Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween Fun!!!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Broadway's inspiration...
I'm so inspired by Terri White's story. She is possibility personified. I wish I could see her perform in this role. It's fair to say that I wish I could see anything right now, but Grease is playing at the Kravis Center here in West Palm Beach. That's not what I'm talking about. I was really down wondering how I could get out of this hole I've found myself in. Suffice it to say my self-pity party was in full sway and then I read this. It got me thinking of an idea for a play. I stayed up late last night writing an outline- something I never do. Outlines and "how to" scenarios kill inspiration, in my opinion, but this story needs structure.
Anyway, I'm inspired again, which is leaps and bounds above yesterday. Still fighting through the urge to sleep all day, I needed to laugh. I found this...
a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHNtuaVHenM
Wesley Taylor, Matt Doyle, Blake Daniel, Mitch Jarvis and Van Hughes (My Link from Hairspray. I love getting the understudies) There are other people I've never heard of as well. Hilarious. These kids are either wicked talented or heavy into illicit drugs. Either way this and the other videos, apparently related to Rock of Ages, is the funniest shit I've seen in a long time. Mitch Jarvis reminds me of Jack Black, except funny and less putrid. Not entirely putrid free but he strikes a better balance in my opinion. The "retarded" comment made me cringe a little, but I let it go. I also watched the Princess Bride rip off, I mean parody, and despite it being sacrilege, I could not stop laughing. Fun stuff.
I look to art for everything lately. I'm living vicariously through it. While I can never abandon it, I need to start living in the real world again.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
I may have had a mini stroke...
OK, he got the right choreographer with the right dance from last season. He got the correct name and style of a dancer this season. Then after reentering the room, he followed with "I remember that kid auditioned last season and they put him through to this season because he was too young. He's good and they should let him dance what he dances." I'm sure I lost consciousness. I mean there was no bat, ball, goal, track, no touchdown, no karate chop...What?
The end of the world may be happening soon. Prepare! It's coming.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Kudos Paul Haggis
"I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated," Haggis wrote. I know this first became an issue and was denied after Travolta donned drag for the Hairspray film.
I'm saddened to hear that Billy Bell is not going to be on So You Think You Can Dance this season although I find it odd that he tweeted today, about five hours before it was announced that he would be out due to illness, that he was doing the "tourist" this with his mother? Weird. Something is amiss. Anyway, Sonia, whatever her name is, does not replace in any way shape or form Mia Michaels. There is really no reason to watch this season. This show is falling apart.
I took the dogs for a long walk today down by the lake. It's really pretty there and the dogs were off leash for a good 30 minutes. They are peacefully snoring at this moment.
Obama landed in Miami earlier this evening. I'd love the opportunity to explain to him how the fact that I can't find a job is depleting my will to live, but I can't afford the $500.00 a plate to get to talk to him. Bummer.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Johnny Weir....
I'm going out this afternoon to watch the Jets play at the Ale House. I'd much rather have battery acid poured into my eyes, but it'll be a day out. Tonight, I will be forced to watch the freaking Yankees. I'd much rather have battery acid poured into my eyes while watching the Jets. Baseball is the worst game ever invented. I'm rooting for the Angels just so I don't have to watch the World Series. Hate baseball. There is a problem. If the Angels win, the final game will likely interrupt my So You Think You Can Dance. It's a dilemma to be sure.
Wrote another poem... The title will change.
Each fleck and yarn
Translucent
Liquid
The most solid
Earth
Drains it with every
Step
Its cracks
A treacherous
Terrain
Too much of it
Left behind
To recognize
Itself
In space
It would be
A sphere
Protected
By tension
Here
Too easily
Washed away
Too Human
Invisible
Wasted
Resources
Of forgotten
Bounty
Metamorphosis
Urgently
Required
Connection
Combination
Attachment
To another
Element
To Another
anything
Nothing
Is meant
To connect
Alone
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The Soloist...
Today. My brother decided to teach me the guitar. He hands it to me and tells me where to put my fingers. For the next three hours he tries to teach me some chords. For the next three hours, I mess it up. Can't make my fingers go that way. It doesn't feel right. "Keep trying. What are you doing? Oh my God, what's the matter with you? You are not supposed to grab it like that." He snatches the damn thing and lays it on the floor and says that I'm not to touch it. After a 30 minute dissertation on the way music should flow through you and how it will never flow if my arm is completely wrapped around the neck, he tells me I can pick it up. I do pick it up. My brother's response, "Shit, you're left handed." Yes, I am. Have been my whole life. Apparently that makes a difference.
Friday, October 23, 2009
No coffee for the weary....
Anyway, another Broadway actor has come out of the closet. Matt Doyle has added his name to the list that already includes Jonathan Groff, Gavin Creel, Nick Adams and Max Von Essen. There are more but these are the youngsters. Collectively, they weigh about 42 pounds but they stand to add a great deal more in value for being so brave, so young. Anyway, Matt did it very subtly and with a great deal of class, in my opinion. He provided a link to a photo shoot, a day in the life type thing and a part of his day was dinner with his “boyfriend” Wes. If I assume that Wes is Wesley Taylor of Rock of Ages, then his name should be added to the above list and the total weight should be increased to 48 pounds. LOL. Kidding. Seriously though, a change is coming and I like it.
So I stayed up late again last night writing my play. I reread it this morning and for the first time in my life, related to something I’ve written, I think it’s good. I think it’s really good. It’s not ready yet and still needs some tweaking. I changed the direction of one characters completely. Because of that change, I need to change the first act dialogue to set up the revelation. I know these people so well at this point; I can almost visualize it. That is weird since I stand amongst the auditory people of the world. So I’m a little tired from lack of coffee and donuts so I’ll end this here for now.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Just Desserts
by Alicia Vonne
I am famished
I digress
from bright lighting
into darkness
back and forth
infinity
burned
crispy
yet undercooked
baked
and milky white,
striving for nothing
and everything
these are fruits
mixed with sugar,
mashed into
an unknown
porridge
for the taking
ripen me to the quick
eat me with
strawberries
and blueberries
and whipped cream
I am sweet
but subtle
almost dry
but dressed
and waiting
for
someone
Imprints
by Alicia Vonne
Even gentle steps
in sand leave an imprint.
Sometimes a wave
washes the evidence
away, or a more
significant
imprint is made
that renders yours
invisible.
There is not
enough commotion
born to sand alone
that could make a
difference for it is so
delicate that the wind
can make it dance.
Same sex marriages and the involvement of the church...
Here’s my problem. I was raised Catholic and there is no doubt I’ve been on both sides of the fence when it comes to God. I lost a child. You’re not going to find someone who has been through what I have without having a beef with the Almighty. Suffice it to say, however, I believe that the core of my moral foundation comes from Catholicism and I believe that it is a strong foundation.
That being the definition of my belief for a strong foundation, I have to say it is true that a person can live their life to the letter of man’s law and be utterly corrupt of morality. You can commit adultery without breaking the law. You can lie without breaking the law. You can covet without breaking the law. You can kill without breaking the law (Military.) You can have false Gods before Him and not break the law. La de da de da! Etc…
That being said, I have a personal a definable grudge against the Church’s involvement in stopping same sex unions. First, I believe that there is nothing immoral about same sex unions but more importantly, they have a moral obligation to abide by God’s law. God’s law states “Matthew 25:40- And the King will make answer and say to them, truly I say to you, because you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Although it is difficult the write, I have been the least of these and I have been turned away. After my child passed within a year of the death of both of my parents, I had no one to answer to except myself. I moved to New York City, something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I took a temp job after being unable to find a “real” job. I broke my arm requiring two surgeries and was “laid off” on the day I was supposed to return due to budget cuts. Being laid off from a job I was grossly under-employed at in the first place and not being able to find another one left me unable to pay the rent. It left me unable to live. Having nowhere else to go, I spent a week sleeping, sort of, on the streets of the City.
I went everywhere for assistance, including every church affiliation I could think of. I was told over and over again that there was no money and yet million of dollars in church money was spent to stop same sex marriages from being legal per man’s law in California. How can the church justify forsaking God’s law in favor of man’s law? How can the church justify spending a single dime on stopping the rights of a human being based on a judgment of morality when they are being immoral by turning God, represented by the least of me, away? What kind of precedent does that send to those who place their moral trust in the church? It’s okay to walk over human beings in the street to put your money on hate.
I always thought God was being instructional anyway …Thou shall not lay with mankind as with womankind? It is true. Someone has to flip over. Crass, I know, but it could be. People in these times weren’t big talkers about things of a sexual nature and perhaps they would have needed a little explanation. No mention of women because God knew they could figure it out. Suffice it to say I’m getting loopy from a lack of sleep. Off to bed now. It is time.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Feeling blah today...
I inherited the hypochondriac gene from my Father. He would get a twinge of pain in his side and say it was his spleen. My Mother would get so angry. Especially since he was having a massive heart attack and refused to go to the hospital until he finished his cigarette. He sat outside the hospital in Michigan, in the dead middle of winter dragging his IV and his ass outside to smoke. That's dedication.
I'm missing them a lot lately. I would love to go see the revival of Bye Bye Birdie in New York City with my Mom. Even though the reviews were less than spectacular, it was one of our shows. Mom saw the original, of course, and said Janet Leigh was a tart in the movie version. We loved it though. My poor Father! I can't believe they will have been gone seven years on December 13th.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..." (Henry David Thoreau) I moved to New York for just that reason but it didn't turn out so well. I timed it with the collapse of America. Thanks George. I wrote that My New York Story piece because of it. Everyone keeps saying that we are coming out of it in every area except unemployment. Yea, well, that sucks for me. On SNL this weekend Seth Myers joked that all the unemployed people sitting at home at 3:00 in the afternoon yelled "yay" at their TV screens when they announced the dow had climbed over 10,000 on CNN. Yea, like I can afford cable.
I hate to think it's 2009 and people had to march for equality...in the land of the free? Really? I'm having a hard time adjusting to this reality. My head is all over the place tonight.
I'll end it with a poem I wrote a while back after the death of my parents.
I Wander
With every age
the road narrows.
Ponder the whispers
long forgotten
by some.
I forgot
or forget sometimes
to steal a moment
and seal a memento.
I did not notice
the narrowing of time
or the pace at which
your time had come.
I now walk in footsteps
formerly planted
to soak up a memory
and understand
what road may
be left for me.
I yearn to learn
from it or lean on it
for solace.
Make me a token for
years of something.
So I can find my way
again.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Today I...
I'm deciding whether to read Obama's book next or stick with the Mamet plays. I'm afraid my mind is slipping. I just finished reading Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness and I swear I had to stop and reread every page. It's like I've forgotten the English language.
A New York Story
I regret that I managed in this new economy to hit rock bottom without a drop of alcohol or a hint of drugs. I imagine that my continuous delusion that there was still hope for people that tried cost me greatly in the full experience of homelessness and depression. I truly believe that I could have been completely aware of the fragility of my existence while enjoying a mind altering substance and that altering of the mind would have provided a distance allowing me to stop the wallowing and self pity that generally accompanies needing to pee in the middle of the night whilst making my home on the street in front of The Coalition for the Homeless.
It’s not like people didn’t try to warn me. A very nice homeless woman elegantly stated, “Girl, you needs to get stoned. They not gunna help you unless you stoned.” Another wisely stated, “You don’t have to be falling down drunk. Just get a pint, drink it and then go in there. They won’t help you if you screen comes back clean though so you gotta do something.” They were right, of course, but I was stubbornly and stupidly optimistic. I can do this. I can survive this. Someone will realize that I have something to offer. Someone will realize that my being on the street is a great travesty of justice and they will offer me a job. That was the only boundary between my existence at the time and a life- a job. They didn’t notice. For five days and nights I set up camp outside the place that was supposed to help me. For five days they repeated their mantra, single, no kids, no family, no friends = no assistance. For five nights they walked passed me after their long hard day at the office and pretended not to notice me.
The funny thing is that the people charged with helping the homeless were the only people who did not make eye contact with me while I was homeless. Although I had managed to live quietly in New York City for over a year without making eye contact with anyone, except that one guy who felt the need to apologize after nearly beheading me with his umbrella one rainy afternoon in Midtown- clearly a tourist, everyone seemed to stop and stare at me while I was at my lowest. Not being a person who enjoys being the center of attention really hurt me in that area.
Not to mention the fact that my Diving Bell and the Butterfly experiment went all awry as the staring New Yorkers did not seem to get that I was trying to communicate with them by blinking excessively whenever they said the next word that in the sentence I was creating in my mind. You don’t know how difficult it is to form the sentence “You suck for judging me you worthless chum suckers” until you’ve tried to blink it out with random strangers on the street. I gave up and started reciting the alphabet in my own mind, storing up all the letters until someone would stare at me with disgust in their eyes as I blinked out the last S. It was remarkable unsatisfying as they never seemed to hear the judgment I was shooting back at them. Apparently you have to actually have locked in syndrome for people to take your blinking seriously, which sucks.
I made other mistakes besides not hitting the heroin hard, as I’m sure most newbie homeless people do. I thought the most important thing besides having clean underwear and personal documentation was to give myself enough reading material to keep my mind sharp. I would finally have the time to read Moby Dick, to tackle the lesser known works of William Shakespeare and, of course, no life in the gutter would be complete without the talents of Edgar Allen Poe, but that goes without saying. I learned the hard way that the words of these great minds were never as heavy in the metaphysical sense as they are in the physical sense. I also believed that if the continuous threat of being mugged ever came true, the villain would surely return after finding he wasted his time and effort stealing five pairs of underwear and fifteen books and rightfully shoot me in the head. I luckily survived that mistake.
One thing I never truly sorted out was the sleep situation. Another issue that would have greatly benefited from the use of alcohol was the eventual delirium that overtakes the mind due simply to the lack of sleep. It is illegal to sleep on the street, you see, and I was determined not to break the law. It was that same misguided integrity that kept me from making a home in abandoned buildings or begging for money. I even turned down the offer of five dollars from a neatly groomed Hasidic Jew who was perplexed and irritated that I would turn it down. I did, however, accept seventy-five cents from a Crack dealer because that was drug money anyway but I feel I have been punished enough for that. Money was not the issue. Although the 92.00 I received weekly from unemployment wasn’t enough to pay the rent, electric and food required to barely scrape by in the modern world, it was surely enough to barely scrape by on the streets.
Human beings, it seems, need to break the law as eventually they need to sleep. It just happens. The eyes become heavy and start to close on their own and there is no amount of integrity or desire to be a law abiding citizen even in the direst of circumstances that can stop that once it starts. I found a cozy spot in the corner of a subway car on the 1 line and slept for 45 glorious minutes. I only managed 45 minutes because a pristinely pressed uniformed officer of the law grabbed me knee and shook it. He asked, “Can you sit up?” “Yes” I replied in my delirium. “Sit up,” he said without a hint of humanity. If I were less tired, I would have tried to express in a rational and well thought out statement of facts, but I was inevitably altered from an exhausted mind getting only about 1/8th what it needed. I managed a quiet but determined “Pig” as the subway doors closed. I can only hope he heard me. I tried to sleep some more but couldn’t because I had been warned. I hate that cop and would like to talk to him now. Not sure what I would say but it would be a curse filled rant about decency and karma. I hate that cop!