EDINBURGH DAY EIGHT - TIME PASSES, AND THEN AGAIN IT DOESN'T

I might be an amateur horologist. Time, its passage, how things change continually is a manner that is constant, how we all seem to be shocked with another year passes, a child becomes older, a movie we love suddenly is no longer the hot new thing.

It's bizarre, at times a little bittersweet, and just the way it is. 

We went to the big castle yesterday. Wandered ancient streets, walked through prisons, felt strangely young in comparison to our surroundings. Went to Saint Margaret's Chapel up on top, which has a stained glass of St. Columba, the first person to have encountered the Loch Ness Monster. So of course one of my favorite saints. Strangely, the glass doesn't depict Nessie. Well, what can one do?

Saw an old friend yesterday. We were apprentices at the Berkeley Shakespeare Festvial long ago, and fast friends. Later, we were roommates at The Western Stage in Salinas, and worked on, among other things, a nine hour three part adaptation of East of Eden, one of the most intense and glorious shows I have ever been a part of. And we also did some shows with a fledgling company in Berkeley called Central works. Thick as thieves would be a good way to describe how it was.

Then time and life and school and marriage and moves and more moves... you blink your eyes twice, and decades have past, and you haven't spoken in years but keep up on all the socials.

Strange.

And yet, life is nothing is not constantly surprising, ready to give curve ball after curve ball, pretty much always when you think you are past such things.

Lance- my friend from back then, is directing a play called Bad Shakespeare here at the Fringe. In the very building I am doing Banned the Musical in. The very same building another pair of old friends from NYC, Todd and Nicole, are doing The Bronze Boy. (which is fucking great and if you are here you must see)

Coincidence, or fate? Qui sait?

I walk in to the theatre yesterday, and there is my dear friend, last seen in my apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan so long ago I was still drinking. 

Long indeed.

And yet, not a moment has passed. He is still he, I am still I, and we hug and talk like not a moment has gone by.

One of life's "So Anyway" friends. 

Years pass, you don't really talk or see each other, randomly connect, and first think you say is a variation of "so anyway" and you pick up where you left off.

Delicious and magic, this life, isn't it?

The show is a group of college theatre students performing various scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeares villains and not-so-nice-ones.

The theatre is a sauna, but I don't care one bit. It's a walk through pieces I know, some from the days Lance and I were apprentices in the long ago imaginary world called the past.

Then it's time for Banned. 

And we kick the shit out of it. Small house. Very quiet. Very hot. Another reviewer. 

We don't let it get us down. 

We are driving the bus, and on a mission from Dionysus. 

Then it's off to a whiskey tasting at The Lost Close, a really brilliant place under the streets of Edinburgh. I don't drink, so I sit and listen and smell the dram and then hand it to Lisa. She is quite wobbly by the end.

And then it's off to Pleasance Courtyard for late night food, a looooooooong chat with some of the cast about writing and theatre and life. 

And then sleep. 

But I wake early. Like 5 or so. I can't help it. 

Now we are off to see the Gems of Edinburgh. A tour of some sort. But I feel as if my pockets are full of rubies and emeralds already.

Here's a song. It's I Am a Scientist by Guided by Voices. Enjoy. 

MERCURY OUT OF RETROGRADE TOMORROW

I looked it up. Tomorrow, Mercury goes out of retrograde, and moves from Scorpio to Libra. That translates from astrology talk to: Good Times are on the way, Good Vibrations have begun, and the Sun will come out Tomorrow. 

I could feel it in the night. I fell asleep, drifting in and out of consciousness with the TV on to Netflix's new take on Unsolved Mysteries, so my head was full of alien abductions and an unsolved family murder, so my head was full of misery and woe. On top of that, I was, like most of the world, wrapped in anxiety about what might happen tomorrow. Not that I am worried Biden/Harris won't win. I know they will. I am worried about violence in the street. More Trump caravans stirring up more trouble like less sexy versions of Brando's gang in The Wild One, minus the pathos. I'm worried about the Orange One trying to get the military involved. I'm worried people are going to get hurt. I still am. I am certain there will be some blood shed on our streets tomorrow. 

But I am also certain we are going to know we have a new President by sometime late tomorrow night or early Wednesday morning.

I can't explain it, but I feel it in my bones. In my soul. In my stars. 

Yeah. I know. It's magical thinking. And that can get one into trouble. And maybe I'm wrong, and there will be an attempted coup, and we will have to rise up and take democracy back from those who would end our country, and our world, with their wanton ignorance and blatant aggression.

But again, I don't think so. 

We, as a species, are in flux. We are at a crossroads. All of us. And those who sold their soul to the devil for four years in office, or some spiritual equivalent for where they are in their lives, have to pay up. I think, like all deals with the devil, it doesn't work out for them. 

And that is sad. 

I shall weep for those who gnash their teeth, hugging their Trump/Pence flags tightly as they bemoan the loss of what they think is their land but nobody else's. We must be kind to them, yes. But we must not let them slander us, attack us, or steal from us. 

Love is not love if you let those you love act like assholes.

It is time for a new age. For dealing with climate change, and lingering systemic racism, and the virus. For addressing our vast economic inequality problem. To boldly go where no one has gone before. 

So, get out and vote. And cheer. And love.

If you wonder how I got to be the way I am, here are some of those to blame, in no particular order: Jana McCoy, who was the drama teacher at Blackford High; Free Will Astrology and it's creator, Rob Brezny; Duncan Trussell and the Midnight Gospel; Shakespeare; JoAnna Beckson, my Meisner teacher in NYC; The Western Stage and both the 1992 & 1994 productions of East of Eden; Jon Selover; Taft Miller; Pod Save America;  and my very liberal, always encouraging mother.

More influences to follow.

Here is a song. It's Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys. 

NEVERLAND STAY WITH ME

Long ago and far away in a kingdom by the sea, I was a pirate in the service of Captain James Hook. It was glorious. I had many tattoos, a harpoon, and a sense of magic coursing through my veins. This was in a land called The Western Stage, more of a dimension than anything else. A world where we all could fly, cast spells, and dance between the raindrops. I had gotten lost on my travels, and sent out a distress signal to an old friend. He answered, gave me a position on the Jolly Roger, and my fate was set.

For those who don't speak theatre, or Kelly, that means I once was in the musical Peter Pan at a theatre called the Western Stage after my first attempt at being a starving artist in NYC. It was a show that in many ways set the tone, the style, the theme of my life. We leaned into the story. We gave it our all. We came up with idea after idea. Some worked, some didn't. But we all knew we wanted to do something special. And we all had each other's back. We all trusted each other implicitly and completely. We were all part of it. There were over sixty people in the show, and another twenty or so in the crew, and then there was the orchestra, the front of house, the costume shop, the scene shop, and the administration. And we were a family. We were one. We all lived in Neverland.

This is something to strive for. Always. Sometimes I think we should make congress, the Senate, and the White House do a show together. The world would be much better for it.

Here is a video about that show. It's long. It's magic. It's worth it.

THOU MAYEST HOWL

Many, many moons ago I stood on a cliff with friends and howled at the end of summer. We were in Big Sur, and had all worked together at the Western Stage theatre company in Salinas. It was an intense time, in the best sense of the word. One of those times that sort of set the tone for how we would live our lives. I don't think anyone knew going in it would be that. We had simply auditioned for some shows. But life is like that. You walk into a room expecting one thing, and pow, something else happens. The big show we all worked on was a nine hour, three part adaptation of Steinbeck's East of Eden. If you haven't read the book, do. No spoilers here, other than it's beautiful and epic and funny and sad and uplifting. We worked our asses off, day and night. It was pretty much our existence. It filled out off hours, our few days off, our nights spent blowing off steam and talking about the show. And we all blended our souls in the process. We were one. And we were magic.

I think, to a certain degree, we are all going through a similar process right now. Our lives are dominated by one unifying event. It fills out days and nights, our conversations and our dreams. And it is shaping who we will be moving forward. I can, and do, call people I did Eden with, all these years later, and it is like no more than a few days have passed. Because we still have bits and pieces of each other inside of us. There are songs we sang, movies we saw, days at the beach, highs and lows, that attached themselves to our DNA. And isn't that what's happening now? Won't all of us, whether we watched it or not, have a gut reaction whenever the Tiger King is mentioned? Will any of us, ever, for the rest of our lives, look at someone wearing a surgical mask the same way we once did? The entire world has a stamp on it now. A bit of our souls are now infused with this time. And we are part of it too. And we howl. We listen to the Chimes at Midnight. There will be a a name for us, some Gen X or Millenial or Greatest Generation or Lost Generation moniker that will arrive, unbidden, from a surprising source. And it will fit, and that will be that.

One more thing. In East of Eden, there are two things I find relevant to life today. First, the line "life made to look beautiful to the weak and the foolish teaches nothing, cures nothing, and does not allow the heart to soar".  I have always found that to be so, ever since I first heard it. It resonates stronger than ever. Don't believe me? Turn on your television. The other thing is Timshel. It's an old word from the Bible. It means Thou Mayest. Here is the section from the original book. It's part of a conversaation between Samuel Hamilton and Lee, two of the greatest characters ever.

Do you remember when you read us the sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis and we argued about them?” “I do indeed. And that’s a long time ago.” “Ten years nearly,” said Lee. “Well, the story bit deeply into me and I went into it word for word.

The more I thought about the story, the more profound it became to me. Then I compared the translations we have- and they were fairly close. There was only one place that bothered me. The King James version says this- it is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, ‘If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.’ It was the ‘thou shalt’ that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin.”

Do you remember when you read us the sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis and we argued about them?” “I do indeed. And that’s a long time ago.” “Ten years nearly,” said Lee. “Well, the story bit deeply into me and I went into it word for word.

The more I thought about the story, the more profound it became to me. Then I compared the translations we have-and they were fairly close. There was only one place that bothered me. The King James version says this- it is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, ‘If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.’ It was the ‘thou shalt’ that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin.”

We have a choice. We choose how to respond to this crisis. 

Here's a song. It's Rafe Hollister singing Look Down that Lonesome Road.

And here's a bonus link of an interview I took part in about The Western Stage.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Dreamt of a cross country road trip. There was a time I was on the road quite a bit. Something about the open highway, the vastness of the land, the strange glamor of cheap motels and bad gas station food, appealed to me. I drove from NYC to California a lot when I first got out of college, drove from San Jose to Michigan, took a circular trip from Arkansas to Memphis to Chicago to NYC to Missouri to Iowa. Like Johnny Cash sand, I've been everywhere. Or at least it feels like it sometimes. Indeed, one of the seminal events of my life was a road trip I took with two buddies from Salinas to Vegas to Grand Canyon to Telluride to Denver to Columbia MO to the Twin Cities to Chicago to NYC. We just went where the wind blew us. And I remember, clearly howling into the Grand Canyon my joy at being alive. It felt a lot like the 8 pm howls we do nowadays. So last night I dreamt of the road. First, I was at The Western Stage, a theatre I did a lot of work at when I was a young actor. I was seeing a bunch of old friends, who were quarantines at the theatre. One of them was a mom, and she was far away from her children and missing them. Then, somehow, I was given dispensation to not only travel about, but to take a few folks with me. So about five of us loaded up a van and headed north. We drove past lakes and farmland, and then I decided we would go to Mount Shasta, an old volcano in northern California said to be full of mystic energy, and a place I loved when I was a kid. We drove past a town on the Pacific coast that looked a lot like Kansas City, then on to the mountain. The main thing I felt was a connection to everything. To the road, to the things we were seeing, to the stories people were telling me, and the stories I was telling them. I felt present. And that's something I feel all the time now. Present. One thing being shut in has given me is that feeling of being in the moment much more often. I still have flights of fancy where I stay into space, gone on a thought walkabout. But even then, it feels more germane to the here and now. Maybe it's the meditating I've been doing. Or the inability to go anywhere. Or the fear of mortality bringing out the brevity of this life. I don't know. I just know I feel more alive.

Speaking of feeling more alive, I took part in a group Zoom for writers last night. There were about fifteen of us, and we took turns talking about what we are working on, how this is effecting us, what we need, and so on. Several of us mentioned howling. The meeting felt both long and short at the same time. I felt like each person spoke forever, while only using a moment. Time has really gone elastic, hasn't it? That's something that has become quite apparent, now that the veil of busy work has been lifted. Instead of life rushing by, over before you know it, time has slowed, even stopped, and it seems as if I could almost move back and forth in it, like I'm a Time Lord. Yeah, I'm freaking Doctor Who.  Anyway, this Doctor is writing a new screenplay, and it feels so good, so where I want to be, so relevant to what I am feeling and so fun to write. And I'm writing it for myself. And yet, I think it might be the most commercial script I've written. Fact is, every script I've written that's done well has been written for me first. Not for me. For the story itself. When I let the cosmos dictate what should happen, when the story takes a life of its own and goes where it wants to go, be it NYC or Mount Shasta or San Jose circa 1976, that's when the magic happens. So I'm a Magic Time Lord. I'm Doctor Strange Who.

Today I've started getting up at 6 am. Set the alarm and everything. Part of that is because both Lisa and I start teaching during the day again today. Part of it is that it just feels right. I like writing in the morning, and by setting the alarm, I give myself this hour of quiet, making coffee and letting whatever comes out come out. Of course, having set the alarm for six, I woke up at quarter till, and lay there pondering if I should just get up or try for that extra fifteen minutes. I opted to just lay in bed, enjoying the moment.

Not much to rant about  this morning other than the usual: we still need to improve our national response; we need to continue to keep the curve down; our Dear Leader is an incompetent boob who should be thrown out of office immediately; and we need Universal Healthcare. Not shocking, but worth saying every day.

Ok. Here's a song. It's Rodeo, by Aaron Copland. We played this on that seminal cross country trip that started in Salinas.

KEEP WRITING

The best- the only- advice a writers needs. Keep writing. All other ideas, advice, changes, breakthroughs, innovations, edits- the whole enchilada, if you will- only happen when you take that first bit of advice.

Read others people's stuff. Write in a journal. Cut the first two lines and the last two lines of each scene. Make sure the character has a flaw. Keep the pace moving.

Whatever.

Just keep writing. Nothing else really matters.

Even when you don't want to.

Especially when you don't want to.

After you have gone through all your excuses, your other things that must be done- walking the dog, watering the plants, calling that friend you haven't spoken to in years, checking the scores, rearranging the refrigerator.

Keep writing.

After you have read what you've got so far at least fifty times. After you've stared at the screen and gone into a sort of coma and snap out of it not sure where in the story you are, or if it is worth anything to anyone, ever in the history of time.

After you've asked friends, family, strangers, everyone in every social network you belong to and anyone else you can get a hold of to read it.

Keep writing.

Tom Wolfe once wrote that in a copy of Hooking Up for me. "Kelly, Keep Writing, Tom."

Taft Miller, the Teiresias of Salinas, was one of the most amazing people I ever knew. He was an actor, a director, a friend, a mystic- a force of nature who had gone blind shortly after I knew him and was quite ill, but always full of energy and life. He directed me in East of Eden. When I wrote a bunch of screeds about whatever was on my mind and called them "Memos from the Underground" and placed them, anonymously, in people's mail slots at The Western Stage, Taft was the only person who immediately knew it was me. And he dug it, told me to keep it up and asked if I needed any help with printing copies.

I loved Taft.

When I got word he was dying, I called his hospital room. Joyce, his lover and another amazing person I was very lucky to have in my life, got on the phone. She was crying, and Taft couldn't really talk- but I heard him in the background ask her who was on the line. "Kelly", she said. And I heard Taft say "Keep Writing".

Last words he said to me in this world.

Keep writing.

Keep keep keep writing.

Amen and hallelujah and amen again.