More Train Pictures

These from Christmas in Albuquerque.

I had a whirlwind three day visit home. Going to the old abandoned train shop with my great friend Summer was the best part.

The pictures, of course, are on my Flickr page.

On the Existential Subject of Cold

There are only four meaningful levels of the experience of cold.

Baseline is Not Cold, because a zero is important on any scale. I leave the subject of Hot to another person, or at least another time.

As for the cold: my father told me a story right before I moved to Minneapolis. He didn’t know it at the time, but it was one of the best of the Wise Things that a Dad must Say to his Son. He was on the swimming team in high school, in northern California. It’s a fall sport, and they practiced before school, early mornings. They’d get out of the pool and all stand around shivering and miserable in the damp, cool, breezy mornings, teeth chattering, knees knocking, tense, angry, frustrated, and bleak. He had a big realization one day: it didn’t have to be a traumatic experience. It could just be cold. (And this is probably the first big Zen experience in his life.)

And this is the first level of cold: Just Cold.

This is a surprisingly large category of cold, and the ability to do what my dad did that cold morning is probably the most useful skill that a person can have when living in the upper midwest: separating physical discomfort from emotional trauma. I can’t stress this enough. It’s just cold. The appropriate response is to separate physical discomfort from emotional suffering. This will carry you through the majority of the winter. It is freedom. Learn it. Love it.

Most common usage: “Meh. It’s just cold.”

…And then, okay…

There comes a point when it’s no longer particularly cute or even humane to say “just” in front of “cold”. This is when the cold starts to influence not only what you wear, but the way you plan out your day, and even how you think. Certain baseline assumptions become irrelevant. Assumptions such as: “The world is basically a friendly place.” Oh no. No.

And this is the second level of cold: Cold.

It’s wise to understand the distinction between Just Cold and Cold, and to learn to deal intelligently with the consequences of each level. Jumping to Cold when you are really Just Cold is to miss the point of the my father’s Zen lesson entirely. But to ignore the moment when that lesson becomes irrelevant or even untrue is to do violence to your own human nature. Hold yourself in a Just Cold headspace for as long as you can. You’ll know when you have to switch. Because the greater part of January should be spent not in dealing with the existential problem of conquering your own suffering on principle, but in dealing with the very specific and material demands of the cold weather. This is the other side of the trick as you learn from Just Cold: differentiating the physical pain from the emotional suffering. Only now, the intelligent place to sink your energy is decidedly no longer in emotional transcendence; it’s in the functional problem of keeping warm.

Most common usage: “Man. It is cold.”

….And, then… Damn. I hope this never happens in your life. Ever.

The last level of cold: Really Fucking Cold.

No Jedi mind trick is going to make it anything like okay, how cold it is outside. You live in an absurd and unjust world. This is when you know what death tastes like. There is no God, and he hates you. The important thing to do is not to engage intellectually or emotionally with the problem at all, but to stay in a well heated and insulated environment drinking soup, cursing fate. It is both more personally helpful and more cosmically important to curse fate on these days than you can possibly imagine.

Most common usage: “Jesus fucking Christ. It is really fucking cold.”

—

Learning to distinguish between the three meaningful levels of cold and their appropriate reactions is the most helpful thing you can do for yourself if you plan on living in the upper midwest. Every person’s tolerance is different, and a lot depends on the gear you have on. But you must learn not to confuse one level of cold with the other, at the risk of profound emotional trauma.

Stay warm.

08 New Year’s Omnibus

Meta

For those of you now joining us, this is my blog. Which is an ugly word, I think. Inspired by a friend of mine who sent out weekly newsletters through all four years of college, thereby keeping us all in the loop on his life – I began two years ago to keep a monthly tracker on my life. It tends to take the form of Personal, Professional, and Political. Also, from time to time, I post longer and more developed thoughts from my life.

As time has worn on, I find myself less and less likely to make the end-of-month deadline. Before attacking the problem laterally and reconfiguring the supposed problem, I’m going to see if by sheer strength of force I can turn the mother out and recommit to the monthlies.

This is am omnibus installment, covering the months of November and December 07, and taking us up to the present moment in January 08. As such it’s interminably long.

Welcome to the Year of the Frog.

—

Things have been so wonderful I fail to grasp how this could be.

Personal

This thing is generally filled with all of the most anaesthetized sorts of update information that such as an aunt might hear at a dinner party. As I get more and more famous (har fuckin har) I’m sure that they’ll continue to run down that track. It really isn’t all as dull as what goes in here, I promise. But Teh Google is powerful, and I’m a cagey guy about a lot of things. Just ask the women that have (sort of?) been parts of my life over the last few years. As such I tend to remove identifying details, as if I were protecting the identities of the events in my life, but still calling them in to testify as to what the hell might or might not be going on.

Onward!

I’ve been spending more and more time with the cast of Hunchback, getting closer to some of them, and with the rest maintaining that funny sort of warbuddy-closeness so common to the theatre which is basically a prolonged form of flirtation. And these, I realize now, are some of my favorite relationships – the ones to be had in the theatre, backstage, before and after the show. And all too soon the whole jig is up. I am remined of the slow, cold awakening I had regarding Red Team, my college compatriots. It’s none to comforting to look forward to; this time I’ve had at Redmoon has been, although fraught with financial stupidity (see below), one of the happiest times of my life. Recently two of us took a dedicated day to polish off an entire bottle of good vodka. Good times were had by all.

It’s one of the strongest, best, most wonderful ensembles I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. One can’t expect things not to change once the magic box is opened and everybody goes home, but here’s hoping that the weekly potlucks the cast has been having go on in a new form.

I’ve said it enough that it’s starting to lose its natural and spontaneous meaning, but at the nut of it is something true: I haven’t been so happy for so long since I was in love at eighteen.

Speaking of which, there is a girl, yes, that I’m trying as well as I know how to get interested in me. And how rarely one meets a Someone to dig one’s teeth into. (So to speak.) A friend recently observed that we should start having dedicated and rowdy celebrations when we get real live bona-fide major-league crushes on people, because contrary to what the TeeVee says about life, they’re really rather rare. Since leaving college, I’m singing to the tune of 2.

I’m growing increasingly tired of life sans romantic companion, and growing increasingly irritated at various areas of the topography of my self which seem to block the passage of strong love energy. Something has to change, and I’m reasonably certain that it’s me. Lao Tzu says being sick of sickness helps.

It’s all related. It has to do with forcibly unstrapping the corners and allowing life to break through in surprising, even upsetting ways. For those of you following along at home, this has been the continual story of my life for some time. The degrees to which I have succeeded and failed at this Letting Go map a fairly good arc of my personal narrative. I am most comfortable when I know myself least, guided most by that part of the self that I understand the least – the part that Wants. Enter the freight-hopping metaphor, wherein the powerful engine takes over, and one’s anxious little self is simply borne willingly along the tracks through beauty and towards destiny.

So I’m trying to bring color back into my wardrobe. For a long time I’ve been confined to a uniform of sorts with about as much color creativity as the Wall Street Journal. What began as a way to leave my constructed self outside the rehearsal room became a rigid self-image and defeated the original purpose. So I bought yellow socks. A bright green shirt. An orange sweater.

Oh yeah. And now I take orders at a pizza joint, for carryout and delivery. A bit of a Would-you-like-fries-with-that job, but it helps me not to be quite so poor. Not quite, anyway.

Professional:

This section generally contains short updates on what I’m doing, the possibilities that lie ahead, and unfulfilling tidbits hinting towards grandiose essays to come on the nature of art and my work. These, naturally, never come. It also helps me to keep focused on the forward motion of my professional/divine narrative.

Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, director of Hunchback, director at 500 Clown, is a freaking genius. If you ever get the chance to work with her, or even to see something she’s worked on, leap at it.

Since moving to Chicago last spring, I am continually astonished at how much work has to go into my non-artistic professional life, and how much there is to keep tabs on. And how little financial reward there really is.

I’m still playing Claude Frollo in Hunchback’s Redmoon. Apart from it being quite possibly the most engaging production I’ve ever been a part of, rapidly donning the Favorite mantle, there have been some financial tensions all around. All in all, the executive summary is that a lot of people, including me, have made mistakes in what we have done and in what we have left undone, much of which has worked out more or less against me and the rest of the cast. A lengthier – and I hope fair, if disgruntled – treatment of the problem is available to the individual who asks. In any case – I’ve certainly learned my lesson about reading contracts carefully.

I’ll be playing Banquo at Greasy Joan this spring. For a while there it looked like they were going to call me in for a rapid reprisal of Macbeth, but such was not my fortune. Greasy Joan is a storefront theatre that has been around for some time, and is pretty well connected, if one can believe what one hears, to the areas that I’d most like to break and enter into in Chicago. Those being the Physical and Classical wings. Lookinglass, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakes, and so on. That being said, the pay is for shite, and the idea of being artistically successful but financially dependent on means not of my own choosing begins to take shadowy and sinister shape. (See pizza-joint.)

I’d been holding off on sending my information to the big dogs. Just after Hunchback opened I began in earnest the first round of the establishment theatre mailings. So far I’ve met with promises of auditions and cool replies of semi-interest. Which is about what I was hoping for.

Being in a show with no text whatsoever has really allowed me to let go of the wheel on my vocal instrument. That’s a dangerous thing to let go as one ramps up for important auditions where people pay attention to your vocal power and precision. It’s been worth it to get away from that (obsessive) part of my actor-self, but I recognize that in coming weeks I’ll have to kick back into gear there.

I’ve learned a whole lot, artistically speaking, from this Hunchback stuff. Most especially about liveness – the terrifying and exhilarating experience of really just being up on stage with an audience watching. Most of my castmates typically do shows heavy on audience interaction and light on script. I’ve never had much faith in my own ability to do this, but it seems to be related to the personal goal I have of letting go of control. Perhaps there ought to be more of this type of thing on the horizon.

Political

This is a troubled section of the updates. Ideally it contains little nuggets of things for my army (har har) of readers to do, actualizing the power of personal networks in a political sphere. Generally I fail at this, but hopefully it helps to keep the eyes on the prize anyway.

MFA went under, finally. This is a letter I wrote to its executive director when I found out. Rest in resurrection, MFA, you changed my life. Even if it all did go downhill pretty rapidly at some point.

—

Wow.

I don’t know really how to react. I’m a little bit heartbroken. Or nostalgic, maybe, is more appropriate? I certainly feel some grief. But I can see what’s happening, I guess, and I certainly don’t hold it against anyone. Not that I’ve been an active MFAista for some time now, really. My reaction probably is not proportionate to my crrent involvement with MFA, but only my past involvement. I guess I pretty definitively dropped out of the scene some time back, truth be told.

But in a sense I never did. MFA really changed my life. And in no small way. The earliest times at MFA crystallized in my mind not only a set of politics but also a set of procedural guidelines – that participant ownership can be a powerful model for organization, that empowering people gives them skills, that lateral thinking by a committed group can and will trump sheer mainstream inertia, that one kid with an even semi-workable idea and a fuck-you attitude can accomplish a lot…

I’ll never forget the Republican National Convention in 2004, or the feeling that there were people out there that had similar ideas about the Public Life and the way forward towards improving it. I don’t know how I would have responded to the dark days of 2001-2005 had there not been an MFA to give me some little seed of hope. The forums gave me a real chance to develop what have become some of my guiding principles in politics – particularly as regards culture and Jesus.

I don’t know. I was pretty busted up when MFA cracked at the seams the first time. I can only imagine what’s going on for you guys up top that have continued to pour yourselves into it. It touched me that you thought to put my name on the list of special thanks. I was so unendingly proud of the @mfa email you guys gave me.

I think Franz said it best – in New York, December 2004: “It worked. All of it worked. I mean come on: like they’re not gonna work indy shows from now on in politics? We moved the fucking goalposts.” Ultimately it’s the same situation as the death of the Dean campaign. I can only hope that the Obi-Wan maneuver works again: in death we become more powerful than Darth Vader can possibly imagine.

Best of luck with everything going forward. The resurrection is not about the resuscitation of a corpse, but the presence of a peculiar breath of spirit.

-Samuel