FEEDING MY SOUL

Tired today. Went to sleep early, woke up a few times starting around 4am, and feel pooped. Took my temperature, and it's normal. But of course, the mind races and you wonder.  What would happen if I had it? Would it be like my friend, who indeed did have it but was told to stay home until it got really bad, and somehow made it through? He looked like ass for about a week, have trouble breathing, fever, and all that, but made it through and is now on the mend. We played D&D the other night, killed a bunch of orcs, and all seemed well. So that we cool. But every case is different, or so they say. For most, it's supposed to be mild. For some, deadly. I know life is uncertain, and nothing is permanent besides impermanence, but holy shit, it's a weird world. Anyhow, I'm up, coffee is on, dog has been let out, and I am blogging. This has become the one mainstay. I get up, let out the dog, put on the coffee, and write. I highly recommend it. I have kept a journal for most ofmy life, going back to high school, and every day I write in it is a good day, because I let out some of those half formed thoughts that if left in my brain do not go quietly into that deep night. No, the unexpressed thoughts I think fester, cloud the system, and become one of a long line of "what ever happened to that idea I had"s.  So I write as often as I can. Things with journaling really kicked in when I first read The Artist's Way. Before that, I would be a sporadic journal writer. I'd write every day for a period of time, then go for months without an entry. In the Artist's Way, they call writing in a journal doing your "morning pages", and the author made the point that all you really have to do is get up half an hour earlier than normal and just write whatever pops into your mind. I gave it a shot, it stuck, and here I am.

So, went into a Safeway for the first time in what seems like a year yesterday. It was eerie. The energy was muted, everyone kept their distance, and it was oh so quiet. Made me think of the movie The Mist. For the most part, shelves were stacked, though there were a few prominent empty patches in the produce section. As I rolled the cart around, if I came upon another shopper we'd both stop, make sure of our distance, nod and smile, and move on. We had already hit two other stores, and I had just left Lisa in the line at Trader Joe's, where they were monitoring how many people could go in, so as not to have it too crowded. People were waiting outside, evenly spaced, for their turn. 

And last night, I taught a few classes online. An acting for film class, and a rehearsal for School of Rock. Young people never cease to amaze me. So here and now, so in the moment. In the acting class, we worked on monologues. It was a small class, 3 kids, and went for an hour and a half. Then I had a two hour rehearsal with 24 kids. Yikes. But both sets were amazing, and there is something about focusing on other people, trying to help them figure things out, that energizes me, and keeps me going. It was hard to rehearse, to be sure, but the simple fact of being together, recognizing we are all going a little stir crazy, that we are not along, was a shot in the arm, and needed.

Other than shopping and teaching, I continue to write down memory after memory for a possible screenplay based on my early life. And out of nowhere, one of my oldest friends sends me a text this morning all about a memory he had  today of when we did the Mile Swim at Camp Chawanakee, a rite of passage where, around age 13 or so, you get up before the dawn, make your way to the shores of Shaver Lake high in the Sierra Nevada, and swim for a mile. I can see it clear in my mind's eye- the lake seeming to steam as the rays of the rising sun hit it, our voices carrying across the lake as we laughed and swam, the metal row boat in front of us with a camp counselor in it to make sure we didn't drown, passing Thunderbird Island, which was the mid-point, making it back to the shore, and the great sense of pride as we walked back to our campsite.

I find writing things down about the past easy right now. Of course, putting all these memories into a story is another thing entirely, and I haven't a clue as to how that will work out. But for the moment, it feeds my soul, like this blog does, and like teaching does. And that will suffice.

Here's a song.

https://youtu.be/3PZSpmAKxVY

I AM GONNA MAKE IT

Dreamt of going to school. Elementary School. I went to Strawberry Park Elementary in San Jose, California, long ago and about twenty minutes from the sea. In the dream, it was that school, but looked more Ivy League, less weird 1970s style. When I got to the school, there was confusion as to which classroom I was to go to. One was overcrowded, even though the room was very big. I went to that class first. The teacher was nice but struggling to keep control. He told me he thought I was supposed to go to the classroom next door. So I went there. That room was a little bigger than a broom closet, and was empty.

For some reason, that woke me up. Lisa was asleep. Padfoot was asleep. Just me and the room and that dim light from the windows and electronics that fills a room in the middle of the night.

So. I am still wrapping my head around the fact that there is a virus that has spread across the entire planet, infecting over half a million people and killing so many. Even now, it doesn't seem real. It all feels like a dream. Sometimes, when I am having a particularly bad dream, I will realize that it is indeed a dream, and I will wake myself up. No such luck with this one so far. And the peak has happened yet. I mean, how are we supposed to wrap our heads around estimates like 100,000 to 2000,000 dead just here in America? Large numbers are hard enough to contemplate in happy times.

I think our brains are all processing and changing, adapting to this new reality. How it will change is anybody's guess. Cuomo the other day said some will become better people, some worse. That's probably true. I'm fairly certain our appreciation of the little things by and large will increase dramatically. Also, I think the way we treat each other and the planet will change. The need for universal health care is pretty apparent, and gets more so each day. So does the wonder of nature, which is moving along with no care, shaking off a bit of our mess and showing her glory more and more. Every day, the sky is cleaner, and it seems like there are more birds in our neighborhood. Maybe we just hear them more because the traffic is so much lighter. I don't know. But I like a cleaner planet.

Yesterday, for the first time since this all kicked in, I did a good bit a yard work, mowing both our lawn and the neighbors. Took a few hours, but felt great. Working on the new script, it was nice to have something like that to do, so that my subconscious could kick around ideas without me telling it what to do. And, of course, ideas came. For me, writing is best when I let my subconscious come up with the fun stuff. It's like that idea bubble they make you do in writing classes, or at least the classes I took. You get a blank piece of paper, write down and idea, and then make a bubble around it, and then just let your mind go where it wants, and write down other ideas that somehow relate to the first idea. Free association. Improv. Being in the moment. It is something artists always strive to do, find a way to follow structure and at the same time be in the moment.

I think that's what we are all trying to do now. I come across friends doing their best to deny the moment. To fill their day yelling at the tv, or posting every couple of minutes about how it's a Deep State conspiracy. Or how good their ratings are. There are even some who are still trying to tell toilet paper hoarding jokes. Not too many, though. That, I think, has finally jumped the shark. And while all those things are of course valid things to do, sometimes I get the vibe that some of those folks are not being true to themselves.

No doubt, I am not true to myself all the time either.

No movie to promote today. We watched an Amazon original called The Pale Horse, one of their new Agatha Christie adaptations, and it was great, but I fell asleep early on. Maybe the lawn mowing tired me out. Maybe the whole global pandemic did. Hard to say. I did do a zoom meeting with a bunch of local writers, and that was amazing. We all vented about things, or talked about what we are working on, or what we want to do, and decided that the meeting itself was a great idea and plan to do one each week. For me, writing isn't a problem, even now. What I want to write about has changed, but the act of writing itself helps me. Hence, this blog.

Ok. Time to wrap this one up, then it's off to go shopping for a few essentials. And later today, I do my first bit of teaching/rehearsals. Should be interesting. Will I have a class full and wild, or an empty broom closet?

Here's a song.

BEAUTY AND TERROR

The dreams all ran off this morning. Jumped over the moon while looking for the dish and spoon. And I woke up extra early for no reason. Well, I did go to sleep a little earlier than usual. But only a little. I always feel a bit robbed when I can't remember my dreams. Like a message from my spirit guides got lost in the mail or something. Sometimes, as I wake, I can feel them fading, can remember them for just a moment, and then they're gone. As if they had substance and were physically taken from me. I wonder if there is a cabin out there somewhere, full of forgotten dreams. A country sized cabin, a world, full of me flying and being in old places that aren't really those old places but an amalgamation of other places that only make sense in the dream world.

We watched JoJo Rabbit last night. I've been wanting to see that since I first saw a trailer for it at the Alamo Draft House (my favorite movie theatre). I blew me away. So funny and original and exciting and sad and tragic. That's the kind of film I would like to make. Sort of a farcical magic realism period fable from a modern perspective that's both intelligent and heartfelt. And so damn funny. I think it's streaming now, so if you can, watch it. Fables of courage in times of madness seem like a good idea right now. And it has a fantastic quote in it which I think applies to us all more than ever.

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Speaking of which, it's almost the end of the month. Bills are coming due. Energy, water, phone, internet, cable, credit cards, and mortgage. What are we going to do? I know, the stimulus. And yes, that's a good thing and I'm glad it passed, though I'm not sure yet what all it means other than that one time check. I hear artists might be able to apply for grants. And that there are small business loans at zero rate. I hear lots of things. But what will actually happen? How hard will it be to get these things? What will we all do at the end of next month? I think I heard that we will be in isolation until at least the end of April now. So much for the Easter uprising. I think, as this grinds along, we are going to have to rethink our economic system. Completely.

I remember, shortly after 9/11, standing on the balcony of a friends apartment in NYC, talking about the world, what had just happened, what to expect, and so on. This was right after, when you could still smell the electrical fires from downtown and there were army dudes in the subway stations and it felt for a brief moment like wartime. My girlfriend had just gotten a radical masectomy and was in chemo, and had caught pneumonia after that day of the attacks, being young starving artists we had no insurance, and things looked a bit bleak. My friend conjectured that the world would either go in one of two directions: towards the anarchic dystopia of movies like The Road Warrior, or towards the Utopian world of Star Trek. I think about that conversation a lot these days. I vote for the Star Trek world. We can start by doing the Andrew Yang thing of guaranteed income paired with the Warren/Bernie thing of universal healthcare. Seems like a huge portion of the world would be better off, happier, and healthier- and this would trickle up, down, and all around. I'm sure there would still be problems- Klingons, Tribbles, and such- but we would all be better equipped to deal with them.

So. Another Monday. Only it's not like Monday used to be. Not going back to the grind Monday, no sleeping in Monday, no it's-a-whole-week-until-the-week-end Monday. It's just a day that starts with the Sun rising, the dog needing to be let out, and a world that seems cleaner of late quietly spinning.

Time to explore the inner soul a bit, tend to our garden, and write my story.

Here's a song. It is a bit of a spoiler if you haven't seen JoJo Rabbit. So watch the movie first!

70 SCENES KNOCKING

Woke up in the middle of the night. Maybe 3 or 4. Not sure. Someone was ringing the doorbell, over and over, and it woke me up.  I could see that our motion detector light had gone on for the front porch. The ringing had stopped when I awoke. Whomever was doing the ringing had done so every couple of seconds. I stood there, wondering who it was... a drunk kid? The police? Death? Took me a while, then I remembered we don't have a doorbell.

Dreams last night were a jumble. A room full of spiders. Theatre students asking for help with a scene or monologue. Theatre teachers looking for work, and all of us moving into a tiny apartment for the foreseeable future. There were other dreams, but they vanished like the morning fog, burnt off by the sun.

Last night we watched the movie Ladybird. So good. I'm trying to watch as many coming of age movies because I am working on a coming of age type story. I figure I should watch/read as many of those types of story as I can, see what other folks have done, how they approached it. In Ladybird, scenes are very compact. We are given the essence of each incident, and move on. It was a revelation to me. I have a list of little scenes I want in my movie. I keep note of them in this Bigfoot pocket journal I was given. I get a lot of things related to Sasquatch, have most of my life. I like cryptozoology, my first feature script was about Bigfoot and mythical beasts, and my theatre company is Sasquatch Productions. They all feed the myth of me and Bigfoot. There is even, on that list, a scene where as a boy I watch a documentary about Bigfoot. But I digress. The point is, I have a list of scenes, moments from my life from 1975-1977. I want the list to have at least 70 moments. This is because I read a thing by David Lynch once saying when you are preparing to write a movie, get a bunch of note cards, and write on each one an idea for a scene for your movie. When you have 70, you are good to go. So I'm giving it a try. It seemed, watching Ladybird, that maybe this is what Greta Gerwig did. I read that at one point her screenplay was over 350 pages. Amazing. She must have cut so many bits, so many moments.

Later, we were doing our now daily meditation, and I had a thought hit me like a bolt of lightning right when good old Deepak was giving us the days mantra. A simple thought, true, but it seemed super important at the time. All stories are about love, or the lack thereof. Love of the world, or each other, or that certain someone, or one's art. Or no love, angry and sad people doing angry sad things, all the result of no love. I think might look at each scene in my script and see how that principle applies. Maybe it will make it amazing. Or terrible. We shall see. As soon as the meditation was over, I reached for my notebook and began writing as fast as I could.

Today's agenda: Writing; Walking; Cleaning; Reading; Going Over Stimulus Plan; Games with Ryan and Lauren via Zoom; Movie. Who knows what else. So go find the love in your world.

Here's a song.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS

Dreamt last night about work. One of the places I work at is Reel Kids, a place where we teach TV/Film & Theatre. It's mostly after school classes and week-end sessions, as well as summer camps. A lot of the kids are part of different troupes, and it's a big part of their lives. In the dream, we were meeting at a park as part of the new reality. Kids were gathering, and class was about to start, and a parent was dropping off his kid. He was really angry, and venting to another teacher that we had changed our schedule and even cancelled some classes due to the virus. I tried to speak to him, but no matter what I said, his anger only grew. It was one of those dream conversations that seem to go on and on and on. Finally I woke up.

I've been interacting with lots of folks online. As no doubt we all have. Most people are doing what they can. And most people are freaking out. Some complain about the dreaded toilet paper hoarders. Some talk politics. I had one guy this morning sounding the alarms and saying the US was becoming the same as Nazi Germany (no lie) because NYC was saying you can't have large amounts of people in a church. I have vented clouds and clouds of steam about my anger at the current administrations lack of action in a time of crisis. At home, Lisa and I can argue about pretty much anything, and have a couple of times. None of this is shocking, I think. We are in Bizzaro Universe, only not a funny one like in the comic books or Seinfeld. This is a world with terrifying statistics and images on our screens, an army of fear phantoms marching through our collected unconscious, and a constant sense that nobody quite knows how to stop it.

I'm going to try and do less shouting, more listening. When I do speak, I'm going to try to be more positive. Stop arguing about what might happen, and instead respond to what is happening. Easter seems like a million years from now. Right now, I think packed churches is a mistake, and urge everyone to not do that. In the future, who knows. I don't live in the future. I may sound like a cheesy self help book, or that friend who is into wind chimes and ointments and Rumi and Tai Chi. So be it. I need to exit the Panic Room and enter the yoga studio.

I'm not saying I won't lose it, freak out, yell at the tv, PRINT IN ALL CAPS WHEN I'M UPSET, respond to my few Trump following friends with vitriol and bile. I'm sure I will. I'm just going to try and be better about it. (yes, I purposefully used the "be better") Now, today, I'm going to go over the stimulus bill and the new unemployment rules and try to figure out what can be done, so this kinder, gentler Kelly may last only an hour or so. But that's an hour of peace.

Things that have helped: Connecting with friends and family both through email, and even good old phone calls. Those are the best. I called a cousin I hadn't spoken to in years yesterday, and we talked for almost an hour. It was awesome. Meditating. I mentioned before we are doing this Deepak Chopra thing, and it is really calming, energizing, and easy.  Takes all of fifteen minutes. Walking. We get up early and walk for almost an hour, keeping social distancing. We connect with the world, the neighborhood, kids playing, nature. Games via Zoom, Skype, and facetime with friend and family has quickly become a thing in our house, and it rocks. And of course reading all the books I've been meaing to read, finishing all those streaming shows I paused halfway through, and so on. Oh, and podcasts. If you haven't gotten into them yet, this might be the time.

Well, I was going to go on about how the world economy will have to change, how the environment seems to be doing better when we leave it alone, and yada yada yada. But time has run out for today.

More tomorrow. Here's a song.

A CANDY COLORED CLOWN

There's a candy colored clown they call the Sandman.

Two dreams last night, and a lot of tossing and turning. That's what I get for watching the news right before bed. I hadn't in a couple of days, but thought I should. And I'm glad I did. But wow, things are really getting nuts.

So, first dream. A Stephen King type thing. I was a writer, in this small town. Everyone was sort of quirky. And something happened on everyone's computer that took them over. The mayor of the town was in on it. And a group of middle school Salem witch trial re-enacters. It was all leading to a show down with the big bad in a quarry outside of the town. Then I woke up. My dog Padfoot looked at me like he knew I had had a bad dream.

Second dream, another theatre dream. This time, I was directing a version of Hairspray at the Barn Theatre in Michigan. It was n outdoor production with a huge cast, and we were rehearsing the big number "You Can't Stop the Beat", right there on the road. The actual Barn Theatre is on this highway outside of Kalamazoo. It's where I got my Actor's Equity Card long ago. In the dream, the theatre was smack dab in the middle of a typical suburb. The cast was huge. As we ran the number, cars drove by. The kids were exuberant, and the number fantastic. I woke up again after that dream. Padfoot was looking over with approval. Lisa was asleep, and seemed to be having a dream as well.

Morpheus is mighty busy these days.

So, on the news, good old Rachel Maddow, who I like to watch more than any other news analyst because she's smart and compassionate and funny and truly seems to care and not be serving some dark corporate agenda, was filling us in with what is happening, how states are bidding against each other and the federal government for supplies, ventilators, and so on. This drives up the cost. Makes things sit in stockpiles as the bidding wars go on, which loses us precious time. It seems like the Federal system, under our current leadership, is unwilling or unable to take this thing by the reins and do its job. Why? It seems like this will lead to needless suffering and death. If things keep up like this, and people start to die in great numbers, will the system hold? Are we at that point from the beginning of the tv adaptation of The Stand, where a freaked out Ed Harris quotes Yeats?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

I think not. But sometimes, it feels like it. And that keeps me up at night.

What to do, besides get into yet another social media argument? Call you local elected officials. Call your reps. Call your senators. Call the White House. Social Distance. Be alive. Love unconditionally. Rise up, as Hamilton told us to do.

I once wrote a stage version of the Deathly Hallows for young people, and added a funeral for Dobby, with Luna giving a little speech- I know, not in the book. But here is what she said we need to do when things get tough:

LUNA

We go on, Harry. We have to. We could spend all our time
being sad, I suppose. We’ve all seen enough sad days to do that. But I think we need to try and make the sad days stop. To try and find happy times. Times full of love, and hope, and peace. Don’t you?

Ok. Sort of a long one today. Such is life. Here's a song.

CAPTAIN AMERICA CALLING

I dreamt I was Captain American last night. I was in NYC, and it was the NYC from when I lived there in the 1990s, but also NYC right now. Mostly in Manhattan. I got my shield in this building over in midtown, then went to an open call audition at this theatre complex that was sort of like ATA,  but  it had a little cafe. A bunch of actor friends, plus students I have had, were waiting to audition, while a few others we getting ready to go to class at a conservatory. I had reservations about the conservatory, and needed to check it out. Then I walked around town, looking for clues, ran into the Hulk, and got woken up by my dog, who of late has the habit of walking around our room at 4 in the morning.

I've always liked Captain America. Once of the first images that really stuck with me was the cover of a storyline where Cap was dead, and tied to a chimney on a New York rooftop. This was in the early 1970s, at the height of Viet Nam, Watergate, and the whole generation gap thing. It struck a chord when I saw it. I was at the local 7-11, where I went for slurpees and comic books, and there it was. I stared at it for a bit, and thought "that about sums it up".



Where is Captain America now? Do we all need to take up the mantle? It seems like some people are. Doctors and workers at stores, friends and families. Sadly, not at the White House. I think it odd that the leader of our country is so un-inspiring and divisive. Is he more like Chamberlin at the start of World War Two, or Johnson during the Viet Nam, Nixon whenever, or the Red Skull?

There is this twitter feed, called President Supervillain, that might answer that question. Go HERE to see it.

So, yesterday we took a very long walk, our meditation, a 6 minute work out from this article Lisa found on the NYTimes,  made breakfast for our neighbors who are older, in the middle of a move, and in need of some help. When I say we, I mean my wife. I carry things to the neighbors, and if needed act as chef's helper when I can. I read a long chapter in McKee, all about genre and structure,  did a load of laundry, worked on a few online teaching projects (mostly getting set up or trying to figure out how to set up, cleaned the house, read far too many stories on the stimulus bill (which seems more of a distraction than anything else and I think has taken our collective eye of the ball on things like more hospitals, ventilators, masks, etc.), and I can't even remember what else.

Isn't is strange how time has plasticized? Some days are eternal, others flash by at the speed of light.

Well, I think that's all. I do want to say I think it is just beginning, that there seems to be this false sense running around that we have hit the nadir with the shut downs, like this is the worst it will get, being cooped up. But I don't think that is the case. People we love getting sick and dying, grappling with a society that was ill prepared for this, an economy in the tank and massive unemployment, and who knows what else- those are things to come.

But still I have hope. Things have been worse in the history of the world, and will probably be worse again in the future. We just have to do the best we can.

Here is a song that seemed appropriate for today's entry.