Required Reading

Friend Patrick

's going to kill me for this one.

I just realized, referencing

Library Thing

(an online resource I do

not

endorse; I'm just too lazy to switch to something else just yet), that the last four books I've read have to one degree or another been arduous experiences for me. If you're reading this relatively recent to when I wrote it, and actually from my 'blog's site, you can see for yourself which books these have been in the widget ovah he-ya:

<--go left and down a ways

I should

say "have been and still are," as I am bound and determined to finish

Love in the Time of Cholera

. It is a book I might've enjoyed under different circumstances. Say, oh, when I'm spending my days floating on an inner tube out on a very placid, contemplation-encouraging lake, perhaps drinking a lush and fruity beverage. But somehow, in the midst of New York's hubbub, all I can think while reading it is:

Gabriel - GET. ON. WITH. IT!

This might inspire a lesser man to put the book down. (Read: smarter man.) But not I! Nay! I shall be able to say that I read the book and, in addition, that I did not enjoy it! And what a proud day that will be for this great, stupid man, indeed. I think it's a great book, actually, and think the same about

The Road

, and

Revolutionary

Road

. I have no explanation for why roads are good right now. They just are. (And you may notice that I'm rather damning one book by way of omission, which is entirely intentional, I assure you.) The hard, cold fact is that a book can be very good indeed, and yet one may not personally appreciate it.

In fact, the last book that I read and truly enjoyed (I measure enjoyment largely by how eager the book makes me to climb into the subway) was one I've read before:

American Gods

. I daresay I enjoyed it more this time around than my first, too. It was also the most intentional book I've read in a while. I meant to read it. I chose it. I chose the others, too, to one extent or another, but they all also came my way by circumstance.

American Gods

is the only one of the group that I actively sought. Of course, I knew I'd like it somehow, given I knew what to expect. The opposite thinking is what's behind my usual strategy of reading. By following a course of coincidence and circumstance, I stand a better chance of being surprised, and taking in new ideas from moment to moment. Alas, this approach can backfire, and here we are, with roughly five weeks of unappreciated reading behind us.

My plan is to apply a little more intention to my reading, and I naturally welcome any suggestions from you, Dear Reader. As to what my intentions are, they are of course entirely honorable, I assure you. My first priority is to find novels that compel me to read on. I feel I owe my psyche this after four books that having required some psyching-up before each read. (Patrick is banging his head on his monitor right now. Patrick, I can hear the thudding from 31st Street!) That can be a difficult basis for choice, however, so my second criteria is a little more specific. I want to read novels either in the general style of, or dealing with the general subject matter pertaining to, the writing I keep trying to make time to do. That means good fantasy or magical realism stories, and books about cadavers and death. What I lack in style, I certainly make up for in viscera.

I have a real inclination toward imitation-of-style (read: outright theft) when I'm writing, so what I'm reading at the time invariably influences me. I've not found this to be true of writing dialogue for a script, but I may simply be lacking perspective enough to perceive it. Or perhaps that work is more influenced by conversation than by what I read. In which case, while my promised werewolf story is in present danger of ruminating at great length on complex, plot-grinding character studies, the

Hereafter

revisions are currently threatened by the possibility of very, very dry and official administrative speak. This, I think, is ample justification for going out and having really fun and surprising social interactions this weekend. It is required!

Emerging Work

When I graduated from college, I topped the whole experience off with one, final, profoundly disturbing regret. At the theatre department's ceremony, I presented my favorite acting teacher with a gift -- my complete collection of dramatic writings, which at the time totaled something like two full-length plays and a couple of ten-minute ones. All nice and neat in a three-ring binder. I think I saw it as sharing a personal connection with him that hadn't been permitted before, and perhaps I even hoped to spark a dialogue or future collaboration. He is a great director, after all. I even have a photo of us posing with the tome, taken by my ever-encouraging (to a fault, I daresay) parents.

Oh God, how I wish I had a time machine and a flame-thrower.

So when I say that the culmination of NYU's undergraduate play-writing class on Monday was an impressive display, I say so with the wisdom attained only by retrospective utter failure. Monday night, in the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row, I participated in

a staged reading

of excerpts from an approximate dozen dramatic works by some of NYU's finest. Many were funny, some were heart-breaking, and all were very carefully crafted and re-crafted over the course of a year's study. I had the pleasure of performing in five of the pieces, alternating between an every-man, a lothario, a yuppie, an historian and (naturally) that classic foil: the best friend. The performances were oddly cathartic. I had the sense that they were very, very important to the audience, which was made up mostly of the playwrights and their friends and families. I suppose I'm more accustomed to feeling that the performance is most important to the actors, which undoubtedly says something about me and the theatre I've had experience creating. Bear in mind, too, that

my instincts suck

.

It was an interesting day, and by "interesting," I in fact mean "largely boring." We began at 11:00, and ran through every excerpt a couple of times for tech purposes. This meant a lot of waiting and, when time came to actually occupy the stage and a character, only as much acting exploration as didn't get in the way of logistics. We had a lot to get done in seven hours, and we did, and it's all a credit to everyone's professionalism and commitment. But that doesn't mean I wasn't kicking myself for not committing to buying a new laptop already. I kvetch about not being able to make time and space to write, and when it's handed to me on a tin platter (this sort of gig doesn't exactly pay large sums) I am unprepared. Boo me, say I.

No, I don't give up writing because I'm so embarrassed by my younger efforts. Somehow the memory of my previous works and their

naiveté

doesn't occur to me when I'm excited to write something new. It's not quite selective memory, because it's not quite intentional -- more like a non-gag reflex. I think it's a reflex akin to the little tricks everyone's memory plays on them to get them to ride roller-coasters, or fall in love. One doesn't think of the terror, the loss of control, the vomiting; one only thinks to oneself, "

WANT!

" It's a dangerous urge, which seems to me the only kind of urge worth having.

Face to Face

Curious side effect of my acceptance into the Cult of Facebook: I believe it has affected the readership of this here 'blog here. Unfortunately, I am not computer-savvy enough to figure out how to quantify that change. I do know that the readership growth (growth in this context being a very, very relative term) for Odin's Aviary has slowed over the past year, though I attribute that more to Google Reader and RSS feeds than anything related to Facebook. No, the more interesting change -- more interesting by far -- is how many people are now reading my thoughts who haven't been privy to them for five, ten, and in a few cases even twenty years. I could no doubt increase this number by "tagging" friends for each entry, were it not that I'm pretty lucky to get as many posts published as I do with the time I have, anyway. The point is that my audience has had an intersting development in quality lately, in spite of a seeming falling-off in quantity.

Now, I'm not trying to imply that people I already know who read my 'blog are in some way better than them what don't. By "quality," I mean the overall identity of my audience. (An "overall identity" is a pretty interesting-slash-meaningless concept, but you get what I mean. I hope.) When I first started doing shows in New York -- which is as much as to say, when I started being a true professional actor -- I quickly became fascinated with the relationship between audience and creator. This fascination existed in a very immediate sense, not some theoretical or academic speculation, and it continues for me today. Just who are these people who are coming out to engage in theatre? And, perhaps more interestingly, who are the ones that no one on the production side knows, and what do they come seeking? Odds are, when you're sitting in the audience of an off-off-Broadway show, most everyone around you knows somebody involved in some respect (so watch what you say) but there are always at least a handful who don't, who are there for an evening's entertainment, or for something they don't even know yet. Maybe this isn't as curious as I find it; after all, in big productions all sorts of strange people are filling the 1000+ seats and looking for something other than seeing their friend on stage. Still -- to my audiences -- who are you, really?

So both are interesting, friends and strangers. Hello. Welcome. Try not to rely on this 'blog for too many of those promised fart jokes.

Wife Megan

and I have had several conversations lately about people we feel we know who don't know us -- Neil Gaiman, mostly. It's a very Gaiman-y season. I recently re-read

American Gods

(and I rarely re-read books) and rented

Beowulf

. I just read and loved his two-shot Batman comic "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", we're seeing the musical adaptation of

Coraline

this Sunday and seeing the man himself at a talk at Used Housing Works Bookstore in the latter half of the month. May is positively Gaiman-esque. And it's funny, because we both feel awfully close to the man, and he has no idea about us. Really, we have no idea about him, personally. It's just that his writing has influenced us so, kept us company, driven away boredom and provoked thought and emotion in us, that, well . . . it's hard not to want to make the man breakfast the next morning. Oh, you're up! How do you like your eggs,

American Gods

? I have cleaned and pressed your trenchcoat,

Anansi Boys

. Please,

Fragile Things

, don't bother about the bed. I need to change the sheets anyway.

Yes; I acknowledge that analogy as just this side of creepy. Alright: Way over here with me in downtown Creepyburg.

What does this have to do with showcases presented in under-99-seat theatres, or a 'blog that gets in just over 50 hits on a good day? I suppose what I take from it is that we extend farther than we may be aware, we influence more, touch (perhaps at times inappropriately) many more lives than can be evident, even with the aid of all things TwitterFaceSpace. It's a reminder I value. It reminds me, in fact, of a big reason for doing this stuff -- all this exploring, communicating, connective stuff -- in the first place. Because it matters, to people we know and those we have yet to meet.

And Some Days, the Bear Gets You

Bleaaaaaaaghhhh . . .

It's been rainy here in The Big Apple, and is slated to continue various levels of gray dampness right through to the weekend. This, amongst other circumstances, has led me to about three days of feeling like a cold was coming on. I think I'm pulling out of it now (fingers resolutely crossed [you should see how I'm typing]), but even this morning there was no convincing myself to repeatedly push-up from the floor, much less jog through the moist grayness. In fact, starting with Saturday, the past few days stand in sharp contrast to the energy and motivation that were driving me last week. Lest I ever doubt seasonal depression . . .

Trailing off is rather what I've been doing lately, in most things. That is, perhaps, not giving myself enough credit. I have been working like a dog (that is to say, confusedly, but with enthusiasm) at el jobbo del day, and there has even been the odd acting assignment and social assignation thrown in, too boot. Good and bad. Yet the end result has been, regularly, a certain sloping down-current that ultimately results in . . .

That. Bleagh.

I demand exclamation points! At all times! Bleagh!

That is all. Whoops:

That is all!

(Oo-oo-oo . . .

italics

. . .)

Unwanted Knowledge

I've returned to my research of corpses, which seems to be endlessly fascinating to me. (This return is in the hopes of generating new [more gooder] material for

my play-in-progress,

Hereafter

.) I think the fascination stems from the fact that so much of the research is a discovery of items I never even had a hint of before. No one knows, because no one wants to know. I've always had an appreciation for the taboo--in some of the dullest senses--but this is the first time it's struck me as a pointed preoccupation. I love learning about things I ought not to.

Actually, it's not quite true that I've never before tapped this appetite for the occult. As an elementary school student, I almost single-handedly kept the library out of its stock of books on monsters and mythological creatures. It was embarrassing, I remember, but a thrill. The strange is thrilling. Erotic, too, in a way. Remember playing doctor, or sneaking looks at pictorial nudity? No? Just me? Alrighty then...

I feel I'm at a curious stage of writing, too. It reminds me of a couple of my first serious attempts at creative writing. A short story and a short play, written years apart, they both started out as one thing in my mind and were drastically different by the end, largely through the application of heart, of earnest meaning. These were improvements to the work, hands-down, but in both cases I was initially resistant. "No, I'm not trying to make

that

, I'm trying to make

this

." Someday I'll learn that it's more about whatever it is I'm making, and what it wants to ultimately be. In the case of

Hereafter

, this self-made conflict has to do with whether it's a play about what happens to our bodies after we die and how funny that can be, or if it's about how we process the idea of death itself. The latter is, naturally, winning out in terms of dominant content.

It's curious how creative work gets started, and where it can go from there. The ideas that energize our start-up can eventually hinder the process, and the emotions we discover in the process itself may end up being more significant. Well: If not more significant, than more directing, at least. Yet my research today has done more to motivate me to rework the play than anything else in recent memory. In particular, I was learning about the embalming process, and it was really firing up some ideas that I want to get on paper . . . er, screen. Which is ew; very ew. Still, it's fascinating. I didn't know, for example, that you should never investigate the lower end of the coffin in an open-casket funeral. Why? Because sometimes morticians remove the major inner organs and seal them in a plastic bag that gets deposited at the corpse's feet.

YEAH. LIKE THAT. YOU'RE WELCOME.

I also had a wonderful conversation about

Hereafter

and the subjects it addresses with a friend yesterday, which invariably motivates more writing. So that's the order of business this weekend, while

Wife Megan

is away selling swag -- writing more interesting tidbits about the verities of death. Maybe the things I have to share with you are unwanted. Or maybe, it's all just fascinating, and I'm saving people the trouble of admitting it.