Category Archives: a propos of nothing

a propos of nothing, travel, writing

Jim, I’m a doctor, not a…

I was reviewing the brief bios of a group of us going on this trip in May, and they all had higher degrees (MDs, mostly) except for me. It made me realize that it’s been 4 years since I graduated from school- plenty of time to get some kind of additional credential, if that was what one wanted. I don’t have one. I have a resume stuffed with productions and a passport, at least within the US, busy with travel.

Still, I’m starting to feel like I might be able to give 2 or 3 years of my life to a graduate program, and enjoy it – like some of the wanderlust is out of my system. But I have a feeling that’s another 2-3 years off, too. And if I were to do it, it would be in writing, not directing, for the simple reason that writing is the field in which I’d want to teach.

I can really imagine myself teaching poetry, or playwriting, or some kind of combination director-playwright collaboration course. I was even thinking it might be fun to teach principles of drama in a performance art class for visual artists.

This is probably five years off, because it seems so settled to me. Sitting down in a classroom. Opening a book. Writing in a notebook. Wouldn’t that mean I couldn’t be in a different state every month? That’s a problem!

I was reading therapy workshop proposals for my day job yesterday, and one of them was about the subject of home as an appropriate subject for therapy – that locations have the same emotional resonance with us that people do. Well, of course they do. But to see it like that, popping out of my Windows-addled work computer, shook me up a bit.

I suppose in one sense, this year has been about redefining my relationship to the concepts of home and location.

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a propos of nothing

outside Roscoe, NY

on the Short Line Bus from Ithaca to NYC, I see a man standing in the river, not moving, with a white-coated lab mix next to him. I know it’s Roscoe because, moments later, we drive by a flat hillside where the words ROSCOE are planted in low-lying green bushes. The bus goes on. I wonder how much longer he’ll be standing there in the river, and if he’s cold.

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a propos of nothing

by mirthday’s dotay (yes, that’s from the muppet movie)

I went downstairs for a couple of seconds, to be outside in the Portland air as it struck midnight. I was humming “Only The Good Die Young” to myself. I thought about texting folks but didn’t. After all, in a cut line, “What can you say? What can you possibly say?” But I cut the line too, and just thought it. “Play the moment without the line.”

And then, just like that, I was 26. And I tell you, I feel so immensely relieved about it. I think all my birthdays after this are going to get easier and easier. I stood downstairs in the Armory lobby, and laughed, and said “Thank God that’s over.”

Thank God this is beginning.

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a propos of nothing, SAGN

blogging from the old year

On a personal note (which for me is usually G) I spend the last half hour of being 25 typing preview notes – a fitting ending to my year of assistant directing, which began at South Coast Rep and is ending here at Portland Center Stage. We moved the location of intermission tonight, very successfully. My parents are here in town, and they saw SAGN tonight and really loved it. We had a great dinner, too.

As Chris Henderson says in SAGN,
“You can do as you please. Me, I’m figuring to move on.”

Oh, I got a job in New York today – a low-key day job, which is just what’s needed, and I have an apartment I’m subletting. So that promise I always made to myself, that I wouldn’t go to NYC without housing and employment, has been kept. There is now nothing preventing me from going there to write, to see shows, and to have a great time.

Here are the preview/birthday notes to myself, since it’s been a week of notes:
DARA:
– Only make promises you can keep, to yourself and to others. And keep them.
– When you’re trying to remember what it was like being 25, remember that it was disorienting, unstable, confusing, but that it was worth it. All of it. Every second. There have been some years that you’ve regretted. This one isn’t going to be one of them. You did really good work this year, if you do say so yourself.
– When you were ready for a composer to come into your life and your work, really ready, you met two in less than a week. It’s the same way with all the things you wish for.
– You’ve always been a writer more than anything else. Now all you have to do is BE a writer more than anything else.
– There have been more than enough things you’ve done that were absolutely no fun. The year of being 26 gives you dispensation from all of them. If it isn’t fun, don’t do it.
– In the logging scene, please take two steps downstage. Your sidelight is being blocked by a giant black umbrella.
– Diction on “To be or not to be.”

My birthday is tomorrow, or in ten minutes. I’m sure I’ll spend another birthday in previews soon, perhaps next year, or the year after that. And I won’t regret a second I’ve given to theater, and I never have. But next year is going to be more about giving some of those seconds to myself, too. Maybe we can share them.

I’m going to finish these notes, go get a drink to celebrate, and go home to my Portland apartment overlooking the church on Alder Street. And I’m going to go to sleep in the second quarter of my life.

From a basketball point of view, being in a later quarter can only be a good thing. The game gets more interesting.

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a propos of nothing, rhyme

from the a-pun-is-worth-a-thousand-words department

I’m so full of great ideas once we get into the theater. Such as: “Popsicle Styx,” a super-short stop-motion film about dead souls being ferried down a river of, you guessed it. Part of a series of artsy shorts made entirely from kindergarten art-project materials. To be followed by “Tracing Paper Follies” and “The Ballad of Chalk and Vellum.”

Will there ever be any respite from Piers Anthony’s influence on my consciousness? I think I loved puns this much before I even read those books. I remember discovering, once elected one of the writers for the Stanford Band, that puns (and rhyme) were the only kind of humor I had access to.

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a propos of nothing

Printemps

You know you’ve lost a sense of proportion when you find out about the holidays from the graphic designs in a search engine’s name – but I’m still glad to know it’s the first day of spring.

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