MUSE OF FIRE

So it's almost Valentine's, 2003, and I need to submit something to the Fringe.  The deadline is the 14th.   I had a pretty good go at the New York International Fringe Festival last summer with Last Call (added performance, Excellence in Playwriting Award, Publication in Plays and Playwrights 2003, etc.), and lots of people think I should do another one.  I  agree with them.  I really like being called a playwright, and having people read my stuff, and think I've found my life's calling.  I take Errant Muses, my unfinished play from a play writing class I took at SJSU, and dust it off.  Could I make a new play out of this old thing?  Should I?


A lot of it is pretty bad- lots of obvious exposition, two dimensional characters, and cliches.  But there is the germ of a good idea in it, so I start to tinker with it a bit.  I take the idea of two muses who are stuck working with each other but have diametrically opposed ideas of what art is about and keep the first scene, scrap most of the rest.  I make one of the muses female, and change their names from Tom and Dave to Dion (after Dionysos) and Polly (after Apollo).  And the reason I do that is because of the song Hemispheres by Rush, which I listened to a lot when I was about 13.  No lie.  In that song, Dionysos is the God of Chaos, and Apollo is the God of Order.  In the play, Dion is chaotic and loves how art makes him feel alive, while Polly is angry, and wants art to have meaning and purpose and be used to make the world a better place.

I also decide to change the title.  Errant muses just sounded clunky to me.  At the top of the show, Dion is alone in the muses apartment, reciting the prologue from Shakespeare's Henry V, the one that starts with "O, for a muse of fire...".    It hits me clear as a bell- name the play "Muse of Fire".  And so I do.

One of the great satisfactions for me is taking a play and twisting it and turning it and trying to find the magic inside- the stuff that seems to have been written by someone else, or better yet, seems to have not been written at all, but dictated by...what ever it is out there in the void, the infinite waters of mysticism.

The plot of Errant Muses was as follows- the muses are given a job, namely to help a young girl named Anne become a great writer.  She is a drama major at San Jose State University.  The muses have lost the report given to them by their superiors, which has all the details, including exactly what it is they are supposed to do- but fearing retribution, they don't tell anyone they've lost the report, head down to earth, meet the girl, figure out that she needs to fall in love with Will, another drama major.  Hilarity follows, and of course it all ends happily (and yes, I named them Anne and Will after Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare).

Also, I had just read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.  Very cool book, and one I had wanted to read ever since I was a kid and heard that it had influenced George Lucas when he made Star Wars (or as the Philistines call it, Episode 4: A New Hope).  In the book, Cambell outlines the basic hero story found in all cultures.  First, there is the young hero.  He or she gets a call to action, sometimes from a frog who comes out of the infinite waters, then there is a series of trials, then the final battle, where the hero has to sacrifice herself/himself in order to further the greater good.

I decide to incorporate the mono-myth into Muse of Fire.  The hero will have two faces, Dion's and Polly's.  The frog becomes Carlos, a god like being who calls himself the Toad of Infinite Waters.   And I start to get into it.   Writing is funny- you write and write and write some more, and it feels like drudgery, like punishment for wanting to be creative or something.  And then, all of a sudden, and usually un-noticed, you slip into the world of the story, and lose all sense of time and place and just go to that other place- then you look up sometime later, and there's page after page of story, and it's later, and you have no idea what happened and no memory of actually typing anything.

So I'm cruising along with the play, finding new characters and situations almost daily.  My mind is in the world of the play pretty much every waking moment.  I'd be a working a lunch shift at Bryant Park Grill, and in my mind I'm thinking "yes, the director will be named Cassandra- but in reverse, because she's crazy and spouts lunacy but everyone believes her!"  I ride the subway home and watch young lovers, eavesdropping and fishing for dialogue.  I read somewhere that there were nine muses in Greek mythology- so I decide there will be nine actors in the show.   I pretty much throw anything and everything I am experiencing and have experienced into the script.   I get as much done as I can, and send off the application to the Fringe.

And wait for May and notification.

To be continued...

ERRANT MUSES

So I'm posting about all my shows that are on Indie Theater Now- how they came about, their first production, and all that jazz.  My last two blogs were about Last Call, which is part of the 9/11 collection, and was my first full length play.  On the docket, Muse of Fire, which had a long, winding road from initial concept to first production spanning over ten years.  Here goes.

Muse of Fire came about because of a touchy feely exercise I did as part of a play writing class at San Jose State University long ago and far away in the Kingdom of My Youth. For those who weren't theatre majors, let me explain.  In the world of drama, there are many, many exercises you are forced to participate in as part of a class, or play you are cast in- usually it involves laying down, closing your eyes, and listening to some teacher, director, or actor lead you through a sort of meditation, picturing your favorite place, a lover's embrace, butterflies- something like that.  These experiments can take ten, twenty, even thirty minutes.  They are all about getting in touch with the inner-self.  Yummy.   So in this class I was taking, which was taught by the great David Kahn, we had a guest artist for a few weeks, the playwright Sheldon Rosen.  Sheldon is a really cool guy, but he did have a penchant for taking us through some routines that could be described as "new age", "spiritual", or "weird".  Being twenty something at the time, I of course thought of them as weird.   I did them anyway.  Why not?  Maybe, just maybe, something would come of it.  So there I was in class, relaxing, listening to my inner voice, when all of a sudden, I saw as clear as day, two guys having a conversation.  One guy was really angry, they other guy was really kind.  The kind one was talking about how he met Van Gogh one day.  How he had been looking at a self portrait that old Vincent had done, and the painting started talking to him.  The mean one said that was a bunch of crap.

I thought that was kind of cool, so I took the initial scenario found in my head, and started making a scene out of it.  Quickly, the scene became about two muses, arguing about the meaning and purpose of art.  I read it out loud in class, and the response was immediate and quite positive, so I kept on trucking.  One of our final assignments for the class was to write at least one act of a play- so I gave the scene the title "Errant Muses", and tried to make up a full length play.  It took a lot of work, and I wrote a good chunk of that first act the night before it was due.   In hindsight, I was an idiot for most of my college career.  But such is life.  At least I got it done.  Also, at the end of the semester, the play writing class teamed up with a directing class and an acting class, and did presentations of new scenes written, directed, and performed by students.  Two different groups wanted to present my scene with the muses.  I said sure.  Why the Hell not?  On the day of the presentation, something extraordinary happened.  People laughed.  A lot.  They really liked the scene.  It felt pretty friggin' sweet, believe me.

Then I graduated, moved to New York City, and had many adventures being an idiot.  It was something I did quite well. (note photo:  I'm the one with the funky glasses)   At the end of my first foray to the big city, I was broke, lonely, and hadn't gotten one paying acting job- so I came home to California to regroup and try and figure out what to do with my life.

A few years later, I was working at the Western Stage in Salinas, CA, when I got a message from the girl who had directed one of the scenes from my play for the final presentation.   Her husband, an actor, was graduating from CalArts, and wanted to do some scenes from Errant Muses for their showcase.    A showcase is a review of scenes, usually put on by a graduating class for people in the theatre/film industry (agents, casting directors, etc.), done with the hopes that said industry people will like what they see and offer everyone big contracts to come to Hollywood or Broadway or wherever.  Ed Harris was going to emcee the show, and the whole thing sounded pretty cool to me, so of course I said yes.  I tinkered with the scenes a bit, went down to help out during rehearsal, and felt pretty good about where everything was.

Then, I left town before the actual show.   Remember, at this point in my life I was still busy being an idiot.  I mean, why stay and be present at a show where tons of people who could help me find work in my chosen field were going to see something I had written?  That made too much sense.  So I headed back to Salinas.  I put Errant Muses into a binder, and didn't really think about it for almost ten years.

Then, as noted in the previous two posts, I got my act together, wrote Last Call, and realized that what made me more happy than anything else was writing plays.  It was the fall of 2002.  Last Call was being published by NYTE, and then featured in a Best Stage Scenes of 2002, published by Smith & Kraus, and being shopped around to some theatres in Germany by a someone who saw the play and really liked it.  On top of that, I had just been named Graduate of the Last Decade for the School of Humanities by San Jose State University.  I'm fairly certain the success of Last Call had a lot to do with that.

I decided to write a new play, and enter it for FringeNYC 2003.  And the source material would be Errant Muses.

To be continued...

LAST CALL

I was sitting in the Seattle-Tacoma airport, waiting for my flight to Fairbanks, Alaska, on my way to see my father, who was in a coma in the ICU room up there. I was told that I probably wouldn't get there in time. That the end was nigh. I was going anyway. There was a layover of several hours, and with me in the airport were dozens of laughing, singing, teen-age born-again Christians on their way to some outreach camp. They were doing cartwheels, singing folk songs like "If I Had a Hammer", and doing all those things one does when young and saved. Their enthusiasm was starting to get to me. I needed a distraction. I took out the notes on my play Last Call, which was opening at the New York International Fringe Festival in a couple of weeks. I went over the play, making cuts, fixing snippets here and there. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking "my dad is in a coma." I wrote a new scene that had two old friends playing hide and seek in a graveyard. They run into the ghost of another old friend, and talk about how everyone seems to go Elsewhere. My dad is in a coma, and everyone goes Elsewhere. The saved teens started singing Blowin' in the Wind.

I made it to Fairbanks, and somehow my dad woke up. I was standing next to him in the room. He looked around, confused at first. Then saw me. It was weird. It seemed like he was pissed to still be around or something. After lots of doctors coming in and out, checking on this level and that, Dad was able to talk. Barely. He said he was tired, that he didn't have anymore fight. That it was time to go. I made him a list of reasons to stay alive. And to cheer him up, and of course feed my ego, I read him some of my play. At the time it seemed like a good idea. I mean, what else would you want to do after coming out of a coma than listen to someone's new play? Also, I thought that may be he'd want to stick around and see the show. That is, if he ever got out of ICU. For the next week, my two sisters and I cleaned up his cabin, went through his things, and tried to figure out what to do if the big "if" happened. Alaska is a great place to go for contemplating eternity and oblivion. Wide and sparse and forlorn.

And then, Dad started getting a little better. Good enough to be moved down to California and live with my Aunt Bobbie and Uncle Mike. So we cleaned up his smoke infused cabin, and I got on a plane and headed back to New York and the Fringe and the show.

Long and the short of it: the show is in great shape- my brother Jerry, director of the show, has managed to put together an awesome production on a shoestring budget- less, on half a shoestring. And everyone seems to think something is happening. Something unique and not quite nameable. We get Theater for the New City for our space. We tech. We open on a matinee. And this guy named Martin Denton, who runs nytheatre.com, shows up for the first performance.

On that first performance, I learn that I feel like throwing up during my shows. Like throwing up and/or exploding. It's very strange, and I had hoped it was just for the opening, but I have since learned that is pretty much what happens everytime a play I've written gets performed. So there I am, pacing next to the risers, house left. There's about 90 people at the show. And it seems they dig it. A lot. I remember feeling really good. Triumphant, even. Then the review comes out. It's a rave, a pick of the Fringe. It is a surreal experience to get a good review, I think. You read it, read it again. Ask someone else to read it and tell you it's a good review. Read it again.

The show starts to sell out. We add a performance. This is hope theatre's second production ever, and our first in the Fringe. None of us are famous or anything close to it- even in the Indie Theatre world. And here we are, adding a show. Friggin' awesome. The rest of the Fringe run goes fantastic. I still feel like throwing up every performance, but I start to get used to it. The one thing I start to get hooked on is audience reaction- laughter, applause, and best of all, tears. One show, I saw a grown man cry like a baby. That was a good day.

Then, at the closing party for the Fringe, the play wins an Excellence in Playwriting award. And shortly after that, I get contacted by Martin Denton, asking if I'd like to have Last Call published in his anthology series, Plays and Playwrights.

And that's pretty much the story of Last Call.

As for my dad, he never got to see it on stage. I did get to tell him it was going to be published. It was close to Thanksgiving, and I was home in California. Dad was sitting in Aunt Bobbie's kitchen, and when I told him, he asked me how it felt to be a success. A nice thing to have your father ask you. He died shortly after New Year's.

INDIE THEATER NOW

Wheels are turning, winds are changing, and something new is coming to a computer near you- Indie Theater Now. It's basically a digital library of plays, put together by the good folks at nytheatre.com, and it will launch with a collection of over a hundred plays from the past 15 years of the New York International Fringe Festival. And I have the great honor of being part of it.

That's right, you heard correctly.

Me, goon among goons and freak among freaks is going to be part of the latest, coolest, cutting edge thing in the world of theatrical publishing.

What plays of mine will be part of this, you ask?

Last Call, Muse of Fire, and Some Unfortunate Hour.

And I have decided to give a little background on each play. What the hell.

So, first off, let me tell you about Last Call, my first full length play and probably the reason I am still writing. Back in the late 1990's, as I wandered Manhattan, lost, young, brilliant, and stupid, I one day had this idea for a scene. It sort of just popped into my head. I was down at the old Expanded Arts theatre space on Ludlow, standing next to my old friend Joe Neisen, and suddenly I saw a bunch of old buddies sitting in a particular bar I used to frequent in Salinas, CA- and I had to write down what was going on, so I cancelled that nights plan of debauchery and headed home to write up whatever it was that I saw in my head.

It was weird, but I felt compelled. So, I wrote this scene where a bunch of dudes who are sort of stuck in a rut sit around in the bar they always go to, having the same conversations they have every night, when into the bar walks their old pal David, who long ago went off to New York. He has come home to wake everyone up after having an existential crisis and coming out of it with a new found sense of life.

I know, not very original, but hey, when the iron strikes, or whatever that metaphor is, etc.

So I had a scene, and I liked it. At this point, I hadn't really written a lot- I was an actor, and writing was cool, but not what I was trying to do with my life. Although whenever I had written things, people were always pretty responsive. In fact, a few years before writing that scene, Taft Miller, one of the coolest people I ever knew in my life, said to me as he lay dying in a hospital, "Keep writing". So, I had written something. Now what? I gave a copy of it to my friend Lisa Zambetti, who at the time was working with the Turnip Theatre group, and the next thing I knew, there was a staged reading of the scene- which had grown into a one act play. The reading was great, we all had a wonderful time, and as soon as it was over, I put the play into a drawer and got on with my pursuit of lunacy on the stages of New York.

Then life got complicated, and strange, and sad, and rough. I quit drinking. My girl friend got cancer. And then 9/11 happened. Things pretty much sucked. And to top it all off, we didn't have any insurance and suddenly had a lot of bills to pay. So I took a second job on top of waiting tables, answering phones on the trading floor of J.P. Morgan. I'd get up at 5 every morning, take the subway to work, and on the week-ends work dinners at Bryant Park Grill. The average work week was about sixty hours, and I remember I stopped dreaming for a while. I'd just lay down, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, and so on. It was, to borrow a phrase, the best of times, and the worst of times- I was tired and scared and going nuts, but also supported by friends and family so much that I felt like George Bailey at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life". Minus the angel.

So there I was, working hard, floating through it all, when my pal Jack Halpin tells me one day that I should take that play I was working on and submit it to the Fringe Festival. So I printed up the application at work, printed up what there was of the play, and sent it off. And forgot about it. This was in February, 2002. Then in April, I got a letter from the Fringe saying "good news, you're in!". Which was great, except for the fact that I had said on the application that the play was going to be two acts, and that in act two there was going to be a murder, and one of the characters would turn out to be gay. None of that was true, but I thought it sounded good for the application. Oops.

It was time to get busy, because it looked like I was going to have a play produced in New York. Now, one of the good things about my office job was that for the first hour, I would watch over the phone lines and sit in front of a computer, free to do whatever I wanted. So every morning for an hour, I wrote. And suddenly my little play with 5 characters, all male, became a play with 9 characters, and 3 of them were female. And I started to dream again. In fact, a lot of the play came out of dreams I had. First, I dreamt that one of the characters kept seeing the ghost of his old girl friend. And the guy who saw the ghost was kind of crazy, and slipping in and out of reality. And it all made sense.

Next, hope theatre, inc. - the theatre company formed by my brother and sister and me- held auditions, cast the show, and started rehearsing. And that's when it got really interesting, because I discovered that with some tweaks here and some edits there, plus a few new scenes the show was not terrible. In fact, it felt like something special was happening. It helped to have so many talented people working on it. My brother Jerry was directing, my sister producing, and the cast was: Jack Halpin, Christine Goodman, Vinnie Penna, Brett Christensen, R. Paul Hamilton, J.P. Nord, Matthew Rankin, Masha Sapron, and Sara Thigpen. It was the best feeling, working on that play. It felt like I could fly. We all did. I'd rewrite a scene, bring it in, and it would be better, and we'd all look at each other like we were all part of some wonderful, powerful secret.

Then one night, I arrived at rehearsal after working a dinner shift at the restaurant, and everyone was outside, and Jerry wasn't there. This was back before cell phones were everywhere, and news took a little bit of time to get to people, but it seemed that my father was in a coma, and not expected to live long, and Jerry cancelled rehearsal. So I got a ticket to Alaska, where my Dad was, and wondered what would happen next.

To be continued...

Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition

Let's face it- there's a lot of crazy out there today. Everywhere you look, somebody is yelling or screaming or going off on strange tangents. Fear and anger run rampant. It almost feels like the world is Pamplona, the bulls have just been set loose, and we're all running around, trying not to get killed.

Or, as Shakespeare put it in King John-

But as I travell'd hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.

A lot of the world seems to be strangely fantasied- at least to me. Three prime examples:

Charlie Tiger's Blood Sheen, Glenn Beck, and Moammar Gaddafi. This triumvirate of superwhack point out to me a lot of what can go wrong in the human spirit. Ego, fear, and selfishness in the extreme. And what's weird is the feeling of guilt I experience after I laugh at them. Because I do laugh- it's kind of hard not to when they say and do so many insane things. Bi-winning? Dressing up like a Nazi for your book cover? Ordering your people to dance in the middle of a bloody uprising? That's some funny shit. Sadly, these folks aren't characters on the latest sit-com. If they were, I'd be dvr-ing them and wasting a lot of time watching them over and over. But no, these are human beings, doing bad things, with tragic results. They have families and friends who worry about them. Children who are going to need a lot of help. And beyond their personal lives, there is the effect they have on the world. Who knows how many folks will "get their Sheen on" tonight and get incredibly high, to the point of doing harm to themselves and/or others? How many people will act against their own self interest and support their corporate overlords based on the insane- and untrue- rants of Mr. Beck? How many people will die today due to Gaddafi's mad egotism/despotism?

It makes me sad.

But I do find hope out there as well. I look at the people throughout Northern Africa and the Middle-East who are rising up, facing any and all kinds of danger, to say they want a better world. I look at the people of Wisconsin, who are sticking up for their rights and their dignity against a very well funded GOP set of goons. I remember that this is also the world that gave us The Beatles and Mozart and Free Will Astrology and, and words like groovy and fantasied.

However horrible things get, I still dig this world. I remember once, in college, I saw a holocaust survivor speak. The man was amazing. Here was someone who had seen the very worst of humanity, endured torture and cruelty that I can't even really imagine- and yet he found life worth living. He found hope, and love, and purpose. I spoke with him after his speech. I wanted to hear more of what he had to say. And also tell him how sad I always felt when considering the horrors of the world, how confused and guilty for having a much easier life than he did. And he said "If I met a woman who had been raped, I could not feel the pain she did, but I could hold her hand".

Amazing.

So, that's where I'm at today. People suck, and people rock- and life is beautiful, and worth it.

2012

Is it the end of the world as we know it? And do I feel fine? Do you? Does anyone? I have been watching a lot of shows on the cable about the Mayan calendar, end of days, and all that- and I sometimes wonder: What if the world does end in 2012? What does that mean to me, right here and now?

Well, first off- I think that would suck, because even if I got a script sold and a movie was made from it and I won an Oscar- I'd only have a year or less to enjoy the good life- the money, the accolades, the travel. You know, all that stuff we all think about when we buy that lottery ticket. Wouldn't it suck to finally have that dream come true, just

in time to look up and see a massive tidal wave crashing over the Rockies? Or a fleet of invading ships from Planet X? I mean it- the end of the world would really be a drag for my personal goals.

So, I think, on top of writing every day, sending out query letters, entering contests for writers, and all that- I am going to try and do something for myself everyday. As if it's the last day of my life.

For instance- there's this crazy lady who wanders my neighborhood with her little dog. She's nice enough, I suppose, but doesn't seem to be able to stop talking, ever. I don't really know what she talks about, because the moment she begins to speak, my mind sort of numbs out, my eyes glaze over, and I just smile and try to appear like I'm actually listening to her. This can go on for five, ten minutes- maybe longer sometimes. (it's hard to tell, as time loses all meaning when stuck in conversation with her) Well, that's time wasted. Time that could, and should, and will be better spent. There's a worldwide apocalypse coming, for crying out loud. I can't listen to the latest adventures of Fluffy the dog who really needs a bath. So, next time she approaches me, I'm going to say "Shut up, crazy dog lady!" Hmmm. Okay, that's a little too harsh. I know, I'll say "If you don't have a point to speaking, I shan't listen." No, too snooty. Alright, I've got it. Next time our paths cross, I'll just turn around, and briskly trot off in the other direction. Subtle, yet clear. Perfect.

Also, and this is from something I saw on the tv show- I have decided that from now on, whenever I am flying anywhere, when it comes time for me to be patted down or x-rayed or whatever it is, I'm just going to go ahead and get naked. Why not? Along with making it easier for everyone involved, it's fun. There was a time in my life where I got naked in public quite a lot. I stopped when it went from being a spur of the moment type of thing into an institutionalized thing. Well, time for the skin to come back. Be ready, fellow travelers. In fact, I urge you all to do the same. I think, somehow, everyone getting naked more often will make the world a more harmonious, kinder place.

And while I'm on this whole make my life better before it's over kick, I think I shall be brutally honest with people. Like the next time I'm at some fast food joint, and I get that thousand miles away stare from the person behind the counter, I'll just tell them "you need to get out of this hell hole and do something else- anything else- with your life. Hell, rob banks if you have to- don't shoot anyone or anything like that, just take the money from those banker bastards and go to Rio or something. Alright, scratch the bank robbing thing- become a cat burglar. It's safer and sounds cooler. And speaking of banks, from now on, whenever I go to one, I shall inform the tellers that they work for devils, and if I see any real bankers there, I'll either flip them the bird or at least give them a very mean look.

And one more thing. I will no longer read the results of any polls. I mean, who cares what thousands of other people think? Do I know these people? How many of those thousands polled are either crazy dog ladies, or bankers, or non- streaking bankers? Throughout history, there are many, many, many instances of thousands of people getting behind some really stupid ideas. Case in point- is there anyone in the country who doesn't think at least one of the people who got elected in this last cycle is a total jerk off, and that the people who elected said jerk off are themselves massive jerk offs?

Already, I feel better about the approaching doom of civilization.

RIDDLE LOST

Okay. So I've been busy, writing lots of stuff- new short play, new long play, new screenplay-

Busy Busy Busy.

Now it's time to hear feedback. I've decided to put part of new play on blog. See what people think. If they dig it, groovy.

The New play is titled "Riddle Lost". Here is first few pages.

AN OPEN SIDE-SHOW TENT IN THE MIDDLE OF A CARNIVAL MIDWAY. INSIDE, A TABLE WITH A CRYSTAL BALL; OTHER TABLES AND SHELVES ARE FULL OF: ICONS- MYSTICAL, RELIGIOUS, AND CULTURAL; RELICS OF THE OLD WEST; AND ARTIFACTS OF VARIOUS NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES. A PHANTASMAGORIC WILD WEST SHOW ATMOSPHERE FILLS THE ROOM. AGAINST THE BACK WALL IS AN OLD STYLE CIGAR STORE INDIAN. HEL, NORSE GODDESS OF DEATH, SITS AT THE TABLE, HUNCHED OVER A DECK OF TAROT CARDS. A LONG BLACK VEIL COVERS HER FACE. SUDDENLY, SHE SITS UP. JEFFERSON RIDDLE ENTERS.

RIDDLE

Excuse me, miss?

Hel does not move. Riddle politely waits for her to answer.

RIDDLE (cont’d)

Hello?

He looks around the room, pokes his head out of the tent, then back inside.

RIDDLE (cont’d)

Could you tell me-

Hel raises her hand to silence him.

HEL

Who are you?

RIDDLE

I’m...I’m Riddle.

HEL

Riddle?

RIDDLE

My name-

HEL

Your name is a riddle?

RIDDLE

No- my name is Riddle.

HEL

Am I’m supposed to figure it out?

RIDDLE

Figure what out?

HEL

Your name.

RIDDLE

My name?

HEL

You’ve come here seeking answers, no?

RIDDLE

No. Yes. I’m not sure.

Hel places a Tarot card on the table.

HEL

You lie.

RIDDLE

No.

HEL

You say you’re a riddle.

RIDDLE

I come from a long line of Riddles.

HEL

Don’t we all?

RIDDLE

My father was a Riddle-

HEL

My father is the King of Riddles.

RIDDLE

Look, Miss...I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.

HEL

I didn’t throw it.

Hel stands, slowly walks to Riddle, until she is standing right before him. She sniffs the air.

RIDDLE

Miss?

HEL

Silence!

Hel takes Riddles hands, smells them, then drops them.

HEL (cont’d)

Hel.

RIDDLE

I apologize if I’ve upset you.

HEL

I am not upset. I am Hel, Queen of the Dead. And you are?

RIDDLE

I told you- I’m Riddle. Jeff C. Riddle. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I wrote a book once.

Hel reaches out and begins to feel the top of Riddles head.

RIDDLE (cont’d)

What are you-

HEL

You hope I will show you clearly what has become clouded with time.

RIDDLE

No. Could you tell me where I am? Last thing I remember I was in my car-

HEL

You seek a boy and a man and a legend and a body.

RIDDLE

I do?

HEL

You don’t know what you want.

Hel slowly lifts her veil, looks directly into Riddles eyes.

HEL (cont’d)

You don’t even know you’re dead.

RIDDLE

I’m dead?

HEL

Tell me- in that last memory- the one of you in the car- do you remember anything else? Like a truck coming at you with great velocity?

RIDDLE

Truck?

HEL

Yes, truck. Riddle me this- when a truck hits a car head on, what usually happens to the man in the car?

RIDDLE

So you’re saying I’m dead?

HEL

Look into my eyes.

Riddle looks into her eyes, shivers, backs away.

RIDDLE

What’s...what’s happening?

Hel walks towards him, their eyes locked.

HEL

Don’t you know?

RIDDLE

Are you hypnotising me?

With effort, Riddle looks away. Hel reaches out, turns his face back to her.

HEL

I’m measuring the thread of your soul.

RIDDLE

If I’m dead, why don’t I feel any different than I did before?

HEL

How did you feel before?

RIDDLE

Hard to describe.

HEL

Try. Tell me what your life was like.

RIDDLE

Sometimes good. Sometimes...not.

Hel sees something in his eyes.

HEL

The Everytime...what’s that?

RIDDLE

How do you know about the Everytime?

HEL

Tell me.

RIDDLE

Oh, well- the Everytime is...was...it’s just a theory I had. Have. About life, memory, things like that. Every now and then, all my memories sort of just happen again. All at the same time. Like a tule fog made of memory and time.

HEL

The Everytime?

RIDDLE

Yes.

HEL

Tell me about the tule fog.

RIDDLE

It’s a really thick fog that hits from out of nowhere- we had it a lot where I grew up.

HEL

Where was that?

RIDDLE

Lost River.

HEL

A river was lost?

RIDDLE

No. Well...actually, I suppose you could say that. Yes.

HEL

More.

RIDDLE

Sometimes- often when whiskey is involved- I get sort of...I don’t know...like I become part of my memories, part of that fog. Lost in the Everytime. And it always feels like it’s supposed to mean something- but I can never figure...never quite stitch all the moments together. I thought that after I wrote my book I might have... but even that wasn’t- I don’t know. What was your question again?

HEL

What was your life like?

RIDDLE

Confusing.

HEL

It wasn’t always like that.

RIDDLE

No.

Hel turns and goes back to the table and sits.

HEL

Let us gaze into the past.

RIDDLE

Is this some kind of side show or something?

HEL

Sit.

Riddle goes to the table and sits. Hel looks at the crystal ball.

HEL (cont’d)

Now, why don’t you tell me what your name used to be.

So, is that goofy, or should I post more?