Heard on the Street.

Pretty frequently there will be a club or sorority or some such group doing a blood drive on campus. They bring in those big bright buses, line them up, and get a couple perky girls to nab people as they walk by: "Would you like to save 5 lives today?" The first time this happened, I didn't know what it was and I said, "Sure? How do I do that?" "Your blood donation can save 5 lives!" I muttered something like, "Not today," and kept walking. But now I always say, "You don't want my blood" -- blood banks don't accept blood from men who have sex with men -- and the perky girl's smile freezes and her eyes go all quizzical and she'll say, "Okay."

There's an area on campus, on the main mall, called the "free speech area" (the name cracks me up, as if speech is not free anywhere else), where organizations like the Palestinian Students Organization or Campus Democrats set up tables and hand out literature as kids move between classes. There's a group called Face AIDS which raises money for and awareness of AIDS in Africa. I don't want to disparage their hard work and dedication because AIDS is a big problem in Africa for sure, but it strikes me as bizarre that, when rates of new HIV infections among college-age kids are spiking and most college kids seem to have no clue what the fuss is, the only student organization dedicated to AIDS is focused on Africa. Anyway, when you walk by they say, "Would you like to help fight AIDS today?" I've taken to saying, "I fight AIDS every day." (Meaning that every sexually active homosexual man, no matter his antibody status, lives with the spectre of HIV.) Same falling smile and quizzical eyes.

I wonder what stories these kids are weaving in their brains about me.

Blog About It.

On the web site of the graduate admissions office, they say that applicants will be notified in late March whether they have been accepted or not, so when I got an email from them Thursday afternoon it didn't cross my mind that this would be "the news," and I opened it and started reading, only half-focused because I was in the middle of my anthropology homework, which scrambles my brain:
"We have concluded our review of applications for the Master of Fine Arts in Film & Video Production program at The University of Texas at Austin. We regret that we are unable to offer you admission for Fall 2009." etc.
I had to read it a few times. I was so completely unprepared for the news that I literally couldn't quite make sense of it. My first thought was "Fuck it, fuck college, the only reason I went back to finish my BA is so I could do this MFA program, so why do I need to be struggling with fossils and math now? I'll drop the whole thing, go to New York, and work on my show." That's what I would have done at 23, in fact pretty much was what I did, more than once, quit school because it was annoying and making art was more compelling. But I'm older now, as they say, and if I'm going to be homeless I'd rather be some place warm.

I settled for dropping my anthropology class. I can take something else this summer to fulfill that science requirement, something math-free. There, I feel better now.

When I got home, there was a big zip file in my inbox from A with recordings of 5 songs from his rehearsal with the band. I listened to them and cried. I'm sure my disappointment was in the tears somewhere, and my regret that I'm not in New York, but mostly I was crying because they just sound so fucking great.

I get it. The future contains infinite possibilities. I don't need another reminder.

Everybody's Happy.

T called late last night ecstatic about the show. He was on his way to the subway after the first music rehearsal and he said, "I just have to tell you this show rocks!" You know we hired, they hired, my old friend A as musical director after a lot of lobbying on my part because, well, I've always thought the show needed a musical director because of my limited skills as composer and arranger but the need it seemed to me was crucial and obvious this time since I with my limited skills am not even there. I had this strong feeling that A was the right person to do it. I thought he would understand the story, the approach, the songs. He's played in rock bands for years, he has formal training in composition, plays several instruments, has done a lot of theatre.

He elbowed his way into the score fast, seeming to comprehend the thing whole and know exactly what needed to be done in ways big and small, which took my breath away, not, I have to admit, in a good way at first, because he suggested a lot of changes, some of them pretty substantial. But he has been right about everything. I'm in awe of his talent right now.

So T staged the first three scenes last night, the first three songs. He's thrilled with A, thrilled with the new cast. God I wish I were there.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, JP is finishing the bodies in the garage. He's executing an idea T had for Mr. and Mrs. Borden who have to be hacked to death with an axe on stage. They only appear for moments, but it's the big scene, it's what the show is all about, so it's got to be great. They don't have to look completely real, but it needs to be gruesome.

T's idea was that two big road cases would be wheeled out on stage for the murder scene (you know those big black and silver boxes with oversized hinges and latches that they use to carry stuff around in for rock shows?), and when they're opened, inside are truncated but life-size dioramas of Mom and Dad made out of latex and dressed in period clothes. Mr. Borden is napping on a Victorian settee and Mrs. is sitting at a dressing table, both looking very proper and peaceful until blood starts gushing out of their heads. They are rigged with stage blood that, when Lizzie hits them with a rubber but very convincing axe, will be pumped out through pre-cut wounds in their heads. (The picture above is one of the crime scene photos of Andrew Borden dead on the sofa.)

I also talked the producers into hiring JP to make the props, because the other thing besides a music director that this show needs is great gore effects for the murders, and I just happened to know someone super-talented in that department too.

Don't Panic.

I was feeling sort of panicky yesterday. On my to-do list was a pile of reading for my human evolution class, a project that involved a bit of research and a scale rendering for my stage rigging class, study for a Spanish quiz, and a phone call with the Lizzie Borden music director in New York. I couldn't concentrate for long on any of them without the others pushing their way into my brain, so I spent about an hour in the late morning just lying on my bed with my eyes wide open trying to breathe slowly.

I have seriously bit off more than I can chew with this anthropology class. I needed one course from a list of science courses to fulfill a degree requirement, and it was the only course on the list that would fit in my schedule. Since this is my last full semester, I don't have a lot of flexibility. I knew it was a course for science majors, but the course description was a little vague about prerequisites and it's a course on a fascinating subject taught by one of the top scientists in the field, so I just decided to do it.

I was reading from the textbook yesterday morning, and seriously not absorbing ANY of it because it's so full of terminology it looks as opaque as a foreign language. So not only do I not know what I'm reading, it takes me forEVER to read it. I kept thinking I should just stop, it's a waste of time, and I have so much other stuff to do. But then I would tell myself to relax and read it a few times, maybe it'll get clearer eventually. A few times? You mean I have to read this more than once?! And round and round.

The hard thing for me to accept (and the fact that it's so hard makes me even crazier) is that I may not get everything but what I do get will be valuable. When he's not digging fossils, the professor of this course is very involved with creating interactive teaching tools. Besides the book for this course, we have a CD-ROM which is much easier to navigate than the book. Pictures! I spent a little time with it yesterday and suddenly a few basic concepts became clear, and now I feel like I have at least a start of a framework that I can hang all the esoteric information from the textbook and articles on.

It's not that I can't do this stuff. I just need to take it in smaller pieces. My new motto for life. "Don't panic!"

I finished the rigging project, and the Lizzie Borden phone call went well. He's making some big changes in the arrangements of the songs: all improvements, but it's hard to have someone else fussing with material that I created and have become very attached to. Some of those songs I wrote almost 20 years ago.

Falling.

Today in my rigging class, we climbed a very narrow metal spiral staircase with a low, open railing up to the grid at the top of the theater's fly space over the stage to look at the rigging system up close. I knew this would be part of the class, and though I dreaded it I looked forward to it because it has become one of my pet projects in my middle age to challenge my fear of heights. I don't think I will conquer it in the sense of making it go away, but I try whenever I can to ignore the signals and push ahead. I try to experience it as a thrill, as ecstasy instead of terror and panic. Physically they're very similar, so it kind of works. To a point.

Well, this today was hard core.The way up was bad enough, just staring straight ahead at the steps in front of me. The teacher had told us that if we really didn't want to go up, we didn't have to and halfway up when I started to get really scared, I considered stopping and going back down. I guess my vanity helped me out, because I kept thinking, "If I stop, everyone behind me on the stairs is going to have to go back down and then up again and I'm going to look like a fool in front of the whole class," and that kept me forging ahead. But the way down was absolutely terrifying because the only choices you had were to either look down (unthinkable) or look straight out into the wide open space, which made my legs feel wobbly and my eyes tear up. I took it slow, and I made it.

I thought actually being up there would be the worst part of it -- and it was pretty intense standing on a grid of steel pipes with 4 or 5 inch spaces between them looking straight down 65 feet to the stage floor -- but the walk up and down were far worse. It's one thing to stand still and involuntarily contemplate, over and over feeling it in your bones every time, falling, but there's something altogether more difficult about forcing yourself to put one foot in front of the other when every nerve and muscle in your body is telling you that to move means death.

Me, Today.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. The beginning of the semester always brings this feeling. I look at the syllabuses (I refuse to say "syllabi" -- for some reason it's annoying to me how people in academia insist on using Latin plurals) all together and start thinking, oh my god, there's no way I can do all of this stuff -- read 2 dozen books, write several papers, take all those tests, learn all that stuff! -- for some reason forgetting that I don't have to do it all right this second.

And then there's math. I don't even have a math class this semester (I'm putting off my one and only math class until the last possible moment, this summer), but my stage rigging class involves some math, and my anthropology class involves a lot of math. Who knew? Not me, for sure. The anthropology class is hard core -- it's called Human Evolution, extremely interesting stuff, but seriously hard. Chemistry (fossil dating), statistics (classifying fossil bones), and taxonomy up the wazoo.

And there's some great stuff happening with Lizzie Borden in New York. They're doing a showcase production in February to try out the new book and songs, slightly more staged than the reading we did last spring, but still short of the full production which is planned for next fall. I couldn't be there for the auditions, but they had a big open call and from what I heard they saw lots of great people and have a strong cast. I'll miss most of the rehearsals, but I'm flying there for the show in 3 weeks. Maybe another reason I'm feeling stressed out is that it's all happening without me.

I dropped out of school 3 times because working as an artist was more compelling to me than school (well, to be honest, the third time I dropped out it was because of a man), so I'm determined to finish this degree this time. Besides, I couldn't just move to New York for this show. I don't have a paid role in the production, so it wouldn't have any way to make a living there. But god I hate missing this!

3 For 3.

Actually, 4, if you count Revolutionary Road, which we saw a week or two ago.

J and I saw The Wrestler last night. If you're planning to see The Wrestler and you're as neurotic as I am about not hearing anything positive or negative about a film before you see it, stop reading this now.

I hate being disappointed by a movie. It's like rejection; it's hard to shake. I don't read reviews before I see movies but often will read them afterwords to check my impressions against writers whose opinions I admire (or find interesting, anyway), so I read some reviews of The Wrestler this morning and realized that all the fuss really was about Mickey Rourke and not so much the film itself. Mickey Rourke is good in it, but he's so disfigured that it's hard to look at him after a while, and a lot of the film -- steroid monsters in seriously ugly clothes beating the shit out of each other -- is hard to look at, which I'm sure is intentional. But I'm not sure what it adds up to.

The story is full of the worst eye-roll inducing cliches, which can work for me if there's something to grab onto, but this movie just hits the marks -- big sweet lug who's not very bright but his heart is in the right place, stripper with a heart of gold who falls in love with a customer, daughter who hates her father because he was never there for her -- without giving the characters' lives any of the depth and complexity that would let you believe the big sentimental moments.

On the way home, J and I were talking about the world of professional wrestling, which neither of us really understands, and J said something along the lines of "We're supposed to feel sorry for these guys?" I think that sums up my reaction to the movie. The central character was not sympathetic and the supporting characters were not credible.

If you're in love with the "resurrection of Mickey Rourke" narrative that the marketing of The Wrestler is pushing, you'll probably like this movie more than I did. For me, morbid fascination only went so far.

Revolutionary Road wasn't as bad, but it fell into all the pitfalls of a film adapted from a novel. It feels schematic and jumpy, like they went through the book and highlighted all the scenes they wanted to include in the movie. The setup of the relationship and marriage is way too quick for me to care later (not enough later is my point) when everything goes sour.

I think what I hate most about my disappointment in films like these is that they have spent a shitload of money and time and creative energy making a film yet they didn't address basic, solvable problems in the writing. They didn't do their work, and I feel cheated.

Expectations.

One of my favorite movies is an obscure film called Girl in the Cafe, which I think was made for TV. The story is simple yet full of surprises; it's a quiet film with understated performances, and genuinely moving. It was written by the guy who wrote and directed Love Actually, which I seem to remember getting a lot of attention when it came out a few years ago. Lots of friends have recommended it. So, J and M and I watched it last night.

It's dreadful. I enjoyed parts of it, the cast is a treat: Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy (great actor, who was also in Girl in the Cafe), and lots of other really fine actors. But the accumulation of syrupy-sweet triumph of love moments was just too much and in the end rang false.

What really put me over the top was one particular storyline (there are about 10 interwoven stories in the film) featuring Liam Nissan as a single father whose wife has recently died, leaving him to raise an unnaturally articulate little boy, who confesses to his father one day that he is "in love." The boy learns to play drums so he can play in a school concert where his beloved is the featured singer (of course, she has that weird, forced but very popular these days little girl voice like a cross between Andrea McCardle, Whitney Houston, and the sound of letting the air out of a balloon slowly), and after the concert he chases her to the airport where she is getting on a plane to somewhere. I don't think they ever say where she is going, but that's not important. What's important is getting the movie to the airport -- airports are very dramatic, you know.

Basically their story consists of the father pushing the boy (who is all of about 8) to pursue a sexualized relationship with the girl, which he, the father, can enjoy vicariously because his wife is dead and he regrets that he never adequately professed his love to her. Is this a normal way for fathers to interact with their prepubescent children? I found it very creepy.

Maybe my expectations were too high, since this was one of those movies that are "supposed to be good." I was also disappointed after seeing Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of The Magic Flute earlier this week. I loved his films of Frankenstein and Hamlet and Henry V. The Magic Flute was fun, sort of, but I guess I expected it to be thrilling (because the music is) and it wasn't. The biggest hindrance to my enjoyment I think was the fact that it didn't make any sense. Is the whole thing a dream? Is the story as bizarre and impenetrable in the original, or did Branagh make it that way? And what exactly is magic about the flute?

Another Scared Little Man.



There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about this Mark Driscoll character, who strikes me as an asshole of the highest order. I read the article straight through, fascinated and horrified, then looked at some youtube videos of him (the one above is especially charming -- his poor children).

It's a nice slap in the face. Just when I was feeling all sunny, after the election, about the so-called Millenials and their comfort with diversity, their so-what attitude about sexual deviance etc., this article appears to let me know that religious authoritarianism thrives in the pierced generation.

All the press on this guy refers to him as a new Calvinist, which of course he is not. (Not that Calvinism was so great the first time.) Here's some perspective on that, from one of my favorite blogs.

Pictures.




My father has taken photographs ever since he was a teenager. He's a serious hobbyist, an amateur in the most positive sense of the word. I don't know if it's true or not, but a story I tell about my dad is that he used to say, "Don't try to make money at something you love; you'll ruin it." There are many things he's done all his life and is highly skilled at -- building model airplanes and replicas of 19th century firearms, carpentry and woodworking, wine and beer making -- but never did professionally. Instead he spent his whole working life at a job that I'm pretty sure he didn't much enjoy.

Recently, he had hundreds, maybe thousands, of old slides converted into digital files. (For years, I think he took only slides, in the late 50s/early 60s when people were buying expensive projectors and screens and having friends over to look at their vacation photos. The reason people loved slides is that photographs come to life when projected with light. Computers do the same thing, now.) The history contained in the images astounds me, but, besides that, many of the photos are evocative and beautiful, funny, full of emotion. I've been poring over them and choosing my favorites, and I thought I'd share a few here. (Click to see them full size.)

I always knew he was talented, but our aesthetic sensibilities were so different when I was young (he's a formalist, loves following the rules, whereas I never met a rule I didn't want to break) that I didn't really appreciate how good he was. Or I should say, I always knew how good he was but never thought of him as an artist until I saw these photos now with more mature eyes.

Mail.

My official GRE scores arrived today. I already knew the verbal and math scores because they give them to you right after you finish the test, so the writing score was the only news. I got a very low score: 4 out of 6, which is in the 37th percentile. Which is bullshit. But still frustrating because there it is, a big "4" printed on a page that came in the mail with my name on it.

A New Year.

I just got back from a week in Indiana. I have an itch to write something long and reflective to start the new year, but it's not taking shape in my brain. Things I want to write about:

How happy I am that my mom's hair is growing back. It's funny how we focus so much energy on the hair loss associated with chemotherapy, as if that even comes close to being the worst thing about cancer. It's just so ... visible, I guess. (She wore a wig when we went out for New Year's Eve dinner. She's still self-conscious -- I guess older women with very short haircuts stand out at the Outback Steakhouse in Muncie Indiana. The wig is very pretty. She calls it "Gina" because that was on the label when she bought it, and I'm sure it looks totally natural to anyone who doesn't know, but it cracked me up because it's my mom in a wig, which is just funny for some reason.) Anyway, without the wig she looks great, like Laurie Anderson with her spiky silver halo and big wide smile.

My nephews, who are endlessly fascinating to me. The oldest (will be 13 this month), who is getting tall and just starting puberty. He listens to hip-hop and lets his pants sag when he can get away with it. He can be a little shit, and he's rude to his mom (who is of course my little sister, so I want to slap him), but he's funny and cute and that goes a long way. He's also very sensitive, cries at the drop of a hat. The tall and cute part reminds me of all the boys I wanted to be when I was 12. The crying part reminds me of me.

The middle one, who will be 9 in March. I could follow him around forever. What's in his brain? He loves musical theater and science fiction. One evening, he and I played a spontaneous game for a long time which went something like this: "I have a million dollars in gold, but it's disguised as an artichoke and hidden at the bottom of a volcano in the past." "I would design an indestructible robot and send it back in time in my time machine to find the volcano and steal the artichoke." "But I have the only time machine in existence and I'm the only one who knows how to turn the artichoke back into gold." "Then I would design a bomb that would selectively blow up the time-space continuum, then use my robot to retrieve the artichoke from the volcano." "But it's still an artichoke." "That's okay. I love artichokes." And on and on. He laughed every time either of us said artichoke. I enjoyed that a lot.

And the youngest, who is in kindergarten, adorable, and spends most of his day just trying to keep up with his brothers.

I'm putting together a list so I can send New Year's cards this year. I've fallen out of touch with so many old friends, and I don't want to let another year go by without remedying that, if I can. My first plan was to write a concise story of the last few years of my life to include with the card, but I've given that up in favor of just letting people know where I am now. I figure anyone who wants details can ask.

As Always, the Smartest Person in the Room.

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What's interesting about this to me is that you see how unknowledgeable Obama is about so-called LGBT issues, which mirrors I think the American people's state of familiarity with them. It's a strange sort of half knowing that maybe (to them) feels more complete than it is because of the massive influx of gay and lesbian images in pop culture with Will & Grace, The L Word, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and other miscellaneous homosexuals on reality shows and commercials, etc. in the last 10 years. Not to mention everyone's favorite homosexual, the one who started the conversation, Ellen. I think people are much less afraid than they were 10 years ago, but they're still pretty uncomfortable with homosexuality unless it's entertainment.

This Rick Warren thing really throws it into the light. The gay community is all like "But I thought you loved us! I thought you understood," and Obama is like, "I do!" and we're like, "Apparently not."

And maybe I'm gonna be hugely wrong on this in the end, we'll see, but I still think it's the wrong approach to compare the homosexual struggle to the civil rights movement. Of course there are parallels, but I think the argument's persuasive power is too limited. Because gay rights is about sexuality rather than ethnicity, it's a different row to hoe. The conversation requires a comfort with talking about sex that most Americans just don't have. The Rick Warren-type 3rd grade schoolyard arguments against homosexual relationships -- "people aren't made that way," "the parts don't fit," etc., the so-called plumbing argument -- are impossible to refute without having a fairly graphic discussion of body parts and sexual behavior. I think most people feel such intense discomfort with the subject matter, a discomfort that I think a lot of people aren't even aware of or wouldn't acknowledge, that they are literally unable to have that conversation, to learn the stuff you need to learn in order to understand that homosexual desire is just as natural as heterosexual desire. I think what most people want to be assured of is that it's natural. It's a steeper learning curve than the race stuff, and it's unreasonable to expect Obama to be anywhere other than where he is with it.

It's so clear, when you look at a mixed race couple, to see what a simple, glaring injustice it is to deny them the right to be together in the exact same way we allow non-mixed couples to be together. The argument against mixed-race couples falls apart when you look more closely at the idea of race. The argument is based on the idea that the races shouldn't mix, but that's ridiculous because of course they already have. Each of us is already a great mixture. So you can't argue that there's some fundamental biological difference between, for example, a white man and a white woman marrying and a white man and a black woman marrying. But two men together, two women together, does present something biologically different than a heterosexual couple. Not that it's not natural or right or good, not that they necessarily shouldn't be encouraged to emulate heterosexual relationships, but it's a different argument to make.

Am I missing something?

Actually, That's Not True and You Know It. Asshole.





He's either stupendously ignorant or he's lying, and I assume this guy has read the Bible, so that leaves out ignorant. What bothers me more than the meanness or power-hunger or whatever it is that makes people want to control how other people live their lives down to its most intimate details, is the contempt for history, for knowledge, for science, for simple common sense.

It's like they're talking about Sasquatch when they repeat their "definition of marriage that has been in place in every culture and society for 5,000 years" mantra. On some level I can understand the ignorance of science and history, if these crackpots were educated in American schools, where they don't really teach that stuff to kids because it offends their parents and so after generations American science and history curricula are just a big swamp of avoidance, denial, and misinformation. So maybe Warren is a little weak on science and history. But how many wives did Moses have? I assume he knows it was more than one.

I'm still practicing patience about this one, but I have to admit it hurts. Surely there must have been a less appalling choice than Warren to participate in this historic inauguration.