The way

it is.

There was a boy... they say he wandered very far... over land and sea.

I want to travel.

Again.

Traveling gains perspective, experience and awakening.  These are apparently, things I want right now.  The last couple of times I've left the country, although amazing experiences in their own right, were very much necessitated and determined by the fact that they were business trips.  Business trips have a strange way of being very... um... business oriented.  Fun, exciting and full of chills and spills however they may be, you can never get over the fact that you are there for a very specific purpose.

To accomplish... something.

Travel, life altering travel, involves a lot more, uselessness.  No hotel reservations, no cab rides from the airport, no "job" to fulfill.  You're just, well, there.  Woken up in the middle of the night by the guy peeing on the floor of your communal bathroom.  Drunk, and figuring out exactly how big vatican city really is, when you have to remember where your bed is.  Discovering that beer costs less than water, and tastes better.  Figuring out that boats do indeed make for much more exciting taxis than cars do.  Knowing how young and naive your own country really is.  And learning just enough in a dozen languages to know where you are, and maybe, where you are going next.

Take it as it comes, leave the rest, never plan out further than you can see.

I miss that.  The immediacy of it.

I have this theory about knowing people.  It involves needing to have three shared experiences with someone else, before you can say you really know them.  You have to travel with them, drink with them, and see them angry.  Oddly enough, taking a trip like the kind I crave right now, will probably involve all those.

I'm thinking, Spain.  Who's in?

My heart's a drummer

I thought I would share the view of my week with you.  I have to say, it is easy to get spoiled working in this profession.  When things like assistants, crew, tech tables, monitors, headsets, and a place to sit down don't exist, this job gets a lot more... complicated.

Don't get me wrong, it's been a blast.  It's just funny to me, when the majority of my job is in the days and weeks spent obsessing over parts of shows that last for seconds, when I spent 45 minutes cueing this show standing backwards on the last row of chairs so I could see/talk to my bored programer (intentional).  Going straight into runs where my head was in a score, calling the cues that I just wrote and still haven't really seen, standing behind a comically large projector shooting translation titles out of the front, and 134º fan blown air out the back, trying to lend a hand to the titles operator when the program she is running to display the translations crashes... again.

But it really has been fun.  Everyone that I am working with is so good at what they do, that putting a show like this one together takes almost nothing.  It just... happens.

So, cheers to my colleagues and compatriots.  May we continue to make things... happen.

It's that time again

Time for Michael to go delving deep into the back log of papers, essays, critiques, and general dribblings that is his evidence of Higher Education.  I will have you know, a lot of time and money were spent in putting that "F" in my B.F.A. and I like to remember, occasionally, the steps I've taken to get... well... here.

That being said, to look at all of this, I'm pretty sure "now me" and "22 year old me" would have some stuff to sort out, were we to have a sit down talk, over drinks.

I mean, wow.

Brief Examples:

I actually started an essay for my "Absurdism in Performance" class with the line, "Citizens of Western Idealism, HEAR ME!".

In an essay for "Western Thought" I described Aristotle's Poetics as "... about as helpful a guidebook for performance and art, as Marxism turned out to be for the Soviets."

Using my newly favored term "Homo Aestheticus" 14 times in a critique describing the modern theater patron. (side note, I still think it's a great book and worth study)

And my personal favorite of this evenings wanderings, in an essay for "Western Thought", describing Aristotle's Poetics as "... about as helpful a guidebook for performance and art, as Marxism turned out to be for the Soviets."

Really?

It is legit fascinating to look over works, deeds, and catalogues of an older version of yourself.  To trace back thoughts, emotions, ideas to a less articulate / more passionate state.

I think it would be truly neat to be able to have that sit down talk, over drinks, with myself.  Just leaving home for the first time, getting into this field of art and performance for the first time, and accepting for the first time that I don't have a clue.  But in the same breath, settling in with the knowledge that I am really not that far removed from that person.  At all.

The only real difference is time spent living, and the interactions of other people...

Hmm.

In other news, the show I've been working on opens Friday / closes Saturday.  Company holiday party tomorrow night (no obscenely loud Karaoke this year... lame).  And wrapping up prep for the Winter shows.

Next time, maybe we can explore some of my pre-18 poetry together...

Get out the eyeliner and the fishnets.

How does one

break the cycle of familiarity and complacency?

Honestly, I'm all ears.

So, quick story.  I say (often, and to the disapproving eye rolls of my room-mate/office-mate/life-partner) that I do not enjoy musicals.  That may not be entirely true.  In fact, there are quite a few musicals that I get a lot of joy-ish listening to.  One of them in-particular has been on my mind a lot lately.

Actually one song, of one of them, has a context that has been robbing me of sleep and general well being.

"What do you get?"

You see, world, I've been thinking a lot about relationships: close distance, long distance, casual, friendly, sexual, confusing, amazing, frustrating, life changing, what we get from them, and what we give to them.

"Someone to crowd you with love."

I think I have come to a point of realization, that the answer to the question that titles this entry, isn't found within yourself.  We lack the perspective on ourselves to radically and powerfully better/change ourselves in any kind of permanent capacity.

"Someone to force you to care."

That's why we entangle ourselves in another's life.  We grow, they grow, and if you are really lucky, you both grow in the same direction, and are able to continue to give that needed perspective throughout a changing, maturing, surprising life.

"Someone to make you come through, who'll always be there..."

But I guess that's what we want in the end, a companion.  In the truest sense.  A pair, intended to compliment or match each other.

"... As frightened as you, of being alive."

So here's to musicals that make you think.  Or rather, here's to created works that make you realize that everyone thinks the same things.

Wow

So I officially lasted with this "Post Blog Every Day" business for about 4 days.  Maybe I should rename this little challenge "Post Blog Most Days Unless It's Not Convenient, Or I Am Too Sleepy".

So today started the week of "Showcase" here in beautiful Midtown Houston.

I could take this opportunity to bitch and moan, but that's tiresome and uninteresting.  To sum up, I was able to clearly hear the voice of my Father, telling me all day long that it's "all in the details, Michael".

Joyous.

I am constantly surprised by how much I overlook, forget about, or simply don't deal with when it comes to life, and specifically my profession.  Time, money, and people do a great job of providing a buffer for those "oops" moments.  Needless to say, this particular production is in short supply of all of those categories.  But hey, it's up, it's working (ish) and and we are ready to spring tomorrow morning and write some cues.  Assuming I can get the correct templates installed in the moving lights.  This time.

Honestly.

I think sleeping well would alleviate a good deal of the aforementioned "oops" moments.  Waking up in the morning feeling less tired than I did when I went to sleep would be great.  Any suggestions?

More to come on "Showcase" as it develops.

Until next time, as long as it's convenient and I am not too sleepy.

Snow

I woke up this morning in an honest to goodness wintery landscape.

-ish.

I guess as wintery a landscape as I have seen in recent memory.  White slushy snow, grey skies, and scores of nervous Houstonians wearing new ankle length North Face down jackets, purchased at great expense for THIS day.

It was just earlier this week that I was reminiscing with a colleague about how I have never experienced that famed "white christmas" that Crosby sang to heartily about.  My Christmas traditions consist of morning walks down to the beach and along the breakwater or to the end of the wharf to peer into the vast infinity of the pacific.  Maybe a game of croquet.  A drive up PCH/101.  In short, mostly things that would be hindered by freezing temperatures, snow, and ice.

I find that I really like the concept of the "white christmas", I have just never ventured to experience one for myself.

I am reminded that every Christmas I've experienced until this point, every tradition, every meal and morsel, every moment sitting on the floor of that house, figuring out which color room I will be sleeping in, every breakfast around that iconic breakfast nook, has passed from expectation into memory.

Don't get me wrong, I don't invalidate all of those experiences, even in the slightest.  I am just acknowledging that with the passing of that amazing women, there's not a lot that I hold true (about family, holidays, and traditions) that hasn't changed, or been replaced completely.

But that is the way of life I suppose.  It's up to those of us remaining, and yet to be born, to make the conscious choice whether to continue on with what has been, or to breach into something new, and yet undiscovered.

Either way, it's going to be a very different Christmas.  And that's alright by me.

::I realize that most of this makes absolutely no sense without the back story.  But I think you get the point::

I might have missed a day

It's true...

It's after midnight and I have not posted anything for my Thursday Dec 3.

To be fair, I had actually written something earlier, but it was gloomy and doomy and boring... nobody wants to read (more) of that here.

So here goes version 2.0.

This seems to be the week of meetings.  I've had meetings to plan having meetings.  And at meetings, we've talked about how we should talk at the end of the meeting about some things or other.

It's out of hand.

I had a (really) early production meeting at Rice about a show next year...  the scale of things amaze me.  From playing in a "pit" orchestra in High School, to running shows at Moorpark, to designing and other at NCSA, to Santa Fe, to HGO... things just keep getting bigger.

Literally.

The spaces get bigger, the money flows faster, the inventory gets ridiculous.  The theater I walked around at Rice could fit snugly inside one of our rehearsal halls downtown... but that makes the work no less valid.  It makes the hours spent there no less important.  It makes the artists that tread there no less talented.  It makes the performances that occur there no less poignant.

What it does do is remind someone, who is used to seeing the lights and colors available to him number in the thousands, that it is actually quite a bit harder to do this job with firm restrictions.  And the likely hood of doing something really interesting with it, gets a lot more likely.

Restrictive environments breed imaginative solutions and brilliance.  Boundlessness breeds sloth and mediocrity.

I am excited to be finally starting to work in the community that I have lived in for the past 3 years.  I can only hope this job leads to my more chances for imagination and brilliance.

We should probably have a meeting about that.

I lost something

When I was in school, I was classified as the idealist.

I fought for and got angry over discussions about the purpose of art, or what can be called art. In a slug out match, across a large black conference table, I fought for the Tolstoy-ian ideal of art as being able to be anything and everything, as long as it creates that beautiful and fragile emotional like between artist and audience. Intent and Reception.

Down with Plato and Wilde, with their shallow and meaningless ties to aesthetics and beauty. Cynics the lot of them.

I thought we had the makings to start a new "-ism". To build an "-ism" in our own image and with our own ideals and morals. Where aesthetics and intention and life could walk hand in hand with success.

I lost something.

I have been thinking an awful lot these past couple of months about where I've gotten to, and what has led up to me sitting on my couch, in this 3rd floor apartment, in Houston Texas, listening to the Smiths (it's been that kind of day). What have I given up, passed over, or ignored to get to where I have gotten, and in the time I've gotten there.

This business demands success.

It demands success of it's people, and it demands success of it's product.

The pursuit of success has a funny way of blurring out the edges of everything else. Your time, your peace, your love, your money... I've been pretty quick the shelve every one of these things at some point to get to where I am today.

I think I'm just getting tired. My life has turned into a seemingly endless stream of opera. Which, to be fair, is exactly what I have been clawing and fighting my way towards for years.

But I miss the idealist.

I think I'm at a point now that need to... have to start un-shelving some things. Even if that means giving up some of that security that I have become so accustomed to.

I lost something.

Now I have to go and find it. And I apologize for the angsty-ness of what you just read. But like I said, it's been that kind of day.

It's Winter

in Houston.

Today.

Today was that lovely day, that seems to happen every year in this fine town, where the weather, seemingly of it's own accord and for no particular reason, turns from "Oh, hey, it's not very hot outside today. That's nice" to "Holy shit, it's freezing!".

Cold, wet, rainy, grim day.

I should preface all of this by sharing that to date I have lived in Los Angeles, North Carolina, Santa Fe, and Houston. None of which would be considered much in the way of the "Wintery North".

For me, Winter is when you can see your breath.

Anything worse than that is unpleasant and should be avoided.

It's Winter in Houston.

Don't get me wrong. I love the concept of winter/snow. It's just that every time I've been in direct physical contact with it, it's been horrible.

Por ejemplo, my first time in Chicago... Thanksgiving day. Took the train into downtown with some family for my first Chi town excursion. Seeing the sights, living the dream, when the sun starts to go down. So there I am, standing in Daley Plaza, waiting for a tree to light up, when it starts to snow...

Sideways.

No one mentioned to me what exactly "Lake Effect" snow was. But I got a pretty clear crash course in it that night. My scarf, was stuck to my face, with ice.

There might have been tears... but who would know. It would have just added to the ice.

No one should live like that.

It's Winter in Houston.

and this nomad of the mostly southern sunny regions, may need a thicker coat.