upon flying

cocooned, sounds absorb into the placenta of oxygen so carefully packed around us.

we are neither here nor there. an in-between space where time is irrelevant, simulated at the discretion of the bored attendant who flicks the light switch.

a modern marvel, that surely someday will appear barbaric, hurling ourselves through space in a ridiculous tube.

i watch the other passengers slip so easily into unconsciousness. their entire existence in the hands of the onboard computer.

my own joy or sorrow held at bay, just outside the sliding window, like the gremlin riding gleefully on the outer wings. it peers at me, content to cackle and hop, mocking my disconnected face just through the glass.

and i do not scream, alert the attendant with his tray of drinks. i have no will of self preservation, only the disassociation of nothingness. The Nothing is coming, or going, it is hard to say which.

and so i do not sleep, but wait placidly on the edge for what will occur to occur. inevitably, i will leave the cushion compressed around me and will be met by all the things i checked at the gate. the fear, the excitement, the pain, the despair, or sweet relief.

dystopia

Strange days lead to Strange nights
What do you control when you have no control?
Everyday the flames get higher higher higher
You can move your feet one in front of the other, you can even move the speed faster slower. But where can they take you? How far can you go till you are constrained by all the chains that bind?
You can open your mail or leave it stacked away. Yet bureaucracy revolves on its axis, heedless of Schrödinger's cat entwined.
Tread water the shore remains ignored.
Everyday the sky gets lower lower lower
You can pop the tab, swallow the pill, follow the white rabbit and yearn. In the morning the glass is still a mirror not a magic lantern
Everyday the tide gets blacker blacker blacker
If we cut off the water then the jackals will return
A sharp stick
Strong hands digging in a pit of mud
Our tongues they are all on fire
Soft things can be squished
Hinges can be snapped
The earth is on fire
You can paint on a smile, outline your eyes
Pull up the muscles
We are all hungry we are all tired
The walls we build are higher higher higher
You can hit the snooze or jump from bed but everyday you ride the same line, sardines like sheep in pipelines, messy mechanisms of the Powerful.
Higher higher higher
Let the mother fucker burn
Control is imaginary
Self determination fallacy
We're afraid of dying
Plug in Check out
A can of paint explodes, dripping rivulets over plastered advertisements.
But a little bleach and a minimum wage check rerights remnants of reality.
The earth the earth is on fire

try to remember that time in september

i have been a little down recently ~ but if you actually read my ululating, you know that i am a constant swing of craziness.

so, in lieu of a potential future trip to my other home, i decided to go back and try to save some of my plethora of musings from my 2007 trip to africa. at the time i was a myspace devotee. now that myspace has all but devolved, i've transported some of those thoughts over here. the shifting sands of the interwebs weren't able to hold everything. what will our future generations do? will they forget us entirely with no record to show for ourselves? ah well.

so for the babies i may never have, or at least for my niece...

June
July
the kili climb
August
September
October

the breathing memory

with the east coast deluge, my wedding season comes to a close. it is fittingly dreary for an "end of things," though i had hoped to grasp a tiny bit of summer here in the south. alas, i waited too long. instead of lounging by the pool, i have ample time to putter around my home town. to visit the spots of those enduring moments in my brain. probably too much time.

that being said, the last of my weddings was beautiful. vastly different--actually, they were all very different from each other. yet, everyone managed to plan something very fitting. i love how different they all have been.

sometimes on the other side of the fence you mush all marriages together. it becomes a blur of TLC episodes and wedding magazines. when most of your friends are single or family-less, you start to re-imagine  "domestic bliss" from fragments of your memory, real, imagined, from that last pulp novel to the 3d family film...

my sister Julia and her husband got married at their new house, which they have been refurbishing themselves all summer. and we are not just talking a little paint--not only the walls, but everything from  a complete upheaval of the yard, to the plumbing, to the freakin roof-- yes, they laid the beams!! in the ceiling!

not only was the wedding perfectly simple, but allowed all the friends and family to really appreciate how much work they have already put into their new home.

alyssa's wedding, on the other hand, was incredibly elegant last week. the ceremony was at a beautiful mansion, overlooking LA. all the fancy guests hid beneath delicate, matching parasols to fend off the blaring sun.

i didn't know a lot of people at the wedding--a far cry from the plans we made as teenagers in high school, daydreaming about our lives together. the houses we'd have, the baby strollers we'd push, the husbands we'd torture... it wasn't so much the "what" but the fact we'd be doing everything at the same time, so we could share the suffering and the joy, could gossip and bemoan together.  but times change. and we grow up. i guess some of us do.

her wedding was officiated by another of our friends who got one of those "day passes" to legitimately perform the ceremony. a very sweet idea.

my mind is full of twistable turnable thoughts that i have not yet decided if i should let in or i should just pack away.

however, i am very glad that i took the time, money, and effort to make it to all of the weddings this summer.  living the status quo is a terrible place for an artist.  you must stretch yourself in some way as much as you can. whether reading new scripts, attending scene study classes, trying out different ideas or having wild adventues.  sometimes, esp when things are emotionally stressful, stretching can mean a simple, rote physical warm up. but it can also mean this overindulgent "exploration" of "feelings."

and as i am falling asleep typing this, i'd better sign off for now.

limbo: when the aliens descend

there is a state between awakefulness and dreaming. it is unrecognizable when you are in it- the state of full cognition flows right into this limbo without marker. but it seems to me that this limbo might as well be a whole 'nother person taking over my body. invading my skin as my conscious slips from control. maybe it's an alien having fun with a corporal human. or maybe it is a me from an alternate world.

i have often wondered if our dreams are reality some where -- after all, if the multi universe theory is correct , everything that can be is somewhere. why not then our dreams?     if in a dream we can see into another version of ourselves, maybe this limbo is a different kind of blurring between our realities. this would explain why i still feel like me even if i can only vaguely remember what has happened, what i have said and done.

could this also be what happens when we drink? maybe not when we just drink to a state of drunkeness, but when someone's conscious blacks out, when we are still acting and speaking and doing, but not recording any of it. maybe we aren't recording it because a different version of ourselves is recording it.

have you ever stayed up all night? had a sleep over? as a four year old or fourteen or forty four? have you had those late night conversations where you know you are making complete sense and then you wake and your friend or partner or sister laughs and says "you were saying the funniest shit last night!" and you don't remember.

i have long loved to document those moments. well, i love to capture those moments for myself. but if they involve other people they can sometimes be embarrassing or too revealing just as often as they can be good fun.

but alone they are like tapping into some secret. the bulk of my really bad poems in highschool came from mining limbo. i wouldn't be able to sleep, would sit up under my skylight with my journal de jour and scribble away my thoughts. in the morning i would look over what i had written. the last few pages often enough were illegible - even my other selves have atrocious hand writing. but before it trailed off into chicken scratch, there was pure adolescent angst gold.

i don't do this anymore. i don't have the luxury, my days packed going from one thing to the other in my desperate attempt to realize a career of a working artist in nyc. it seems my nights are a delicate balance between struggling to sleep and dropping like a rock. if i tried to write as i sleep, i'd probably keep my mind spinning on endless tracks till dawn breaks.

however, i do take a very long subway to my pinnacle of manhattan. at least late at night i do. and i am becoming adept at thumb typing. which means my itouch is filled with "notes" thumbed out as i force my eyelids open to stave off opportunistic thieves, rapists, and hoboes.   sadly the touch screen keyboard isn't quite as forgiving as my  young penmanship. and the apple provided automatic word correction doesn't always help.

but flipping through those late night subway ramblings, i again wonder- just whose thoughts have been pouring out?  i'd like to meet her.    


ps. if you haven't seen the joe iconis rock and roll jamboree yet, what is wrong with you? don't you get how awesome it is? my sister, katrina rose dideriksen, is a superstar and joe iconis somehow taps my brain. not to mention the awesome stylin' of the rest of the iconis family. seriously. get on the train.

what's another year?

there is something about being an actor that seems to keep people, well at least some of us, in a perpetual state of "growing up". you're not really a child any more, but you have to be able to play. if you lose your ability to play, i don't think you can be a very good actor. without playing, how do you take risks?

then again, maybe it's just me. me refusing to take on the responsibilities of being an adult.  it's not that i want to go back to high school--though kindergarten was pretty fun. it's more that i just don't see myself in that locked down world that being "an adult" seems to represent in my mind. i'm still moody and crazy and wear funny clothes, even when i'm trying to be "wise".

oh well. :)

what is the magic of the familiar?

kentaro hiramatsu "park II"

what is it that makes your body recognize a place, a person, a moment?


it's that illusive something that hits you when you turn down the street you grew up and your body says, yes. i know this place. no matter how the houses around my parents' homes have changed, i still get this feeling as i pass what used to be the "green store" katrina and i used to buy penny candy at. i still get it as i crest the pine tree covered hill on 751 just as pinecrest comes into view. 


but the strange thing, is that bodily recognition of something brand new. sometimes it is a feeling of deja vu--that you have, in fact, experienced the moment, the person before, perhaps in another life.  but it is often something simpler--or more complicated--than a "weird" feeling because it's just not weird at all.

take a place. for me, when i walk into a truck stop, the rows of kitsch plastic gifts, disposable snacks, the occasional shower rooms. i know these things. i know the smell of recycled AC with a hint of motor fumes.  i can anticipate the blase disdain of the attendant when i hand over my lone diet coke for purchase. what does this say about me that one of "my places" is a truck stop? i'd like to think that it does not point to my inborn hickness, but my propensity to long road trips my whole life.

it's the same thing with airports and that reaches all over the world. every airport i have ever been in gives me that same sense of knowing. from skimming over the highway to RDU to the lights leading into Cairo, i've yet to be surprised by an airport. true, the little outpost in africa from which we took a tiny 3-seater plane was different-- i don't remember it having any electricity, after all. but it still maintained that airport "feeling."  there is something about the area around any airport, the roads that lead into them, the people who make their living off them, the stores or food places inside that just feels the same, no matter the race, the religion, the language, even the city size...


then there are people. people are, of course, a-whole-nother story. they change, they toy with you, they create strife without even meaning to just by their very transient existence.  the only thing that stays exactly the same, in that way a place can, is your memory of a person in a particular moment.


and yet, you can have that moment of "knowing" with a person. when a stranger catches your eye as you both chuckle at something only you both have seen and find funny. when a long lost friend spews out a turn of phrase you haven't heard in years, but the simple words evoke a pandora's box of shared stories. 

when you kiss someone and you are surprised to think "yes, this is how they should taste." even if you have never touched them before.


it is pleasing, this recognition. a mundane chemical reaction in our synapses, but maybe a bit of magic too.

she used to be a classy lady. and then she met me.

in her mother's dress. beautiful.

so the question i've been asking myself since The Wedding is: is blacking out the gods way of giving you a free pass?

yeah, yeah. i know your answer to that one. however, this time (not that i make a habit of this sort of thing) it kinda feels like it was. a little gift from above, saying, you made it here, it's done, you can let go.

i mean, really. i am a damn fine imbiber. i enjoy a cold beer. love a cocktail on the beach. i lust over a perfect bloody mary. i dream of sweating Kilimanjaros in the African twilight. while i don't often go crazy, i have had my share of wild nights all over the world.  so why, on this occasion, with barely 4 drinks over an 8 hour period did i manage to lose an entire evening?

well, let's just say there was a heck of a lot of stress on this wonderful televised weekend.  some i brought with me-- though the "gay hell" :) of my dear friend's first fashion show all night before was not one of those stresses and is a story for another time.-- most i walked into disembarking at LAX.

there are too many awful stories to tell, somehow squashed into 72hr period. and some are not my stories to share. the main lesson though, is tv producers have only one priority and it won't be yours.

the "real" wedding ceremony was beautiful. almost the complete opposite of the wonderful event i last attended. a complete, honest to goodness orthodox ceremony, full of pomp and circumstance.

from the ornate church, to the greek cantor singing, and the careful attention to procedure, my biggest concern was not being struck down for all my wickedness.

not that it was free from the TLC debacle touch. there was a moment of impending catastrophe when one of the TLC photogs  started to cross into the inner alter sanctum that literally no one but the priest is allowed to enter or fear the wrath. i hesitated a moment too long for maria's parents' sanity, for fear of crossing the magical line myself, before reaching in and pulling him to safety.

we had some time after the church ceremony to reach and prepare for the second course. i maybe should have taken a nap in the limo. having pulled an all-nighter, then a very late night with the rehearsal dinner and catching up with long missed UI lovies, a very early morning with the stylists, not to mention jet-lag, a nap--even in my bridesmaid dress--might have helped in the whole let's-remember-this-evening plan.

ah well. hindsight.

instead we took the limo to the cali favorite In & Out. i had half a milk-shake. again, smart? no.

the second location for the day was a mansion high up in the hollywood hills. the guests had a large open lawn to mill around while waiting -endlessly- for the ceremony. the cliff side pool served as the open air alter. guest rooms made for bridal party respite and the wide courtyard made for bar, dinner, and dancing.

on television, i'm told, it looked like a dream. i haven't yet seen it myself.  my outlook on the place, what little i remember, is marred by the series of disasters, from stupid scripted mess-ups, to down right life endangering f*ck ups.

guests hike the mountain after 2nd bus breaks down

it probably would have helped if someone on that production crew had realized prior to the actual event that the mansion was in a cell-phone dead zone and that the crews' walkie-talkies would only work within a few feet range.  maybe some of the mess could have been easily resolved before it affected the rest of the evening.

the "party bus" waits patiently for the firemen to fix things above

but that is seemingly a lot to ask for from TLC. for some of the guests, including our wonderful UI family, the mistakes just added to a fabulous story. but maria and jeff repeatedly begged the crew to get things under control.

i often write here about memory and the creation of reality.

what is more important? what is more true?

is a list of "facts" more real than what we remember? and when the memory fades, polished by time, is that true? if we agree that what we remember to be real is more important than bare fact --"Maria Pallas wed Jeff Dyll on May 8th, 2010"--whose memory wins?

is it lisa's, who brought a calm touchstone in the midst of girly hysteria all weekend? is it mimi's, who overran incompetent caterers from poisoning the bride's family? maybe brent's, whose full bottle of maker's mark was an empty bottle before the over delayed tv ceremony even began?

i hope it is not my fellow bridesmaids', whose drama erupted, melting everything in its path.  surely maria and jeff's parents get some say, though they might not want the paramedics or panic attacks marked for all time.

the "happy" couple's memories should get most weight. and there are lovely pictures of the stunning bride and handsome groom to help cement those memories. though, as my best friend, i would wish away the heartbreak, the frustration, the sobs from maria's truth.

of course my own plays like reel-to-reel, where the projectionist has lost the second case.

not so TLC's "reality." it has been captured, cut, and recombined. it has been smoothed to a glistening 47 minutes of dreamy perfection. where a couple's "wish" to have fantasy only hollywood can provide is maybe the only thing that was really delivered. a fantasy.

twenty years from now, which will remain?

as long as no one shares a certain tape, my guardian something-or-other decided my reality never needs to include a certain speech.

classy ladies always cry.

classier ladies save each other.

when you want something beyond a dancing cockadoodle do

i am not a particularly forward person--yeah roll your eyes. i admit, like any true Cancer-Leo cusp i can be stubborn and argumentative. in my defense, i firmly believe that everyone has the right to their own beliefs. it's just i simply cannot abide stupidity and bigotry. i'm often surprised that people don't agree with me about things that just seem obvious.

but when it comes to talking about myself... not so much.  on the one hand, i'm a good listener. but on the other, i keep my cards close to the chest and most people at a distance. in this age of passive aggressive communication filled with "friends," "connections," and "buddies" at your fingertips, it is easy to let people float on the periphery of your life.

the equivalent to asking "hey, how are you?" -even with the obligatory "good, you?" - has become typing "look at this random-crazy-cat/wacky-baby video."  it doesn't even require a response.

speaking of, have you seen this dancing rooster?

apparently, he likes middle eastern music.

but what if you want to reach out to someone?
how do you break through the digital barrier?

performance: the past, present, and future of art

In a recent interview with Fresh Air, George Lucas said "I always tell people, I say look, as long as Green Bay Packer fans go in the 70-below-zero weather, in the snow, to watch a game they can't actually see because they all want to be together and scream together and have a good time together, the movie industry is safe. And there will always be movie theaters. There will always be people that want that social experience, because people, human beings, are a social animal, and they will want something like the opera, like the ballet, you know, they will want to go and have this communal motion picture experience, or like plays and Broadway shows."

Lucas is reflecting one of the most fundamental aspects of live art: the commune between creator, performer, and spectator. while i might argue with him over the sustainability of high art forms, including opera and the ballet, i think his assessment of  cinema is right on the money.of course with the rise of digital video, it is easier and cheaper to make low budget movies. like Lucas, i believe these "small" films will continue to be pushed off screen into video-on-demand services.  however, in order to survive the digital age where we can carry all the latest films on our phones,  the cinema "blockbuster" is going to push the boundaries of  the communal experience.

it started simply enough with the expansion of the (outrageously priced) "snack bar."  where once you could only get hyper saturated popcorn (be careful, that stuff is bad for you), now you have everything from chicken, hotdogs, and pizza, to gourmet options like fresh baked treats, samosas, and vegan options, to a full bar. and while i fully admit to sneaking in my fair share of items, the novelty of having a beer or a glass of wine in the movie theatre still gets me. then the cinemas upgraded seats, sound systems, and projection. now finally we are seeing the beginnings of true revolution in the film experience with the meteoric explosion of Avatar. even if you haven't been won over by the slew of 3D films or haven't tried an IMAX, they are here to stay. why? because you can charge double the price for the experience.  luckily for us, greed will spur the technology forward so it becomes less uncomfortable and more enjoyable. 

but the cinema is a purely audience rooted communal experience. and if 3D is indeed the future of such experiences, we are talking about a communal experience literally behind the individual walls of glasses. yet, Lucas also mentioned the survival of opera, ballet, plays, and Broadway.  as an actress (and a pretentious spouter of thought) i have to wonder how we keep communal movies from taking over traditional art? when Shakespeare wrote, he wrote for the masses. the masses attended the theatre and his plays are rife with commentary that his contemporary audience would have inherently understood. he shaped his community with his art in such a profound way that his made-up words and phrases are still in our language centuries later. there are too many examples, but his affect is so extensive that i can't help but list a few:

Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI)
Fancy-free (Midsummer Night's Dream)
For goodness' sake (Henry VIII)
accommodation (Othello)
assassination (Macbeth; "assassin" was already in use and derives from "hashish eater")
circumstantial (As You Like It / Cymbeline; first attestation in the sense of "indirect")
cold-blooded (King John; first use to mean "lack of emotion")
fashionable (Timon of Athens / Troilus and Cressida)
to gossip (The Comedy of Errors; first use as a verb "gossip" was one's familiar friends)
moonbeam (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
vulnerable (Macbeth; used in today's sense)

so how do we, as artists, make our art relevant? Drama 101 (or Art 101) : what is art? is art, "Art" if nobody sees it? without an audience, what is a performance?  if a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? how do we make a sound in an over saturated world?  

well, i think the survival of performance art will depend on two very different factors. one, the generosity and desire of the upper-class to participate in an old fashioned definition of "culture."  but Shakespeare did not transform our dictionary by only performing for the Queen. so, two, the evolution of the communal experience between artist and audience. 

to stay relevant we must reach the audience. we must play off the human desire for communal experience, which means we cannot rely solely on traditional theatre. i'm not suggesting we completely abandon the master playwrights, choreographers, and composers. but unless you are only marketing to the few who can afford it, we must find ways to make it relevant. to make it better than the high definition dvd version with famous performers someone can watch close up for a fraction of a ticket price.  

in the last few weeks, i have participated in two such evolutions of live art. first as a performer with the Adirondack Shakespeare Company's production of Richard III.  this was a "raw shakespeare" performance, which means a small company of actors prepare all the lines of multiple characters on their own. then the actors come together for an incredibly intense couple of days, to review lines, choreograph fights, work on relationships and intentions, but the first actual performance of the entire script with full character intentions is done with the paying audience.

to some extant, this is a bit closer to the way shakespeare would have performed his pieces. the performances were "raw," minimal costume and costume changes (by today's standards), minimal sets (the words describe the settings), and rambunctious audiences (the Globe resided in basically the red-light district, surrounded by cock fights and bear baiting and the "pit" was the standing room cheap seats). as for the actors, they pretty much only had their own pieces of the script and all the rest would have been new to them in the moment.  (of course, the company-The Chamberlain's Men- would have performed the play many times, so after the first few performance we can imagine that the company would have been very familiar with the whole thing. it is also said that shakespeare wrote some what with his company in mind. that is, his actors would probably have played their "part" in every play. Richard Burbage, the tragedian played Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Richard III.  Will Kemp, the comedian, played Bottom and Falstaff. later Robert Armin succeeded him and played Touchstone, Feste, and the great Fool of King Lear.  in other words, they knew their stuff and ol' Bill would have known what they were good at, and together they made each others' lives easier.)

this was my first experience playing "raw" and i think it was eye opening on a number of levels. one, it revealed to me how much of my process of learning my character and the play has become wedded to the exploration in rehearsal. now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, that is after all the point of rehearsing. but knowing your lines can't be dependent on your blocking or on a set piece. my process of physical life has overwhelmed some of my basic prep, which is inexcusable. so this was a return to basics.

now, heck, i went to grad school. i'm not saying you just learn the lines and throw someone up to say them and you make good art. better, as a trained actor ever questing to perfection (ie communication of truth), this quick and dirty process forces you to have excellent preparation of lines and intentions (actor speak for why my character is doing what i am doing). the process, if fully prepared, gives you the chance to really live in the moment, open your heart to instincts, and as shakespeare instructed:
 Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,
and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. 

i'm not going to lie. it was also terrifying to perform to a full house without the safety net that set repetition and fancy accouterments allow.  


as for the audience, i don't know how this type of performance affected them. but it did seem to me that there was an electricity in the air. that we were all in this together. that not only the company, but also the audience was pulling for Greg Davies, our Richard III, to make it through the intensely difficult role. they weren't drunk, to my knowledge, or cock-fighting, but they were more audibly present than my last several shakespeare pieces. plus, we did find a drunk man passed out on the stage and a naked couple in the booth prior to performing, which added to the atmosphere.

my other recent communal live art came as an audience member to the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Company's recent installation piece. in this instance, there were no seats. the audience quite literally became part of the dance, as the dancers performed all around us. they took this even one step farther by dancing on multiple planes: around us, through us, in the air (with ropes), on the walls (with strategic foot holds), and even with preshot digital projections.

personally, i loved it. this is something i could not have watching PBS. it was challenging and engaging, even if you can't possibly see everything at the same time. it was even slightly uncomfortable, standing relatively still for 45 minutes in your heels. yet, even that discomfiture both put me physically in the dance, a part of the group movement, and metaphorically highlighted the supreme example of body and motion the dancers exude compared to my own ill developed self. the piece, like much contemporary and evocative art, is what you make of it, subjective to how each individual interprets what they see.  i saw a long board room table, a people attempting to break out of the reality (that i myself represented throughout) and a struggle against controllers (leaders, bosses) and controlling forces (self consciousness, even gravity). in this essence, the audience is an integral part of the story being told.

wow, that's a lot of meandering today.

Xmas, yet again I have defied you!

i love christmas. i hate christmas. i love beautiful snow laden trees and moon reflected glowy nights. i hate dark days and freezing solitude. i love the rebirth of a fresh year. i hate the emotional upheaval of lost days, endings, and missed moments.

yes, i am a soldier of the winter doldrums. i'm not sure when it started. on the one hand, it seems like it has always been this way, yet on the other, i remember a time when xmas was only about santa clause and presents and school vacation. i think it must have been high school. there was one winter that is pristine in my memory, the penultimate for a young teenager with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes. that makes it sound much more dramatic than it should. but i suppose the important thing was that in the moment, nothing could be better.

and of course, what solidifies such a moment? the moment's end. and once life was once again tarnished by so many things, you are drawn back over and over to that seemingly perfect moment. you polish it reverently, till the edges are smoothed away, till it becomes something it never was, gleaming, perfect, infinite.

remembrances are all well and good. but a pearl is a dangerous memory. nothing in the moment can ever compare to something enhanced by such attention. if you are lucky, you have other good experiences, good days. and with time, these events will also be lifted above themselves. perhaps only your own memories can save you from your memories. the brightness of the new cherished memory dims the glow of the old.

as a child you have endless hope and future opportunity. then you have successes and failures. you lose things and you gain things. as you get farther down your own time line, you begin to see -or imagine you see- the endgame. with the end come the limits, not of your abilities or even your chances but of your time to reach those abilities, fulfill those chances.

how easy it is to get lost in the past, polishing, instead of living and creating new moments to remember a decade from now.

my sister recently talked about getting rid of her "box" -that collection of items that link you physically to memories, people, time. my "box" still lives on the walls of my childhood bedroom--mementos, pictures, posters of productions from high school to college to grad school and beyond. my mother told me she takes my little cousins on trips into "the museum" as they call it. that is frightening.

but i'm not ready to throw my box on the funeral pyre. i'm taking another tactic all together. i'll let them grow dusty, forget about them from time to time. then i'll add new moments to the old. i want to fill the museum of my heart all up till it's full to bursting.

we do this in acting. prepare, prepare, prepare. image, elucidate, fill out the corners of the imagined life, till you walk out on stage and it pours through you unconsciously.

course, the danger is living in the old and not making the new. this is my challenge for the new year. to prepare my real life as i do for the stage, to keep making the memories to out shine the old.

eh, resolutions!

 

regina spektor and the consequence of sounds

despite my very slow recovery from flu-ness, this week meant Regina Spektor!! it was her first show at radio city music hall and she was obviously overwhelmed- in a grateful, i-can't-believe-i'm-here way. as my first time in radio city as well, it was pretty awesome. (though, as she lives in brooklyn, i wish i had caught her at one of the smaller venues. she played at the beacon in june, but those tickets sold out pretty much instantaneously. even radio city sold out- i was lucky i happened to see a fan presale just as it was announced.)

our seats were much better than i was afraid of--i mean we were in the center orchestra section and could see her clearly. and yet, it was impossible not to watch the huge jumbo trons. i don't attend huge shows very often, so i have no idea when the concert world shifted. back in the day, yes we had the jumbo trons so you could see the artist from far off, but you still watched the stage. but this show, and i imagine it can't possibly be unusual, the show was jumbo tron-centric.

here we are actually watching the event live-and in good seats- but instead of watching the stage you're drawn to the giant screens and the facial close ups. it really changes the production of a stage show. the lighting and pyrotechnics,  which can make a show "wow," become secondary to the camera and live editing. in the extreme close up you can't see the stage lighting , so really there's not much point.

i wonder why this is? what's the difference between, say, dave matthews a million year ago and regina this week? i didn't watch dave through the screen, i watched the stage. but even consciously paying attention to the stage, i was half watching the screen, enough so that i was totally aware of how advanced and dynamic live editing has become. --that is, the cameramen/producer did a great job cutting and mixing shots as it happened.

i'm inclined to think that this is only partly the result of advanced production equipment. maybe it has more to do with our hyper-techno society.  here in the ipod decade, we are constantly in extreme closeup.  we are immersed in media. when we're not watching a screen, we plug it directly into our head--the extreme close up version of sound.

and to get super nerdy on you, most media is/has shifted towards the extreme closeup artistically.  that is, more directors and editors of video--music video, television, ads, etc--use extreme close up camera shots than ever before. this isn't random, it is a direct result of the "ipod decade"-- small screens make up a huge percentage of our visual consumption today. ipods, phones, computer screens, handheld games, car tvs, portable dvd players-- it never stops.  these screens are tiny. tiny screens don't like broad, expansive shots. they like faces.

it becomes a loop. the technology forced us to create tighter. then we crave tighter. now we see a resurgence of 3D media, putting us a foot closer to players--like you're standing just inside the door. so when we're actually a part of the live action--but one of hundreds, it doesn't feel close enough. you watch the live music video and its cross cuts that capture regina's smile, that glint of conspiracy--you are with me-- instead of watching the live action that is too far away to imagine you're in the inner circle.

that being said, there was one awesome moment when they focused the lights on a huge disco ball, partly hidden behind instruments. the ball reflected a galaxy of stars across not only the stage, but the theatre as well--quite a feat in the cavernous radio city.

well, whatever the truth of it is, i fully admit to being a convert. and on the other hand, maybe it partly regina herself that incites this reaction. her music is poetry and piano and -on this occasion- some strings. intimate. her and me. and she did encore with Us just for me. obviously.

facebook, friends, and growing young

what did we ever do before facebook? (i mean other than call each other, write letters, and have coffee)

it always surprises me when someone is getting married, having babies, and sadly even divorced. especially when i think of that person as i remember them- lounging in the cool coffee shop, scrunched in a hot school bus, slip-and-slidin' down my lawn...

yet another of my good friends is having a baby, i've just discovered, and it makes me miss crowding in her car along with too many others. afternoons spent at her house. even the "abs of steel" we did for a few months. it's hard to wrap my brain around.

so my introspection for the day: before the quasi-closeness of technology, did people suffer this conflict of past and present? i imagine one kept in touch and thus your perception of a person changed as life changed for both. or, you didn't. and they were relegated into anecdotes and memories and maybe old journals.

don't get me wrong-- i like the technological updates and sometimes it really does help you reestablish someone you shouldn't have lost. it's especially helpful for someone like me who is absolutely terrible on the phone. but i'm also a self indulgent wack job.

a couple of friends have recently been plagued with ex-partners and friends suddenly showing up back in their lives. live, in person. but me, i find myself half expecting a 15 year old to walk in the door.

then again, maybe it's not such a terrible thing. maybe it's nice to have these other versions of ourselves walking around, fresh in someone's head. i may be different than i was 8 years ago, even 3 years ago, but knowing that for some old friends, that's the me they carry around--well i guess i like that. maybe the versions of you that follow me around will help me remember the versions of me.

no i have not been drinking this morning. kisses.

kilimanjaro: the metaphor of the mountain

with the rain delaying my run, i've finally finished posting my account of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. i'm glad i happened to look back at it today. it has been a tough week, i have struggled to come out of the dark side, to put out some positive energy, appreciate what i have without coveting everyone else too much.

yeah, i'm still going to struggle with that a bit, but having my own words thrust back in my face doesn't hurt:

"Can i hold on to the metaphor of the mountain? it is impossible not to see the implications of it in my own life. simply jogging, i am reminded- how can i quit now, this is not as hard as Kili, not as cold or hot, i can breathe, i am not empty. but of course even further the comparison is unavoidable. i am an actress- unemployed for quite a while, frustrated and more often depressed by my comparative successes to my friends and colleagues and family.

i see around me what i have sacrificed, the relationships, the security. but am i yet empty? and even when i have given everything, does that mean my feet stop? do i turn back, beaten, or do i go on? reaching my highest peak, battered physically, mentally, and perhaps only half brained, but reaching it some day all the same..."

read it here: shangala-bangala

didn't drown today.

alright. so yes at a brief glance it would appear that it was going to be a rainy day today. however, fridays have become my day to get in a 12 mile run and i really hate to loose that. welcome, my friend, to the magic of weather.com's radar satellite. on this nifty little site you have you can play forecaster with all your local weatherman's tools. the best part is you can watch several hours into the future, following the blobs of clouds against your map. which means genius me was able to map out today that leaving work at 4:50 should give me a window of 2 hours at least before those pesky green and yellow blobs brought rain down on me. perfect!

ah. bargaining with... Zeus? well, it started out well. bright and sunny, if a bit muggy. thinking of my precious time gap, i thought it best to pick up my pace a bit. so i threw on next to normal--yes, i know i have sworn off listening to this crazy music, but for running it is surprisingly inspiring--and rocked out.

that's right. i admit to singing loudly between my puffing. i'll have you know it is a talent. besides, everyone wears earphones these days or is talking on their cells. and i'm not the weirdest person out on the path.

it wasn't until about mile 5 that things began to look ominous. across the river into jersey it was peculiarly dark. and the wind had picked up to an eye-squinting blow that made running like fighting against one of those workout jet mini pools . however, i had faith in my studious reading of the maps and was sure the storm would stay over there for at least an hour. ha. ha.

truthfully, i don't mind running in the rain. yeah you end up a bedraggled, wet rat, with your clothes sticking to you, but it is kinda nice, as long as your ipod is safely covered with a handy ziplock bag, especially compared to blistering heat. plus, running in the rain always makes me think of running up kilimanjaro with john. rain over new york smells surprisingly similar in that first burst to rain in tanzania.

it was when the rain suddenly turned horizontal that things became bad. just how does rain fall horizontally anyhow? huge pellets piercing my left side, biting into my eyes and ears till i was running with a hand at my face just so i could see the step in front of me.

then came the lightening. what does one do when one is far away from shelter in a lightening storm? and i'm not talking just flashes. i'm talking about clear distinct bolts. bright blue, splitting the sky all around me. each time one rent the air, burning on my retina, i jumped and yelped like a schoolgirl. and the real ridiculous part, i'd leap backwards, as if dodging a foot behind would save me if one of those electric spikes came down in front of me.

in spite of the storm raging, i kept my headphones in and turned up the volume. now this may sound foolish, however, did you not read of the girl who survived 300,000 volts because the charge went through her ipod wire, saving her vital organs?? just last week?? well i did. and those bolts were freaking big. and right above me. and though cars crept by me on the freeway, i remember from my youth that lightning is supposed to bounce off car tires or something.

it did occur to me that it would be the height of irony to be struck by lightning while rocking out to next to normal--Alice Ripley is belting out her electroshock therapy and i fall down crisp. it would be a fitting end to my last two weeks.

despite all my self indulgent musings on the effectiveness of electroshock therapy to cure one's foul mood, the thought of looking straight into one of those bolts was putting a bit of the fear of god in me. i played an electrocuted patient once for a doctor exam. they bruised me up all over then bloodied up my ears, where my eardrums i guess had burst, blackened up my hands, where the bolt supposedly entered, and bloodied up my feet where the burst was supposed to have exited. cool in makeup. not cool in actual burning flesh.

i admitted momentary stalemate by mile 7 and huddled under a tree for a good ten minutes, still leaping at the increasing light display. was i actually saving myself at all under this sad little bush of a tree on the shore of the exploding hudson river? i have no idea.

though the rain didn't let up much, the lightning seemed to move a bit further into the city and i took off again.

why is it that playing in rainstorms or defying your parents by leaping through ocean waves in the middle of a storm is only exhilarating, with barely even a hint that you might actually suffer? by the end of my 12 miles, i was running by children playing in the water while their parents huddled under plastic sheets. true, the rain was much kinder, but the occasional bolt, like an afterthought, still had me leaping backwards--a funny syncopated jog.

does the worry come from being older and wiser? i don't know. i don't have any storm wisdom. or is it the responsibility itself that creates the fear? as a child, the stormy ocean was thrilling--because, even if i wanted to ignore them, subconsciously it was ultimately my parents' fault if i got struck down? out there by yourself, well you've got no one to blame but you. you have to find the escape route, come up with the death-defying plan.

"sheild eyes with hand and out run storm" isn't much of a plan.

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world

so the city of new york supposedly has a population over 19 million people. you'd think then it would be relatively easy not to ever bump into people you intentionally avoid. alright maybe not intentionally avoid-- but really its like somebody enjoys laughing at the little idiosyncrasies of my life.

completely randomly, i bumped into someone i used to date tonight as i left the the theatre. now really this isn't such a big deal. but i haven't moved in the same circles as this person and seeing him as actually existing apart from me is like a bizarre wrench into my reality. yes, the world revolves around me. (and your world revolves around you, so no big whoop.)

it's just hard to contemplate. is this because i'm not a grownup yet? i guess so.

i often think about the paths of life. of the moments i could go one way and go another. in fact i have a fully rationalized theory of the whole thing. basically it has to do with the physics theory of multi-universes. (which i love) in a nut shell, in this explanation of physical reality, every thing that could happen, has happened-- in one universe or another. everything you can imagine actually is a choice in the infinite possibilities of existence.

so here's my little thought on the matter-- there are definitely 2 moments in which we can sense the crossover of our self in our universe and the us in a different universe- 1) when you feel dejavu, it is because of some sort of residual "yes you've actually done this". and more to this post 2) when you can see laid out in front of you the path you took and the path you could have taken. i mean really see it, if only a few steps of it. those memories you hold on for years and can clearly say to your self, "what if i had done this? said this?" i think they stay locked in our minds, even the shortest or most inconsequential moments precisely because it is a moment where our universe has split. one of us took one path and one the other. and because we are the "original universe" we retain a strong connection to the moment of split.

ok, so i don't really under stand the physics, quantum physics? i don't even know what you call it. but i listen to a lot of lectures so there :p
and for those who often say i am full of shit check out this fascinating podcast explaining the multiuniverse theory: WNYC Radio Lab.