You know when you know

It struck me, the moment in the heart of Manhattan where I was double-parking a gigantic Suburban and running into a Park Avenue building to collect luggage that had returned to the States from a touring experimental theatre production, that my iPhone had died and I was going to be without Google Maps for the whole drive back.

I'd been eying my battery life the whole way there, but for some reason I just refused to believe I would put myself in the position to have to drive through a labyrinthine, and heavily-trafficked, city without my magic map, my third eye, my godlike knowledge of what was to come.

I had quickly checked it upon parking the car to look at the route back, and about half-way through scrolling along the step-by-step list, my phone blacked out. And I was now entirely alone. I had a good three, three and a half hours with traffic, to go, and then another 45 mins of loading out and returning the rental car to go. All without the tool I daily rely on to get information to get me places.

At first, I was pretty freaked out. I beat myself up for forgetting my car charger at home, for not taking a detour to get it after picking up the rental, for not just sucking it up and buying a charger from a rest stop store along the way.

For some reason, though, after grabbing the luggage and making my way back through Manhattan, I kept having the hunch that I actually knew where to go. So I just kept following that hunch. All the way home.

The pre-smartphone me is scoffing right now, that this feels like a triumph, driving through Manhattan and home to Philadelphia without the use of a smartphone. It was sort of a self-reliance moment, trusting both that I knew the way and that if I got lost, I could find my way out of it. And even though there were a few close calls of missing turns or taking wrong exits, I managed to make my way sans smartphone. It felt even better than finally putting a piece of Ikea furniture together. And when I do that I feel like a god.

This past fall I went on a week-long road trip, driving from Philadelphia to New Haven, Providence, Boston, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, then back down to Philly. I used it as an opportunity to look at grad schools, visit family, and start seeking inspiration for this Hamlet project I've been harping on. I wanted this year to be about artistic growth and development, so I knew I wanted to take some significant time post-Fringe away from other responsibilities to just be with myself and do something. A roadtrip, an adventure, sounded right.

What I noticed about that roadtrip, which holds rich metaphoric weight in my mind, is that I actually tend to be pretty good at decision making on the go. I may get lost, I may have to make hard choices about where to go and what time to spend, but in general, I was pretty happy with the results of how I conducting myself. I got the most frustrated when I made little stupid mistakes, which were mostly the result of driving long stretches, pushing myself perhaps too far. I think I tried to take on too much on the trip. But I did get it all done.

And isn't it powerful, to feel decisive? To feel self-reliant, like you can tackle problems even when you don't have all the best tools at hand? You know when you know.

I guess maybe because a lot of my work (sales, education) sort of involves incredibly unknown quantities, like I never know if I'm going to make any sales, if I'm going to reach the kids I teach & have a successful class, there are always a ton of variables that don't quite have the same road map as well, a roadtrip might have.

But I've noticed I do better and feel more myself when I'm under pressure, when there's a challenge. Unknown quantities are apiled ahead, but I'm glad I'm moving. This year has transformed from the year of artistic growth to the year of huge life changes, and believe it or not, I think I'll find my way just fine.

a funny little moment

Quick one this evening.

Thought I was being brought in during my break at work today to get reprimanded,
The darkest part of my brain even thought fired.
Don't know how I got so skittish,
My mind jumped straight to the worst possible conclusion
to the scene answering the harrowing question
"can I see you for a minute on your break?"

There's that authority ghost again
Hamlet Sr. floating around
Revenge, he whispers.
Don't disappoint me.

Turns out she wanted advice in play producing
As a friend of hers was trying to get a play produced
Beyond a reading.
She had questions about corporate funding, the best kind of fundraising, etc. etc.
I was actually there as a friend, to give her advice.

It's such a strange transition
To be awaiting reprimand for
whatever, checking my phone during work,
Or not putting in enough evening hours
even though we agreed I needed a flexible schedule
And instead,
the Boss wasn't punishing me
But seeking council
On matters she didn't know as much as I did about.

I am sometimes surprised by how much I do know about this thing that I do.
It was a funny turn of confidence.
I left the evening feeling like an expert
In something I love

I'm glad to finally be back on doing more of it.

I don't know that this post is anything, but it struck me, and here it is.

Dick the Shit, Francis Underwood, Lena Dunham, & the man who killed Osama Bin Laden walk into a bar

Okay okay okay.

I've got some blog-catching up to, and I made some notes today during my boring hours at work that I want to thread together. They read:

Richard III, House of Cards, power & might...
Masculinity? Disfigurement? Lena Dunham
Ugly -- not-conventionally attractive......
Body -- I am not my body --> Othello/selfhate
Old World Warrior/Medieval Warrior --> Same as Hamlet Sr.
Obama/drone strikes
Shooter --> calling dad at parking lot

**Spoiler Alert** If you like going into shows with absolutely no prior information, I'm going to talk about Netflix's House of Cards. I've no intention of revealing sensitive information, but general stuff about the show & its structure. As of today I've only watched through episode 6, so I can't quite go all the way anyway. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

So Jess (my girlfriend, whose blog is also worth taking a look at, especially if you like reading)  & I started watching House of Cards on Netflix (I'm intentionally italicizing this because it feels like I should, it's like a play, we italicize titles of plays, right? Still? Or is that just for college papers? I'm sorry, I'm still doing it) and it begins with a direct address from Kevin Spacey's deliciously manipulative Machiavellian House Whip character Francis Underwood. From the first minute, I was hooked, and felt so impelled after the first episode to keep watching I all but forced Jess to keep watching even though we were also very tired. She generously indulged in my appetite for Shakespearean machinations, and it certainly paid off.

Francis Underwood is a modern Richard III, and although he's not out for the presidency (AS OF YET), he is out for utter and complete control. He implicates his audience in his schemes, confides in and instructs us in the way things actually get done in Washington. He's brutal, he's ostensibly amoral, and unlike Dr. House or Don Draper or Walter White, he speaks right to us, and doesn't seem to give a fuck what we think. He is utterly seductive, incredibly powerful, hard-hearted and silver-tongued. He does what needs to be done. He is an uncompromising cynic, and tells people exactly what they need to hear.

We started watching House of Cards maybe a day or two after the announcement was made that Richard III's bones were found under a parking lot in Leicester (happy circumstance for Netflix, I'm sure), and I was fortunate enough to read a bunch of excellent articles that talked about the discrepancies between Richard III of Shakespeare's plays and the historical figure. Mainly that he was nothing like Dick the Shit, and that most of what Shakespeare was responding to were the slurs and lies politicians told at the time to keep people on their side. The War of the Roses was an ugly affair, and casting Richard III in the worst light did the most good, for a play seeking favour, and for an audience seeking to forget what had actually went down. Plays then, like plays now, relied a lot on patronage, in this case royal. No one was going to make the crown look bad.

What uncovering Dick's bones did do, however, is affirm him as a warrior. I mean he was out on that battlefield, there are gashes in his bones to prove it. He got hit in the skull with a halberd for Christ's sake -- the dude definitely could've cried "a kingdom for [his] horse!" because he was down and out. One article I read, which I can't find now but I'll try to in the coming days, talked a lot about how Richard III represented the end of an era of medieval kings, who basically killed everyone in their way in order to gain power. Francis Underwood, in this way, is entirely unlike Richard III; he's not killing anyone literally, just gaining power over everyone by whatever means necessary. Richard III died in battle; modern leaders don't do that anymore.

(Incidentally, I'll note that Hamlet Sr. is a similarly medieval warrior; he also fought valiantly in battle against Fortinbras Sr. and was only vainquished by the same kind of modern deceit that medieval times considered evil, insidious, unmanly, perverse -- beneath what was true, noble, honourable. Hamlet Jr. in caught in the middle of this transition, between a medieval notion of what it means to be a man [REVENGE THIS FOUL AND MOST UNNATURAL MURTHER] and his resistance to that)

Today I also read about the shooter who brought down Osama Bin Laden in the SEAL Team 6 raid, and how now that he's out of the Navy he's had absolutely no support. Definitely worth the long read. There's been a lot in the media about drones recently and President Obama's powers in defining what an acceptable target for those drones are. And here's this story about a modern warrior who has been trained, at its heart, in a bit of a medieval way. I mean he's a killing machine, and that's what he was sent to do. Drones didn't take down bin Laden, though they could have. They didn't think they were coming back from this mission. They thought they were going to get blown up. But they hoped to kill the leader of al Quaeda first.

There's a sort of testosterone that is kicked up inside me when I read about this or envision the mission. It came up during Zero Dark Thirty, which Jess & I also saw recently. I don't consider myself a warrior or war-type person at all. I don't do a lot of physical things, I'm not all about guns or killing or military in any way. I'm a died-in-the-wool Canadian, all about peace and passivity. I am very much against American aggression in the Middle East, for whatever reason. Taking down dictators is something I'm not sure we should do, at least not unilaterally. I also wonder about our place in "bringing liberty" to others. I question whether our understanding of liberty works in a culture that's not our own. I also question if "liberty" is something we can ever give to others. It seems like, with the Arab Spring, etc., the people whose rights are in question need to fight for them themselves.

All that being said, there was something heart-pounding and raw and emotional about the depiction in the film of killing Osama bin Laden. Again, he's "the Bad Guy," I get how on some level killing him ends a decade of the open wound of 9/11. I teared up when they said "for God and country." I felt flush with the success of finally beating an elusive enemy that had caused so much suffering of people I cared about, or of a country I cared about. Something about that victory felt incredibly primal, I remember feeling the same way when Obama announced it had happened.

Suddenly I'm thinking again about warriors, and the model of medieval warriors, of men who fight other men face to face. The big debate about drones is that they remove human beings from the killing so far, in the name of keeping soldiers out of harm's way, that they actually can allow for a lot of collateral damage, and some horrible things have already happened at the hand of a man and leader who I otherwise respect and admire. I mean, I don't want to be a liberal-minded person who ignores the fact that President Obama has unilaterally taken/allowed this drone program to continue to kill innocent people, and it is still able to be trained on anyone considered an "imminent" threat. I mean there are problems with that, problems that Richard III, an altogether insidious, deliciously vengeful and manipulative man, had no chance to deal with. Richard III did send assassins to kill Clarence. I don't imagine he'd think twice about sending drones to defeat Lancasters.

But Obama would not ride into the field on horseback and fight hand to hand against his enemy.

And, keep in mind, Richard III, according to his bones, had some INTENSE scoliosis. This dude was, indeed, deformed, though probably not to the extent that Shakespeare dramatizes. Richard III was not a stud muffin warrior, he was not sexy without his shirt on surfing on vacation in Hawaii. Elizabethans reviled those with physical deformities, it was assumed it betrayed a moral deformity as well.

And here's where Lena Dunham comes in, because I think we do that as a society still, too. But instead of an actual deformity like scoliosis, I think we demonize anything in popular culture that is not traditionally or commodifiably beautiful. The most recent episode of Girls, sorry, again **SPOILER ALERT if you're behind on Girls**, deals directly with this pervading sense we have of the inappropriateness of regular looking women hooking up with conventionally/Hollywood-ly attractive men. This Jezebel post talks about this very well. Somehow Lena Dunham, because she is the show's writer/director/star, is completely deluded in thinking this could ever happen in reality. Women with body fat or small breasts or who express desire openly are not only IMPOSSIBLE to be with hot, successful, rich older men, but they SHOULD NOT BE INFLICTED ON THE GENERAL VIEWING PUBLIC. Lena Dunham transgresses everything by being disfigured, somehow, from the standard woman seen on our screens.

I sincerely hope Lena Dunham does not internalize the hate the world presents to her, and becomes a mass-murdering Machiavellian monster like Dick the Shit (you certainly wonder what's motivating Francis Underwood, for it feels a bit more personal than Iago's "just wanting to watch the world burn" brand of destructive manipulations), but it stands to reason that if you're treated one way for your body being ugly and disgusting, but feel you have a better, even perfect soul locked in that cage, that you just need to set free through deeds and grasps of power (see Descartes' mind/body split and many other things I've talked about/will talk about in relation to Othello and my piece Othello, Desdemona, & Iago Walk Into A Bar). 

Interestingly enough, though, what's so maddening about Dunham and her character on Girls is that we only get the performance this character makes for her friends and to herself about who she is. She is never authentic. Jury's still out for me as to whether we ever see Richard being authentic, but he does directly engage with his audience, which Dunham & her Girls alter ego never does. Incidentally, neither does Louis C.K.'s fictionalized self, another "grotesquified" man, though never reacted to with quite the same vigor over landing in the bed of a beautiful woman.

Where am I going with all this? I wonder how violence and rage, which is so prevalent in Richard III as a response to the kind of hate that comes from "wrongs" that are un-owned, the kind of vengeance that pervades Richard III & Hamlet, could be anything but inevitable in a medieval world. And if we're still, even in the midst of drone strikes and remote wars, sending man in against man in the name of defeating evil, what ultimately do we say to men? If you kill the bad guy, the killing is okay. If you talk directly to us about what you're doing, if you operate from a position of authority, if you sell us the position you're taking, you make it okay. And you do it because the world has told you that's the only way to gain power. You are ugly, deformed, disgusting, without it. And who have you learned that from?

It strikes me that before the Shooter on SEAL Team 6 went on the mission to Abbottahbad, which he was certain he'd die in, he called his dad. Not his wife, not his kids. His dad. 

There's a lot going on here, a lot of associating, but here it is.

Hanging with Hamlet's ghost

A daily writing project indeed.

I feel it pertinent to point out that I absolutely hate disappointing people. And not that anyone's religiously following my blog or that I didn't clearly say on day one that any days I'd miss I'd just have to make up. But I'm like four or five posts behind, and I hate feeling like I'm not living up to the spirit of the thing I've made for myself in order to GIVE ME more spirit.

I guess I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Things do happen.

It brings up what I want to noodle about briefly and relatively vaguely for this post, though, which is what I wrestle with when I wrestle with disappointment.

Overachievers hate to disappoint authority figures, yes?
I mean I'll be honest.
I hate letting my parents down.
I cringe at even the slightest bit of trouble I get into with bosses, even when it's well deserved,
I try very hard to always be seen positively,
To be respected,
To be approved for the work I do.
It's very difficult to conceive of a world for me, at times, where messing up wouldn't be emotionally akin to running over a favourite pet on the street.
I punish myself severely so no one else has to.

In that way there's a little bit of the ghost of Hamlet hanging around. Hamlet's dad appears to him, whether in psychosis or paranormal event or whatever, and implores him to revenge his FOUL AND MOST UNNATURAL MURTHER!!!

And Hamlet spends the rest of the play shivering in the horrific shade of disappointing him.

Sins of the father, problems for the son. Men, in particular, feel that pressure in relation to their dads. The ones who predominantly teach them what it means to be a man. Can't disappoint them.

"To disappoint," I am reminded, comes from a French word, désappointer, which means to remove from office or appointment. Getting fired, actually.

And maybe it's the fact that I grew up in a French immersion school, but disappointing my parents has carried the same intensely hot, nauseous shame that flushes through my gums and down my throat and into my heart when I've gotten fired.

I've noticed I freak out pretty intensely when I feel like I've disappointed any authority figure. I did it a number of times this weekend accidentally, and seeing myself react the same way each time made me think about what's going on behind that. I must have a lot of authority ghosts floating around.

I think I've conceived of this top grad school I was rejected from as another form of an authority ghost. A high and lofty entity, whose opinion I feel I should respect and look up to, asking me to do or be in a certain way I cannot reconcile with myself, with my own behaviour.

There's an inevitable terror I feel about disappointing these entities because in some way I know I will. But I don't think that's as "woe is me I'm awful" a statement as it sounds.

It sort of gets at the whole problem with wrapping your self-worth up in pleasing others, whether they're authority figures or audiences or what. You're inevitably going to fail. You are different from your father, your boss, and ultimately, although you can make quite a concerted effort of doing everything FOR others, you ultimately have to act for yourself. You're the only one who'll do it. And you are going to do something, inevitably, that doesn't sit well with others, because it's not about them.

Maybe I am merely a victim of a very Puritan cultural upbringing, but I have to make a concerted effort to remember that it's okay to need what I need, and to put myself first.

I think it's easy to expect the worst of ourselves, that when we put ourselves first we're going to do so out of balance, we're going to become selfish, and really we should deny what we feel for the good of our betters, who really get it, who really understand, because we feel like we really can't. We'll kill our dad's murderer not because killing is definitely the answer, but because it's asked of us, and if we say no we disappoint the one thing that gives us value.

Hey, let's not do that, shall we? Let's value ourselves. And not just because other people tell us to.

Project definition

I'm cheating, because I'm working on another application today, but I just wrote this to describe a project I'd like to work on in the coming years:

The project that I am currently investigating is a devised work centered around the question of what it means to be a man. As a young one, I feel that there is a a lot of stress in American culture to perform man-ness, that being a man involves acting and action, doing things, taking command, performing, physically, sexually, occupationally. Men get results. Men take matters into their own hands. Men dominate. Men lead. Men succeed. But with this economic crash and all the changes in our culture it has stimulated, men, maleness, and men's roles in society are changing. And I, as a decidedly less "masculine" man, find myself wondering, what about the ones who still aren't sure? What about men who don't know, who can't decide, who struggle with feelings and actually let them show? What about men who want to lead but don't want to dominate? What about men who are overwhelmed? Men who are lost and mad and scared and sad, are they still men? What about men who fail? Are they still men?

So I've started to interrogate this in relation to Hamlet, who culturally speaking represents both our key representation of Man, as well as in common parlance the Sissiest of Men, the Man who Could Not Make Up His Mind, the Man who Failed to Act Until Everything Was All Screwed Up. Hamlet, the man who goes crazy, or who pretends to be crazy but can't take advantage of his performance. The man who feels and thinks too much, who speaks too much. The man who cannot act.

I've also started to investigate my own clowning in relation to this, which echoes very nicely Hamlet's Yorick and other pressures of performing as a man. My clown is super slow, super low status, super sad, an emotional, pure, yearning young clown, seeking love from the audience but feeling overwhelmed and desperately lost in trying to get it. What if my clown is forced to perform, forced to try and be a "Man?" What if he has to speak the speech?

I'd like to throw other culturally Overthinkers into the mix, like David Foster Wallace, who's so self-aware he is self-aware about the futility of being self-aware, and speaks ad nauseum about it. I wonder if there's room too for James Joyce, who also folds investigations of Hamlet into his work. What if David Foster Wallace, Hamlet, and my clown were forced to play Hamlet in a play? Would they be able to do it? Would they be able to act?

I envision this piece with three actors, all men, who talk directly to the audience, and switch between different modes: Themselves speaking very vulnerably, self-aware, frank, honestly, about being young men growing up in this culture. At least one is not completely heterosexual. Then there's clown mode, where these clowns endure Manhood tests. Then there's Character mode, where we play these other figures, struggling in other language about performing, about taking a stand, about acting, about  overcoming madness, about being men. 

I get the sense that in a devised process this would be explored and explored and then winnowed down into a much more refined question and focus. There seems to me to be a sea of multitudinous ways to explore all kinds of things related to this question. My goal as director, co-writer/deviser, and perhaps one of the performers of this piece, would be both to question my own impulses to control & command, expose them actually in the piece (do we descend into a metatheatrical moment where I try to direct the other two actors on stage, and they defy me, and I fail? Could we set this up so it could happen for real?) as well as to focus on creating an experience in the audience of the spiraling state of self-questioning, self-doubt, self-investigation, and maybe self-exposure.

I'm in process of putting this piece into its early investigation stages. I'd love to push forward on it as it is refined and redefined for me.

Grasping

A blank stage. 
Probably marley.
Black curtains behind, and masking both sides.
Two men enter, barefoot, in black shirts and black sweat pants.
One is holding a skull.
One is holding a yellow ball with a smiley face printed on it.

or, maybe,

One enters in an overlarge wool winter coat, snowpants, fuzzy socks, a shaggy winter cap, and a red clown nose. He carries a skull in one hand, a bunch of white flowers in the other.

The other man enters barefoot in a black shirt and sweat pants. He holds the yellow smiley ball.

SKULL holds out the skull to the audience. 

SKULL
I got these for you.

SKULL realizes he's holding out the wrong prop. 

SKULL
Oh! Uh... I mean... I got these for you.

He holds out the flowers.

SKULL
Is it okay that I did that?

SMILES steps downstage, holding the ball aloft.

SMILES
Alas, poor Yorick!

SKULL
My name's not Yorick...

SMILES
I knew him, Horatio.

SKULL
My name's not...

SMILES
A fellow of Infinite Jest, of most excellent fancy.

SKULL
Matteo, I'm not--

SMILES
He hath borne me on his back a thousand times.

SMILES hops onto SKULL's back. The flowers and skull drop to the ground. He rides SKULL around, with a little sad protestation.

SMILES (while riding)
And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.

They fall to the ground. 

SKULL
Please...

SMILES
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?!?!

SKULL is being whirled around by SMILES in an accusatory fury. 

SKULL
I'm sorry.
(to everyone)
I'm sorry, everyone.
I didn't... I didn't know...
I killed it.
It was my fault.
I didn't know that.

SMILES
Aw man, it's cool.
Don't worry about it.

SKULL
Don't... worry...

SMILES
Everyone gets bummed out now and then.

SKULL
Really?

SMILES
Yeah, just stop fucking fueling that shit, bro.

SMILES begins to dribble the yellow ball. SKULL recollects the flowers.

SKULL
What?

SMILES
Stop letting yourself get in that fucking mindset.
You know.
Man up.
Take those depressed thoughts by their fucking balls
And yank that shit up.

SKULL
Yank.

SMILES
BE A MAN, man.
Get rid of that shit.
Get on top of those dark twisted feelings
and FUCK them into SUBMISSION.

SMILES is taking SKULL from behind, who's frozen in terror.

SMILES
YEEEHAWWWW!!!!! YEAHHH BABYYYYY!!!!
Fuck the pain away, bro.

He dismounts.

SMILES
Life is not about pain, my brotha.
Life is about

He makes a grasping motion with his fist.
He repeats this several times.

SKULL stares at the skull.

Maybe

Maybe the telling of the story is what you need to do
The act of speaking, the act of exhale, the act of sending the signal out
Maybe the receiving of the story, the feeling with, the sympathizing, the crying for, the smiling after
Maybe that's not your job; maybe that's theirs
Those faceless ones, at who you deliberately do not stare
Whose weighted judgments, shadows though they are, gnaw and
Weigh, weigh you all the way down to your insecure little bones
Rattling in the raking of your own wind.
Maybe they're not the blizzards you think they are
Maybe the act of listening does something to a person
We so rarely do it fully these days, but even still, when we do, we open up
We unfurl our sails, we catch your wind and soar as you soar
Our brains light up as beacons along the way
We roll through the same fog, sifting
The same sand, hand in ever present hand,
Because we know the way is all too familiar.
Maybe we can't both breathe out and breathe in at the same time.
Maybe we shouldn't expect ourselves to.