Just Wrought

Make Me One with Everything

Luck is a sympathetic magic, to be coaxed with metaphor and token.  So I have decided to troll for a streak of it by posting a run of early essays that I wrote for Everything2, a quasi-prophetic mash-up of Face Book and Wikipedia, if the former only allowed text and the latter had a sense of humor. 

The following essay was written in 2003 during the build up to invasion of Iraq.

* * *

It's got to be the oldest Zen joke in the West . . .

There's a barbecue at the Zen Buddhist Temple, and the Zen Master's working the grill. A young monk reverently approaches. The Roshi looks up, smiles and says, "Wanna hotdog?"

The monk replies: "Please, Master, make me one with everything."

Besides being pretty darned cute, this joke, I've always suspected, has something deeper to say about Western attitudes, toward Zen in specific, Eastern thought more broadly, and most generally of all, our poorly perceived relationship to each other and the universe at large.

I've been a practicing Buddhist for twelve years now (ironically enough, ever since around the time of the last war brought to you by the Bush family.) For most of that time, I've kept my mouth shut about my practice, for a couple of simple reasons. First and foremost, it's just considered bad Zen form to prattle on about it. "Him who'll tell ya, don't know. Him who knows, won't tell ya" (my hillbilly stab at Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching). Secondly, upon hearing that I'm a Buddhist, most people tend to react to the novelty of it, rather than the substance. "That's wild!". . . "That's crazy!". . . "Only you, Paul!". . . "We'll see how long that lasts!" Since Buddhism is decidedly not a religion of conversion, I see little up side in telling people I follow it. But in these darkening days of terror and hatred and waste, I've begun to feel that it's incumbent on me to pipe up about a practice that has helped me face these things; and while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, it may just offer some unique and rarely considered perspectives on our world and our place in it.

So what's the problem with “make me one with everything?” In a nutshell: you can't make someone, even yourself "one", any more than you can make yourself obey the law of gravity. You are one with everything, whether you like it or not, and that oneness necessitates inevitabilities and responsibilities that all of us as human beings ignore at our peril and the greater suffering of everyone.

For instance, some examples of the inevitabilities: you will die, I will die, everyone who will ever read this will die. Death is inevitable. Pretty simple stuff so far, right?

Here's another inevitability, directly related to the first: you will suffer, I will suffer, everyone who reads this will suffer (though hopefully not because they read this).

And another: what you do, and don't do, reverberates throughout existence. You can't avoid this through hiding. You can't wall off your section of existence and hope that all the awful and inevitable things happening on the other side won't creep across. They will. Why? Because any wall you build is an illusion. Why? Because you are one with everything, whether you asked for it or not, whether you like it or not.

So that brings us to our responsibilities. And these are not Buddhist responsibilities, per se. Remember, one doesn't become one with everything because one is a Buddhist; you just are, and because you just are, and because as part of the unique blessing/curse of being a sentient human being, you know you are, you have to acknowledge that your responsibility is to everyone and everything.

Americans love being heroes. We're shocked when we hear that most of the world doesn't see us that way. "Don't these ungrateful bastards realize we saved their asses in WWII?" (I've said these very words myself on many beer-sodden occasions.) But from the one with everything perspective, storming Normandy and all the rest of it was less heroic than the Hollywood media machine would have us fool ourselves into believing. We saved ourselves by storming those beaches, just as much as anyone. And while there's nothing ignoble about self-preservation, it's not necessary to lord it over a bunch of people who happen to live in Europe, and who lost a lot more lives than we did.

Americans are very comfortable being powerful, because we are so convinced that we are right. And much of the time we are. Alas, the universe responds with an profound "So what?" For just as you can't make someone "one with everything", you cannot coerce someone to be free, and you cannot force someone to give up force. You can only force them to force you to use more force. The Buddha recognized such recursively misguided action as a trap. He compared it to trying to still the ripples of a pond by patting them down with your hand. (In the case of our recent actions in Iraq, I'd compare it to smacking an oar down on the water. These violent ripples we're currently creating won't go away in our lifetime.)

Regarding these actions, many Americans throw up their hands and say, "Better them than us." But the point is: there is no "them", only us. Some of our glibber war advocates say "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." I just wonder if enough thought and pause was given to the question, "Do we really need the omelet? Aren't our geopolitical love handles big enough?"

From the Buddhist perspective, every bullet fired, is fired at your own head, or, if you find it more terrifying, your own child's head. The upside of this is that every kind act—every bow, every smile—is an action done for—a bow made to—a smile smiled for—everyone. In our actions in the world, it is our responsibility to ask ourselves, very simply: are we adding to its suffering, or healing it? Every day we must ask the question, and every day, change the answer based on what the day gives us and what we give in return (though of course, we are the day, and it us.)

This is the Buddhist practice in a nutshell.

Call me crazy.

 

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

I decided at the beginning of this year to focus a little bit more than usual on luck: to court it a bit, if that makes sense. Luck is one of those wonderful inventions that cannot really exist— not in any empirical way— but that nevertheless human beings can still learn a lot by considering. For instance, I spent a lot of last week constructing an essay I felt compelled to write defending my chosen art form from prevarications that would weaken it. Contrary to what some assumed, it brought me no joy to make my arguments. It felt like duty. But then, as luck would have it, someone I did not know read that essay and reached out with an email to thank me for it.  We became Facebook friends and I noticed that this person had a professional relationship with one of my favorite places on earth, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I flashed on a long forgotten essay I wrote nearly nine years ago for an on-line gathering site for weirdoes and writers and weirdo writers called Everything2.

I repost it here as a burnt offering to luck.

  

I don't believe in God.

I pretty much don't believe in God.

Okay... here's the deal:

I believe in God. . .

. . . but only in one place: the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Apparently, the universe is constructed in such a manner that the omnipotent, omniscient—though obviously not omni-present— deity known for the most part in these parts as "God", only exists-- as far as I can tell-- when I exist within the walls of this largest Gothic cathedral in the world.

I can vouch for this phenomenon going back to late 1999 when I first stepped inside the church, its cool echoing darkness enveloping me immediately. I was living up on the edge of Harlem at the time, and began going often. I'd walk in past the periodic light shafting down from the stained glass, sit on one of the chairs (the nave has no permanent pews) and strike up an ongoing conversation on hold since my earnest Catholic childhood.

Hello Old Man. It's me.

These were not supplications, but rather heartfelt chats between one very good old friend and another. I didn't have to genuflect or cross myself to gain access to this communication. It's certainly telling that I don't feel this presence at all at, say, St. Patrick's Cathedral down on 50th and Madison, shouldered up against Rockefeller Center and all those other much taller skyscrapers. If God lives there, he's the God of Pinstripes and Napoleon Complexes and Rudy Giuliani.

We moved to Queens in the late fall of '99 and my visits to St. John's became rarer but no less ardent-- in fact, maybe more so, since a two-train, 45-minute pilgrimage was involved.

And then, less than two years later, the world changed for New Yorkers and for everyone. I found myself in Our meeting place almost every other day, two trains or not. The conversations grew ever more urgent, but also so private that I couldn't even bring myself to write about them in my personal journal:

9/25/01

St. John's again.
Talking with God.
Private stuff.
Wondering: Is faith a means or an end?
Or is the question nonsense? 

Sometimes I'd cry. Sometimes I'd feel God feeling me cry and letting me know that it was understood.

On December 7, 2001, while I watched TV in the living room, my wife took a home pregnancy test. From the bathroom I heard a calm but distinct, "Uh-oh." Back then I didn't know just how damned accurate those things have gotten, but still I had a gut inkling that this time it was for real. I had a whole new thing to talk to God about, a whole new way to be scared. 

Old Man, help me be a good old man.

 On December 18, 2001, I turned on the TV just to be dosed with a whole new horror. 

12/18/01

8:12
St. John's is burning; a five alarm fire.
God damn.
What a lousy, lousy year.  

In my head I drove a pathetic devil's bargain worthy of Winston Smith in room 101. "Take the goddamned Twin Towers", I practically prayed to Satan, "Just leave me my St. John's."

The firefighters, already crowned in glory, waded into the burning church which was home to, among so many other things, the largest memorial to fallen FDNY prior to 9/11. Commanders on the scene rapidly made the decision to use high-tech lasers to find their way through the smoke instead of following the common sense course of action: smashing through priceless, irreplaceable stained glass to vent it (adding a James Bond-esque/art connoisseur quality to their already enormous reputation for heroism). Within hours the fire was extinguished. But who knew how long the church would be closed to visitors?

In March of 2002 I got a short-term temp gig up at Columbia University. I walked by St. Johns on my lunch break, saw where soot still blackened the stones of the northern transept. My heart heavy and anxious, I climbed the front stairs and went in. It still smelled of burnt wood inside, and the gift shop, where the fire started, was still boarded up, but I knew instantly that the conflagration had done nothing to fumigate my Old Friend from the place. I sat down to chat.
In the end, you can only ask Him for a sample of his Grace, a slightly wider perspective than the one you're sitting in. It seems like a small thing writing about it now, but such an epiphany is really the only miracle there is. Art can offer it sometimes. Perhaps that's why I decided to become an artist.

And becoming one I am still.

Now I live in Seattle and have no place to talk to God. 

 

The Inalienable Happy Pursuit of the Living Wage

This image has been floating around Face Book lately, accumulating plenty of “likes” on its way. 

Well, I don’t like it.  I actually kind of hate it.  I believe that once an artist ties his or her work in a one-to-one, all-or-nothing relationship with making a buck off it, the game is done, and the moneyed powers-that-be have won it all over again.  Nothing new or good or game-changing can come out of saying you’re only going to do your art if someone pays you a living wage for it. Instead, what you are really saying is that your creativity is simply one more commodity to be bought and sold in a market-driven society owned by folks who know a lot more about money, and a lot less about creativity, than you do.

One the other hand, I also hate the idea artists should shun the marketplace altogether. We should get paid,  as much as we possibly can in any given market. (So long as we are aware and comfortable with knowing that some markets will only offer us compensation that is utterly untranslatable into coin.)

Up until now I have not written about the “living wage” crisis in Seattle Theatre because I did not have a good new idea on how to frame it. Then I attended the October Seattle Theatre: What’s Next? Forum, and listened with growing excitement as actor/producer Peggy Gannon kicked off a heated round-robin discussion of the issue that was finally and brilliantly summed up by Annex Theatre’s Meaghan Darling.  Jim Jewell’s notes from the night describe it best:

Making a living and making art should not be mutually exclusive.

This last point came out of our earlier discussion, but was most eloquently encapsulated by Meaghan Darling, fairly paraphrased as, “Nobody owes me a living, but I want them to not prevent me from making a living.” Big House rehearsal schedules were particularly discussed here, as the now-standard 10-6 rehearsal day precludes keeping a day job, while the economics of theatre (and of course there is much debate here) can’t offer a sustainable salary for that work (and we lamented how many amazing actors have had to leave town or the profession). We all rallied around this idea, because it is very much in the spirit of Seattle Theatre: What’s Next as a whole – it is a statement that holds within it hope and offers compromise, which seem to me essential components of productive dialogue.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Despite the Tea-Bagging idiots who have co-opted their ideas and headgear, our Founding Fathers were no fools. No one can or should guarantee anyone happiness or a living wage. But when your systems—and this goes for unions and Big House administrations alike—stand in the way of the pursuit of making a decent buck from doing theatre, well, then the truth becomes self-evident, and independence must be declared.  If this be treason, let’s make the most of it!

You Don’t Have to Hold On

I have maintained that we are better off trying to determine what art does rather than defining it.  I even went so far to make a list in an essay called “The Uses of Art”, in which I promised to flesh out each enumerated “use” with an essay of its own.  (Of course I miserably defaulted on that pledge.)  Further, I have always assumed— like a lot of folks, I suspect— that the best art always sticks with you: it goes into your library for reference and reuse, which is why I can still recite verbatim Puck’s “If-we-shadows-have-offended” Midsummer Night’s Dream show-closer three decades after playing the role.  And when I fail to hold on to a piece of art, I tend to feel a little guilty.  After all, is it not a little shameful to have forgotten easily a hundred times more poetry and painting, music and movies, than I have ever remembered?  Was all that art wasted on me?  

The 13th Century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi and his modern American interpreter Coleman Barks have convinced me otherwise.  Just as art has a variety of uses, it also has many mechanisms.

“There is a South Indian story about soap.  Soap is the dirt we buy.  We introduce it to the dirt we have, and the two dirts are so glad to see each other they come out and mix!  They swim together in the warm pleasurable water and, at just the right moment, the washer lifts the cloth of our true being free of both soap and dirt.  Mystical poetry and other practices may function this way, as soap that dances with what disturbs our clarity.  Then at some moment they drop away and leave us clean, ready to be worn again.”

--From Coleman Barks introduction to a chapter in his collection
The Essential Rumi

Sometimes art doesn’t stay with you.  And sometimes that’s best.  How disgusting and useless would it be if the film from every bar of soap you’ve ever used still remained on your body?  Some art is meant to mix with parts of you and then rinse off, parts and art together.

So the next quiet night you read a poem, and then find you’ve forgotten the entire thing the next morning, don’t berate yourself.  Instead, give yourself a pat on the back for being spiritually hygienic. 

Rumi himself this time: 

“. . . Enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.”

The SunBreak Suggests Some New Strokes

Just because I have excused myself from the debate about the future of Seattle Theatre along with the broader crisis in American Arts doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate an insightful perspective, especially when it comes from someone who sees the problem from sides I can only barely glimpse.  Michael van Baker, Editor and Publisher of The SunBreak once worked for the Seattle Opera and other non-profit arts organizations around town; and in his recent post, “Arts Marketing for Dummies”.  He sneaks us a peak of some of the lessons he learned, with promises of perhaps more and deeper observations to follow:

Because self-preservation is the defining aspect of arts institutional life–ironically, the non-profit model virtually guarantees it–the business model warps in that direction. People begin to have trouble distinguishing between best business practices and those that have worked in the past to pay everyone’s salaries. Over time, the institution’s existence–its habits and proclivities–mediates the art presented. It’s not just a question of the popularity of one work versus another–it’s a question of box office receipts. That’s what’s being discussed when the directors meet: saleability.

It should be discussed! Don’t get me wrong. But, as before, is anything important being left out?

Van Baker sketches some bold fresh solutions, but with the sober understanding that they are not likely to be quickly adopted by a cadre of arts administrators who would rather sink with the ship than swim a new stroke.

Rule: We create art and outsource/outshare the rest….

…  As it happens, arts administrators are not the soulless quasi-corporate drones they are at times portrayed to be. So it’s already the case that most arts organizations collaborate and share a great deal, more than you might expect if you considered how competitive the marketplace is. The problem is, they collaborate inefficiently. … Every single organization reinvents the database, usually in their own way, and the results are sometimes anarchic.

The situation is unlikely to change because, at an institutional level, there’s no apparent incentive and the loss of control disturbs leadership. Thus, database management and mining remains a core function of organizations theoretically devoted to art production.

Van Baker also recognizes a fact which took over a year of me blogging here to sink into my thick skull:  a lot of folks, in this city particularly, would rather quibble and bitch behind backs than make any actual moves.  Says Van Baker, “Of course, the arts being what they are, there are many over-educated people willing to argue about minutiae rather than broader principle.”

Towards the end of the piece Van Baker hints that there might be a larger, more detailed opus forthcoming.  I encourage that effort and look forward to its fruition, especially since I’m shutting up.

Money isn’t Everything… or Anything

My friend Maria’s mom gave me one of those rare koan-ish gifts of wisdom that stick with you for a lifetime, poking you at odd times as you struggle on and off to get to the core of understanding it. I was in high school, over Maria’s house for dinner, and her mom and I must have been talking about my hopes and aspirations. I said something like, “It’ll all work out so long as I can find the money to afford all the things I want to do.” Smiling sweetly, Maria’s mom said, “Oh Paul, don’t worry about money.  Money is the easiest thing in the world to get.”

What?

Okay. Set that notion on the table a moment so that we can compare it with what a former friend and colleague once flatly told me. “Paul, theater is an art form for the Upper Middle Class. Period. End of argument. End of story.” I remember seeing in his eyes the pride of superior conviction as he went on to explain that fundraising, marketing and, by tacit implication, programming itself must be tailored to this essential truth. Furthermore, since theatre is for, by and of the moderately to handsomely wealthy, then raising money for theatre, which was his job at a large West Coast regional theatre, was the noblest and most essential duty one could perform for our art form. 

Now, honestly, that sounds more sensible than my friend Maria’s mom’s enigmatic epigram, right?  We are on much firmer territory with that kind of thinking, aren’t we?

Are we?

After all, what the hell did my sweet earlier friend’s sweet mom mean?  For the longest time I tended to interpret it prosaically. “Well, okay… everything else takes money to get.  Therefore money is easiest, since it requires one less step. Money is freeze-dried effort waiting to be reconstituted for a different circumstance… or something. Got it.”

I guess that makes a sort of sense but only the sort that isn’t really worth much digging for. However, as the years blurred by, and most especially as the struggles for the vitality of my art form have come to a head, especially in my adopted home town of Seattle, I am beginning to suspect something lies deeper in Maria’s mom’s words.  

All right. Let’s dig: if money’s easy and I shouldn’t worry about it, then what is it that is hard and that I should be worrying about? Maria’s mom did not elucidate. I realize now that this is because she knew I had to figure it out for myself. Happily I am beginning to believe that the alternative currency she was pointing me at is one that I, and so many of my true friends, have been blessed with to a richness. The “hard” currency Maria’s mom wanted me to find and treasure was the precious tender of ideas.

“Oh sure,”  I hear my former friend say, “That’s great. Wonderfully idealistic and all, but without money, theatre dies. Raising money is the essential task that makes it all possible.”

What do you think, gentle reader? If one wanted to destroy the essence of an art form, obliterate its fresh ideas and enchain it to defending at all costs the miserable back-ass-wards status quo of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, could one employ any more effective strategy than keeping its brightest people constantly courting the almighty upper middle-class dollar instead of trading and paying interest on ideas?

All art is a conversation—theatre doubly so. If my former friend is telling me I can only hold a conversation with the upper middle class of the Western World circa early 21st century I am obliged to either politely ignore him, or firmly insist he go fuck himself. I want to talk with everyone everywhere and everywhen.  And I buy into this conversation with my ideas or I don’t join at all. I will not, nor will the colleagues I admire most, huddle acquiescently on the tiny postage stamp theatre artists are ceded when we are told that money is what defends us and what we must defend. 

Maria’s mom always had faith in me when others didn’t. She is no longer in this world and I have no way to repay her for her gifts so gracious. So in honor of that fine lady, you can have this idea, and everything you find here, for free:

Yours is the territory you refuse to surrender.

The Macallan Talks – Side Two

 

 

 

A few days ago I shared a transcript I recently found from the first half of a cassette tape recording that William Salyers and I made one evening in 1997 while consuming a bottle of Macallan scotch, each.  As promised, I share the second half of the full transcript at the end of this post.

We are clearly getting drunker on side two.  Alas, this does not increase the insightfulness of our comments.  Just the opposite, I’m afraid.  I sure don’t like myself very much as the discussion wears on.  It feels to me, thirteen years later, like I am trying to badger Bill into believing he will be a better artist once he admits he’s an artist and opens himself up to-- what?—the “wider universe”; the “heroism of art”, or whatever woo-woo crap 30-year old-Paul was spouting.  At one point, I literally say to him: “I think you need to start reading folktales.”  Can you even get more excruciatingly Left-Coast Joseph Campbellish condescending than that? 

In the intervening time since I gave him this advice Bill Salyers has gone on to world premiere the title role in Louis Slotin Sonata  in Los Angeles and then off-Broadway, winning himself several awards and enormous critical acclaim for his efforts.  He also world-premiered my play An American Book Of The Dead – The Game Show, directed the world premiere of The Good Ship Manhattan, world premiered The Sequence playing future Nobel Laureate, Francis Collins, and these are just the examples from my scripts. The quality of his work as an actor in an even broader panoply of plays —classic, modern or brand new (mine and others) — is legend.  And I think it is safe to say that Bill never really changed his point of view from the one he espouses in these recordings.  In other words, for all my high holy exhortation to become a better artist by first admitting he is one, Bill remained a great artist, and became an even greater one, simply by being Bill.  Lesson learned: not all heroes and artists want to be heroes and artists— some don’t even believe in such things— and yet, somehow, art and heroism still happen.

So, with that, here’s some highlights, then the whole thing at the end if you’re interested:

 

Blowing smoke up Salyers’ shorts while simultaneously patronizing him

PAUL:  I consider you to be as great an artist as I’ve ever met.  I consider you... to...I consider that I need to learn things about my craft that you’ve already learned about yours.  I’ve also-- yeah!  And I’m starting to, because you’ve worked at your craft.  You’ve been pragmatic hands-on with your craft in a lot of different ways that I’m just starting to: I’m starting to write for television, you know.  I’m starting to... write for hire.

BILL:  Right.

PAUL:  You know?

BILL:  Right.

PAUL:  Which you’ve been doing for a while.  In fact, in some ways, you... that’s what you do is act for hire.... Except on projects like TUESDAY where you chose to do it because of-- of whatever feelings you have for the work.  Um... but I-- but I think the one thing that I’ve always kind of instinctively known, whether it was because of my religions upbringing, or because of my attraction to art.

BILL:  Mm-hm

PAUL:  Because my attraction to art was one of a knight in shining armor.  And we can talk about that too.  Uh...I have revised my vision-- but not completely on that.  Um... I do think that artists are true heroes.

BILL:  Hmm?  (Maybe this is sort of a verbal shrug?)

PAUL:  True heroes.  That true artists are those people who um.... and I include that person who can make the exquisite phad tai, or... or the exquisite scotch, or, or can uh... well, we can talk about that maybe later, but-- I feel like one of the things that-- that you refuse to admit is that that which you do is beyond your control--

BILL:  Mmm-hmm.

PAUL:  To a certain extent.  And you’re uncomfortable with that.

 

Devolving into faux-Jesse Jacksonism

PAUL:  For many people-- for the born-again Christians of the world-- I would nothing but heartily convince them that there is nothing outside themselves.

(Bill laughs.)

PAUL:  That that world which they have created is their own fucking fucked-up... vision of the world.

BILL:  Yeah.

PAUL:  And that that which they hate is themselves.  And that which they love is a... sweetened aspect of themselves and that they have not left themselves.

BILL:  Right.

PAUL:  You... you I would encourage you to see the other aspect of the universe, and that is that you are constantly connected in a thousand million different ways to that which you feel unconnected to.  And that that the-- that the satellite-- you’re either a satellite revolving around the sun or you are the revolution.  You know?

BILL:  Mmm.

PAUL:  You know?

BILL:  Mmm-hmm.

PAUL:  And uh... not to sound like Jesse Jackson.   Although that would be-- Fuck, man.  I should write for Jesse Jackson ‘cuz that’s great!

(Bill laughs.)

PAUL:  That’s better than anything Jesse’s said in a long mother-fucking time. 

(Bill laughs.)

PAUL:  You’re either that which revolves around the sun, or (Jesse Voice) you are the revolution!

BILL:  You’re right.  That does sound like Jesse.

PAUL:  Umm.  Except it doesn’t rhyme.  But it’s-- it’s a little too sublime for Jesse.  We’ll have to find some other demagogue for it.  But-- although I love-- my heart goes out to Jesse.  I can’t hate, Jesse.  He’s fab--  Did you hear his speech the last convention?  It rocked.

 

Mullin lays an Irish curse on Salyers

PAUL:  There’s-- There’s this great Zen koan that I love.  Says-- the young monk comes to the master, and says, you know, “I’m meditating but I’m too cold.”  And the Zen master says, “Well, you know when cold go to that place where you are so cold that it kills you and when you are hot go to that place where you are so hot that it kills you.”  And I lay this Irish curse on you: “Live in that universe where there is no art.  Be that universe where there is no art.”

BILL:  Well, I think I’ve tried to.  I mean, I--

PAUL:  No, I mean it.

(Paul laughs.)

PAUL:  NO, I MEAN IT!

(Paul laughs hysterically.)

BILL (drunken voice mockery of Paul):  You don’t understand!

 

On whether an actor should ever argue a director down

BILL:  This stuff about-- this stuff about uh-- nobody stops to think about the fact that there was a director involved in that show.  It wasn’t just about what Steven wrote.  It wasn’t just about what I did, you know?  What I-- when I’m-- when I’m rending my hair, my fake hair, at an incredible point and I go, “RENFIELD!”  That’s not necessarily my choice.

PAUL:  Right.

BILL:  That’s me doing what I was told the best way I could.  And I’m--

PAUL:  Right.

BILL:  And I’m presented with the challenge of trying to find truth in that.  Now a lot of actors would have argued Eddie down....  That’s not my job.  It’s not my-- it’s not my job to uh-- promote myself--

PAUL:  Is there ever a time when it’s right to argue a director down?

BILL:  Yeah, when you’re the other director. 

(Paul begins to groan very lowly. )

BILL:  If you’re an actor your job is to do what you’re told as best as you possibly can.

PAUL:  Wow!  Okay!  We come to the truth of it.

BILL:  I’ve-- I’ve long said that.  If you want to direct a play go fucking direct a play.

PAUL:  Well, wait a second.  Wa-wa-wa-waaaiiit a second

BILL:  Okay.

PAUL:  Because I think it’s not as facile as that.

BILL:  I think it should be.  I think if you’re a craftsman it is.

PAUL:  Ah well.

BILL:  --And that’s why I’m not an artist.

PAUL:  Hmmm.

BILL:  I-- I don’t have any patience for that crap.  I mean, it’s another-- it’s another-- it’s another way that the film world has invaded what we do.

PAUL (overlapping):  Well, here we go.  Well, here we go is what I’m saying is like, yes, as the novice, rookie, bullshit actor who’s got a little taste of Stanislavsky, a bad taste via Mr. Uh-- Strasberg.

BILL:  Strasberg, yeah.

PAUL:  Uh....  That’s the last thing they need to be doing is telling the director what their choices are.  But let me tell you something about Mr. (slurry) Mr. Eddie Levi Lee, is that you know more about theatre in your fucking, you know, nose--

BILL:  Then I, then I--

PAUL:  Hair clippings than Eddie Levi Lee knows.

BILL:  Okay, then if I-- if I believe that going into it, I’m a hypocrite when I sign the contract.  And I’m not a hypocrite... so I sign the contract.

PAUL:  I--  augh!

 

On whether an actor should ever refuse a line change from a director

PAUL:  Billy, you’re saying-- you’re saying to me that in no circumstances would it be right for you as one of the best actors that I know uh... to-- to call bullshit on a director.  That

BILL:  I’m saying it’s not my job.

PAUL (overlapping):  That fucking frightens me.  No, it is your fucking job!

BILL:  No, it’s not.

PAUL:  Yes, it is your fucking jo--

BILL:  I don’t agree with you.

PAUL (overlapping):  I went to-- John Sylvain came to me and said-- I had a line that said, “I threw that pass--”  now obviously this is an actor/playwright, a whole ‘nother issue.

BILL:  I know the line you’re talking about, too.

PAUL:  Yeah, said, “That fucking nigger dropped it.”

BILL (simultaneously):  “That fucking nigger dropped it.”

PAUL:  And Johnny said, “You need to cut that.”  And I said, “You need to go fuck yourself, because one, it’s the night before opening, and two, it’s the fucking script, and THREE, it’s the way we rehearsed it.

BILL:  Well, let me-- let me tell you something.  I’m not saying-- don’t misunderstand me.  In that same situation I would have asked John to keep the line.  I wouldn’t have told John to go fuck himself, because John’s the director.

PAUL:  No!  No!  No!.  But see that’s where I digress with you, because John’s fucking with my shit there and he has no business doing it.

BILL:  Brother, it’s not--

PAUL:  And he deserves--

BILL:  It isn’t your shit!

PAUL:  Yes!

BILL:  It’s our shit.

 

To follow is the full transcript of the second side of the cassette.

The Macallan Talks – Side One

 

Giving my demons the year off  has left me time to take care of some housecleaning, like backing up my old files to the cloud before my next hard drive crashes.  About a week ago I ran across a couple of old Word files that I thought were lost forever: transcripts from something called “the Macallan Talks”.  The premise was simple: two full fifths of Macallan 12-year-old scotch, a cassette tape recorder, William Salyers and myself.  We would talk about what we always talked about, but capture it on tape finally so that I could transcribe it and then possibly either publish or stage it.  Or at least that’s what I recall the plan was.  This was over thirteen years ago, so I’m not really sure what I was thinking.  All I know is that this conversation has never seen the light of day until now.

Mostly you get an ardent exchange between two friends who love talking, especially to each other.  Bill and I still blather like this, whether on the phone, since we no longer live in the city, or into the wee hours over scotch and illicit cigarettes, on the now ever rarer occasions when we do manage to get together in person.  What strikes me most clearly now looking over these transcripts is how little our positions have changed in the intervening years. Bill still ardently defends his “craft” against any woo-woo incursions of higher powers or purposes.  I still maintain that what we do, when we do it well, matters in sublime and fundamental ways we can only barely glimpse in fleeting, incomplete flashes.

Had I made these discussions public at the time, I am convinced that they would have been dismissed as the pompous rantings of a pair of third-tier theatre artists who thought way too highly of themselves and each other.  Now?  Well, nothing’s changed.  All of that is essentially still true (sorry Bill, at least you have a television career), but somehow I imagine (hope?) that the intervening near decade and a half gives our arguments some resonance beyond the moment.  Of course, the final analysis is up to you.  I publish the full first cassette side transcript at the end of this post.  I will publish the second side in another upcoming post.  In the meantime, some highlights from the first half:

 

On lying and acting . . .

(I try to start the tape without Bill knowing but he can tell something’s different about my face.  I’m a horrible liar…. )

PAUL:   So let's talk about lying.  Is a good actor a liar or not a liar.

BILL:  Well you know what Plato thought about that?

PAUL:  What?

BILL:  He literally thought--

PAUL:  Micky Mouse's dog?

    (beat)

BILL:  I was about to imitate him and then I realized I couldn't. 

    (He laughs.)

    'Cause he doesn't--

BILL & PAUL (together):  Say anything!

. . . .

BILL:  From what I remember reading in college, Plato said that actors should be killed because they lie.

PAUL:  See I consider myself a pretty good actor and I cannot lie to save my life.

BILL:  Well, I can lie but I consider them to be two separate things.  I don't... I don't lie unless I absolutely have to, and I hold that to a pretty high standard.  It's not about my convenience.  I'll take a lot of shit before I'll tell a lie.  Because of that thing we were talking about.  About how it's an allowance.  How responsibility comes with the power.

PAUL:  Right.

BILL:  And the only way I can tell a lie is to buy into myself.

PAUL:  Yeah, so you involve yourself in the Dark magic.

On art versus craft . . .

BILL:  . . . I think the word "art" is pretty useless.  It is so subjective as to be pointless--

PAUL:  Like "love" or something like that?

BILL:  Exactly.

PAUL:  Well, what would you replace it with?  Or would you?

BILL:  I'm not sure that you need the word.  It's almost used to describe that which people don't have the capacity to describe another way.  When someone says "art" they're either collectors talking about something that's worth a lot of money, or they are people who are moved beyond the ability to express... that.

PAUL:  What about when somebody says, "The way that guy does phad thai is a frickin' art?"

BILL:  he's talking about a transcendent experience     that goes beyond what he understands as being the execution of... the act.

PAUL:  Well, what about that?  Is there something to that?  I mean this "transcendent experience"-- if we don't have a name for it beyond "art" shall we not call it that?

BILL:  I think it's the height of craft.  When I approach a role there are a whole lot of givens.  I think particularly in acting, and particular among young actors, there's a need to over romanticize what we do.

PAUL:  Well, yeah... and then you get into that nastiness of Method and that whole "I-must-go-through-that-which-my-character-has-go-through" nonsense.

BILL:  Yes.  That's right.  And actors saying things like-- in all seriousness-- "I don't like to like to take about the craft 'cause I don't like to over analyze it.  And if I over analyze it, I'll kill it."

PAUL:  Which-- yeah-- sounds like somebody who...

BILL:  Doesn't know what the fuck they're doing.  that's exactly right.

 

 

On going the dangers and responsibilities of playing a dark role

PAUL:  ... Ok, I'm gonna go on the record about TUESDAY.  I think that the reason why TUESDAY was hard was because you had met the wall with your "craft", and with TUESDAY you had to be an artist.  And you were an artist, but it hurt because you were entering a realm where-- to use those fantastic mytho-terms-- you entered the realm where you were naked and raw.  It's like the total hero's journey.  At the beginning we see the hero and he's kick-ass, but he finally meets the challenge that is capable of kicking his ass.  And then it becomes interesting.  That's where the heart becomes involved.  And that's why I argue this art-versus-craft argument over and over again.  And that's why I'd like to try and get to the meat of it.

BILL:  So you're a masochist, because art has to hurt.

PAUL:  No...   No...  It's an old Buddhist thing.  You see Westerners misunderstand Buddhism because they think it's nihilism.  Because they say, "Well what a Zen Buddhist does is he sits in a room for eight hours, and that's torture!"

BILL:  Mmm-hmm.

PAUL:  And it is torture, and I do kinda share the opinion that the people that are attracted to Zen are masochists, but I do it, and I've sat in a room for 8 hours and I'll probably do it again.  See the problem is most Westerners misinterpret Buddhism as saying "You must suffer."  And I would interpret it slightly differently.  I would say true Buddhism is: "You will suffer."  But ultimately the suffering is as unimportant, if not more unimportant than the pleasure.

BILL:  So you don't glorify the suffering.

PAUL:  No.  Not all.  The suffering is a message.  And there's something to be said for computer metaphors-- the suffering is like an error message, saying, "Ok, error in sector B.  You're suffering.  Why?  Why are you hurting?"  Like, why does it hurt to do TUESDAY?...  And you're looking for reasons like your technique wasn't quite right,  and I'm saying no.  You're doing everything right.  You just refuse to admit that that which you are doing is more important than you think it is.  And that that which you are doing is more connected and more vital and more rooted in who you are than you feel comfortable with as a craftsman.

BILL:  Well my reaction to that is first of all is that... if we go that way for a moment, if we accept that as a truism, I have absolutely no problem in saying I'm not interested in that.  I'm not interested in self-flagellation in public.  That has no--

PAUL:  Well, first off that's not what I'm talking about.  And second off, if you were to say that to a Zen master, he'd probably give you a whack on the head, but then he'd say, "Who cares what you're interested in?"  No one cares what you're interested in.

BILL:  But remember I act for selfish reasons.

PAUL:  Well, maybe it's time to wake up. . . .

 

 

To follow is the full transcript of the first side of the cassette. 

 

The Uses of Art

 

Art…

• Reminds us we are going to die
• Keeps us interested in living
• Breaks us open
• Gives hope
• Devastates
• Terrifies
• Delights
• Comforts the afflicted
• Can help us to shut the fuck up for a blesséd moment
• Afflicts the comfortable
• Makes us human*
• Magnifies the greater glory of God^†
• Joins the long conversation
• Engenders reasonless gratitude
• Offers the means to become other people
• Demonstrates unprovable truth.

 

I have been noodling on this list for years, mostly because I like to have reasons handy when I teach playwriting. (An investigation of the uses of playwriting would open a whole other can of worms.)  I have arranged these in a loose, ostensibly amusing order of my own choosing. I would be truly delighted to hear suggestions for additions, adjustments and deletions.

Over the last century or so we have tended to shy away from objectivity in the arts and have emphatically discarded any objective means of defining exactly what art is. “It can’t be done,” we shrug; or we toss down the glib gauntlet, “Art is whatever I say it is”, knowing full well that if that were true, then art would be, by extension, whatever anyone says it is, and by further extension, simply everything. And when something is “everything”, it achieves equivalence to “nothing.” Or perhaps even less than that.

So I would like to suggest that art might only be objectively defined in the context of its utility. Or in plainer words, in order to know what art is, we have to talk about—and maybe can only talk about— what art does.

I understand I have no special standing to proffer such a list. I quit college after my sophomore year. My plays are only rarely and mostly marginally produced. I am an administrative coordinator at a biotech company, a husband, a father and a person. That last post is the only one I believe entitles me to talk about art; but I stand fiercely by that standing, because, after all, if art is not for persons, then for whom is it?

My plan over the next few months, or—let’s be honest—years, is to write a short essay about every one of the uses I listed above, and maybe even some I have not yet thought of— maybe some that you suggest. Please be warned, however, that my track record for delivering on promised essays is spotty at best. 

Happy Holidays.

2010

 

*Not always a good thing.

^†Even if there isn’t One.

 

5/28/14 To see my more recent essay, "The Misuses of Art", please click here.

 

 

Related articles

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Reach for your Culture

Boiled Frogs

The art of defining "art"

Chicago Posts: Awesome Theatre Town? Or the Awesomest?

Chicago is an awesome town.  I know this because I have been there once and I had a blast.  Chicago buys you whiskeys and beers-back in friendly, binged-in pubs, and Chicago puts its arm around you and tells you about its job as an assistant district attorney and how it married its high school sweetheart and has a nice family though one of its kids is disabled with something you cannot remember because of all the drinks Chicago has stood you.  And then later when you go to take a piss you find Chicago making out with this kind of skanky chick in the men’s room stall, and you’re pretty sure she’s not Chicago’s wife who Chicago was just telling you about--what was it?  Five minutes?-- or half an hour ago?  Doesn’t matter.  Who are you to judge?  Doesn’t change the fact that Chicago is an awesome town.

 

*

But how awesome is Chicago as a theatre town?  My personal experience on this subject is much more limited.  This production of Louis Slotin Sonata that I am going to see this weekend is my first full production in what is, by nearly everyone’s estimation, one of the United States great stage cities.

Certainly everyone in the business likes to point to the Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company as the model for how to be both commercially successful and artistically relevant.  How many nascent ensemble-based theatre companies have promised you, with their collective hand out for a donation, that they intend to be Seattle or L.A.’s next Steppenwolf?  Me, honestly have no idea if Steppenwolf is all that great.  I have only seen one production by that team, nearly two decades ago, in New York City.  It was their adaptation of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and it was… oh right, it was frickin’ awesome.

Chicago is certainly less shy about promoting its theatre scene than Seattle.  The Tribune’s critic, Chris Jones calls his blog “Theater Loop: News from America’s Hottest Theater City.”  What critic in Seattle would ever be so boldly boosterish?  By my admittedly loose estimation, Louis Slotin Sonata received more reviews per capita in Chicago than in Seattle, Los Angeles or New York.  The fact that they were not all unqualified raves does not really matter.  Coverage is coverage and wide coverage is a sign of health for a theatre town.

To be fair, Chicago does seem to have more than its fair share of block-headed, Broadway-bedazzled reviewers.  Back in January, the above-mentioned Mr. Jones offered his thoughts on Outrageous Fortune, TCG’s ground-breaking analysis of the plight of American playwrights.  He dismissed us as “whining” and “absurdly self-indulgent.”  More recently he began the meat of his review of my Louis Slotin Sonata by saying, “By reacting fast, blocking and ending the reaction, Slotin saved the lives of the men who were with him in the lab that day,” thus moronically parroting the blatant falsehood that the U.S. government began spinning within hours of an embarrassingly avoidable accident.  One might forgive Jones for perpetuating this historical and scientific deceit if the precise counterpoint were not demonstrated over and over throughout the play, providing (I hope) the essential underpinning of Slotin’s unique path to redemption.

So critics can be patronizing blowhard nitwits in the Midwest, too.  Doesn’t matter.  Who is Seattle to judge?  (We can’t even get our best reviewer to commit to staying past intermission.)  Doesn’t change the fact that Chicago is almost certainly an awesome theatre town.  On this trip I want to learn more about how and why this is so.  I think the Emerald City could learn some things from the Windy One.

 

***

 

*A note on Gary’s illustration:  I’m so excited by this one because it gives an inside view to a process usually only seen by myself, Gary and the director of whatever show we might be working on.  Gary likes to diagram.  I think he calls these things bubble charts and they represent one of the ways he gets his arms around a play. 

I stared at this one for like fifteen minutes last night after it came across the inter-tubes.  I could make sense of pieces of it, but the whole eluded me.  I chalked this up to Gary being smarter than me.  The next morning I looked at it fresh and realized my error.  The main path represents not “Paul’s” progress, but “Chicago’s”.  Of course!  I’m not the main character of this piece, Chi-town is (especially in the first paragraph, which this picture maps to perfection.)

Gary’s diagrams cut straight to the heart of a story and expose the essential mechanics that even the writer didn’t fully understand when he constructed it. 

Plus they’re funny.