Good Boston theater: The Pain and the Itch and Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls

Saw a double-header of theater this weekend, not something I get to do as much as I used to, primarily because I simply can't afford the price of a ticket. Disposable income is not something Sue and I have a lot of, and if we have any at all it almost exclusively goes straight into the travel fund. On a Friday or Saturday night you're as likely to find us at home, reading or delving into our musical pursuits as much as you'll see us out on the town.

But...

Currently there are two shows running in Boston that are must-sees: The Pain and the Itch at the BCA, produced by Company One, and Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls at The Factory Theater, produced by Holland Productions. Both are crisply written, superbly acted, and very well-directed.

The Pain and the Itch is aptly titled because it is painful to watch what you're seeing on stage and you will squirm from that itch in your very private parts: A family of very well-off white people who drink the right white wine and watch PBS and espouse all the appropriate, liberal values. Of course there are a few characters who act as flies in the ointment, but funny, those aren't the ones who are making us squirm. The cast is a terrific ensemble. There's no need to give accolades to any one actor on the stage because each character is perfectly drawn and presented, and meshes (or not) with the other characters. The set is sublime, complete with working HD TV. Get ready for the surprise ending, which frankly, threw me at first. Contrived, I wondered, until I reached back and realized how deftly the playwright, actors, and director led me by the nose.

Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, as the title might intimate, asks, Are there times when you can't tell if your life is coming or going? Well, then aloha, which means both hello and goodbye. A fun, quirky script that transverses time and space--one minute you're in Alaska, the next Hawaii, and sometimes that person looks vaguely familiar and so does the dog. The cast barrels along at a non-stop brisk pace, and it's all fun but in retrospect it does ask some serious questions, particularly about our relationships with one another. And that's the production's charm: It's so darn entertaining you forget its serious theater until you're having drinks afterwards.

If I don't call attention to particular cast members of either production, both directors should be given high praise. Avid baseball fans will know that many times a win on a sleepy, hot summer's day comes from one manager out-dueling the other. The success of both productions rests humbly and mightily on the shoulders of their respective directors: M. Bevin O'Gara for The Pain and the Itch and Krista D'Agostino for Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls.

Eminem will someday be on the oldies station

Boston.com posted a link on its home page to yesterday's post on actionbobmarkle on The Sheltering Sky, which I thought was kind of funny because the post basically consisted of me copying about a page and a half from the novel. I wrote a little introductory paragraph talking how the passage nailed what it's like to be a traveler and how that is the pivotal moment in the book that gives it its title.

And that was it. Funny, that an editor over there thought that was worth sharing.

Or maybe not. I'm just guessing, or maybe hoping, that the editor decided that what I wrote about that particular passage is worth something. An appreciation for the art of the novel is waning, just as the art of making an album is waning because digital downloads now let us concentrate on acquiring just one or two songs, and not an entire album. But there is that one point in a novel--a good novel, at least--where the author pulls together for sometimes only a paragraph or two all the loose ends and clarifies why the novel is called what it is, and maybe even why he wrote it. And it takes a certain kind of mind to appreciate that. Appreciating that is like enjoying going into a museum just to see one painting, which I love to do. (If I'm in the area, I'll go into the Boston MFA just to sit in the Buddha room for awhile, or I would sit and gaze on Gauguin's Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? at least I used to until they put it in storage.)

Once, I absolutely floored Allison when she was maybe nine or 10 years old when I told her that Eminem would someday be on the oldies station. True. Someday, everything ends up on the oldies station. And I guess that's where we are with novels right now. With all the "new media" out there, readers are going by the wayside. I remember showing my blog to a very hip young woman at the ad agency I used to work at, and her first, very fast initial response was a reaction against all the words. Who's gonna read all that, she wondered.

Say this in your best old fart voice: These young kids today don't appreciate a good book. Or geography or history or painting or anything else, including that meanderings of the mind of a blogger.

Well, not true. It's all changed and morphed. The responsibility, I think, lies with the younger generation to not leave behind the art of the novel. Or of painting or the theater or any of the other cultural traditions. Move forward, but preserve the traditional forms, too. Time and society move forward, and by moving forward I simply mean in time, I don't mean to infer necessarily that things are getting better, they're just changing. Let future generations be the judges of the quality.

But as society moves through time, there's more culture to embrace and understand. Understandably, how can a novel that needs so much time and energy to read and comprehend compete with a movie or a video game or Facebook or the latest shenanigans of pop stars. But there is something inherently wrong with leaving it by the wayside. There is a beauty and a connection to today's world that shouldn't be lost because, and here's a huge cliche but it's true: You'll never know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

The Guthries: Trials and Tribulations

The Guthries, from nodepression.com...just homegrown music...sigh...



The "Trials" video is a big, one-camera, DV production by none other than Andrew Watt of the Heavy Blinkers. It cost us nothing (that'll be evident if you watch it - no slight to Andrew) but it's better than all of the big-budget stuff we've done. It was shot in the living room of 2 Grove St, which is just "off Windmill" Rd in Dartmouth. Everyone lived in the house - it was our own version of "Big Pink". We recorded out first album "Off Windmill" there with Andrew.

The Sheltering Sky by Peter Bowles

In a little more than a month, I'll be in Morocco. Then, who knows where? When I travel, I like to learn as much as I can about where I'm going, before I go. I read guide books. U.S. State Department reports. And I read novels set in the locale. The Sheltering Sky was a novel Sue suggested. I suggested Morning in Antibes to her.

Here is the passage from which the novel takes its title. Port and Kit, two travelers loose on the face of the earth, have ridden bicycles out into the Sahara. Kit cheated on Port the night before, having made love to Tunner on a train. It clearly shows a traveler's fear of belonging, fear of dying, of living for the moment, of looking for companionship, knowing they'll never fit in. The Arab rooted to a rock in prayer is an especially nice touch.

She pinched his arm. "Look there!" she whispered. Only a few paces from them, atop a rock, sitting so still that they had not noticed him, was a venerable Arab, his legs tucked under him, his eyes shut. At first it seemed as though he might be asleep, in spite of his erect posture, since he made no sign of being conscious of their presence. But then they saw his lips moving ever so little, and they knew he was praying.

"Do you think we should watch like this?" she said, her voice hushed.

"It's all right. We'll just sit here quietly." He put his head in her lap and lay looking up at the clear sky. Over and over, very lightly, she stroked his hair. The wind from the regions below gathered force. Slowly the sky lost its intensity of light. She glanced up at the Arab; he had not moved. Suddenly she wanted to go back, but she sat perfectly still for a while looking tenderly down at the inert head beneath her hand.

"You know," said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, "the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind."

Kit shuddered slightly as she said: "From what's behind?"

"Yes."

"But what is behind?" Her voice was very small.

"Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night."

"Please don't talk about it now." There was agony in her entreaty. "Everything you say frightens me, up here. It's getting dark, and the wind is blowing, and I can't stand it."

He sat up, put his arms about her neck, kissed her, drew back and looked at her, kissed her again, drew back again, and so on, several times. There were tears on her cheeks. She smiled forlornly as he rubbed them away with his forefingers.

"You know what?" he said with great earnestness. "I think we're both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason. We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump. Isn't that true?"

She shut her eyes for a moment. His lips on her cheek had awakened the sense of guilt, and it swept over her now in a great wave that made her dizzy and ill. She had spent her siesta trying to wipe her conscious clean of the things that had happened the night before, but now she was clearly aware that she had not been able to do it, and that she never would be able to do it. She put her hand to her forehead, holding it there. At length she said: "But if we're not in, then we are more likely to--fall off."

Death by jelly: You can run, but you can't hide

I'm not sure what worries more, that it was determined that the Welch's grape jelly may have had mold in it, or that BJ's knew I bought some and was able to track me down to tell me in a letter.

Nobody died or got sick, that I know of, but the jelly didn't live up to Welch's high standards, so the letter said.

But I just figure that the amount of all of this information that is constantly being taken on us from stores and Web sites and credit cards is so colossal in size that there is no way that anyone can sift through it to find me.

Then I got the letter that was so pointed and accurate, I half expected it to say that the two-pack of jelly I bought, one of which is in the right-hand cabinet above the counter and the other one you've already opened and is on the top shelf of your refrigerator, can be returned for a full refund.

It's too late to run or hide in this world. I pretty much discovered that a long time ago. And I guess I should be glad that I could be warned about a potential health hazard (death by jelly!) Still, there's a part of me that won't ever be comfortable with all this.

Helsinki Complaint Choir

"Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the pet peeves and angst-ridden pleas of people in Helsinki and then composed this choral work around the list of complaints..."

And what's so funny is how the complaints are pretty much universal to Westerners. I'm not too sure how someone suffering from hunger in Ethiopia would feel about a meter sandwich being only a half meter long, but let's not get too serious here.




You can’t get rich by working, and love doesn’t last forever. In the public sauna they never ask if it’s ok to throw water. Old forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper. And still all the toilets are always out of paper. Why products on sale drive the people crazy? In the middle of Helsinki they built another shopping hell. My neighbour spies on me through the peephole whenever I come home with guests, and he always arrives too early for his sauna turn. 





We always lose to Sweden in hockey and Eurovision. Christmas season starts earlier every year. Why do people never agree with me? Jobs go to China, tramline 3 smells of pee. 

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair!



Why is the Metre Pizza only half a metre long? And why is the cord of the vacuum cleaner too short – just like the summer. Going to work every morning, then home at night, eventually you lose your mind. The battery on my mobile is always going flat, and all ring tones are just as irritating.

 Ring tones are all irritating. Ring tones are all irritating. Ring tones are all irritating. Ring tones...(Sorry, I’m in a bad spot. Call me later.)

When you buy furniture, all you get is a pile of boards. Tissues are too rough and I can never find them when I need to sneeze. My tights slip when I’m walking. There is always a tall man in front of me. At work they pat me on the shoulder, then stab me in the back?



My dreams are boring. Reference numbers are too long. Women are still paid less than men. Bullshitters get on too well in life. The daily paper is too thick. Why always me?

 It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair!

...(and Finnish language is bloody difficult to learn!

The queue for the dentist is over six months long, after waiting for so long the whole tooth must be pulled out. Nice shirts get discoloured in the wash, but ugly shirts never do. People have no time for Fair Trade goods, but still rush to where they grow. I can’t escape the headlines of the tabloids. The weather’s always foul. I don’t get laid enough…(And this is Finnish language is bloody difficult to learn.

 We always lose to Sweden in hockey and Eurovision. Christmas season starts earlier every year. Why do people never agree with me? Jobs go to China, tramline 3 smells of pee.



My flat is tiny yet it eats all my money. So I’m left nothing to save the world with. People only take a stand in sms-forums. Idiots don’t know which side to stand on the escalator. My husband snores too loud and he walks too slowly, and only washes his hockey-shirts – And my wife always complains! 

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.

Evenings wasted hiding from the TV license inspector because I don’t want to pay for sports and reality TV. The employment agency only needs Java programmers. Old people are fed with tranquilisers so they won’t complain. My friend likes his mobile phone more than he likes me. Our ancestors could have picked a sunnier place to be.

 My dreams are boring. Reference numbers are too long. Women are still paid less than men. Bullshitters get on too well in life. The daily paper is too thick. Why always me? 

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair – it’s not fair!

The Low Anthem: To Ohio

Opening for Ray Lamontagne, writeup in Rolling Stone, playing at SXSW. It's so great to see hard-working artists make it. Not only hard-working, but nice people too.

And being an old Ohio boy, this song gives me goosebumps...





I left Louisiana on the rail line
I left Louisiana on the rail line

Lost my love before her time
Lost my love before her time

I was trying to get to Ohio
Trying to get to Ohio

Now every new love is just a shadow
Every new love is just a shadow

‘Cause once you’ve known love you don’t know how to find love
Yeah once you’ve found love you don’t know how to find new love

All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio

Heard her voice coming through the pines of Ohio
I heard her voice singing in the pines in Ohio

She sang bless your soul you crossed that line to Ohio
Bless your soul you crossed that line

All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio

A gay weekend

I think I've used that subject line before.

Friday night we went to see Milk, which goes to show you just how far behind the curve we really are. But I love Sean Penn. Who doesn't, right? Penn and Nicholson are the two all-time greats, and when I watch either one of them I am so inspired.

Amazing work by Penn, but I wasn't that crazy about the movie itself. Sorry. I guess I have to turn in some kind of club card now, huh? It's just sort of the inevitable problem with a movie like that: You know the ship is going to hit the iceberg and you know he's going to get shot. Camera work and special effects can only take it so far. But this is nothing new for me. Everything I've seen in the past couple of years has left me tepid, if not downright cold. Oddly, the only other I saw in the running for any Oscars was Slumdog Millionaire, which I thought was good, but again, if that's the "best", well...

Then last night we headed over to the Machine to see the Gold Dust Orphans perform the Ryan Landry original spoof on Of Mice and Men, Of Mice and Mink. Maybe it's live theater that keeps my juices flowing, because I love this stuff. Part Oscar Wilde, part vaudeville--hey, they're drag queens for God's sake--this is my idea of theater. Ribald, loud, real audience participation. I've always imagined that this is what Shakespeare was like back in the days before we got all snooty in the theater. Anyway, Harvey Milk would have had a grand old time, so I guess everyone's happy, right?

Unemployment's getting kinda weird

I'm going into my third month of unemployment (last night I heard about a fellow actor-type who's been laid off since September--six months!), and it's getting weird.

The government today reported that another 651,000 jobs were lost in February. Man, we're bleeding jobs faster than GM's bleeding dollars. Is that possible? Since December, 2007 when this so-called recession was first recognized (this intrepid reporter is calling it a depression; remember: You heard it here first, at Action Bob Markle) 4.4 million people are out of work. That officially puts the jobless rate at 8.1 percent, the highest in 25 years. But let's not forget that that figure does not include seasonal employees, the self-employed who aren't finding work, and people like those old timers who greet you at Wal-Mart who aren't making enough to feed their cats. Unofficially, let's call the jobless rate at around 15, or maybe 18 percent, okay?

There is no work out there. I've had one tiny job, and one acting job. You can only make so many batches of red sauce, chicken soup, bean soup, and chili before it starts to get a little repetitious. Make only so many dinners for your honey when she comes home from work before you start feeling a bit worthless. Only so many small chores and errands you can run before you start wondering if you actually are useless.

And you know those are the landmines you have to dodge. You don't just flop down on the couch and sigh and call it a life. I write everyday. I'm a writer, that's what I do. I'm taking low-cost classes around Boston. Music theory at Club Passim. Acting for the camera from a casting agent.

I'm starting to look into going back to school. All the time I was married I couldn't get my Masters because I was too busy working a dead end job to support the family. Now here I am, 53-years-old, out of work in a depression with a BFA in photography. Maybe it's time to finally get that degree, and God love Sue, she's the one pushing me to do it, thinking we can travel and teach at the same time. The one thing is the cost of a university degree is still as inflated as the value of homes. There is no way a Masters should cost between $20,000 and $30,000. Everything, everything still costs way too damn much, and we all need a serious realty check.

You got to get out of the house. Even going into Boston and wandering around, checking out the library, doing some people watching, changes your perspective. Those prison people know what they're doing when they throw you into solitary. We're social creatures. We gotta see some sunshine from time to time.

And I've finally started that play I said I'd write. Yeah, it's called Red Dog, and it addresses that theme I'm constantly beating to death, that we as a society don't recognize that the people who hurt us emotionally are no different than thugs who hurt us physically, and that as a species we still aren't evolved enough to actually see the thing we're hurting, but it's a part of us as surely as our arms and legs are. It's called Red Dog because red dog is a football term for a blitz, where linebackers or defensive backs suddenly charge and usually hit the quarterback from the blindside and inflict some serious harm (which is what these emotional thugs do; they just blindside us because most of us simply are not raised to believe people would do such a thing, so we're caught unaware), and also because dogs are color-blind and can't see colors, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. And the play has all of my favorite things in it: dogs, guitars and whiskey.

Silversun Pickups: Kissing Families

thanks to baxter for this gem...





Stop the season stop the sting
a plastic mic a broken string
infected wound from a rusty ring

soon you'll be there too

kissing families can't recall
a program to derail us all
forgotten prison it's been safe 'til now

it's no wonder that we did it this way
keep looking forward on paths sideways
it's everything that is connected and beautiful
and now i know just where i stand
move on
roll along
not today
it's everything that is connected and beautiful
and now i know just where i stand

thank god your heart is too close

this can be the bitter end
i know it wont

well someone said i made a mistake
kept looking forward on paths sideways
it's everything that is connected and beautiful
and now i know just where i stand
seasons always shift too late
spent too much time now on paths sideways
everything that is connected and beautiful
and now i know just where i stand
thank god it's over....

Everything is amazing...and no one is happy...

Conan hosts the comedian Louis CK who is talking of the spoiled generation.

This guy is my hero.

Thanks to Lindsay for this one.

It's dangerous on Boylston Street: Looney Tunes has half-price sale on all CDs...

It's dangerous in here, I said today in Looney Tunes, the used music store up on Boylston Street. Yeah, but it's only half as dangerous as it used to be, came the reply.

Every CD and DVD is on sale for half price during February, so stuff that's already outrageously cheap is so hard to resist.

I stopped myself after five for twenty bucks. Damn economy. Unemployment just isn't going to cover my habit.

Got:
The Jayhawks: Hollywood Town Hall
The Jayhawks: Tomorrow the Green Grass
Alejandro Escovedo: Gravity
Guy Clark: The Essential Guy Clark
Golden Smog: Down by the Old Mainstream

Well, you can pretty much see my tastes right there. But the place is filled with every genre. Always a great place to stop when you're in Boston.

John, who works at the meat counter at Stop 'n Shop in Quincy, rocks

John, who works at the Stop 'n Shop in Quincy on Newport Avenue, truly rocks.

Kathryn is coming over tomorrow, and I wanted to make something special for her. I love cooking, I love taking care of people, I love watching people enjoy my cooking. So I decided to make lamb stew, but yesterday when I went grocery shopping, there was only one package of lamb for stewing.

I stopped someone wearing a bloody apron and asked if he was getting more in the next day (today.) He said, maybe, but if he didn't he'd cut me some when I came in.

Okay, so today I stop in, thinking, maybe he'll remember, maybe he won't, maybe he won't be there and no one will know what I'm talking about, or maybe they'll be too busy and just tell me to pound sand.

I go to the meat section, and no lamb. So I stopped some guy, and lo and behold, it's the same, guy. His name is John and he remembers me. I start talking and he cuts me off and says, oh yeah, I remember you. I mean, I didn't even remember him, and he remembers me out of how many customers does he see in a day? The guy truly rocks.

So he bones some lamb for me, and I'm all set.

You know, in this day and age, you don't see stuff like this very often anymore. We lead our hectic lives and things don't go very well most of the time for us and then we want to do something as simple as make a lamb stew for someone we love, and we seem to get thwarted every way we turn.

But not this time.

And for anyone who's interested in a really simple but awesome meal, here's the recipe. I usually make rice in chicken broth, but for this it's simply white boiled rice in a cooker. And I also use some lamb on the bone for the flavor. So you have to pick the bones with your hands, big deal.

Serve over rice and some Middle Eastern bread to sop up the juices.

Moroccan Lamb Stew

Serves 4.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons oil
28 oz / 800 g lean lamb, diced
17 fl oz / 500 ml beef or chicken stock
1 medium onion, chopped
4 oz / 100 g pitted prunes
4 oz / 100 g dried apricots
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Freshly ground pepper

Preparation:

Heat the oil on a medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add half the meat and cook until brown. Remove from the pan and place on kitchen towel (lamb can be quite fatty), and cook the rest of the meat.

Put all the meat in the pan, add all the other ingredients and season with pepper to taste. You shouldn’t need to add salt, as stock tends to be quite salty.
Bring gently to the boil, lower the heat and simmer with the lid on for about 1 hour or until the meat is tender. Stir 2-3 times during this time to avoid sticking.

Serve with boiled rice or couscous.

Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song

What is a life? A journey, perhaps? And what if it's the life of a song? What is it then? Is it the same as a person's life, where it touches other people's lives, blessing some, damning others, as it rollicks down its own path, either towards its own fate or random ending?

Ted Anthony makes a pretty fair argument that it's the latter as he traces the song, House of the Rising Sun from its roots in what he calls The Village, a fictional place in what Anthony calls the Golden Triangle, a place in the hills where Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee all come together.

From The Village where a sixteen-year old Georgia Turner was first recorded singing it by Alan Lomax, employed by the Library of Congress in 1937 to collect samplings of folk music, to karaoke bars in Thailand, Anthony follows the life of this song of warning and despair--the reason, he postulates, that gives it such universal appeal.

Known originally as The Rising Sun Blues, the song started out as a story about a young girl and a warning to her younger sister, and it was sung in a major key. Over the years, different performers, some prominent, others just back-country hillbillies in Appalachia and as far away as the Ozarks, put their individual mark on the song, rewriting lyrics, swapping stanzas. Ultimately, we all know the Animals' version, sung in a minor key about a young man's life gone to hell from the decadence in a house of ill-repute in New Orleans. Little tidbits of information are almost on every page. The word "house" was kept out of the title most over pretty much the course of the song's life, because of the subconscious knee-jerk jump we'd have of putting the word, "whore" in front of the word "house".

The two most notable characters in the story, Turner and the Animals' Eric Burden, barely profited, if at all, from the song that played such an important part of their lives. Turner, late in a life that turned to drinking, finally did start to receive small royalty checks for the song that bears her name. Burden, who sang the arrangement that is most popular today, didn't receive a cent.

Anthony, twice nominated for the Pulitzer, is thorough if not a bit clinical. With a reporter's nose, he ferrets out stories and people from all over the globe, following even the smallest lead, but the account is fascinating; the song in all its iterations--from front porch performances in Appalachia to Muzak in elevators--has probably been heard by just about everyone in the modern world, and so you or I could have been fodder for this account. If it all sounds mundane, then think about the first time you ever heard the song, or how you feel right now when you think of the melody, and that's the essence of the book.

Following the song is following a part of American culture that, for some of us, is a deep and longing part of our past. I grew up in that world of country folks, or at least the tail end of it, and even as a youngster I knew it was a world that was rapidly being overtaken by the modern world, like a horse and buggy being overtaken by a Greyhound bus on country road. When the generation comprising my aunts and uncles died out, I knew a way of life would fade from the world. What's funny is to see, through following Anthony's narrative, how that world was melded into today's world. Bastardized, perhaps, but the remnants are there, and that's just the way of the world.

Just to give you a taste of how far afield the song has gone.

Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley:

Something good and joyous happened this week

I got two pieces of good news in the past two days that just made my heart sing. They had nothing to do with "career" or employment or anything remotely resembling anything stable or legit and everything to do with living and loving life.

And that they both came from my two daughters, put me in heaven.

Yesterday I wrote my youngest a message on Facebook wondering if for some crazy reason she had Monday off. High school kids nowadays have so many days off, odds were in my favor that she might. And if she didn't, I wondered if maybe we couldn't do a snow dance to work up a snow day.

The reason was, on Sunday night, Sarah Lee Guthrie, granddaughter of Woody and youngest of Arlo, will be playing at Club Passim, and I thought it would be good for her to see Guthrie play. And it wasn't because she wanted to get out of school that Kathryn said she'd like to go. She's a smart, curious kid whose sole reason on earth seems to be to enjoy life. A night out in Cambridge, even with her old man, who I think she still gets quite a kick out of, was simply the better educational choice than high school...well, high school anything, really.

One of many pieces of guilt I constantly carry around with me for leaving the kids' mom the way I did was that it drove a huge wedge between me and my kids. Allison has said a few times now that one of the things that she missed about not having me around was how I always played music--all kinds of music from rock to show tunes to concert. Music is, I think, one of the most important gifts we have on the planet. We don't fully understand how it affects us. (I just heard the other day that some people see colors when they listen to music; how cool is that?) But kids need to be taught it. Otherwise, they're just subject to the whims and pressures of the culture, or what passes of culture. I hate that I wasn't more of an influence to them. And maybe that's why I'm so stoked about Kathryn wanting to see Guthrie. Maybe something of me really did rub off.

I never wanted my kids to grow up straight-laced. I didn't want them wild, either. I wanted them to grow up, experience life, make mistakes, learn from the mistakes, and keep growing and enjoying life. I wanted them to grow up, mature, and be able to stand up for themselves in this life. Make choices and responsible decisions like Kathryn did. I told them both, we all know where drinking and drugs will take us. Go out and make new mistakes. Probably not the most mature and maybe not the most responsible advice for a parent to give, but I think you, and they, got the point.

Then today I was IMing with Allison, who just arrived in Venice. She and some friends have a break from school in Granada and are just sort of bumming around northern Italy. I did something like that when I was about 17, just working for awhile and saving my money and then backpacking through Europe and part of Turkey for three months. And to this day I remember the freedom and the joy of learning and meeting new people and seeing and experiencing new sights. Life should always be that way. And I read Allison's messaging, saying she wants a life on the road (are you reading this Sue?) and me telling her I always did want to travel and she said I should and I said maybe I will. Both my kid tell me I should go back to photography.

My little girl has grown up into a traveler, something to my way of thinking couldn't be more noble. A traveler. Not a tourist, but a traveler, someone who loves the freedom of moving about on this earth and being a citizen of the earth, not some member of some arbitrary geopolitical nonsense.

I think on Monday I wrote on my Twitter status line that I wondered what the week would bring. This week had its moments. So you just ride it all out, and if you find yourself going through hell just keep moving and the devil might not even notice you're there (yes, that's a line from a country song.) And then when something good and joyful comes along, you just grab it and let it take you soaring in the clouds.

WYWH

Wish you were here.

Sue left for Mexico yesterday for five days. I saw her off at the airport, and thanks to the T running late, we just were able to get her boarding passes and then off to the gate. So, Bob and I are back to our bachelor days, already slipping back into old habits acquired from living and being alone.

It's not bad, I'm just saying life is different without her. When you're not sharing a space, and especially a life, with another person, particularly another person who you love, you tend to focus on yourself, and just like those lists where you write out 25 Random Things About Yourself, it all gets pretty boring after awhile.

I'm sorry, I'm just one of those people who not only believes, but lives his life feeling that if you're not sharing it and your experiences with someone else, it all gets a little pointless. A little dull. This is just me: But I've spent way too much of my time alone or doing things by myself. I've overcome the fear and discomfort in my younger years of doing things alone in public like going to movies and out to dinner by myself to prove I don't need someone else. I've hiked and camped and traveled alone, and scraped and struggled through personal difficulties alone, proving I really don't need anyone else to get along in this world. I like people and I like talking to people and interacting with them. And if you take that to its furthest appeal, to feel completely content, I like intimately sharing my life with a woman.

I'm not some right-wing, Bible-thumping fundamentalist either. I think anyone who can find happiness in this world, anyway with anyone they can is all right by me. And I know there are people who don't have the same needs I have. Some people enjoy living alone. Some people are so wrapped up in their own lives (and I know that the way I worded it is is mildly pejorative) they don't have time or energy for someone else. They think it's a burden. A person becomes an obligation which, to my way of thinking, is one of the worst things a person can be. Yeah, a person who lives like that is a little selfish, if not a lot of selfish. There's no law against it.

But right now it's a bit after 8:00 in the morning and I'm sitting on the couch where I (and Sue) always sit in the morning with our coffee and it's just not the same. (Something About What Happens When We Talk. Lucinda Williams. I've posted the YouTube vid and lyrics before, so if you want you can look them up.)

And maybe I'm being melodramatic, or I'm thinking too much; I've been accused of both--usually by people whose heads would start to ache after a bit of mental exercise--but I am an actor and I do have an IQ of 135. In the past I've dumbed down to so many people, and finally a good doctor said to me, John, you're just going to have to get used to the fact that you're smart. It's not easy being different in this society; you're never accepted for who you are. So because of some God-given talent I have, and an ability to achieve a high score on a Western, white-dominated testing model, I am able to see and understand some things that others can't. And so I can put myself in a time and a place where Sue isn't in my life, and I don't like it one bit. It's how I can tell I love her to death and the life that we have.

So today is a day like so many I've had before. There are deadlines to make (I am a writer, too, which means if you give me a deadline I'll go right up to it.) There is music to study, not the least is the song that inspired this post. There are a couple of critters to tend to and a few errands to run. I have no idea what the day will hold or bring. Knowing what I know, I'll have a few smiles and laughs; I always do, mainly because I've learned to make my own fun.

Still, I wish she was here.

Bad Jazz: Really good stuff from Zeitgeist Stage Company

Finally, something you can sit through for an hour and 45 minutes and not even notice there wasn't an intermission. You want it to keep going and going, at the fever pace it established from the beginning of the play and it kept going throughout the entire play, non-stop, boom, boom, boom, boom, bang, clang--the last two notes because it is all Bad Jazz.

The New England premiere of Bad Jazz opened last week at the Boston Center for the Arts for a three-week run. The structure is a play within a play, always fun for an actor like me to watch, but you don't have to be an actor to enjoy this farce, to laugh at the driven, creative "genius" director, who many times is the only one who has a clue about what he's talking about, if he's talking about anything at all, or shake your head at the obsessive method actress who eventually lives her part as a hooker.

All the actors deftly deliver on Robert Farquhar's snappy, cutting script with it's combination of Mamet-like dialogue, one part humor, one part irony, and one part laser-sharp observation on relationships--Noisy improvisation that start out with structure but break down to make something that can only sound and be called bad jazz.

Especially delightful, though, are Kara Manson playing Natasha and Mac Young playing Danny.

Manson plays Natasha with depth and range, taking her character on a journey that starts with an ended relationship, through the fire of the play she inhabits as a tortured young woman looking for love and coming out empty out the other side. My God, Farquhar must have the same love/hate relationship many people in the theater have for the theater.

Young nails the young male actor we've all seen, talented but clueless to the subtlety and meaning of the script due to inexperience in life and, God knows, just plain naivete, but Danny eventually learns a lot more about life, although he never learns to expertly shoot heroin. His final role in the play is purgatory for all actors.

Michael Steven Costello, as Gavin, the megalomaniacal director makes some interesting choices that are fun to watch. Rather than play it dark and brooding, Costello saunters and dances across the stage as his character stabs and thrusts and feints at the world and theater, as he eventually gets his just reward from Elvis, a minor character played by Zachary Winston with relish. Costello plays it almost, but not quite, cartoon-like, which is masterful and works for the entire play except at the very end, where he meets his end. He just needs to tone it down a bit, that's all.

Becca A. Lewis plays a quirky, twisted sort as Hannah, the playwright. She might have the best line in the play, when Danny demands to know what the play is about, and she tells him she hasn't a clue. Lewis also performs a wonderful counterpart to Hannah as Danielle, the producer of the play.

David J. Miller both director and set designer, maintains his vision, and it's interesting to walk into the theater and have some of the audience actually walk through the set to get to their seats. From the beginning we know it's going to be and in-your-face experience. Again, the actors come out like racehorses out of the gate, and don't let up for a minute.

Special notice, too, goes to Jeff Adelbeg for lighting, creating the proper mood and space from the rehearsal theater to Gavin's apartment late at night.

New Year's celebration: Chintatown

Traveling, to me, is a state of mind. And as much as I want to soon be in a country where the likes of me stands out like a sore thumb, I also believe that, just like Dorothy, sometimes you don't have to look beyond your own backyard. I've felt like that about Boston for so long. I've never done the Freedom Trail (and I hope I die never having done it), have been to the Union Oyster House precisely one time in the 28 years that I've lived here, and avoid Faneuil Hall like the plague, but I'm constantly being delighted and surprised by experiences here that a person would have traveling to a far off city.

I fell in love with Chinatown the first time I ever set foot in its groady streets. I can remember when Chinatown pretty much consisted of a four-block neighborhood. It gives me my much-needed fix for the Far East, and there's nothing I like more than sitting down in a restaurant where I am the only farang. I know it's going to be good if only the locals eat there.

Yesterday the Chinese celebrated their New Year, or at least as much as I know about it, one of the days of their New Year celebration, and yesterday, a glorious day that felt like a heat wave after the bitterness winter has delivered, dragons and drummers and enough gunpowder to blow up all the bad spirits coursed through Chinatown.


I've seen this celebration on many occasions, and I've always felt like a voyeur. This day brings more white people to Chinatown than I usually see there. Sue and I rode the Red Line to South Station and walked over to the Gate. Immediately we were swept up into a crowd following oe of the organizations that go to each business frightening away demons.

It's an amazing display of the spiritual world intersecting the reality-based commercial world. Right now I sit here and smile, thinking of dragons and drummers shouting their way through the ad agency I just worked for. If anywhere needs demons exorcised, it's American business. What if every year we had pounded drums and lit firecrackers on Wall Street? But the belief just isn't there, the belief that a spiritual world sits right there, next to us all the time, we just don't see it. And it interacts with us in a real way on a daily basis.

Lucinda Williams: Side of the Road

I'm a Libra. And something about Libras: We don't like to be alone. I especially don't like to be alone, not since.

But Sue's not here tonight, on a Friday; she's with her mom tonight since it's her birthday and she was operated on yesterday, so Sue drove down to the Cape tonight to be with her, and she's leaving for a couple of days for Mexico next week, so I've got some alone time to deal with.

I thought about calling a buddy to come on over, cook something to eat, have a few drinks, talk like we used to. But then I thought I'd take the time for myself. I was chatting with Allison the other day, and I told her I don't like to be alone anymore, don't like to do things alone anymore, have done enough in my life alone and I've gotten to the point where I want to share the time. You know?

And she got all up on that, she's young and just learning about herself and the world, and she said I should be my own best company, I should do something nice for myself, get dressed up and take myself out to dinner. Yeah, that's something a goat like me is going to do.

I told her I've been by myself so many times even I bore myself.

Anyway, years and years ago, I don't even think I was married yet, the woman who eventually became the mother of my girls had a job where one long weekend a month she'd work from Friday night to Monday morning. I wasn't going to just sit around and pine for her, so I used my T pass to learn Boston, all over. Rode the T from one end to the other. When I was seventeen I traveled all through Europe alone for three months. I've always liked the freedom of traveling alone, not worrying about another person, their likes and dislikes, schedules, and quirks.

And back then, I'd go to parties and movies alone. And I'd read cookbooks and go to place like Haymarket and get ingredients for dinners and that's how I learned to cook.

We got married and unfortunately it all turned into two people leading two separate lives under one roof. I did a lot of things by myself, then, too.

Once--Sue and I were already going out--I went hiking up in the Whites with Bob like we used to. It was supposed to be for a couple of days and we ended up on top of Mount Bondcliff the first night with the sun going down and I threw down my tent up there and one point I looked up and the moon was coming up over the Presidentials in front of me and the sun was setting over over my shoulder over the Franconian Ridge, and I thought to myself, dammnit, I've done this so many times by myself, I'd like Sue to see this. I came home the next day. I just wasn't mentally prepared to be up there alone, although I've done that so many times.

But tonight I just wanted to be alone. And in a funny way, sitting here writing these words I don't feel so alone knowing somebody's going to be reading them soon. That's what I keep harping about, about how we're all connected, so connected we don't even know how connected we are. If we aren't, I ask you, how come I don't feel alone knowing people will read these words and that will connect us? Again, just because you can't see it or explain it logically doesn't mean it doesn't exist or happen. Aristotle and all those logical Greeks didn't know it all, you know.

Anyway, tonight I made something new: Southern okra (as if there's any other kind.) And I intend to read and play a little guitar. Just feel my own skin for awhile. And I feel pretty good. It's nice to be alone with yourself for a short time.

It's also nice knowing Sue will be back tomorrow. That's real nice knowing that.

Lucinda Williams wrote a real nice song about all this. It's called, Side of the Road. Once you hear it, it's all pretty self-explanatory. If it's not, well, I feel sorry for you.




You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
La la la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.

The Airborne Toxic Event: Sometime Around Midnight

Lynne whispered into my ear: Airoborne Toxic Event. They're the next group up.





The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight Lyrics
And it starts, sometime around midnight.
Or at least that’s when you lose yourself
for a minute or two.
As you stand, under the bar lights.
And the band plays some song
about forgetting yourself for a while.
And the piano’s this melancholy soundtrack to her smile.
And that white dress she’s wearing
you haven’t seen her for a while.

But you know, that she’s watching.
She’s laughing, she’s turning.
She’s holding her tonic like a cross*.
The room’s suddenly spinning.
She walks up and asks how you are.
So you can smell her perfume.
You can see her lying naked in your arms.

And so there’s a change, in your emotions.
And all these memories come rushing
like feral waves to your mind.
Of the curl of your bodies,
like two perfect circles entwined.
And you feel hopeless and homeless
and lost in the haze of the wine.

Then she leaves, with someone you don’t know.
But she makes sure you saw her.
She looks right at you and bolts.
As she walks out the door,
your blood boiling
your stomach in ropes.
Oh and when your friends say,
“What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Then you walk, under the streetlights.
And you’re too drunk to notice,
that everyone is staring at you.
You just don’t care what you look like,
the world is falling around you.

You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
You know that she’ll break you in two.