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.