Responding to something from McCain the Obama people say, "“…it seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq.”
There are so many things to hate about politics but at the moment what I hate is this formulation of thoughts that the Clinton's do like crazy, the Repubs do a lot but I can't remember the Obama folks doing until this week. . .The "I'm not really saying what I'm saying but. . ." The "It seems curious, isn't it curious, hmmm, what does it mean do you think that, I mean, I'm not trying to make a point but. . ."
What the fuck is this rhetoric? Where the hell does it come from? And why the fuck has it suddenly creeped into the Obama rhetoric? I remember the Clinton's constantly doing it at the beginning whenever Obama opened his mouth they'd say something like "It seems odd that the unity candidate isn't pulling as all together in a hug." And I remember last month with the Repubs, every time he opened his mouth, saying "It seems odd that someone with so little experience" -- You know, it didn't work for them so why would Obama adopt it now? Seriously, what is the point?
If you've got a point to make, goddamned it make it. Say "Senator McCain showed he didn't understand Iraq when he voted and supported the war and when he stated two years ago that it was perfectly safe. We don't intend to take him seriously now since he lost his credibility on it at that point." Make the goddamned point! Don't say, isn't it curious? like, I don't mean say anything but here goes. O, fuck, it just pains me.
Stop it. Just stop it! Make your points or don't make your points. Don't hint at your points. Don't try to lead th epress to your points. They're morons. We already know that! say what you mean. mean what you say. stop hurting us.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thank you, Sleep
My god - Sleep! I had no idea.
Leah bought me some herbal sleep enhancing pill thingies, so I've actually been sleeping deeply for at least a few hours a night for the first time in like three years. Seriously, for three years, I've been sleeping incredibly lightly or not sleeping at all. For the last week, while I've gotten up a few times in the night still, when the dog starts pacing, I've also slept some hours that felt more deep than I've felt in a long time.
And the difference in my outlook is incredible. It's not like I'm a different person or anything, or all my troubles and woes disappear, or something. It's just that everything seems a little lighter and easier. Ah, thank you, to be a light-hearted again. The weight, the weight, the weight lessens. O, thank you, thank you, for sleep. All you people who sleep well - you don't know how lucky and happy you are.
I hope this continues.
Leah bought me some herbal sleep enhancing pill thingies, so I've actually been sleeping deeply for at least a few hours a night for the first time in like three years. Seriously, for three years, I've been sleeping incredibly lightly or not sleeping at all. For the last week, while I've gotten up a few times in the night still, when the dog starts pacing, I've also slept some hours that felt more deep than I've felt in a long time.
And the difference in my outlook is incredible. It's not like I'm a different person or anything, or all my troubles and woes disappear, or something. It's just that everything seems a little lighter and easier. Ah, thank you, to be a light-hearted again. The weight, the weight, the weight lessens. O, thank you, thank you, for sleep. All you people who sleep well - you don't know how lucky and happy you are.
I hope this continues.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Feeling Better
I do believe in the power of writing even when I lose faith in the justice of the written world.
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and I regret that anyone who reads this blog had to read that diatribe. However, I feel better. It's nice to vent. Sometimes, its nice to vent thinking that someone, who may not even want to read what you've written, has to listen to you.
Why do I feel better this evening than I did this morning? Because I feel like I'm starting again to ask the right questions. I have some big ones staring me in the face right now.
What I do know - I want to change. To the extent that desire effects writing - Pleasing the audience isn't bad. Also, musical theater is pretty great, or can be.
However, I was standing in a book store this evening, gazing at all the different books a person can buy, wondering what the authors of each book were thinking when they wrote. Did they think they would be Hemingway? Or the next Fitzgerald? or T.S. Elliott? Or did they just want to sell some books, make a nice living as an author, feed their kids, have a good story for the high school reunion, not go crazy, be a writer, be a good enough writer, write. I'm not disparaging any of these things, please understand. i was just wondering what they were thinking. . . And it occurred to me that if I'm not thinking that I'm writing something pure and truthful and unique and surprising and ambitious and brave and, quite possibly, the most original best play that a person like me could ever write on this planet -- whether or not anyone understands it as long as I recognize what I was trying to do and maybe succeed -- if I don't think these things then it isn't worth it to me to write. There are much more useful and hopeful and practical and pragmatic and also valueablethings to do in the world.
And maybe I should to them. Because I suspect that no one cares about the type of plays I want to write these days. Maybe in a different era. Maybe they aren't special. Maybe. The circumstances of all occurrences are so fraught with chance and timing and age and moment that who knows what something work or not work. I doubt plays are going to make an important comeback as cultural weather vanes. They will continue to be important but their importance will be largely in the intellectual rather than the emotional or experimental areas. I don't even know that much. . .
What I know is that I can only write the plays I'm interested in writing -- what the theaters themselves want or think they want be damned -- Again, I like the musical, and I want the audience to have an emotional hallelujah when they see my work but I can't really or I won't really please anyone but myself when I conceive of a play. I could conceivably. i could even see the value in it conceivably. Maybe I could write for a really good television show. maybe I could write a good television show. . . Yet as an ambition on its own -- just to write a television show - isn't valuable enough to justify a life. Art justifies in its way but commerce or simple entertainment doesn't. Not for me.
That's what I know tonight. I'm sure I have more to explain tomorrow.
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and I regret that anyone who reads this blog had to read that diatribe. However, I feel better. It's nice to vent. Sometimes, its nice to vent thinking that someone, who may not even want to read what you've written, has to listen to you.
Why do I feel better this evening than I did this morning? Because I feel like I'm starting again to ask the right questions. I have some big ones staring me in the face right now.
What I do know - I want to change. To the extent that desire effects writing - Pleasing the audience isn't bad. Also, musical theater is pretty great, or can be.
However, I was standing in a book store this evening, gazing at all the different books a person can buy, wondering what the authors of each book were thinking when they wrote. Did they think they would be Hemingway? Or the next Fitzgerald? or T.S. Elliott? Or did they just want to sell some books, make a nice living as an author, feed their kids, have a good story for the high school reunion, not go crazy, be a writer, be a good enough writer, write. I'm not disparaging any of these things, please understand. i was just wondering what they were thinking. . . And it occurred to me that if I'm not thinking that I'm writing something pure and truthful and unique and surprising and ambitious and brave and, quite possibly, the most original best play that a person like me could ever write on this planet -- whether or not anyone understands it as long as I recognize what I was trying to do and maybe succeed -- if I don't think these things then it isn't worth it to me to write. There are much more useful and hopeful and practical and pragmatic and also valueablethings to do in the world.
And maybe I should to them. Because I suspect that no one cares about the type of plays I want to write these days. Maybe in a different era. Maybe they aren't special. Maybe. The circumstances of all occurrences are so fraught with chance and timing and age and moment that who knows what something work or not work. I doubt plays are going to make an important comeback as cultural weather vanes. They will continue to be important but their importance will be largely in the intellectual rather than the emotional or experimental areas. I don't even know that much. . .
What I know is that I can only write the plays I'm interested in writing -- what the theaters themselves want or think they want be damned -- Again, I like the musical, and I want the audience to have an emotional hallelujah when they see my work but I can't really or I won't really please anyone but myself when I conceive of a play. I could conceivably. i could even see the value in it conceivably. Maybe I could write for a really good television show. maybe I could write a good television show. . . Yet as an ambition on its own -- just to write a television show - isn't valuable enough to justify a life. Art justifies in its way but commerce or simple entertainment doesn't. Not for me.
That's what I know tonight. I'm sure I have more to explain tomorrow.
Theater and Politics and self-pity.
And not because they are connected. In fact, in the stream or river or rain of consciousness writing that I feel like doing right now, I'd have to say that theater would have to matter to a larger percentage of the population in order to be connected to politics. Don't get me wrong - I think theater is incredibly relevant and "matters" to the personal emotional expansion and imaginative thinking and creative potential that it nurtures in the individual people who come see it. I just don't think it is directly politically relevant. I don't think movies are directly politically relevant either and more people watch them. Music can be political. . . I wonder why? Because it literally can move large masses of people -- like politics. Movies, theater, t.v., books, these are much more personally effective endeavors. They may effect someone's ultimate political views but they aren't political in the sense that people literally move as a result of them. Which is not a failing. Music, short and sweet and effective, hits us differently.
I'm thinking today however that all I ever get motivated to write on this blog are theater or politics. And generally unhappily. O the infinite self-pity I can acheive when thinking about the contemporary theater community and my place in it. Here's one that amuses me: Every year I apply for core membership at the Playwrights Center and every year I am rejected. OK, fine, whatever. You can't win them all. I think I've earned it. Five professional productions in the last year, real playwright leadership locally, I started a theater company that actually paid 60 local playwrights including many PWC core members. I've gotten phenomenal reviews, good audiences. I've experimented with style, writing for actors, working with physical theater, creating realistic dialogue or abstract symbolic movement. Played with time. Played with media. Played with stagecraft. Hey - I've done a little bit. I've actually done a little bit more than most. OK. They can do whatever they want with their membership structure. Except - People WHO ACTUALLY WORK AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER keep thinking that I'm a Core Member. More than once in the last two years someone associated with the PWCenter has asked my opinion about something over there with the preface "As a core member" or "You're a core member so" Yikes! I mean, fucking yikes! OK. OK. Fine. . . I mean I guess fine.
Somehow this seems wrong to me - if the people who actually work in the Twin CIties, if the people who know the community, think of me, look at my work, and just assume of course I'm a core member - well, I guess it doesn't matter. They don't make the decisions. Their panels are nationally constituted with people you've never heard of who are vaguely famous in the theater. Good for them. One day I'd like to be one of them. Though I will probably decline to be on panels because who in the theater has that kind of time? Here's my best guess at the moment, and I've rifled through lots of them, including the guess that regardless of audience response, critical response, and actor and director response to my work, I must truly deeply suck as a writer because the playwrights center says so. Thankfully, I've gotten over that one.
So, here's my latest theory. Most of my productions lately have been at small but professional theaters in the twin Cities, so the national panel hasn't heard of them. If however, I had a ten-minute play at the perishable theater in rhode island -- which happens to be smaller, less talented and pay less than Gremlin Theater in St. Paul -- then I'd be in better shape because the people on the panel who still look to new york for their guide have heard of perishable theater. It's you know, off-broadway in a way. Lots of people in the Twin Cities know what an adventurous and amazing company Burning House Group is but no one outside the twin cities does. I'd have to, I guess, collaborate with the Wooster group in order to get people's attention -- to belong to an playwright service organization that is based in the Twin Cities, mind you. O well.
Though the Playwrights center is the reason I came to the Twin Cities and in some ways the catalyst for me meeting my wife who I love, every since that first couple months, I've really had some pretty bad luck with them. I must have offended someone. Or I have a nasty mouth. i really do. Especially about theater. What's a poor passionate playwright who isn't shy to do. . . O! Now I understand why its best for playwrights to be quiet and shy. We all have opinions. We have tons and tons of opinions that we're confident we're correct about. All playwrights do. Jesus, half the time I can't stand to hang out with other playwrights because they're so quietly smug and secretly judgmental and arrogant. But if they're not shy, then they'd be doomed. They'd say their opinions loudly and firmly and whenever and wherever those opinions happened to spill forth because-- well, how are artists always to control their passion?!? -- and then they'd be fucked. Like me. How's that for a theory? Probably too self-centered.
I'm sure none of it has anything to do with me - except that while I rack up productions and audience and critical praise, and invent new ways to bring more theater to more people and then actually DO THEM! my friends rack up fellowship money and national notice and those things entirely pass me by. Entirely. For the last five years. At a certain point, it stops being coincidence. It stops being random. Simple probabilities would suggest that SOMETHING would go my way. O, that's nonsense. forget I typed it. . . I still think its funny that playwrights center staff think I'm a core member even though I keep getting rejected. But, hey, what do they know? I guess its not that strange either.
Thank god for blogs to vent on.
Here's the problem. One break of a certain kind leads to other breaks of a certain kind. Even though Gremlin Theatre or Burning House Group is better than some slightly-more notable small theater in some other location - and pay better -- a small production, even a ten minute play there, may be just the snowball I need to make a snowman. Core membership in the playwrights center might be the snowball. National notice. Some kind of notice. Some kind of success that makes other people say -- hey, he was noticed somewhere that I recognize. I should pay attention. As opposed to -- I've never heard of those theaters. Are they even theaters? Are there really real theaters in the Twin Cities besides Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Guthrie?
OK. Now that I've vented. All of this is just self-pity, isn't it? There are plenty of core members of the playwrights center who can't get noticed either. How many playwrights actually make money at this? I'm pretty happy to get good productions honestly that people seem to engage with and enjoy. . . I just sometimes dream that if I was given a little support, I could really do some stuff. Actually, in the one year of the Jerome Fellowship, I was able to begin the process of taking my style of experimentation and writing to a level that sustained me for 3 years of really prolific work. I took the time of the fellowship to really examine what I was doing and what I wanted to be doing and stepping out on the edge and doing that.
I need to change again. I'd like to go toward "more bold" rather than "more commercial" but, well, who knows. I just can't help but think . . . wish. . . o, get over yourself, my friend. yes.
As for politics, more later.
I'm thinking today however that all I ever get motivated to write on this blog are theater or politics. And generally unhappily. O the infinite self-pity I can acheive when thinking about the contemporary theater community and my place in it. Here's one that amuses me: Every year I apply for core membership at the Playwrights Center and every year I am rejected. OK, fine, whatever. You can't win them all. I think I've earned it. Five professional productions in the last year, real playwright leadership locally, I started a theater company that actually paid 60 local playwrights including many PWC core members. I've gotten phenomenal reviews, good audiences. I've experimented with style, writing for actors, working with physical theater, creating realistic dialogue or abstract symbolic movement. Played with time. Played with media. Played with stagecraft. Hey - I've done a little bit. I've actually done a little bit more than most. OK. They can do whatever they want with their membership structure. Except - People WHO ACTUALLY WORK AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER keep thinking that I'm a Core Member. More than once in the last two years someone associated with the PWCenter has asked my opinion about something over there with the preface "As a core member" or "You're a core member so" Yikes! I mean, fucking yikes! OK. OK. Fine. . . I mean I guess fine.
Somehow this seems wrong to me - if the people who actually work in the Twin CIties, if the people who know the community, think of me, look at my work, and just assume of course I'm a core member - well, I guess it doesn't matter. They don't make the decisions. Their panels are nationally constituted with people you've never heard of who are vaguely famous in the theater. Good for them. One day I'd like to be one of them. Though I will probably decline to be on panels because who in the theater has that kind of time? Here's my best guess at the moment, and I've rifled through lots of them, including the guess that regardless of audience response, critical response, and actor and director response to my work, I must truly deeply suck as a writer because the playwrights center says so. Thankfully, I've gotten over that one.
So, here's my latest theory. Most of my productions lately have been at small but professional theaters in the twin Cities, so the national panel hasn't heard of them. If however, I had a ten-minute play at the perishable theater in rhode island -- which happens to be smaller, less talented and pay less than Gremlin Theater in St. Paul -- then I'd be in better shape because the people on the panel who still look to new york for their guide have heard of perishable theater. It's you know, off-broadway in a way. Lots of people in the Twin Cities know what an adventurous and amazing company Burning House Group is but no one outside the twin cities does. I'd have to, I guess, collaborate with the Wooster group in order to get people's attention -- to belong to an playwright service organization that is based in the Twin Cities, mind you. O well.
Though the Playwrights center is the reason I came to the Twin Cities and in some ways the catalyst for me meeting my wife who I love, every since that first couple months, I've really had some pretty bad luck with them. I must have offended someone. Or I have a nasty mouth. i really do. Especially about theater. What's a poor passionate playwright who isn't shy to do. . . O! Now I understand why its best for playwrights to be quiet and shy. We all have opinions. We have tons and tons of opinions that we're confident we're correct about. All playwrights do. Jesus, half the time I can't stand to hang out with other playwrights because they're so quietly smug and secretly judgmental and arrogant. But if they're not shy, then they'd be doomed. They'd say their opinions loudly and firmly and whenever and wherever those opinions happened to spill forth because-- well, how are artists always to control their passion?!? -- and then they'd be fucked. Like me. How's that for a theory? Probably too self-centered.
I'm sure none of it has anything to do with me - except that while I rack up productions and audience and critical praise, and invent new ways to bring more theater to more people and then actually DO THEM! my friends rack up fellowship money and national notice and those things entirely pass me by. Entirely. For the last five years. At a certain point, it stops being coincidence. It stops being random. Simple probabilities would suggest that SOMETHING would go my way. O, that's nonsense. forget I typed it. . . I still think its funny that playwrights center staff think I'm a core member even though I keep getting rejected. But, hey, what do they know? I guess its not that strange either.
Thank god for blogs to vent on.
Here's the problem. One break of a certain kind leads to other breaks of a certain kind. Even though Gremlin Theatre or Burning House Group is better than some slightly-more notable small theater in some other location - and pay better -- a small production, even a ten minute play there, may be just the snowball I need to make a snowman. Core membership in the playwrights center might be the snowball. National notice. Some kind of notice. Some kind of success that makes other people say -- hey, he was noticed somewhere that I recognize. I should pay attention. As opposed to -- I've never heard of those theaters. Are they even theaters? Are there really real theaters in the Twin Cities besides Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Guthrie?
OK. Now that I've vented. All of this is just self-pity, isn't it? There are plenty of core members of the playwrights center who can't get noticed either. How many playwrights actually make money at this? I'm pretty happy to get good productions honestly that people seem to engage with and enjoy. . . I just sometimes dream that if I was given a little support, I could really do some stuff. Actually, in the one year of the Jerome Fellowship, I was able to begin the process of taking my style of experimentation and writing to a level that sustained me for 3 years of really prolific work. I took the time of the fellowship to really examine what I was doing and what I wanted to be doing and stepping out on the edge and doing that.
I need to change again. I'd like to go toward "more bold" rather than "more commercial" but, well, who knows. I just can't help but think . . . wish. . . o, get over yourself, my friend. yes.
As for politics, more later.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Audience
When I was younger, I didn't care what the audience wanted because I thought I was good at giving them what they needed instead. I don't mean that I had deep philosophical ideas that I thought they should hear. I mean that I thought I could construct, through knowledge of craft and awareness and respect for audience, an unexpected experience that they would prize, in part, because it was so unique.
Now, I care more about what they want because I understand that if you want them to have an experience they prize, you have to acknowledge and value and consider and believe in what the audience already values, what they already want. I think I knew this before also but I thought that surprise was something they wanted. It may be but it isn't high on the priority list.
Is it selling out to give the audience more of what they want? At this point, it seems like the only way to be effective. And effective is something I've always wanted to be. . . So, is that a rationalization for selling out or not?
Now, I care more about what they want because I understand that if you want them to have an experience they prize, you have to acknowledge and value and consider and believe in what the audience already values, what they already want. I think I knew this before also but I thought that surprise was something they wanted. It may be but it isn't high on the priority list.
Is it selling out to give the audience more of what they want? At this point, it seems like the only way to be effective. And effective is something I've always wanted to be. . . So, is that a rationalization for selling out or not?
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