A Decade Over the Influence, or “The New Grunge.”

I recently heard a live version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the album From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, recorded at Del Mar Fairgrounds, CA on December 28, 1991.

I’ve probably heard that song a thousand times, but listening to this particular recording, at this particular time in my life twenty years later, was a reminder of why Nirvana, and Kurt Cobain, became the symbol of the anger, frustration, and sadness a lot of young people were feeling at the time.

It was like I was hearing the song for the first time.

Raw, screaming vocals Cobain had no trouble maintaining live this early in their career, with the explosion of Dave Grohl’s drums after Krist Novoselic’s relentless bass line brought them all over and over again to the pleading chorus:

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us. I feel stupid, and contagious. Here we are now, entertain us.

There isn’t anything I can really say about Nirvana’s influence that hasn’t been said much more eloquently, and with a lot more research; but listening to this track made me realize how starved I was for the naked honesty with which Cobain expressed himself lyrically and vocally, as well as the rare genius of being able to combine catchy riffs with distortion and feedback, bringing a sort of new melody to punk rock.

But it wasn’t about nostalgia.

The expression of anger by Nirvana in particular, and Grunge culture in general, brought awareness to a lot of teenagers that we weren’t alone in feeling lost, lonely, and apathetic towards the out-of-date values of our parents, and totally confused about what our lives were supposed to look like.

How could we continue to believe in the old value system while it seemed to crumble before our very eyes?

I feel stupid, and contagious. 

We were no longer lonely, though, because someone had come along and screamed the truth. And that felt really, really good. For a brief moment we felt like things could change, that our misery meant something because someone was making art out of our despair.

He was being honest and celebrated for it.

But his voice was silenced by a shotgun, and the subsequent decade was marked by total fear: 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the War on Terror, and an unprecedented rise of corporate control as we suffocated under the Bush Administration (not to mention the housing crisis and economic collapse from which we are still trying to recover, and the eroded trust in President Obama’s Yes We Can manifesto of “Change“ which so many of us were enthusiastic about just a few years ago).

Listening to this song again, it occurred to me that the anger, confusion, and disillusionment that became a Generation X cliché hadn’t actually gone anywhere. It was buried in an avalanche of denial, escapism, celebrity worship, and entertainment even more vacuous than the 80′s hair bands Nirvana came along and destroyed.

So here we are at the dawn of the new decade, in the infancy of a new century, and the need for honesty is waiting to bust out into the open again. This new decade will see it happen in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time, because we are desperate for it, but it’s a very scary thing because no one knows what it’s going to look like.

We can’t see the forest because the trees have been cleared.

We have been lulled back into an apathetic state by endless ethereal news stories manipulating us into brief bursts of emotion, but leaving us with a pervasive helplessness because we know that any real honesty about the state of affairs will just be folded into the information onslaught, quelled by the next  insignificant event that placates us enough to shut the fuck up and take our medicine.

But every so often, a voice cries out to be heard.

And I think the number of those voices are growing, unable to just sit back and believe the fallacy of the American dream that has become a bloated mockery of itself.

Those voices have always, always been quieted, and most of the time violently. And it is our fault because we allow an environment to exist where truth-tellers are seen as dangerous and we are brainwashed enough to silence them ourselves by taking up arms against them (John Lennon, Martin Luther King, et. al.) or convincing them to take up arms against themselves (Cobain) because they can no longer live in a world that doesn’t listen.

Or simply ignoring them, waiting for the next opportunity to disengage from actual reality and indulge in the irony of ironies, “reality” television, which, like a snake eating its tail, has become more real than reality itself because it reflects exactly what has happened in the last decade. It was the band-aid on the wound Cobain exposed.

Throw a few dollars at us and listen as our voices get smaller and smaller until they are just whimpers among the multitude idly wishing that something could actually be done to add to the beauty of the world rather than perpetuate its greed and ugliness by believing the hype, but feeling helpless to do anything about it.

We are desperate to be loved and paralyzed with fear to stand up for what we believe in and tell the truth, and so we fall in line like so many others and become sycophants.

Of course we’re afraid. Because we’re afraid of death, and they will kill us. They are killing us.

But we must speak out because we owe it to the people who came before us and sacrificed their lives.

That’s what it meant for them to do what they did, to be alive, to say something honest.

It’s fucking suicide.

But we no longer will sacrifice our humanity for identification as a consumer. 

Buy until you die. Believe everything we say. Shut the fuck up.  

It will be an identity crisis in the best sense of the word.

How else can we be moved to feel, to be elevated, to love, if we don’t risk our lives, that is, if we’re not willing to tell the truth about ourselves and destroy the illusion?

Someone called out “Judas!” to Bob Dylan at a concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England in 1966.

Dylan said, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.”

Don’t believe anything they tell you.

I define truth as the thing you must say and what you must express.

Say it.

Watch as the revolution of honesty unfolds this decade. Be part of it. Say something.

The grave will supply plenty of time for silence. - Christopher Hitchens 

I believe we are moving toward something beautiful.

There is something in the air that is palpable and people are waiting for permission to cut the shit and follow their hearts.

You don’t need permission.

Cut the shit and follow your heart.

Take the gun out of your mouth because we need to hear what you have to say.

Old Man Take A Look At My Life, I’m A Lot Like You.

As I get older I start thinking about old-dude stuff.

I never thought about contributing to a 401k or Roth IRA, or thinking about investing in real estate. It never entered my mind that I should have health insurance. I just assumed it wasn’t available if you made the impractical decision to be an artist (as if a choice could actually be made).

Maybe I didn’t think I’d live long enough to care. Live fast, die young, and leave a debt-ridden corpse.

But after driving blindly into a number of humiliating walls financially, before the alcoholic fog of my 20′s lifted and I could see where I was going, I had a vision of myself, 60 years old, waiting for that next paycheck.

The same paycheck I had been waiting for week after week, for thirty years, that would hopefully get me to the next one, while I waited for my ship to come in.

And, yeah, that version of me at 60 years old is not sexy, ladies, let me tell you.

It scared the shit out of me, to tell you the truth, and I got down to work the best way I could. I’m fortunate to have a really good day/night job (for me) working for a big, worldwide evil empire corporation after spending years in and out of different privately-owned restaurants and bars whose success is determined by the whims of their customers, and therefore your job is determined by the whim of the owner.

I’m incredibly grateful to be suckling on the corporate teet right now, because I’m actually able to do those old-dude things: savings, retirement, etc., and still have the freedom with my part-time schedule to pursue my professional creative life as an actor and writer.

But, and this is what I’m going through lately, I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing with my life.

I’ll try to explain what I mean by that…

I’m an actor. And in Los Angeles, most of the acting work I have done has been in theatre (which I love and have devoted my life to [more on that later]), but also I’ve done some beautiful, personal film work that I’m really proud of (mostly with this guy), and is really meaningful to me. Television work has been elusive, outside of a few commercials here and there, but I don’t have an agent so opportunities aren’t immediately forthcoming.

I’m also a writer, which includes screenplays (feature-length and shorts), plays, short stories, the beginnings of a novel, and poetry, all of which I’m looking to have produced or published; as well as this blog, which tends to be about figuring out what the hell I’m doing with my life and hoping people can relate to those existential questions with which I’m struggling, looking for a sense of purpose, and the pursuit of happiness.

These things, this stuff…getting up on stage, in front of a camera, putting pen to paper…this is the work.

The place where I work?…that’s my job.

And my job has given me a little glimpse, just a little bit of an alternative view of that future in which the 60 year-old version of me isn’t living paycheck to paycheck, but has lived the last thirty years of his life making sound investment decisions ensuring that his old-dude life can actually be enjoyed.

Those two delicious words: financial freedom.

But the work.

What about the work?

My job is not the work.

Do I want the work to be my job?

Is that what I want?

Yes.

Somehow.

But what I want are guarantees and there are none. Nothing is guaranteed. There is no guarantee that I will make a living as an actor in Los Angeles, thus eventually earning those sexy old-dude things like a pension and a diversified portfolio.

There is no guarantee that I will sell one of my scripts, or that the movie will get made.

There is no guarantee that if I move out of L.A. (which I think about a lot), that I will be able to live my life as an actor in professional theater, which I see many, many actors doing, and something I dream about doing all the time.

Do I eventually leave the job (and the city), and actually commit to the life of an actor in a way I never have before, a life in the theatre, looking for a place where I want to live for reasons that don’t have to do with the entertainment industry but rather building a life that I want?

Not giving up, but the exact opposite…letting go of the fear of uncertainty and change, hitting the road and working in the itinerant, journeyman tradition of being an actor.

L.A. is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind place, but it also can be a disheartening experience because I can sit in the sun and watch my life pass me by, hoping for my ship to come in; but the reality is, it might not happen just because I work really, really hard, and really, really want it.

I do work really, really hard…but I’m not sure if this is what I want.

I think I’ve set my default resignation to live here and pursue work here because this is where the mainframe of the machine exists, but I’ve spent most of the time ambivalent because I may have co-opted someone else’s dream.

The middle-class American dream from which I can’t seem to wake up.

It sends me into a panic enough to picture working for a corporation for the next thirty years in order to create some sense of security that the entertainment industry, and the world, doesn’t provide. Does that middle-class world even exist anymore? Over and over again we hear about the “death of the Middle-Class.”

I don’t have some crazy ambition to be famous or rich, or own a lot of things. In fact, I embrace austerity as a means to deeper understanding about myself and my life; but many actors and writers whom I admire who came up 10, 20, 30 years ago, in lieu of the standard insecurities of being an actor, were able to earn an honest living as a working-class actor. I’m not sure those days exist anymore, and like the country itself, there is a huge division between the haves and the have-nots.

(Maybe it does exist, actually, but it’s just going to look different. I think sometimes that if I’m going to eventually be a part of that burgeoning new market, it’s going to come after evolving into the type of character actor that I’ve always admired and looked up to. [Like this guy]. I’m in a transitional phase of my acting career where I’m growing out of the callow types, and part of my restlessness comes from wanting to spend the next 5 or 10 years in the theatre growing into who I will become as an actor).

Rainer Maria Rilke by Austin Kleon

You know, a couple of times I’ve had to stop myself as I write this in order to keep from sounding cynical or blaming something outside of myself for the things I struggle with. I assure you that it’s not cynicism or negativity, but that it comes from a deeper need to be honest about where I am, and ultimately search out what it is I’m supposed to be doing for my life.

I’m an artist and a dreamer, and believe deep down in my heart that you can have whatever it is your soul desires. I believe that.

For myself and anyone who reads this.

The self-doubt I have comes from knowing that life is too lovely for words and deeply sad sometimes, and too short to be spent pursuing someone else’s idea about happiness.

It’s your life and mine and ours, and everything is available to us.

Everything.

It’s just going to take a lot of hard work and faith in the fundamental, abundant, eternal nature of who we are, beyond the ego-driven habit of seeking external things to make us happy.

Live, love, serve, create.

Old-dude me is totally cool.

Wise Up; or ‘Cause today, I found my friends…they’re in my head.”

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

– Hamlet (Act. III, sc. i. 83-88) 

You’re not pretty enough, you’re not talented enough, you weren’t born in the right place, you don’t have enough money, you don’t have any connections, you don’t have enough talent, your teeth aren’t white enough, you don’t have washboard abs, you’re too fat, you’re too thin, you’re not handsome and charismatic, you don’t read enough books or take the right classes, your apartment is shitty, you don’t have a car, you don’t have the right car, you don’t light up a room, you don’t have anything of worth to offer, you don’t live in the right city, you haven’t travelled enough, you’re not sexy, you’re not mysterious, you don’t stand out in a crowd, you’re not dynamite in a meeting, you’re not comfortable in your own skin, you don’t understand Twitter or viral marketing, your headshot doesn’t look like you, you’re not in the Unions, your resume doesn’t have enough television credits, your resume has too many theater credits, nobody wants to finance your script, nobody will donate to your Kick-starter campaign, no one will see your play, your movie won’t get distribution, no one wants you at their party, you’re too nervous at auditions, you’re not funny, it’s who you know and you don’t know anybody, you should move to New York, you should move to Los Angeles, you should move home and get a real job and stop wasting your time.

You don’t stand a chance.

Photo by Melissa Rizal

None of this is true.

It’s all bullshit, but thoughts like this spread like wildfire and double up on themselves when we have failed or when we’re afraid or ashamed of ourselves.

Our brains are wired to keep us out of harm’s way, and so it does what it can to keep us from walking with courage into something where we might get hurt or show our vulnerability.

So, the strategies our neurological system developed to save us from legitimate threats to our survival have evolved to include self-inflicted emotions on top of initial pain:

To borrow an expression from the Buddha, inescapable physical or mental discomfort is the first dart of existence. As long as you live and love, some of those darts will come your way…But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are second darts – the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts… 

Most animals don’t have nervous systems complex enough to allow these strategies’ alarms to grow into significant distress. But our vastly more developed brain is fertile ground for a harvest of suffering. 

Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourselves for the present. We get frustrated when we can’t have what we want, and disappointed when what we like ends. We suffer that we suffer. We get upset about being in pain, angry about dying, sad about waking up sad yet another day. 

This kind of suffering – which encompasses most of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction – is constructed by the brain. It is made up. Which is ironic, poignant – and supremely hopeful.

For if the brain is the cause of suffering, it can also be its cure. 

–Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. Rick Hanson, Ph.D; with Richard Mendius, MD.  

Photo/Street Art by Morley

If we are to quiet these voices, there needs to be a plan of action that allows us to witness these thoughts as they arise, and not attach ourselves to them and throw second darts at ourselves.

Young Siddhartha, who would become the Buddha, spent 40 years of his enlightened life teaching the three pillars of Buddhist practice:

• Virtue
• Mindfulness
• Wisdom

In Buddha’s Brain Dr. Hanson supplements the spiritual teaching of the Buddha with empirical neurological data, using all kinds of cool words like prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and parasympathetic & limbic nervous systems. He presents a fascinating, palatable overview of our brains and the evolutionary challenges we face when we try to condition our thinking toward positivity and offset the negativity bias.

Simply put, I look at these three pillars of Buddhism as the opportunity to practice…

• Virture: doing good things for myself and others.
• Mindfulness: paying attention to my inner and outer world.
• Wisdom: recognizing when the pain is a natural, healthy part of the experience, and not making it worse by refusing to accept what is.

Basically, I’m trying not to throw darts at myself anymore.

Wake Up! The American Dream is Dead, Long Live the American Dream.

Selected lyrics from “God” by John Lennon (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band): 

I don’t believe in magic/I don’t believe in I-ching/I don’t believe in Bible/I don’t believe in tarot…

I don’t believe in Hitler/I don’t believe in Jesus/I don’t believe in Kennedy/I don’t believe in Buddha…

I don’t believe in Mantra/I don’t believe in Gita/I don’t believe in Yoga…

I don’t believe in kings/I don’t believe in Elvis/I don’t believe in Zimmerman/I don’t believe in Beatles…

I just believe in me. 

Yoko and me…

…And that’s reality.

In this song, John Lennon lists a lot of things into which people have put their faith: the concept of God; the spiritual teaching of the Buddha and Christ; the metaphysical experimentation with magic, I-ching, and tarot; the physical attachment to the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, mantra, and yoga; the murderous German patriotism of Hitler; the previous decades of idol worship of Kennedy, the King of Rock & Roll, Bob Dylan and Beatle-mania…

He watches them all pass away and Love is left as the only reality, beyond any concept. He has found it embodied in his union with Yoko Ono, and that is what’s real for him.

I was the Walrus…

But now I’m John. 

And so dear friends…

You’ll just have to carry on. 

The dream is over.

Millions of fans around the world didn’t want to let go of the Fab Four, but John needed to move on.

He was a dreamer, and not the only one, but he wrote this song because he wanted desperately for them to wake up from the dream.

 It is very easy to believe in the dream, and mistake it for reality.

We are conditioned from birth to buy into it.

There is currently an obsession with the regressive idea of “The American Dream” that is at the root of a sociopathic threat to unravel hard-won civil liberty in this country, and from which we are in desperate need to be startled awake.

Author Seth Godin writes in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: 

We’ve been taught to be a replaceable cog in a giant machine. 

We’ve been taught to consume as a shortcut to happiness. 

We’ve been taught not to care about our job or our customers. 

And we’ve been taught to fit in…

Do  you remember the American Dream? It struck a chord with millions of people…

Here’s how it goes: 

Keep your head down

Follow instructions

Show up on time

Work hard

Suck it up

…you will be rewarded.

As we’ve seen, that dream is over…

We run the risk of eroding a lot of progress in this country and putting a complete halt to any momentum for future innovation, because a large number of people are still sleeping soundly, dreaming this delusional dream, and believing that we can go back to the way things were in the good ol’ days, where you were rewarded for showing up for 40 years, working hard, and putting your nose to the grindstone in order to provide a living for your family.

People are desperate to pop a few Ambien, stay under the covers, and buy into the illusion because it is much easier to be told what to do and how to think, then to be awakened to the truth, to be creative and mindful, to turn off the T.V. and computer, and think for yourself.

To believe in yourself.

The Liberty part of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

I just believe in me…

But, it is a freedom that comes with a price. Some who truly understood this, like Lennon, literally paid with their lives.

We face a different kind of death when it comes to being honest with ourselves: the death of our delusion when we see the reduction of who we are because of our complacency:

We’ve become a commodity, a brand.

We are constituents, voters, members, users, consumers, logos, keywords, networks.

We are in the system, we are the base. We are the target audience, key demographic, and control group.

We are the customer.

“I hated the soup and felt little for the can.” — Patti Smith

How do you cease being the target of a campaign, marketing or political, when you’re doled out endless advertisements and beliefs in order to indoctrinate someone else’s beliefs and opinions in you that are based solely on financial gain and job security for the sales agents and elected officials.

The best interests of the people?

The American Dream is an opiate designed to make us nod off and hand over our credit cards.

Do we have the courage to rub our eyes and rouse from our beds?

We must release ourselves of this peasant mentality and stop believing that the bourgeoisie has our best interest in mind.

There might be a solution:

The new American Dream, though, the one that markets around the world are embracing as fast as they can, is this: 

Be remarkable

Be generous

Create art

Make judgment calls

Connect people and ideas

…and we have no choice but to reward you.

– Seth Godin

 

Let the Golden Age Begin; or The Zen of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”

“All men fear death. It’s a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same.

- Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll). “Midnight in Paris.”

Man, am I a sucker for a good Woody Allen film (read my post “Time Travel at The New Beverly Cinema” here.)

I suffer from a nostalgia for a bygone era, pining for the 1970′s and 1980′s era of Woody Allen protean filmmaking that could be as deeply touching or dark, as it was funny or screwball. He inherited the painful, existential themes of his idol Ingmar Bergman, and transmuted them through his on-screen clown persona, until he became less interested in playing that character himself, and instead having them embodied by actors who represent the “Woody Allen” role in later films, which Owen Wilson does in his love-letter-to-nostalgia comedy Midnight in Paris.

This film is being hailed as a return to form for the oft-maligned writer/director, which is to say, when films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Radio Days seemed to promise an inexhaustible supply of disparate masterpieces each year from the would-be living legend. Notwithstanding the occasional Bullets Over Broadway, Sweet and Lowdown, and Vicky Christina Barcelona, most of us like to keep Woody Allen in that wave of 1970′s American Cinema that is nice and romantic, black and white, maybe, and many, many years away from You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (yikes). Sort of like remembering Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront, and conveniently leaving out The Island of Dr. Moreau. Selective memory, I think they call it.

Midnight in Paris is a really charming, lovely film. But for me it makes the cut of Woody Allen’s Greatest Hits because underneath the joy of watching an ambivalent Hollywood screenwriter rub elbows with literary heroes Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald every time the clock chimes midnight and he is transported to Paris of the 1920′s, there lies a deeper thematic question of our need to romanticize a time other than the present.

It is set up by the pontificating character “Paul,” played with self-satisfied gusto by actor Michael Sheen:

“Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in – its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.” 

In a stroke of genius, Allen not only places his alter-ego into the expatriate romance of the 1920′s, but goes deeper into the Rabbit Hole of Nostalgia by following Pablo Picasso’s muse “Adriana” (Marion Cotillard) into her version of the Golden Age, the Belle Epoque of 1890′s Paris, in which Matisse and Toulouse Latrec sit in cafes complaining about the bourgeois time in which they see themselves.

Rescuing it from being just a light-hearted comedy, this reflection on present-day lamentation and longing for a simpler, or perhaps more interesting time, is indicative of a restlessness with ourselves and a struggle for meaning that is the stuff of what Woody Allen is always interested in trying to express:

“…existential subjects to me are still the only subjects worth dealing with…I don’t think that one can aim more deeply than at the so-called existential themes, the spiritual themes…death and one’ s position in the universe…” — Woody Allen 

Gil: “That’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying.”

But a movie about falling in love with Paris in all its forms isn’t going to go the way of The Seventh Seal, and so Gil isn’t disenchanted, but instead returns to modern-day Paris, and sees the beauty that is available in the present moment when he’s able to let go of the illusion of a better time.

Sometimes I think if only I would have been able to come up as an actor in New York in the 1970′s, and kicked around with John Cazale, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, doing theatre as the Bronx burned, then I would have been able to break into Hollywood as all those anti-heroes started showing up on-screen in Jerry Schatzberg films like Scarecrow and Panic in Needle Park.

That’s my Golden Age.

But if tonight at midnight, I stepped into Times Square in 1970, and was able to bum a cigarette from Cazale or Dustin Hoffman, they would probably be filling the air with stories about what it must have been like in the 40′s when Brando was in his early twenties playing “Stanley Kowalski” in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, or the 1950′s when Ben Gazzara played “Brick” in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, his voice shaking the rafters without a microphone.

Is every age a Golden Age that someone will look back on twenty, thirty years with nostalgia, wishing it was as simple as it is now?

I’m not sure, but I’m doing my best to enjoy the time while it lasts.

If it does turn out to be a Golden Age, I don’t want to regret that I missed it.

 

Losing My Religion (How My Love for Acting Was Resurrected)

I was reading something in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ recently that resonated with me in a quiet, profound way.

A Vietnamese Buddhist monk whom Martin Luther King, Jr. called a “holy man…humble and devout [and] a scholar of immense intellectual capacity,” and whose ideas for peace would “build a monument…to humanity,” Thich Nhat Hanh points to the striking similarities of the teaching of the Buddha and Jesus Christ, and how they both believed compassion and knowledge of oneself was the way to a peaceful world. His intention throughout the book is to bridge the gap between Buddhist and Christian thought, and show that both Heaven, and Nirvana, are available now, not somewhere we go when we die.

In Chapter 7, “For A Future to be Possible,” he writes:

Buddhism, like Christianity and other traditions, has to renew itself in order to respond to the needs of the people of our time. Many young people all over the world have abandoned their church because church leaders have not caught up with the changes in society. They cannot speak to the young people in the kind of language the young can understand. 

They cannot transmit the jewels they have received from their ancestral teachers to the young. That is why so many young people are left with nothing to believe in. They feel uneasy with their church, their society, their culture, and their family. 

They don’t see anything worthwhile, beautiful, or true. 

The reason that this passage was so striking to me didn’t have a lot to do with religion, however, but rather it illuminated something about my life with which I’ve lost touch.

I am part of an ancient tradition of storytelling and performance that has made me feel grounded and deeply rooted in something “worthwhile, beautiful, [and] true;” and in lieu of a strong family lineage, or spiritual experience through traditional religion, I was blessed to find an ancestry by way of renting VHS tapes and seeing movies at Showcase Cinemas in Davenport, Iowa as a kid.

I acted in my first play sophomore year in high school, “Rev. Hale” in The Crucible, and it was terrible. I went up on my lines during one of the performances, wore painfully uncomfortable narrow, buckled shoes; and whenever I sat down, one of my legs would shake uncontrollably.

I have no idea why I continued to act after that. I didn’t know shit about acting or theatre, or how painful or thrilling it could be, or what being a professional actor actually meant. I just kept doing it as I bounced around to different colleges, different cities, trying to come up with some semblance of a life.

Something happened, though.

A little over ten years ago, I was memorizing lines for a scene from Macbeth for one of my classes at Illinois State University.

Alone in my apartment, jacked up on coffee (like always), sawing the air too much with my hand, thus…

It hit me that the words I was trying to commit to memory:

But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen?”

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”

Stuck in my throat. 

(Macbeth, II.ii. 31-33) 

These same pleading, desperate words had been memorized, spoken, felt, and expressed by actors on stages, in rooms, and around the world for 400 years. What I had been marginally experiencing and crippled with self-doubt about pursuing up until then, had suddenly changed.

It wasn’t about me anymore, and what I thought I wanted. It was something bigger, something holy. It became important.

Stella Adler

But in the time since then, and particularly since making the move to Los Angeles, I have vacillated between adoration for my life as an actor, and the struggle to find peace with the reality of a commercial world, and if I fit into it.

I have failed to identify or define what “success” means to me, and so, therefore, I have sought out every excuse to abdicate my role because I have forgotten why I started doing it in the first place.

I wasn’t the actor who knew from a young age after a triumphant, tour-de-force performance in the school play that this was my calling. In fact, I have wrestled with this demon of ambivalence practically every day since that private moment with Shakespeare’s words, as inspired as it was.

So reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s call for a new way to communicate ancient religious wisdom has given me the ironic, secular insight into what I have been avoiding in terms of finding purpose for my life.

When separate traditions come together, at first there are barriers. 

When, through intense work, a common aim is discovered, the barriers vanish. The moment when the barriers vanish, the gestures and the tones of voice on one and all become part of the same language, expressing for a moment one shared truth in which the audience is included: 

This is the moment to which all theatre leads. 

–Peter Brook 

I realized that I had committed the ultimate sin and became Peter and Judas to my own heart, denying myself left and right, and betraying the deep love I have for this beautiful, important art form, and the people who practice it.

The bright, shiny things had flared in my vision, and I couldn’t see who I was anymore. I had lost my place in the history, in my adopted religion of theatre and film, in the congregation of artists who, like the Eucharist, had let me receive the consecration.

But, alas, I have come out of the desert, I have awakened from the Bodhi tree, and I have found myself finding myself in the same place I was all along.

Right here, right now.

But now, with a renewed faith that it is possible, indeed mandatory, to do what you love and love what you do.

I just needed to fall in love with it again.

And I did.

I love what I do.

This above all: to thine own self be true, 

And it must follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

–Hamlet (I.iii. 78-80)

“Love and Prairie Lights.” (A Valentine’s Day Scene)

CHARACTERS

MAN (20′s)

WOMAN (20′s)

PLACE: 

Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City, Iowa.

TIME: 

PRESENT.

 The man sits at a table in the cafe, on break from stocking shelves. He stares at a notebook in front of him, laboring to write, but nothing comes. 

The woman brings him a cup of coffee and looks at his notebook.  

WOMAN: Are you a writer? Do you write poetry? I love poetry.

MAN: No. Yeah. Sometimes. You know.

WOMAN: Valentine’s Day. What a crock of shit, right?

(beat)

WOMAN: Maybe you can write me a poem?

(beat)

WOMAN: Kidding.

(beat)

WOMAN: Can I read something sometime?

MAN: Um…

WOMAN: I’d love to read something sometime…

MAN: Yeah, I don’t know.

WOMAN: I love poetry. “On the southwest side of Capri/we found a little unknown grotto/where no people were and we/entered it completely/and let our bodies lose all/their loneliness.”

(beat)

WOMAN: Anne Sexton. She killed herself.

(beat)

MAN: It’s not really up your alley.

WOMAN: How do you know?

MAN: I know.

WOMAN: We barely know each other.

MAN: It’s not your speed.

WOMAN: I just started this job, and this is the first time we’ve said more than ten words to each other.

MAN: Yeah, but I can already tell.

(beat)

WOMAN: You can tell what?

MAN: You know, that my style isn’t your style.

WOMAN: You have a style?

MAN: My verse is kind of, like, ethereal, you know…or, like, ephemeral.

WOMAN: You told me no, when I asked if you wrote poetry, and now you’re telling me you have an “ephemeral style of verse?”

MAN: Ethereal.

WOMAN: Which is it?

(beat)

MAN: Both.

WOMAN: What is it about your style of poetry that makes it ephemeral and/or ethereal?

MAN: It wouldn’t be your thing.

WOMAN: You don’t know what my thing is.

MAN: My work is…

WOMAN: Your work?

MAN: Avant-garde.

WOMAN: That isn’t the same as ephemeral or ethereal.

MAN: It’s difficult to categorize.

WOMAN: Apparently.

MAN: It’s not your cup of tea.

WOMAN: I’m in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. I have a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, and my thesis was on the Religious Symbolism of 19th Century European poetry, so…

(beat)

MAN: I have a distinctly American voice.

WOMAN: Like Walt Whitman?

MAN: A feminine sensibility.

WOMAN: Adrienne Rich?

MAN: It’s a scathing indictment of the collapse of our society, and the fallacy of the American Dream.

WOMAN: Allen Ginsberg?

(beat)

MAN: I’m not like anyone else.

WOMAN: No, you’re not.

MAN: I’m breaking new ground.

WOMAN: I’ll take your word for it.

MAN: I don’t even know if you could call it poetry.

(beat)

WOMAN: Okay.

MAN: I would say it’s anti-poetry. A meta-poetic manifesto within poetry itself, seeking to destroy poetry by the absence of poetry. Through the revolutionary act of non-poetry, a new form of poetry is born, and it exists because…it doesn’t exist.

(beat)

MAN: It’s not written.

(beat)

WOMAN: You haven’t written any poetry?

MAN: No.

(beat)

MAN: But that…is the poem.

…

…

…

She walks away.

Smile All The Time; or “The Zen of Loneliness.”

I like to be alone.

I’ve learned to embrace solitude in a way that isn’t about fear or isolation or loneliness.

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I go through long stretches of time pulling back from the world, and reflecting on what I am experiencing. These periods tend to last a few weeks, or sometimes longer, when I’m not talking to friends or doing much socially.

It’s something I’ve always instinctually done, but with a residual guilt because I wasn’t enjoying life or doing more to have fun. It felt important, though, even if I couldn’t articulate why, and I needed to stop boring my friends with my frequent existential crises, and total lack of ability for small talk, and just be quiet for a while.

I don’t feel guilty anymore, though, because I’m learning that a conscious, temporary, and occasional withdrawal from the hustle and bustle can be a powerful step in finding out what’s important and meaningful in my life.

Civilized man tends to be in a state of chronic worry and fear and anxiety, because he is always confronted not with the simple actuality of what is happening before him but with the innumerable possibilities of what might happen. 

And since, because of this, his emotional existence tends to be in a state of anxiety and tension, he increasingly loses the ability to relate to the concrete world as it manifests itself to him in the actual present in which he lives…

…Therefore, the need arises for various ways of liberating ourselves from society, for entering what the Indians call vanaprastha, the life of the forest-dweller.

– Alan Watts “Zen and The Beat Way.” 

It doesn’t literally have to be a “forest” in order to experience this journey into ourselves, but the metaphor is important.

The relentlessness of entertainment, information, and advertising is designed to convince us that we don’t have anything and must purchase it in order to feel good and avoid pain.

It’s not good or bad, it’s just noise.

And it’s indistinguishable from reality when it is all we hear.

Our deeper wisdom is often just a whisper, and can’t compete with the din of all the political opinions, status updates, magazine articles, commercials, and awards shows.

So the “forest” is a conscious removal of those things.

Waking up early in the morning to meditate before the streets are filled with cars, or facing the boredom that might come from turning off the T.V. for a while.

Not being sold on a product or an opinion, or co-opting someone else’s dream for your life, but rather clearing your mind and breathing.

Listening to your heart, not the noise.

Image by Alexander Danling

I’m in one of these periods now, and can feel myself getting ready to come out of the forest and join the civilized world again.

In the last few years, a number of really significant changes have forced me to question myself in various states of angst and acceptance, enthusiasm and disappointment, confusion, etc.

Life, namely.

But the austerity that I have embraced allows me the profound opportunity to face my fears, avoid distraction, and live in the nakedness of the moment.

Instead of looking to the ephemeral satisfaction of external rewards to dictate my ultimate purpose, I’m searching my heart to find out what I’m meant to do.

I’m listening as intently as possible, making mistakes, and letting go of judgment for not knowing or having it all figured out.

I’m trying to see the forest and the trees.

Always Be Closing; or “The Art of Sitting on Your Ass.”

I have had an interesting week.

I haven’t done anything.

That’s not literally true, of course. I’ve been exercising, reading, meditating, spending time with friends over coffee, etc.

I even did my taxes. (TurboTax @#$% rules).

What I mean by not doing anything is that when moments come up in which I start to feel anxious about something, I do nothing.

This is really hard.

The tendency is to reach for something, go somewhere, do anything to alleviate the anxiety that comes from feeling like you’re not doing enough to meet the right people, or get the body you want, or further your career.

It’s very difficult to be still in these moments and allow the anxiety to pass, especially when you have the hot breath of ambition breathing down your neck. It takes practice to accept the moment for what it is, instead of running away from the discomfort of uncertainty.

When I’m feeling frustrated, my default comfort zone has always been thinking about different cities to inhabit. I’ll blame my current environment for what’s happening, or not happening, in my career and start picturing what my life will be like in Different City, U.S.A.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this. In fact, it can be a step in the right direction for people who need to explore different markets in their careers, say, or perhaps a new environment because the city is a constant reminder of something painful that has happened in their lives, and need a fresh start.

For me, however, it has usually been about running away from something I fear about myself, rather than toward something positive and exciting for my life.

Thankfully, I’m no longer running away from anything, but I’m in a place that my friend Andrea eloquently dubbed pending, which sort of captures the overall feeling I’m experiencing.

Which means, yes, I’m confused about what my purpose is, to be honest, but I realize that all areas of my life will be a reflection of that confusion until I am able to understand my heart’s truth; and instead of being in despair about it like I have in the past, right now I’m at peace with “I don’t know.”

Instead of running around and staying busy in order to distract myself from asking some important questions about my life, I pay attention to the urge, do “nothing,” and trust the answers will come when I’m ready to hear them.

Because you are alive, everything is possible. – Thich Nhat Hanh

I have an overwhelming gratitude for the growth I’ve been able to make in my life, and the lessons I’ve been willing to learn through painful relationships, struggles with money, and artistic frustration. I am humbled by the gifts that I have been given, and the people in my life whom I love and who inspire me everyday.

So, in terms of doing nothing this week, I realized that entertaining notions of what to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year, was about trying to escape from the moment, and the difficulty I’ve been having in my life in terms of learning my life’s purpose.

I really do believe that it is the truth of the heart, because I can feel it in my chest. It isn’t the anxiety of the stomach that is worry and doubt, but rather a conditioned reluctance to the truth.

This is the first time in my life where I can literally feel my heart center strain to open up and accept what is available to further its expansion.

It means to stay where I am, for now. In this city, in this moment.

If it means going somewhere else later on, then I will know that, but I can no longer run away from that which I want the most, and fear the most: authenticity.

Do nothing and let your heart open to that experience, whatever it is, wherever it happens, and trust that you are always in the right place at the right time.

Right now.

6 Reasons to Meditate; or “War is Over (If You Want It).”

When I first began meditating a few years ago, I had no idea what I was doing.

It seemed weird and I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. I couldn’t sit still and my mind was constantly racing.

I haven’t been consistent in those years, mostly because I thought there was a “right” way to meditate and so I felt like I was failing when I wouldn’t be able to clear my mind and stay present.

It is still challenging to meditate, and thoughts will always come up, but what I have learned is to let them pass without attaching judgment to them, and always go back to the breath.

Now a day rarely passes when I don’t take the time to sit still, focus on my breath, and let thoughts come and go without judging them good or bad, pleasing or painful, identifying it simply as “thinking” and going back to the inhale and exhale of each breath.

I believe very strongly in the benefits of meditation through practice, and seeing the profound but subtle difference it can make in our lives each day.

This small practice could create revolutionary change in our individual lives, bringing peace to our busy minds, and if that can be found on a personal level, think of billions of people doing the same thing.

The positive effect it could have on the world is only a breath away.

If you’re having trouble starting, I recommend a lovely, simple guidebook that can take you through the process of getting started called Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation by Sharon Salzberg.

Sharon Salzberg has been a meditation teacher for over 30 years, is the author of eight books, and founded the Insight Mediation Society with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein.

She lists 6 benefits of meditation in a chapter called “The Takeaway” which describes the practice as a “microcosm, a model, and a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives” (73).

1. We Learn How to Stay in the Moment.

I’ve been very confused about what “staying in the moment” means, and have spent most of my life not living in the moment; but it wasn’t until I was able to actually experience it did I realize what it meant, and it is about going back to the breath. Always the breath. When we are distracted, or lost in thought, we return to our breathing, and that is the moment. Right now. Breathe.

2. We Practice Letting Go of Judgments.

Easier said than done, I know. This means cultivating compassion and patience for where you are in the moment. Judgment of the outside world naturally starts to dissipate if you continue letting go of judgment of yourself. Be cool with right now, because that’s all there is, and it’s exactly where you are supposed to be.

3. We Become Aware of a Calm, Stable Center That Can Steady Us Even When Our Lives Are in Upheaval.

“The better you get at concentrating your attention on the chosen object, the breath, the deeper the stillness and calm you feel. As your mind withdraws from obsessive thinking, fruitless worry, and self-recrimination, you feel a sense of refuge. You have a safe place to go, and it’s within” (74).

4. We Become Kinder to Ourselves.

I have spent far too long beating myself up over perceived failure, or unrequited love, or unsatisfied desires. I have been through enough to know that what we do to ourselves is far worse than what anyone can do to us. When I  think I’m stupid for making a mistake, or judging myself harshly for feeling vulnerable, I imagine telling someone I care about the same thing, and it helps me realize how damaging that kind of self-talk can be.

5. With True Calm Comes New Energy

I used to have a misconception that people who meditated or did yoga, or practiced Buddhism had the goal to kind of check out from life and look at it without emotion;  blissfully detached from what’s going on around them. It is, in fact, the opposite. It is a complete immersion in life and acceptance of whatever is happening in front of them. Acceptance is calmness, and there is a resurgence of energy that hasn’t been exhausted by denial of what is happening in the present.

6. We Become More Self-Reliant.

All that we need is within us at every moment. We don’t have to rely on the outside world, but rather look inside to find the truth of who we are. Meditation, the breath, the calm goes with us anywhere in the world, and through that self-reliance we are able to give everything we have.

The breath of life moves through a deathless valley

Of mysterious motherhood

Which conceives and bears the universal seed, 

The seeming of a world never to end, 

Breath for men to draw from as they will: 

And the more they take of it, the more remains. 

–Lao Tzu “The Way of Life.”