Explorations

Consider it Martin Luther King’s lesser known version, a first draft of sorts: I Don’t Have A Dream.

This is exactly how I currently feel. I don’t have a dream. I don’t want to be anything, I don’t want to do any one thing either. This might sound scary for some, but for me it provides a small, if growing comfort.

It’s nice to see my classmates so excited about acting, or direction, or stage management. It’s moving to see individuals so passionate about something, anything. I look no further than my Latin Professor, Liane R. Houghtalin, whom I adore. I tend to think she’s half the reason I didn’t switch to French or Spanish after last year. Houghtalin is just so amped about coming into our class everyday; you can tell that she loves, no breathes…no, in fact lives the constant study of Latin, the classics and archeology. It’s like this constant study is her very essence. It’s inspiring to study and work under her. I mean Latin still sucks-it always will, but experiencing her passion makes the trip worthwhile. She tries to share her passion with us; it’s hard not to recognize her efforts. When I look at Houghtalin I see someone who has seemingly found their ultimate purpose and joy: she has ‘arrived’.

Then there are my classmates. Lucia, Jen and Sommer are all jazzed about stage management, David about acting, and so on. These people all have a want, a hunger, a need to follow their dream and passion. They want to be a stage manager, or actor; they have a ‘destination’.

I can’t help but feel that I’m wandering about; sort of aimless and a bit dazed. I don’t have a dream. There’s nothing I really want to do. I have no destination, or it’s off the map. I don’t want to call myself an actor, or a director, or an investment banker, or a teacher. I want everything: eclectic.

‘…i want out of the labels. i don’t want my whole life crammed into a single word. a story. i want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that’s not on the map. a real adventure. a sphinx. a mystery. a blank. unknown. undefined…’ chuck palahniuk.

I don’t have a dream, and it’s wonderful. I’ll just react to whatever comes next. There are few instances where I’ve been truly allowed to simply react; but there is a remarkable and rare intensity that is derived solely from this reacting, surviving- that’s where I feel alive and awake.

There is no road-map or destination and sometimes I wish that I did have a label or destination to cling to. There is a safety, or at-least the illusion of safety attached to these ideals: labels and destinations. But, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller

I can respect Martin Luther King and Houghtalin, I admire their dreams and passions; but I don’t have a problem with not having a dream either.

I’m ready.

Few people will fully understand the understated importance of this post’s title. I am indeed a runner. I have been since as long as I can remember. Growing up, my Mother was almost always training for a road race or marathon, and instead of sticking me at home she let me ride my bike along side her. These bike ride/runs with my Mom still stand poignantly in my childhood memories; they were and are remarkably formative and critical to who I am.  Once I was old enough I became apart of the youth track program, and then elementary and middle school until I started to run in high school. Up until high school I was a sprinter, I liked the short distances and strict form it required. As I entered my freshman year I ran on the Cross Country team. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. In addition to transforming into a distance runner, I learned so many valuable lessons and pushed myself to a very new place.

I would say it was a pretty big deal. And one that I can’t fully describe. Running and being a runner has been such a big part of my life, that I wrote my college essay on the topic. That’s half of what inspired this post: I found my college essay today, tucked away in lost files and it explains this feeling far better than this post could:

The Importance of the Sweet Betweens

It’s 6:00am and the night clouds are already beginning to burn off as I lace up my Asics and grab my jacket. This Saturday begins like most every other, with a run. It’s the type of morning where I dread my run, the regrets of three ice cream sandwiches sit heavy in my stomach and my calves are laden with pain from yesterday’s hill workout. But I push past my own excuses and set out of the hilly, narrow road ahead of me: Rattlesnake Hill Road.

My house shrinks with each stride, and my calves slowly loosen. I pass the pond and water fall, the housing construction and the remnants of the sewer installment. In the distance I hear screeching birds, allowing me to recognize that the world is waking up. With the first few miles behind me now, my breathing becomes easier. In the middle of my run, past the miles of loosening up, beyond the doubts and self-recriminations over yesterday’s ice cream sandwiches; I can think. I can really think. Heavy breathing and  the tenderness in my knees still a good four miles out, the opportunity allots me plenty of time to think. I call these miles ‘the sweet betweens’; and sweet they are. My mind begins to wander and soon the dialogues begin; with myself, my parents, friends, teachers, authors of my favorite books and poets.  My thoughts catch up with me, refusing to lose step-what I owe to myself, to others, my broken resolutions and what really matters to me. I try to lose them on the uphill, but they are far stronger than I am.  Anyplace else I would have given the back side of my hand to such idle musings, but out here they are as inescapable as the yellow dash that divides this narrow road.

The driveway ahead with the peach mailbox offers me a chance to turn around and head home. I decline. The mailbox just steps before me, presenting itself as a compromise, a place to say ‘far enough’. But I’ve learned over the years to use these seductions to my advantage. I tell myself that I’ll run to the mailbox and then decide whether or not to turn around, knowing full well that I will draw sustenance from reaching it and then refusing it’s invitation. The midcourse of my run is not unlike the course of my career and my life at large, where I’m tempted to accept the distance already won.

Eventually I set my eyes on a green house a half mile or so ahead, there a dog comes charging out, offering me the perfect chance to cross the road. I begin the wide arc of a return and head back to the pond and waterfall and the housing construction. From the opposite side of the road, even a road so narrow as this everything looks different, transformed by having become a part of my past. The sweet betweens have taught me more about myself than any other event in my life. It’s a lesson I learn every time I run. And at 18 I realize how lucky I am, blessed really to be on this road, even knowing that where the down hills once welcomed me, the up hills now rise in their stead.

Running has provided a remarkably important outlet for me. Yesterday, I sweated it out for a good 45 minutes to Cher and Mika and Say Anything and Eminem.  Everything just melted away: stresses, midterms, shows, meetings, homework, bad grades, people… they all to a backseat to a new found clarity. Looking back on this essay, written some years ago now, there is still one very true statement: It’s a lesson I learn every time I run.  This undefinable, near unknown lesson that resonates with me each run contains a clarity, or illusion or clarity that makes everything else seem so simple and organic.

As Gregg had mentioned last week in class, the most important part of reading the newspaper is making valuable connections. Taking a story to personalize it, or show it’s relation to another story, or idea: the synthesis of the information is where the true value lies.

Reading the Times this week I found an individual who has done as such. Enter Milos Forman. Foreman is a Czech filmmaker who is screening his 1971 comedy Taking Off this Thursday at the MoMA, kicking off a two week retrospective of his work. At the end of the article Forman recounts the tale of a friend trying to discourage him from taking on One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest( he went on to win an Oscar for his direction in the work): “While I was reading ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ ” Mr. Forman recalled, “an American friend of mine said: ‘Don’t go near it. It’s such a piece of Americana that you will never be able to express the Americanism of the story.’ “I said: ‘What are you talking about? For you it’s a book, it’s fiction. But I lived that story. For me the Communist Party was Nurse Ratched. And everything that is described in the story of that book I lived. So to me it’s a Czech movie. It’s a documentary.”

There was never any doubt, though an unshakable believe that Forman held on to: This Story, is my Story. Forman personally connected to the work and refused to let go. While Gregg spoke more of making analytical connections, the personal connection is just as important. Forman saw himself and his story in every aspect of Cuckoo’s Nest; enough to say that is was a story he has lived.

Connecting. Attaching. Fusing. These are not simple things to do. Though remarkably important.

I’ve put a great deal more thought into my final research project for class. In my first attempts I tried to refine my initial question of ‘Why Theatre?’ I thought that I would need to clearly outline and define what information I wanted. I thought I should narrow down the question to a literal or philosophical viewpoint. At the very least I thought I should make a possible list of sources.

After a week of thinking, I’m not quite sure that’s how I want to approach the problem. Unlike most every other class I’ve taken, the goal of this research project is to present my findings, rather than manipulate the information to prove my thesis. I’m comfortable not knowing where this project will end up, and I’m also comfortable with the idea that I may not ‘like’ what I find.

Theatre. Theatre. Theatre.  Red Curtains, spotlights, blank verse, laughter, darkness, the box office, foyer, tip-up seats, footlights, scene changes and music; these are all confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all purpose word: Theatre.  Sprawling, decentralized and in perpetual flux, the American Theatre is almost designed to dare artists to represent or define it. What is Theatre? People or Ideas? Large commercial shows or obscure ‘happenings’? Classics or New text? Truth or Questions?

The very notion of theatre presents these questions, on how we know a thing, and what elements are used to define it.  The truly remarkable(though very difficult) idea that everyone has a differing view on ‘theatre’ helps to answer not only these questions, but the over-reaching question of ‘ Why theatre?’ The difficult part of this idea comes from the easiest plausible answer: People do theatre for many different reasons. They also think many different things. Duh. That seems far too simple and dry to even keep writing about.  However, it does leave the door open to my digital story telling options…

In keeping with the questions, I’ll leave it to Peter Brook for the final thoughts:

 …[we are] facing the simple unattractive fact that most of what is called theatre anywhere in the world is a travesty of a word once full of sense. War or peace, the colossal bandwagon of culture trundles on, carrying each artist’s traces to the evermounting garbage heap. Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. … Why do we applaud, and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties? —The Empty Space, 1968.

This past Sunday’s Washington Post article on photographer James Stokoe and his current works on display at the American Institute of Architects in Washington D.C.,  celebrates what Stokoe calls the ‘unfinished building’.  Stokoe’s photographs indeed present a level of artistic quality; but what’s more interesting is Stokoe’s attitude towards the subject matter.  He is quoted within the article: “Of sidewalk barriers, he says, ‘They establish zones with different rules and expectations where the chance forms of construction are given license.’ The metal tools of construction scaffolding partake of ‘the excitement’ of the ‘performing arts and cinema.’ Steel girders create ‘as much a choreography of nuance as bravado.’ “  Clearly, Stokoe finds art and beauty not only with the photograph, but within the subject; the very concrete, metal, and asphalt he shoots.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Shannon Sanders McDonald and her sentiments towards parking garages. The Post ran an article(Dated Jan 20 2008) explaining how McDonald had just published The Parking Garage: Design And Evolution and finished addressing the Library of Congress on the subject matter. McDonald akin to Stokoe found an unconventional beauty in her subject, going so far as to describe the garage as, ” a wonderfully beautiful and elegant structure”.

There is no real harm in finding beauty in a parking garage or a construction site, but there is an artistic sense of danger in doing so.  Stokoe photographed construction sites for well over a year and over time he became closer and closer with his work; until he had reached a point of being too close. Being too close to your art is dangerous. It could mean losing a critical and objective eye, or losing the ability to communicate the inherent meaning of the work to an unknowing audience. It means losing ‘the big picture perspective’.

On the stage actors have directors. It’s easy to cite examples of actors who have ’gotten too close’ to their characters, or lost part of themselves within the character; yet thankfully there is someone there to pull them back. Of course the director isn’t always this effective, but they serve as a critical eye to the artistic process. They get to see the big picture and help shape it before it reaches the audience.

Article

The simple truth of the matter is that people fascinate me.

Today, like every other Monday morning since September, I went grocery shopping at the local Giant for work. Getting a weeks worth of groceries for a family of four, is an affair that normally takes up most of my morning, and today was no different.  Today, like every other Monday morning since September I unloaded my(err… their) groceries at  the checkout in isle 9. Why? Because of Dawn.

Dawn stands just a bit under 6ft, a few days over 50, with untamed dark brown wispy hair well down her backside, and wearing the brightest, pinkest, lipstick you have ever seen. And she’s also the fastest thing Giant has to offer at 10 in the morning(hence the reason I picked her). I have honestly been in Dawn’s checkout line every Monday morning since September, but I don’t think I’ve said more than 10 words to her the entire time I’ve known her.  Of course, we exchange the obligatory, “How’s it going?” or “Do you have a bonus card?” but that pretty much sums the up the boundaries of our shared communication. Until today that is.

Dawn was swiping the groceries of the older woman in front of me and she asked her, “Do you remember the lowest price you ever paid for a loaf of bread?” As the woman searched the recesses of her mind, I stood shocked and looked at the both of them.  At first I was almost upset; this practical stranger had elicited more interest from Dawn in a few moments than I had in months. Then I just watched. The woman rattled off a few prices and then asked Dawn the lowest price she remembers. Dawn with a slight smile said, “Back in New Mexico, I can remember getting 4 loafs for a dollar.” I was thinking about Dawn, my Dawn, my fast cashier, and her life in New Mexico, and ’how did she end up here?’ and ‘why would anybody want 4 loafs of bread at once?’ In that moment I realized for the first time that Dawn had a story. She had hopes, dreams, fears; she became real to me, more real than our autopilot interactions of the past 6 or so months.

I asked her how she ended up in Virginia from New Mexico.

It was a bold move coming from the “Good and you?” and “Can I just enter my telephone number?” catch-phrase kid.

But we talked. Dawn and I talked. What resonates with me now, more so than our conversation is the simple fact that we connected. My experience today with Dawn served as a simple reminder that everyone has something to say, and perhaps something to teach you. We as artists(or individuals) can never stop learning. It is the single most fundamental and necessary part of our art; we must always find new ideas in people, and learn from them.

And Dawn, she moved out of New Mexico ‘a while back’, but didn’t explain why.