different, and the river is too.

Same with the Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins Fest. Even if you've been there before, it's never exactly the same. Even if you are watching the opening ceremony where Rich Cotovsky channels the spirit of Abbie Hoffman, listen to Hendrix's still amazing, enthralling "Star Spangled Banner," and sing along to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," at the end, just like you have so many, times in the past, it isn't the same.

Every year, the energy is different. There are new people. Old people. Everyone is a little older. I mean, the young ones seem even younger, and the old ones even older. Still, we were renewed into the ritual last night.  A very inspiring kickoff to the 3 day fest.  Rich Cotovsky also performed in Mary Arrchie's "Wild Dogs," a perfect little piece of theater. Rich has totally weathered into the role.  A man eats a Twinkie off the floor like a dog, and runs around the theater space like his tail is on fire. That's some kind of theater magic. And when Dylan's "If Dogs Run Free," starts playing on the stereo system, you just get a little chill, and want to howl at the moon.

Day two today!

Crappy = Self-Sufficient!

Cheap stuff. If you have a limited supply of cash, buying cheap stuff is essential. And there is a coolness factor when it comes to cheap stuff. Sometimes buying other people's discards can lead to some distinctive, cool, counter-mainstream, choices.

There are guitarists who have made a career, collecting and playing really crappy, and cheap guitars. It turns out lots of those instruments have very unique and interesting voices. Paying lots of dollars doesn't necessarily mean a better sound. I have a pretty cheap Mexican-Made Telecaster, that has lots of gritty personality. It's a guitar that I have modded, and fiddled with, and it is very much a "custom" guitar. Cheap, but custom. And I use it often!

Same with bicycles. I have excelled at finding really cheap bikes, discarded and refurbished. There is a whole sub-culture of crappy, vintage bikes that exists on the margins.  It's funny, the front tire of my pretty crappy bike was recently stolen. I, for some reason, not really thinking, wheeled it into a fancy bike shop to see if they could outfit me with a new tire and rim.  It was like I was a visitor from another planet. They looked at the bike like it was some ancient, rare, animal that they had never seen before.

And I guess it would be like driving a Model T into a car dealer today.  So, anyway, they told me that they would need to "special order" a new rim and tire, and that said rim and tire were rare and expensive parts, and they quoted me a price about 5 times what I originally paid for the bike. Very funny.

It was only then that I remembered I had another really crappy bike down in the basement at home, it was a bike that had served me well, but had basically disintegrated, and for some reason, I didn't get rid of it, but put it in storage. Turns out the front tire and rim were in good shape.  And they were exactly what I needed! Presto Change-O! I installed the tire and rim from the disintegrated bike and I was back in business.  If you specialize in "crappy," you can be pretty self-sufficient! 

Everything is Fixable!

Everything is fixable. OK. Maybe not quite.  There are some things that are just not fixable. Suicide and Death by other means, top the list, but there's also disfigurement and old age. There are some things we can't fix, but most things we can.

I came across this little article about "depression and suicide." Interesting and informative.  At the end of the article, there was this, something to keep in mind...

"Ken Baldwin, who survived a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, once told the New Yorker's Tad Friend that as he was falling, "he instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped."

Enjoy it While We Can!

It's really hard to get here. If you calculated the odds, it seems like a pretty healthy long-shot that you are even here, walking, talking, doing the things you do. What are the chances that that particular egg met up with that particular sperm? I mean there are billions and billions of us, so it's obvious this happens all the time, but just how did we get to you?

So, when one of us purposely X's themselves out, it sort of makes you pause, take stock.  And words do fail. And words like depression don't really make it explainable or understandable.  You can't walk in another person's shoes. And you can't feel anyone else's pain. We all feel pain and know what it is, but it's only ours, and it's not something you can trade or translate.

Morrissey famously said (hopefully being sincere, and not flip) upon hearing of Kurt Cobain's suicide: "I respect his decision."  What does it take to take yourself out? What kind of logic? What kind of state of mind must one be in to go through the practical steps that get you to take your own life?

Death is coming. It has it's own timetable.  No need to speed it along.  Why not live? There are lots of reasons to live. You see others with money and fame and the love and admiration of lots of other people, and you think that might be enough. It should be more than enough.  But we all get to decide this for ourselves.

And maybe death is not the end. We don't really know. But there is something amazing and cool about life and consciousness. And from this perspective it looks like it doesn't last forever. So I think we should try to enjoy it while we can, if we can.

Vivid, Vivid Detail!

I'm on page 210 of Mark Lewisohn's Beatles book, "Tune In." They are all still teenagers, Lennon is the oldest at 18. I believe I now know more about the Beatles formative years, than my own. My own childhood seems like a dimly glimpsed and recalled dream. Yes, it's an extraordinary book, but you definitely need to buy into the idea that these 4 lads are of supreme importance. I do, yes, I do.

Our Little Dream Bubble

Our little theater company, not so much a company, more like a little dream bubble, has been doing original work for nearly 2 decades.  We are in the midst of bringing another new piece to life, which we will premiere at the Abbie Fest this coming Saturday.  Yesterday was an intense session of rehearsing.

The day before we had a little bit of a "blow-up," we wanted to just forget the whole thing. This is part of the process. There's the initial inspiration of imagining, writing, envisioning, and then you go through the 5 stages of grief and loss. Finally you end up with "acceptance."

You kind of find out what you have, and try your best to realize it.  Yesterday we got into a little discussion, trying to decide if we are "Acting?" Or just "Performing?" For some reason we decided we are primarily "performing," with a little bit of "acting," on the side. And just what are we "performing?" 

We've decided it's a "piece." A thing. Not quite a play, sort of a performance thing, but not exactly. It's got a little bit of acting, some performance, there's music, and movement, and it all rolls along. There is a theme, there is some coherence, but it's also a little schizoid, and frenetic.  It's kind of what you might expect from our little dream bubble.

Capitalism vs. The Climate!

Question: "Is Earth fucked?" The Answer: "Yes, pretty much."

This is the defining issue of our generation, and of generations to come. And Capitalism is the problem. It's funny, Capitalism has been the solution for so long. It has led to so much wealth and so much prosperity.  It is the engine that keeps on giving. 

But it turns out our strength is also our weakness. "Unlimited Growth," is unsustainable.  In Nature, unlimited growth is actually called Cancer!  Naomi Klein has a new book coming out - "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate." Sounds like a "must read!" You'd think that if we really are the "Smart Monkeys" we'd throw in our lot with the Climate, in a heartbeat. We shall see...  

Personal Influences

And what about me? What song (see previous post) or book or movie "changed my life?" I look back. I think that kind of thing must come from your "formative years." Young and impressionable.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle." That was the first Vonnegut novel I read, but you can add "Slaughterhouse 5," and "Breakfast of Champions" to the list too.  I had dabbled as a writer in grade school and high school, but coming across Vonnegut changed everything for me. Head-opening and funny. Deceptively simple, profound. I didn't think of writing or of writers the same ever again.

Sam Shepard's "Unseen Hand and Other Plays." This collection made me think I could write for the theater. It became an obsession. And led to acting and putting on productions, and founding a little theater company.

Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind." I heard this song at a Folk Mass as a little kid. I thought it was some kind of old time folk classic. When I found out it was written by a 19 year old kid from Minnesota, well, it just blew my mind. My Mom brought "Dylan's Greatest Hits" home and I adopted it.  That sandpaper voice, so hard, so cutting, so elusive. I got my hands on a guitar, took lessons, it became my constant companion.

John Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band." The Beatles were done. Lennon's first album was a sort of a blood-letting. It was kind of an anti-Beatles manifesto. So personal. So clear-eyed. I thought it was the greatest record ever recorded. So basic - guitar, bass, drums, piano on a few tracks. Lennon's voice. Powerful. The best r&r voice on the planet. Bleak too. I still think it's the greatest album ever recorded. It's almost too real. It's almost too personal. Lacerating. Not easy listening. But great.

Hunter S. Thompson's political writing. I remember being in High School and reading HST out loud to my classmates. It was like I was revealing a personal secret. I stammered and got embarrassed, but I just knew that I was telling some kind of mad, corrosive truth.  HST was crazy, druggie, funny, and he was from an alternate reality.  I have carried this alternate reality with me ever since.

 "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Live with the Bomb." It was an old movie. Black & white. Seemed so crazy. I realized that was the world. Funny. Crazy. We were all in this mad caper together. And we'd probably all blow ourselves up for some stupid reason. This one stills rings true. "We'll meet again, don't know how, don't know when..."

One Track Can Change A Life!

They say a song can change a life. In Mark Lewisohn's book, this is the track, recorded for RCA in Nashville in 1956, that blew minds and changed the trajectories of lives of a few teenagers, who later became pretty influential people in England. It's an atmospheric little song about a suicide, and hard-luck love.

It's hard to time-travel back and to hear this song with fresh ears.  We have heard so much r&r music over the years. We know so much about Elvis, and all that knowledge sort of clouds the crystalline simplicity and otherworldly spookiness of the track. It's like a voice of a ghost.  We hear the voice, and then flash on all the stages of Elvis' career, the terrible, cheesy movies, the Vegas schlock, the emergence of the clown-like specter of the Drug-Addled, Great White Whale Elvis. But the Elvis of this song, is not yet that Elvis.

It's impossible to experience this song, this Elvis for the first time. To hear it with ears that had never heard anything like it before. Hard to understand or convey what the impact must have been on those who heard it in 1956. But just listen to the track. Otherworldly echo & reverb. Essence of R&R. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison & Starkey all say this was the track that changed everything (Keith Richards too mentions this track as seismic and seminal in his book, "Life"). Lennon talks about how it was hair-raising, spine-tingling, (he experiences the song on a deep physical level), and it was just the pure sound of it that gave him a new mission and purpose in life. The song was a shared experience that connected and shaped these four teenagers before they even knew each other. And then, surprisingly, they found each other, and then well, they had a story to tell too.

What Life is All About!

We are doing a new piece at the Abbie Hoffman Died for Your Sins Fest. Which has been our habit for many years now. We usually do something we haven't done before, although, all of the pieces we have done have had a certain similarity, you could probably string them all together into some kind of grand narrative.  Someone told us that we do "interpretive theater" by which I think they meant you need to hire an interpreter to explain what it's about.  I don't know, it always just comes out the way it comes out. Maybe that's a flaw or a feature. I'm pretty Zen about it. We do what we do.

This year, the piece is called "Shimmerings," but it started out as "Dead Poe," but I thought that title just gave too much away.  It's sort of inspired by Edgar Allen Poe, and we incorporated some of his poems and other writings into the piece.  I was thinking about how the great man Poe ended up in the gutter, out of his head, and that kind of gave me a starting point.  Poe wrote an an amazing little tract called "Eureka" which is some kind of illuminated document, and sort of resembles "string theory." 

"Eureka" is either brilliant, or just maybe the kind of document someone with an advanced mind and lots of opium might write.  Anyway, we work in some of the "Eureka" text too.  It all has put me in a very speculative and philosophical state of mind.  Running thru the text, memorizing the lines, and I have been tracking with Mr. Poe. And it makes me all wonder what this life is all about. Not sure about that either. Which I guess really is the general theme and gist of our theater work. No one really knows anything about the important things, there is mystery that underlies everything...

Priests of Process

One day working and hanging with the Theater People, and then the next day, working and hanging with the Jazz People. Both camps kind of work on the margins of the larger cultural scene.  Secret societies. Specialists. Almost like Monks or Priests of Process. There are the unique ways of working. Lots of energy and intelligence brought to bear on projects that will be seen and heard by only a very small audience. There's creativity, and practice, and experience, and improvisation, and a sense of play. There may be dreams of "changing the world," of "kicking down the doors," of making some kind of grand cultural impact, but those dreams are buried deep in the bones. Forefront in the brain, in the body is process.  Process and work.  It's all consuming. And that's everything.

Art as Gift!

Somewhere along the line I read David Foster Wallace talking about "Commercials vs Art," and how a commercial could be artful, but can't be art, because it's purpose is to sell you something, and that Art is a "gift." Not just a gift possessed by the artist, but a gift that the artist gives to you. It has no ulterior motive, except to be. In one sense an Art Object is sort of "useless." Now of course, there is an "Art Market," but the marketing of art has really nothing to do with Art. The impulse of Art is to create something - painting, song, story, etc. that didn't exist before, that takes on a life in the viewer's or listener's or reader's mind. And the moment or action of Art happens in this kind of strange and esoteric communication between the Artist, the Art, and the person who receives the Art. And maybe what's communicated is a sense of beauty, or some kind of feeling, or a spark of an idea or whatever. It's a little thing, a thing that can't really be quantified, or marketed, or captured. It happens, or it doesn't happen. You can't buy it, or own it; that sense, it's kind of a gift, a gift that is just presented to you, whether you recognize it or pick it up, that's up to you. It has nothing to do with selling or buying.

One More Outrage

Yes, it turns out that Human Beings are capable of just about anything. Lying, murdering, thieving. We will torture each other. We will slit a throat, stab in the back, gun down as easily as brushing off a fly.  You could catalog the atrocities.  You could list the crimes and outrages. And you could probably rank them too.  Abusing children is pretty much the lowest of the low. But murdering children is even one more outrage, as horrible, as unconscionable, and as unjustifiable as you can get. And then, watch it, Human Beings will even, with a straight face, stand in front of other Human Beings and come up with excuses and reasons for murdering children. 

The Long Unfolding!

And then questions lead to more questions. As human beings, we think we are pretty hot stuff. That we are smart and can figure things out.  But after awhile you begin to wonder if dogs or insects think the same thing. So in my previous post (see below) I make lots of assumptions, that maybe just show that we don't really understand as much as we think we understand.

We are very much influenced by our own personal experience of time, causation,  and  what we think of as a "sequence of events." We may just be bumping up against the limits of our own understanding as individuals, and as a species. Maybe as they say, "everything we know is wrong," or at least, partial, and maybe even beside the point.

So we look at a life, or a history, and we see a sequence, but this kind of looking and seeing and analysis, this kind of understanding, is actually just a construction that we use to try to make sense of a grander thing that we can't really encompass or get our heads around.  Yes, we are trying to catch an ocean of life, of experience, of time, in a little sieve.  The water pours through the sieve, we watch it and draw conclusions, make speculations, think we understand.

We try to separate our selves out from the universe of things but by stepping out we have already lost the thread.  There is a long unfolding going on. We are part of it, and only a tiny part of it. And that is all really. The rest is just sort of for "entertainment purposes only." We can think and speculate all we want, maybe it's useful to us.  But there is a grander thing going on. And it has very little to do with what we think or speculate about it.

One Way this Thing Rolls Out?

So you are reading a story. Or really a history. A narrative of a sequence of events. You understand that there are many narratives, probably as many narratives as there are stars in the sky, or grains of sand on the beach. But really, there was just one particular sequence of events that happened. One sequence, one, a series of events rolling out one particular way. You wonder if there is only one way for anything, for everything to happen. Is it true that whatever happened was the only thing that could  have happened? Did everything have to happen the way it did happen? Could one detail have been different? And if you change one detail, is it a totally different story, a different history? Is there really only one way this thing rolls out? Counter-factual - is there really such a thing as "could," or "would," or, "what if," or are these just mind-games we play? 

Leaders vs. Salesmen

Maybe it's the guilt-ridden, ex-catholic in me, but I ended up reading (see previous post) the last essay from DFW about the 2000 Presidential primary.  What a gruesome subject. McCain, Bush2 - negative campaigning, etc.

Still it was worth the slog. DFW shows us the media machine from the inside. And goes on a very interesting digression about "Leaders," and "Salesmen."  He makes a rock-solid case that we live in the age of the Salesmen, very few Leaders to be found. And aren't we leery of Leaders anyway?  

The the mass market marketing campaign has morphed into every aspect of our lives. And is "truth-telling," just another marketing approach?  It's hard to pinpoint the genuine, the true when everything is for sale and everything is just another tactic to be used to gain some advantage or vote.

And voting is voting, and not voting is voting. And those in power (see the day's headlines) actually want to turn us off from voting and participating. What a hall of mirrors.  The last line from DFW: "Stay Awake."  It's harder than you think.