Sometimes I read my posts and I think "Oh, just shut UP already."
I think that's a useful response.
Little things bring me pleasure, like figuring out how to set up my CD player so that I wake up to music now. I'm reminded of my senior year in high school, when I had an alarm function on my record player. For a long time I woke every morning to Sade's "Stronger than Pride" (yes, I was a big queer). The soft scratch of the needle on the record, in the instant before her low voice murmured;
I won't pretend
that I intend to stop living
Much better than any alarm. All year I had left white christmas lights strung up around the windows of my room. I'd climb out of bed, cross the cold wooden floor and plug them in. Their dim light, like her voice, providing a soft greeting to the day, especially those cold, dark winter mornings in Minneapolis. They're good memories, cut through slightly by all the fights my mother and I had that year. Looking back I'm pretty sure she had started drinking again, and was trying to keep it a secret. That was the first year I realized how much bigger I was than her. One particularly nasty fight she came in close, hand raised to slap me, and I just stepped towards her. She flinched, backed away, in her eyes I saw fear. I remember her eyes clearly.
I don't have Sade, so instead I wake up to Roberta Flack singing "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." By the time I'm out of the shower she's signing "Where is the Love" with Donny Hathaway. That's right, I'm a bad ass. You know you're jealous.
Narrative Magazine is a new online literary journal, currently with free subscriptions. The current issue features fiction by Rick Bass, one of my favorite writers, and you also find out that Jane Smiley has more sex than you do.
11:44 PM | link
Monday, September 22, 2003
Obviously I’ve been slipping into a state of creative inertia. See also writer’s block. See also laziness. As someone pointed out to me yesterday; “You’re making lists now. That spells trouble.”
I have nothing to say, certainly nothing illuminating to add to the universe. I’ve even thought, in my lazier moments, of taking a little vacation from writing, but I’m too afraid that I would never return from such a vacation. And if writing is what brings me the most satisfaction and serenity, not writing feels like a living death. And since I equate not writing with the period in which I was snorting a lot of crystal meth and hyperventilating whenever I'd leave the house, I get a tiny bit anxious when the well seems to have run dry. It hasn’t run dry, but I let myself get too tired to haul up the bucket. Or too afraid that a couple of snakes will be swimming around in there. How’s that for a heavy-handed metaphor? That’s just brilliant, Michael.
I need a certain amount of silence to write. If a few days pass without writing, I start becoming afraid of that silence; I fill the void with music, television, movies, anything that will “keep me company” rather than sitting there with all the schizoid voices ricocheting around my head. Honestly, I’m always just a few steps away from winding up in an institution. I don’t mean that as a slight against the mentally ill, for I most certainly belong to that club. I heard someone share at a meeting the other day that when he was in a treatment center, his counselor told him that when he's spending too much time alone at home, Get out, there’s a KILLER in the house!
Fortunately I’ve suffered through enough of these periods that I am beginning to see them as all part of the process. This morning I again picked up my copy of Art and Fear (which he recommended), which always reminds me that the only way to get art made is to just make it. I hate it when they make it that simple. It takes away all the fun of drowning in my own little sea of neuroses.
Part of the problem is that it’s late September already. Back in the spring and summer it was easy to say “Yeah, I’m going to apply to grad school for next year”. But now, with only three months before application deadlines, the reality is setting in. I have to start organizing a million disparate pieces; essays and transcripts and letters of recommendation, each school with its own set of peculiar instructions. And above all, I must choose 20-30 pages of my very best writing, as 90% of the schools’ decisions are based on the manuscript, no matter how glowing those letters of recommendation may be.
Which reminds me, I’m open to hearing your opinions on what (if any) of my various “pieces” are the strongest. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but I’m not always the best judge of my own writing. I’m also stubborn as hell, so in the end I may just pick a couple of pieces regardless of anyone’s advice. But I’m trying to be a little more open-minded about asking for help. Also, if you or anyone you know has some personal knowledge or experience with the nonfiction departments of various MFA programs, I’d be happy to hear from you. I’m specifically looking at a few schools in/around NYC: The New School, Columbia, and Sarah Lawrence. I got some good advice from Phillip Lopate when I worked with him, but more info is welcome. I feel strangely superstitious about identifying the schools I’m interested in. But there’s so much information that you can’t glean from a school’s catalogue; the kind of information you want when considering investing a chunk of money into your education. As in, does the program suck or not? Is the school a snakepit of insecure, backstabbing bitches? Which professors require bi-weekly blowjobs to get an A? You know, normal questions.
I can’t quite believe that I am setting into motion a chain of events that could result in major changes to my everyday life. Just when things were starting to quiet down. Maybe that’s the reason. Maybe I need a little chaos in my life. I guess there’s one underlying motivation: I don’t want to be an old man, looking back and wondering “what if?” I'm sure that everyone else in the nursing home would get SO tired of me asking that, over and over, driving them all away from my table in the corner of the cafeteria.
6:01 PM | link
Thursday, September 18, 2003
I keep taking these trips where I need a vacation when I get back. Just a note to say I'm back, I'm alive, and I'm trying to write a little in between phone calls at work. How the hell does anyone get any writing done when you have to work for a living? Irritable and distracted, all I can think of are a few random pieces of culture I've been consuming and enjoying:
-Richard Wright, Black Boy
-Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
-Lost in Translation movie and soundtrack
-honey roasted peanuts
-my own bed
-finding out that my AA sponsee and I both know all the words to Sandra Bernhard's Without You I'm Nothing on our road trip home from Palm Springs. I wish I had known sooner, like when I was playing volleyball in the pool with a few queers and I shouted "Yeah, SPIKE IT BABE, YEAH, ALL RIGHT!!" and everyone just looked at me.
-late night convenience store runs while on vacation, picking up a carton of water, milk, and a box of Apple Jacks.
Avoid at all costs: Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale, even if you just want to escape for a little bit. It's bad. And no, not Showgirls bad. Two hours of my life that I will never get back.
Keep it real, people.
1:19 AM | link
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
The Walgreens at the corner of 18th and Castro here in San Francisco is a hub of ceaseless, culturally rich activity. There is constant cruising opportunities while picking up your prescriptions or choosing toothpaste. There's my favorite feature; the veritable WALL of LUBE. It also provides frequent and fascinating windows into other people's lives. The other day I was in line at the cash register, behind a strapping muscle boy. One of his items wasn't scanning, so the cashier flicked on the store-wide intercom:
"Price check....Let's see...um, Sheer and Silky Body Wash...Um, Lum...Luminescence??"
I personally turned red out of sympathy for the muscle boy, but he seemed completely unfazed. Fortunately, as the price-checker let the entire store know, Sheer and Silky Body Wash: Luminescence was on sale for $4.99, with a coupon from today's paper.
Walgreen's was also where I purchased my first bottle of nail polish remover, when I returned from that conference in Palm Springs last year. I'm headed back there tomorrow, I hope you have a great weekend, hopefully I'll have something to write about when I get back.
11:58 PM | link
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
On Sunday I helped Prometheus move some new furniture into his house, and afterwards he took me to lunch around the corner at La Mediterranee in the Castro. We found a shaded table out on the sidewalk. The restaurant was employing a bizarre, tag-team style of waiting tables; every time we looked up, a different waitress was giving us menus, taking our order, pouring our coffee, leaving the check. It was a bright, warm day; the fog had burned off by noon. Across the street, among the lush greenery of Café Flore, there were new outdoor tables with bright red parasols. When the waitress overfilled my glass, I let the spilled water on my forearm dry. I heard not the words but the confiding tone between the two women seated nearby. They were my mother’s age, dressed in layers of lycra and sweatshirts, meeting for lunch after the gym. When Prometheus sneezed one of the women blessed him. I had my back to Market Street, but every now and then I’d glance over my shoulder at the streaming mass of people. I watched an acquaintance emerge from his apartment with another new boy at his side, both of them blinking into the sunlight. I watched cars compete for a valuable parking spot, secretly rooting for the boy with a basket of laundry in the passenger seat. I saw, with a pang of regret, a couple who were once better friends of mine, back when they were both still sober. I watched with envy as they strolled arm-in-arm with other handsome men. I pictured the fun and release awaiting should I ever need to be a boy again, forgetting the cost I paid, if only for a moment. We sat there for an hour, talking. It seemed that all the people walking by were holding hands.
///
Last week I was invited to a screening of a rough-cut version of the film I worked on this past spring. I went alone to Dolby Studios down on Potrero Street, and took a slow elevator to the third floor. The doors opened and everyone was gathered in the lobby, munching on hor d’oeuvres and sipping from bottles of water. There were about fifty people there, many of whom I knew from working on the film. But a curious sort of social physics occurred in which all of my conversations took about thirty seconds, and everyone moved on to other conversations with other people. I let my social awkwardness take over and spent the better part of twenty minutes leaning against a table in the corner, watching everyone talk, staring out the window at a slice of the downtown skyline and the Bay Bridge stretching across the water. Thursday is the only night of the week that I usually have to myself, and I was a bit resentful, showing up out of obligation to the director, not especially looking forward to seeing myself on the big screen. My introversion needed its batteries recharged, and later as I watched the film I felt even more the sense of being spread thin, flayed open for public consumption.
Sometimes acting satisfies me in a way that writing can’t. I’ve been lucky enough to work with talented directors and actors in well-written plays, when the energy from the audience swelled within the theater, carrying us along in its buoyant stream. There’s nothing quite like it; the immediate, addictive quality of applause and excitement. Unlike writing, acting is almost always part of a group effort. Because of that collaborative nature, there’s always the danger of putting yourself in the wrong hands. I once appeared in a horrible production in Minneapolis where it was misery forcing myself on stage each evening. After that experience I vowed I would rather not act than act in something I didn’t enjoy.
So I was a bit wary when I first read the script for this film. It wasn’t badly written, but the story itself didn’t quite move me. It was a simple matter of taste. There was a surreal, Cocteau-esque quality to the story, and I’m usually drawn to more straightforward narratives. There was one scene that I particularly disliked, which involved my character, David, sitting on a toilet while the main character, as a ghost, delivers a monologue that David can’t hear. I’m rather squeamish about bodily functions; even bathroom humor makes me a little anxious. So the thought of being captured on film (or, rather, digital video) taking a crap was less than thrilling. But I didn’t want to disappoint the director, who wanted me for David, and I wanted the experience of film acting, so I took the part. I held out hope that the scene would eventually be cut.
Filming the scene itself was torturous. We had been working all day, at the end of a long week, and I was worn out. I sat on the toilet with bright lights focused on me, trying to look lost in thought. “Mikey, can you try not to blink so much?” the director asked. But asking me not to blink is like asking me not to think of a white elephant. I was trying so hard not to blink that all I could do was blink, my eyelids fluttering in protest against the lighting and my exhaustion.
Last week, as I watched the scene playing on the big screen, I couldn’t get past the hard, mean look on my face, as well as the mole on the side of my nose, which I normally forget is even there. There were funny jumps in editing, and the main character’s monologue sounded so trite; the epitome of expository dialogue. It had been hard enough watching the sex scene, which I did shirtless. That was several months ago, and in the intervening time I’ve put in many more hours at the gym, but those hours aren’t committed for all time on film. I was failing miserably at watching with a detached eye, focusing entirely on my insecurities. I made it all about me. I slid down in my chair, wincing at the sound of my own voice.
I cheered silently when one of the audience members, in the post-film feedback session, said the monologue in the bathroom seemed extraneous, and suggested cutting it. Naturally somebody else said they loved the monologue. The entire feedback session played out like that, each opinion canceling out the others. I kept my mouth shut, feeling too raw. And biased. Afterwards I left quickly. I wanted, as I often do after acting, to go home and hide for a while.
Maybe that's why I've refocused my efforts on writing in the last couple of years. Alone with the page, I am free to create my own little world. I do not work for another person’s vision, merely my own. When my work is less than successful, however, I have nobody else to blame. But apart from issues of control, writing is just more natural, for lack of a better word. Writing, as opposed to acting, complements my introversion. I’ve been writing several years longer than I've been acting. Long enough that it's an inseparable element of my character, like a virus, flowing through my blood, resistant to all cures or forms of medication.
I don’t think I will ever officially quit acting. I will probably always hold out hope that some marvelous little project will fall in my lap. I was reminded of the power and beauty of live performance when I was in New York City in June. I went with him to see De La Guarda, a sort of downtown circus act, as if the cast from Rent took over Cirque du Solei. The show had been running for a long time, and even I could tell that its heyday had passed, and it was now attracting a bridge-and-tunnel crowd. But the show was new to me. I was tired, having worked all week at the writer’s workshop, and then coming to New York City to try and decompress amid the chaos of Gay Pride weekend. And when I’m tired my emotions boil just below the surface. For the show everyone was horded like cattle into a large, dark room without seats. Then the show began. Above us there was a low ceiling made of paper, and lights flickered above it while shadows of people flew overhead. Ethereal, pygmy-like music played, as tiny balls poured in rivers above the surface of the paper. The shadows of people flying above multiplied and they spun faster and faster, and then little by little the performers began to tear their way through the paper, teasing the crowd, showers of foam balls falling around them. Suddenly the entire sheet of paper was torn away, and the impossibly tall ceiling of the hall was revealed. And there were performers strapped in harnesses and cables, flying above us. The music shifted, and a pounding, throbbing, tribal beat filled the hall, and then suddenly there were two girls, each strapped in a harness, and they were literally running up the side of the wall, in tandem, their footsteps synchronized to the frantic beat. They flew up and down the wall, zigzagging across and back and somehow never getting caught up in the cables. The music thundered and I suddenly got choked up. I started crying; I couldn’t stop. That happens to me sometimes. It started when my mother died. It has something to do with loss, of wishing so fiercely that she was still alive, so that she could see such beautiful things. But it’s also about passion and excitement; seeing young people doing what they love, creating something physical and crazy and wonderful, there in New York City. I cried and cried, watching those girls race up the wall.
I left the theater exhilarated and even more exhausted. He wasn’t as impressed with the show. But I’ve always been a little sensitive to these kinds of things.
Like everyone else I get older, and each decision takes me farther away from other paths. It saddens me a little to think that I may never do something like that; fly above a crowd to thundering music. I'm not twenty-five anymore. I don’t like having to choose between two passions. That’s the tyranny of choice; all those possibilities of youth, each demanding to be lived. For a while I wanted to be a famous film actor, with several edgy independent films under my belt. But sometime in the past year I’ve come to realize that whatever talent for acting I might possess, I would probably always be a more natural writer.
Last week at the screening I sat at the back of the theater, listening to the audience members voice their opinions. I was struck again and again by their intelligence and articulation. Words spoken by people who were clearly in their element. People who obviously lived for film, who understood good filmmaking and the art of telling a story through images. I was impressed, and a little intimidated. Then I realized that I, too, have my element: I come alive in writing classes and workshops. I felt a little better about my decision.
///
In the summer in San Francisco the fog begins to roll in from the ocean every afternoon. It moves in over the Richmond and the Sunset neighborhoods, and then crawls slowly over the crest of Twin Peaks. If you’re standing in the Castro and look west, you can see the white cloud of fog pour along either side of the valley. I never tire of the sight, even after six years. Like writing, like introversion, it fits my temperament.
Last night the fog lingered into the night. I parked my car at the end of the street and walked up past the eucalyptus trees, their leaves dripping. I took my time, the mist cool against my sunburned face. I think of you when I walk up the street at night, as I do when I see the things I want to show you.
12:54 AM | link
