That tickled feeling, or, I love you Miranda July

Here are some of the things that do it for me-- (a list-in-progress)
*Really AUTHENTIC people. (I'm throwing caps around to try and compensate for the fact that I know that this is not the exact right word.) A longer version could be: People who are the way they are because they know no other way to be nor aspire to be anything other than themselves.
* A perfect sentence that achieves depth without taking itself too seriously, maybe a surprising word or two but not big words, sometimes it is more shocking to choose the smallest, most humble word possible. Also, whole paragraphs, pages, poems, books. Virginia Woolf I am thinking of you now. There was a sentence in the LA Times review of the movie Once that Adam commented on. I loved the sentence and the man.
* The way it feels when you come out of a movie or a play that started when it was light out and now it's dark and it seems like maybe a whole day, more than a day, has passed for where you've come and gone. Especially effective if experienced with a kindred sort of spirit and you don't go and ruin the feeling with talking about it or what happened in there but instead maybe wander around silent and alone and also together.
* Watching dancers wake up their feet, flexing their toes, the veins in their arches, all the muscles along their ankles bristle, then their calves swell, the bulge build along the side of their knee up to their thighs, their hips sort of thrust forward, their torso straighten, their spines elongate up to their ears, their wingspan expand before your eyes, even their eyes stretching and breathing too, (Tyra Bank's "fierce" face)-- this is the definition of alive for me
* Certain episodes of The Office tv show. British and American editions. (I.e. 'Prison Mike')
* The way my face feels after really excellent physical intimacy or when someone I love tells me a good, surprising detail/story-- bright-eyed but also hyper-relaxed and open
* spending long enough in the woods/nature to completely lose track of time and rely solely upon darkness, light and your rumbling stomach to guide your course of action, also, the crunching of leaves or pine-coney things underfoot is so happy-making for me
* writing and directing when it feels good and true and real
* TBD.

I saw Miranda July at Symphony Space tonight. It was a series called "Selected Shorts" and the concept is that incredible actors read author's writing but in this case Miranda read too. Betty Gilpin read a story before (not by Miranda) and invited me and I loved seeing her on stage and in the seat next to me. The text was from MJ's new book It Chooses You which is a work of non-fiction that she wrote while she was procrastinating from finishing the screenplay for her movie The Future. (Which I saw curiously with the aforementioned Adam this past summer.) There are so many parts of the book, the project, and this evening that resonated for me. She mentioned that sometimes when she's doing something she can experience sort-of feelings of grandeur. Like, 'I'm not just going to check out these Care Bears this woman is selling in the PennySaver for 2 to 4 dollars, I'm really on a kind of VisionQuest and these people I'm meeting, and their objects, are just helping reveal to me a whole lot of other deep stuff, helping me understand what to do with Jason, how to REALLY ENGAGE with humanity, what the meaning of life is, etc.' I think I do that sometimes. I definitely did that going into the Meditation Retreat and Medicine Ceremony with Katie and Nico in Vermont in September. But ahh, sometimes/usually I think the wider the net you cast the more you might catch. I've actually never thought or said that before but it seems like a mediocre description for what I'm feeling. I think Miranda is really good at writing, and standing still and listening, and being a person who is awkward but also very real, and not put-on awkward (hipster) but just really, her essence.
I feel like my challenge and goal as an adult is to do my best to get to this feeling, and to try to create opportunities for other people to get to this feeling. To get there as often as possible. And to definitely know and celebrate it when I'm there.
I'm here now Miranda. Doesn't it feel amazing?

egg-timer writing

It is now November. My voice is back and I even got a new speckled notebook. (Wider notebooks are better for lefties than the 'journal' size I had been using. More room for my clenched pen-in-hand-fist and more wide open space.)
I am trying to write more. And read more. And exercise more. And love more. And work more always of course. And live a balanced life more... AHHH-- it's so hard to do everything more without sleeping less. And I am also trying to sleep more. It is a conundrum.
I just read this article though and I loved it.
It has to do with ALL of the problems I just mentioned. But really, they aren't problems. This is just 'my circle.' As Lynda Barry would say, "Good, good, good."

words and not words.

I woke up this morning without a voice. Periodically in the past six months I've woken up with some sort of extreme-seeming ailment or temporary disability. (The first being the 24 hours of blindness in July, followed by a crazy crook in my next in August, September was good... and now today.) It consistently offers the occasion to remember a quote/saying I heard a lot growing up. Maybe someone famous said it. Maybe my mom made it up. Either way, it's a great one:
YOUR DISABILITY IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY.
Now, it's not the easiest to swallow when you're in the first throes of suffering or what-have-you (it is very hard to swallow today period)... but over time it really resonates for me.
I have barely spoken at all today and it was sort of amazing. I found myself listening much more deeply. And then when the other person stopped talking, instead of jumping in, I would just sort of nod, and try to express something with my eyes (I've heard Mary-Louise Parker calls this "face-acting"-- I'm gonna go with 'making faces' though), and we'd stand in silence for a lot longer than normal. And I LOVE silence.
I know one woman who really does not appreciate silence and it drives me crazy. She is a very loud talker, very redundant, usually sees herself as the victim, and will repeat her gripes about humanity and/or whatever health problem she's facing at the moment until the cows come home. And the cows like silence too so they are never going to come home in this state.
I have also seen a lot of performance in the past five days. Wednesday was SAVAGE IN LIMBO at NYU directed by the brilliant and genius Stella, Thursday was NIGHTLANDS at HERE by my old college classmate Sally, not Sylvan Oswald, Friday was STOP THE VIRGENS, and today was SONS OF THE PROPHET at the Roundabout and a dance performance at Invisible Dog. Today was the best but maybe that is only because I COULDN'T speak about it or dilute the experience with the chit-chat with people afterwards and so on.
I loved the non-textual moments in SONS so much and was so happy to be reminded how powerful really specific physical movement can be (in the dances tonight). Annie-B Parson's piece was gorgeous, accessible, sharp, and full of her wildly charming and subtle sense of humor. NTUSA and Witness Relocation's pieces were magical and sophisticated too. There were four pieces total and the second one (by Miguel Gutierrez) was very performance-arty. I saw a full-figured woman shake and shimmy in a way I have never seen before. And I've seen a lot of things!!
My mind went places and I shared all of these experiences with rooms full of strangers and here I am now to tell you.
Also, it's fun to have no voice because people alternately
1) whisper back at you
or
2) lean in very close.
I like both of these things.

the world expands

I love it when two entitites I love converge. This happened just now when I was reading Stephen Elliott's mind-explodingly-excellent Daily Rumpus column, dove down a wormhole of a link towards some object of his desire named Sugar, and then happened upon a post said Sugar had written about a project Colleen Wainwright is doing. Who is indeed, an old friend and fellow performer from the Ken Roht LA days (which continue to exist of course, just without me.)
Colleen's project was a success, and from the looks of it, WriteGirl is thriving.

pirate summer

Tonight, I lay my head here. I feel very artsy pirate-y already.
I will report back on the all-but-guaranteed adventures.
Thank you Daphne and Eliza for including me.

In honor of the upcoming anniversary of the demotion of Pluto as a planet

Here is a delightful if a little heart-wrenching video made by Brendan Hughes and the cast and crew of Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which played at the Wellfleet Harbor Actor's Theater in the summer of 2008. (I was in the show.)
In honor of Pluto. Because we've all felt demoted before. Knocked out of orbit. Replaced or discarded entirely.


As thia 7 year-olds can attest however, Pluto is not forgotten. Not by a long shot.



For more of this excellent kid wisdom, click here.

thank you stella

For all the magic you are always spreading around...


From: Stephen Elliott
Date: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 8:56 AM
Subject: (The Daily Rumpus) notes on editing
To: the-daily-rumpus@googlegroups.com


A friend said to look at The Limey by Steven Soderbergh. You could see the editing, like a pattern on an expensive shirt. The movie was the editing, as opposed to the acting or any of the other elements. I wondered if the point was to save a film that didn't otherwise work but my friend said No, it had to be shot that way.

So I watched Out Of Site, perhaps Soderbergh's best. In Out Of Sight the editing is again on display, but it doesn't overtake the acting, or the music. You never wonder what the film is about. It's perfect. A symphony.

A friend encouraged me to write about editing. I don't know enough, or anything, I said. She said try. I decided to conflate her, marry two story lines. You can do that, cut out entire threads, why consummate anything, have everything be an open question. Let the viewer decide their own stories while your protagonist stares off, quiet.

The thing is there's a story that never rings true when you tell it yourself, the story where you apologize for a lover's failures. Or, like a guy I knew in Amsterdam who mentioned the way the window girls winked at him. They wanted someone younger and better looking, he said, and I laughed. Though there was Toine. The Nigerian lady did knock on the glass and invite him in for free. But... I think about the porn star who wanted to have sex with Vin Deisel. She wished he made porn. Why not sleep with him anyway? No, she wanted to get paid for it.

I dated a girl who had a client and a slave. They both got her symbol branded on their bodies. I didn't get branded; I was just the boyfriend. Her husband didn't get branded.

It's not uncommon for a sex worker to have a special client. It's just complicated. The movie Going Under is about that.

In this conflated world she said, You always go there; it's like you're hiding. She wrote me first. She said, You're like an irresistible trick. He said, Why am I the only person in the whole world who's not allowed to see you naked? She said, You love me, but not enough to jerk off to someone else. My friend said, That's just like you and me. I said it was just a movie. I said, Actually, yeah, that's the point.

**

What I look for when I'm editing is shape. Here she's a little stronger, here she's a little more shy. If she's awkward maybe I play her best lines on the back of her head and focus on her when she isn't saying anything. I like dialogue from people I can't see but I don't like to see a character from the front saying something without her lips moving. If you're not going to see someone again I might play a song over their scene that continues deep into the next, so it's like a montage, especially late in the film.

I learned the software so I can try something, a cut or a song, and only tell the editor if I think it works. The editor's time is more valuable than mine. I don't want to waste it. She cuts to rhythm, she fixes scenes that otherwise wouldn't work. She knows how to cut around people. I like it most when she takes risks. She's cut many films and knows so much. We both lean toward discordant notes.

So that and I read works that wouldn't make any sense to me if I wasn't in the middle of trying to do it. But right now I inhale them. Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Walter Murch. And I watch movies. And I'm amazed by how much I don't know. I could write a whole book about it.