Some rather important and personal thoughts

I was raised well and had all the necessities: love, good food and water, someone to teach me, and friends. I am incredibly lucky just to have those things in the first place. I can’t think of a time I didn’t have enough of everything I needed.

These things are all wonderful. But having them all puts you in great danger of taking these things for granted and not appreciating that not everyone has them, which leads to overvaluing them. Thanks to my teaching I believe I have avoided most of that.

Despite all the things I have, I like anything else in the world am faced with difficulties. I became so concerned with right and wrong that I sacrificed taking good care of myself at times, in order to do what I thought was just in a given situation. I had a great fear of sin (a religious word for making a mistake. In religion, connected to the “black” side of the religious black and white thinking) I overcorrected to care only about others, and to have little love for myself, hoping to be perfect when in fact that was impossible. It has taken me a long time but I feel I have learned to a large extent to accept my sinfulness and still love myself regardless.

My path led me down an unfortunately dark road wherein I gave up to a large extent my spirituality, whittling it down from an overwhelming piety to a hidden sense of faith. I need to return to that faith, and with every minute I find myself nearing the point where I can find it again, and build on it... it is something that is missing in my life to a large extent. The fact is, I want to have the amount of faith in God that I had before, because it gave me strength. But I know that this is not to be found again easily. They say that anything easily gained is probably not that much worth having, and I believe this. A faith easily gained is a faith easily lost. And just like a car, your faith will lose its usefulness if not maintained.

I feel strongly that I have insight. And that it is close to useless if not shared, if not spread. My whole life I am looking for how to spread this insight. Like a peach left too long on the vine, I feel it rotting inside of me. But it is not on the branch anymore, I am old enough and it has been picked, but am afraid to lose it, I am afraid to give it for fear of losing control of it. I hide it inside me as if inside a refrigerator (hoping it won’t spoil) and I seldom look at it, remembering only how it looked when I first held it. Weakly, I pray that my abuse of holding this gem will harm few, reassuring myself that others must carry it as well, and will spread it regardless. I sometimes wallow in self-pity at my inaction. But sometimes I spur myself to action, and what spurs me to action is my faith. In a lot of ways I think it is a miracle that I even have insight, and a miracle that I still see it. But it will be a sin to have it die inside without having been shared.

The worst thing of all is that nobody sees it but me. Just as it ripened, I saw it on the vine, taking shape, sublime in its beauty, fertilized by the bounty that surrounded me in my life, fueled by the sun’s rays, which in this metaphor are God’s love. And I reached out to it and it overwhelmed me, and I was afraid. But, there was nothing for anyone else to see! I hid it inside me because I was afraid of it. Eventually my sin tore it from my grasp, fear taking me over. Without it, I no longer obsessed over it, and I learned to do as the outside world indicated, and I reconstructed myself with the professional and gracious help of those who love me, and everyone around me. And I forgave myself for not sharing it, because my life was out of my control.

Now I have taken my life and put it back together. Now I am whole again, and my life will go on.

My writing is pretentious and I doubt that it will speak to anyone clearly without more work. I seldom write anything except when I am moved to do so, but (check out this metaphor) the battle will not be won if you wait for the enemy to come before beginning to sharpen the blade.

Battle metaphors are old, and I don’t really like them that much because the rely on a knowledge of war to have their meaning. However, this applies to any metaphor really, if you aren’t familiar with the context, the metaphor is useless.

This is why the truly useful creations connect to things that exist for longer amounts of time. Shakespeare wrote in sounds that communicate pretty much exactly the way they did four hundred years ago, because we speak pretty much the same language now. That kind of expression, the spoken word, is very visceral, so it moves the audience very well. This is not to say that a foreign-language production of Macbeth will have no meaning, because there is more to a play than the sounds of the words that are spoken (that makes sense in my head, I swear!) A story, that is, a series of events that occur, is a universal language, because all human beings’ experience is made up of events that occur one after another.

In a lot of ways I wish that art was more like science, that it was easier to measure. When I think of art and feelings, what I write often comes out like sweeping generalizations. 

Useful art

pictures for sad children

Here is what I read that prompted this post: 101 and the next three comics after it

Artists have always been looking for ways to make art that will convince people to do better things with their lives.

The inherent problem here is that the "better things" they're doing are usually NOT buying and experiencing more art. 


If the main thing someone does in their life is consume goods and entertainment, is that bad?


Is art at its best only a distraction? Is escapism at a large scale unhealthy for a society? If so what is the cure? 


Bertolt Brecht saw theatre as a tool for social change, and thought that by removing the audience from the story, effectively lessening the audience's escapism, would mean that they would be more likely to act once their minds were changed by watching the play.


Art has so many facets to it, I find it hard to believe that the best art can be is distraction or commentary. Culture helps propagate wisdom, and I believe this is an important task. 


Suddenly I think of the movie Fight Club and the message that I think it carries: as society distances itself from things that have visceral meaning, it puts many people in danger of great unhappiness.  

Spielberg cancelled video game "LMNO"

I freaking love reading this article. So interesting.

If you don't want to take the time, or if the article is no longer up, it's about an ambitious video game project that was in development between EA and Steven Speilberg, that as of now is cancelled.

Especially on page 3: the aspect of the project that would be a two to three hour experience, but extremely replayable with hundreds of different things that could happen depending on the player's choices.

Not only would this model more better fit "a mature, adult media consumption habit," it resembles the experience of watching a film a lot more closely.

Most films are over quickly, but can be re-watched. Often people notice different things in the repeated viewings. Some people re-watch films over and over and over again, and if they're good films, they can mean different things as the person's life changes. In a sense, the EA/Spielberg video game idea is simply expanding the role of the viewer from choosing what to look at and pay attention to in the film, to actually being able to control what characters in the film do. In this way it has more in common with Dragon's Lair, than say, Starcraft. Starcraft has more in common with Monopoly than with a feature film.

And I'm sure there's a Starcraft version of Monopoly, but that's beside the point. 

This seems really exciting to me, as someone who loves telling stories and believes in the power of stories. Imagine if instead of simply relating to the main character of a film through empathy, you could see what he/she sees, and relate directly to what he/she relates to! It's like the difference between watching a home video of someone's trip to Spain and actually GOING there yourself!

I think video games are the natural response to the thought that I think everyone has had: "I want to be the one piloting the time machine/kissing the prince/solving the crime." I know I had that thought.

I have always liked video games, even though they have been problems in my life from time to time. I overplay them sometimes, and sometimes I get pretty pissed off. Which isn't good.

But regardless, video games provide the visual and auditory stimulation of a blockbuster film, with the personal connection of, like, playing chess. For someone as sensitive as I am, it's very tempting. And rewarding.

However, unlike a film, the story must be advanced by your own action, and sometimes, skill. If you don't beat the level, you can't see the cutscene. This is frustrating if you don't have quite the skill needed to move it along at a good pace.

Video games are a hybrid art, and I implied above. They can be so many things.

I think video games are art because they are a tool to create an experience in another person. Like music is to be heard, painting is to be seen, film is to be watched, video games are to be played.

What sets them aside from some other forms is the large amount that the one experiencing it has in determining what the experience is like.

side note:
If you're not familiar, Roger Ebert has had some comments about video games as art. Reading what he has to say is interesting.

However, there is a key aspect to video games that is much less like a work of art: the "game" part.

I'm going to use a semi-useful scale I just made up: Video games are like a combination between Monopoly and Jurassic Park. One is based mainly on human interaction, the other on passive experience. Most video games (heck, even tabletop games) are a combination of these two things, and fall somewhere on this line, depending on how much of each type of experience are present.

          Monopoly <------------------------------------------------------>Jurassic Park
      (mainly interactive)                                                           (mainly passive)
    almost totally about gameplay                                  almost totally about story

The closer to the left of the scale, the less a game is like art, because the large majority of the experience is determined by the "experiencers." The closer to the right of the scale, the opposite is true, because only a minute part of the experience of watching Jurassic Park is determined by the "experiencers."

I'm getting tired so I'm going to stop here. I get a little spastic when I feel like I have a good idea.

Mental Masturbation

I have so much energy right now!

I'm twenty-three, which I guess could be the physical and mental prime of my life.

Sometimes I feel like I could do more than I'm doing right now. Sometimes I feel like I could be winning awards and hob-nobbing with the famous people.

this is what they do in their free time, right?

Usually the prospect of this happening is so overwhelming to me emotionally that I block it out. But I can't do that anymore.

In my past I have had some difficulties. Some of you are aware of them, aware of their nature, and I'd like to explain them in more detail here but for the moment I'll put it off. Because the point I'm trying to make has to do with the fact that they kind of taught me to limit my expectations for myself. To get used to not excelling.
Subtext (I have high expectations for myself)

I was pissed off at it at first. And I slammed myself against the barriers that were forming in front of me, to no avail. Smart action is superior to intense action in this case, and it's something I learned over and over again. It was like being in the Winchester Mystery House, and having a general sense of where I should be, but without a map of the "house" I just kept running into dead ends.

The "intense" action in this metaphor would be banging on the walls with my fists and feet, knowing that just in the other room, just six inches away, was something that I needed, something I could use, something helpful. The "smart" action in this metaphor would be consulting a source of information regarding the layout of the house.

No matter how hard you try, thoughts will only get you so far.

Anyways here I am typing again. I talked to a guy the other night at a bar who said he was into "Making things," engineering, that kind of thing. He said he wasn't into "mental masturbation."

I'm into mental masturbation, I thought to myself. (you're reading it)

I kept talking to him and he said he was "lost." He said he was "drifting." He retired two years ago, and earlier this year, his mother, who he said was his best friend, passed away. So now he's going through the paperwork associated with the legal proceedings of this event. Never been married. Never had kids. Loves the woods.

A painting by Thomas Hill 

He goes up into the Sierras by himself for twelve, thirteen days, and fly fishes. No bullshit up there, he says, it's all so real. I told him that I sort of knew what he meant. Because I did. He said that a true friend is someone who never asks for help from you or expects help from you. A true friend leaves you the fuck alone.

I told him about the play I saw last week. I told him how it moved me. And I said with conviction, that's what I'm meant to do; I move people in that way, I make them feel how I felt during that play.

He said I'm lucky to know that clearly, at twenty-three, what it is I want to do during my life.

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

All right! So if I wait any longer to write SOMETHING I think I will have been negligent.

Rehearsals are going well for Picasso at the Lapin Agile at Annex Theatreworks in Concord, CA where I am playing Albert Einstein. It's really been a blast to work with everyone. Tonight went especially well I think.

I notice that I look people in the eye more often onstage than I do in real life. Or at least it seems that way.

I really enjoy the intimacy I can share with the other performers onstage. Not that kind of intimacy, get your head out of the gutter.

Albert Einstein with his first wife, Mileva Maric, who was also a physicist

At first I was having problems playing Albert Einstein, partly because I look up to him so much. It took a while for me to realize that I have to approach him as a human being, with flaws and feelings and hate and fears, not as the ideal that he has come to represent. I mean, his name is a synonym for intelligent, how could I not put him on a pedestal? But the more I learned about him the more I realized that the idea of Albert Einstein is different from the person Albert Einstein. And it's not really that interesting to watch someone portray and idea, it's way more interesting to see someone portray a person. A few things that helped me to bring Dr. Einstein down to a level I could better relate to:

-He was a passionate musician, but not the most talented ever. According to one source I read, he would get really pissed if someone criticized his violin playing.

-He had a rough divorce which separated him from his young son, and letters reveal that he was afraid his ex wife would cause his son to dislike him.

-He was a passionate pacifist in a time of war, committed some "treasonous" acts in the interest of scientific inquiry and pacifism

-His spirituality was not mainstream for the time, even for the present day. He did not see science as incompatible with religion.

-He disagreed with many of the tenets of Quantum Theory, which is generally accepted as accurate to date.

So that's a few things.

I said above that it's more interesting to see someone portray the person Albert Einstein as opposed to the idea of Albert Einstein. But they are deeply connected obviously, and part of what makes seeing a play with Albert Einstein interesting is because it's a way to explore that connection. I didn't mean to isolate him as idea or person. Or somehow imply that he has to be cut down in a sense in order to relate to him.

I think part of what makes the humor in Picasso work is that the character of Einstein does and says some things that one wouldn't quite expect from such a "saint" of scientific thought. In a lot of ways it's a reminder that people like Einstein are just that, people, and when you take someone that is an icon, and specify his actions the way a play like this does, you force a confrontation in the minds of those involved between their ideas of Einstein the Symbol and Einstein the Person. And this will hopefully lead to an inquiry into what makes him an icon, which will in turn lead to a clearer understanding of who he was and what he stood for, and a questioning as to what is admirable about him.

 I think my work falls way short of anything comprehensive or definitive. But it does fill in some details about what kind of a person he was, and I think allows me to act fictionally as him more effectively.

A book I really liked:
Albert Einstein, A Photographic Biography by Kenji Sugimoto (trans. from German by Barbara Harshav)
Schoken Books, Inc. New York: 1989

Some great quotes, even if possibly not authentic.

writing is fun

"WE'VE CREATED A BLOG JUST FOR YOU! CLICK HERE TO START BLOGGING!"

My foray into the blogosphere begins.

Posts here will range from insightful to idiotic, but will always be from my point of view, which is usually oversimplified, naive, and general. Also probably intellectual and a little narcissistic.

Like most arts, there are two parts to writing: ideas and craft, and they affect each other: advances in craft lead to better ideas. Advances in ideas, however, don't necessarily lead to better craft, although they do help the final product.

"If one cannot write, they cannot think." That's pretty cool, even though it puts me at a disadvantage because I'm stronger on the "ideas" side than I am on the "craft" side. But hopefully this blog thing will help me improve.

If you want to write well, you should read good writers. I haven't been doing much reading lately besides the paper, and blogs. Sometimes the SF Chronicle, sometimes Contra Costa Times, and once yesterday, USA TODAY (they had an article on JFK that I thought I should peruse as part of my civic duty to learn history. I was also curious.)

There are some books on a single bookshelf in the room that's not my bedroom. It's mostly theater stuff: plays, books on acting, design textbooks, etc. The other prominent category is therapy: Overcoming Anxiety, OCD handbook, etc. Then there's the outliers: The Guide to Getting it On, "Etiquette for Outlaws" and two Naruto manga (one in Japanese the other in English) BUT! The library is very close to my apartment, which will allow access to countless tomes of varying fictionality and subject matter for me to feast upon. If I ever get off the computer.

There is much more I could say but I want to keep this brief. Maybe someday I'll write something with enough edge to have someone complain about it, but if even at this early stage it is necessary, so be it.

-C