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?

Cynicism vs. Conan O'Brien's Optimism

 "All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen."

so CoCo ended his Tonight Show reign, grabbed his guitar and joined Will Ferral, ZZ Top, Beck, Ben Harper, and the Tonight Show band for a heart felt rendition of "Free bird" --complete with cowbell.

anyone who watches tv knows the story: Jay Leno's 10pm show got terrible ratings, bringing down ratings for local news and giving a bad lead-in to Conan's Tonight Show. instead of just pulling the plug on Leno, they decided to move his -terribly unfunny- show to 11:35pm, where Leno had once ruled the ratings. the "Tonight Show" would then move to 12:05am of the next day.  Conan, a long time veteran of comedy and television, refused to "aid in the destruction" of a 60 year institution he loved. so he was forced to leave.


Michael Ian Black wrote a wonderfully in depth reflection on why so many of us became invested in the whole mess. and while his main point is that we should be just as emotionally invested and outraged about the truly important things, he says people cared because Conan became a stand in for all "the aggrieved, the injured, the wrongly terminated."  he says:


"We see Conan as a victim because we feel as though, like us, he wasn’t given a fair shot. If a guy like that, a guy who has everything, can be downsized and demoted, what hope do the rest of us have?"

and yet on his final day, in fact his final chance--due to his release contract-- that he will be able to say something negative about nbc, he acted with grace and humility, begging all of us not to lose our dreams.

am i a cynic?  i was about to type "no".  and then i remembered the bees that follow me. 

i admit i often have a sardonic sense of humor. that sometimes i can't control the snarkiness.


puhlease. i can be an evil and morose monkey.

you have hard days, hard weeks. you have an extra glass of wine and make unwise decisions.  you watch your talents lay unused while you exhaust under yet another day job. it is hard not to be a cynic, especially in the art world. waiting for the next gig.

would it be easier if, like Conan, i had been employed and paid from the moment i left college? undoubtedly. but we don't all have that luxury. if you have to struggle to hold on to optimism, does the struggle itself diminish that optimism?

can you be happy by clenching happiness in the palm of your hand?

i heard Dan Sullivan, the illustrious director, give a great note once to a misguided actor. (Mr Sullivan is always giving great notes) said actor was having a terrible time with a scene from Hedda Gabbler--to his credit, not an easy play. stuck, the actor was stubbornly refusing to hear what he was being told, arguing with even the "it is cold outside, that should affect you." the actor didn't want to "fake" being cold. finally, with only the barest hint of disdain, Dan said to him "Act like it is."

Act like it is.  fake it till you make it. this has been one of my greatest tools in life, on stage.

in acting, you know (or decide) what your intentions are. when things aren't clicking, you keep going through the motions, fulfilling all the aspects of the moment that you can--however superficial, and sometimes you fall into the truth.

this isn't a bad tactic for life either. smile until you are happy. try it. but you have to make your smile have all the aspects of a real smile, not a plastered grimace. or try it with a laugh. go on. fake a laugh, a good full one.  the physical act of breath leaving the body through the gut, with force and voice. it can engage actual positive feelings. for realsies.

now i am not about to claim that i am always happy, or for god's sake that i always look happy. i know the truth is far from that. but i also know that we make our own reality, our own little Matrixes.

so that brings us back to optimism vs. pessimism. where does a made-up smile fall in that spectrum?

meandering thought of the day, as i prepare for another audition for a precast role.

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!

 

perspective

i had a really rough day today and now i can't sleep. well i need to get my head out of my rear.

the other day one of my good friends told me about a friend of hers, another actress in about the same place as we are, who just discovered she has advanced stage cancer.

and today, 6 blocks from where i spent the entire day downing over the counter drugs and trying not to have a complete meltdown:

"A homeless man died in Union Square today. Not huge news, but his dead body was on a park bench near the cops who congregate at the south-eastern portion of the park. Several people went up to the group of police to mention the man was passed-out or dead. Around 9am, a group of (austrian/german) tourists were adamant with the police the man needed some assistance. The only reply came from a chris noth lookalike cop who said 'Why don't you go push the man. I ain't touching 'em. He could be napping, you wanna take that risk? Go home.' Around 11:15am paramedics (unknown ambulance unit) arrived and took the man's vitals. About 20 minutes later they put the man on a stretcher with a blanket covering him. He was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. Excellent Police work."

lesson: get over it, chris.

ends and beginnings and in betweens

thanks to everyone who came out to my play! i know last night we had to turn away a lot of people because we were all filled up and i'm sorry for anyone who came all the way out and had to go find some thing else to do in times square ;)

course you could have walked up the street and caught my friend jon hill's debut on broadway in Superior Donuts. jon is an awesome actor and i am very happy for him. the reviews have been especially positive towards him--not that we pay attention to such things.

the last time jon and i worked together was in Six Degrees of Separation (yes, the one turned into a will smith film). it was such a pleasure to work opposite jon back then. i think that was a classy production, if i do say so myself. and it's nice to remember that i don't have to always play the "crazy" characters, but can sometimes pull off a little grace too-as i hopefully did with Ouisa.

it is good to remember that show today. as an actor, we collect all these lives inside of us, all these experiences. in a "regular" person i suppose this is multiple personality disorder. but, i'm an -occasionally- unabashed pretentious artist. today is one of those days.

the characters i've been, especially the ones that have really hurt, the ones that have reached in and ripped apart my gut--whether because of the way she was written, or the difficulty of bringing her to life, or the complete fun of her--they seem to live inside me somewhere still. now i'm not completely crazy or that pretentious. i don't go around hearing their voices in my head.

but every now and then, you remember something you, the character, said or did or lived--and it hits you in a whole new way, now in the present, in the "real life."

like today, reflecting on... well all of it-me, my friends, my colleagues, my freaking life. and thinking of jon reminded me of some things ouisa said and how it felt to say them and mean them...

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The president of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find that extremely comforting that we're so close, but... I also find it like Chinese water torture that we're so close, because you have to find the right six people to make the connection...

and these days, maybe even more important than that famous speech...

How do we keep what happens to us? How do we fit it into life without turning it into an anecdote? With no teeth, and a punch line you'll mouth over and over for years. "Oh, that reminds me of that boy..."

sometimes i think the things i say on stage are more true than the things i say in life.
what does that say?

bad ideas, good ideas, and the baby cage

ah, judgement!

me, i judge myself a lot. too much. certainly for an "artist." even with our opening night coming off really well, i battle.

maybe i'll just blame it on society. this, after all, must be the "opinion decade" - sort of like the "me generation" all started going, yeah it's all about me so let me tell you about everything else. but hey i love my daily show just like everyone else--though i could do without perez.

LIFE has a great collection of "dumb inventions" - old photographs of some inspired creations that didn't really get off the ground. i think they are being awfully hasty calling some of these "dumb."

here the "baby cage." now i say why not? especially in the city, babies should get some time outdoors. some fresh air and stimulation.


like the cat veranda, the cage lets the baby take in all the sights in a safe environment.






i also appreciate this cigarette holder built for two, though it is easy to understand why this just won't work anymore. i mean there just isn't anywhere to sit with your beau and enjoy a smoke, while holding hands and gazing lovingly! no restaurants, no buildings or bars, now in new york they are even banning streets and -gasp- the parks! what's the point in sharing a cig holder at home? just not as fun.


when it comes to art, who can say whats a bad/good idea? there's the Thriller musical--yes MJ's "thriller" expanded for all your dancing zombie pleasures--in development now. and london's Enron is transferring to broadway--that's right "the notorious energy company and the 2001 financial scandal that engulfed it!" then there's the new york times review of daniel craig and hugh jackman's A Steady Rain that suggests "But it’s hard to avoid thinking that had they chosen to recite the alphabet in counterpoint (which might have been more fun), their joint appearance would still generate ticket sales unknown for a straight play..." hey, i bet we could make that arty and serious.

for the record i will say our play, Manhattan Fable, is a very good idea- ghosts, re-envisioned shakespeare, kisses and all.

my psycho pharmacologist and i

i read a lot of "zen" books in grad school. i mean that's what you do in acting school. you zen. you balance mind, body, spirit- so you are left with a malleable blank slate. not a blob of nothingness, after all, you have your own history, but it only lightly colors a spring board for genius characterizations and truth and life and being. yada yada yada.

well if i ever came close to achieving such a thing, it seems very far away now. especially after this crazy week. i think with the right ingestables, i could indeed see the aura surrounding me. and it wouldn't be pretty.

too bad there's not a quick fix to balance your soul back out. a pill you could pop that would make the bad things fade away. in carrie fisher's new autobiography wishful drinking she talks about electroshock therapy and how it works by pressing the reset button. erasing whole chunks from her head. that may be going a bit far for me, but it is fascinating. i've heard her talk about how her answering machine says, "leave a message. tell me who you are and how we know each other." yeah, a bit extreme. she's turned the book into a one woman show that roundabout is producing next season. i can't wait!


in next to normal the mother is a bit of a mess, to put it lightly. she has electric shock therapy, which "helps" for a bit, but she can't live with the hole's in her head. (today's playlist is a couple of good songs from the show. alice ripley just won the tony for her performance.)

it seems like such a struggle to stay balanced sometimes. i remember thinking during school that actors spend so much time and energy preparing ourselves to be free- to be open to other influences so that you can respond instinctually. normal people con't do that. normal people just bottle things up and compartmentalize... i guess.

or i've just had a hard week and need to buck up, as my own crazy mother would say. i am a grownup after all.

end of an era

it is hard to believe sweet cody had to be put to sleep last night. when her brother kayack was put down before christmas, it wasn't really a surprise. he was old for a golden, afflicted with all the ailments of a pure bred. cody may have had purebred papers, but we always knew she had a little something mixed in. that broad back, wide belly, spotted tongue... like her dideriksen sisters. ;)

mother says she was wagging her tail to the end. was she happy? she was a mess, that's for sure. all over an infected cut in her mouth! a cut that turned into an abscess that needed a tooth pulled that left a bleeding mouth that just wouldn't stop bleeding! even weeks later.

a girl after my own heart, she hurt herself doing the one thing she couldn't resist- eating. like the "Marley" dog, cody could and would eat anything, be it animal, vegetable, mineral... plastic, metal, wood.

my teenage years could be written around the care of those puppies. the comings and goings, the things they saw. i hope they had wild adventures when they were allowed to run free in the mountains. enough to store up for the long hours in durham. climbing through the trees and the cowpies, i hope they had plots fit for pixar.

sleep well, puppies.