EN – YOU – I

Coffee. It’s smooth in my mouth. I have a bit of a headache, almost like a crack on the dome of my skull. My right eye feels dry and itchy. When I woke up it was crusted in some congealed goop. Crispy. Krispy critters in the night time. Something like that.

The question – what do our lives mean – floats through my head and I consider it. Yesterday’s entry, I read a little of it, feels far too intellectual to me. That’s the way I always write when I write from my head. But what about my sensations? Ooh – I’m doing it again. There’s something about writing that is an act of existence. My breath flows in, and it limps out. My room is behind me all around. My skull tight, as if a strap’s around it. My eye, raw, I feel…I would have to say…a little bit like a pirate. The music is tick tock clock kind of beep boop stuff, and maybe that adds a slyness to my style. My style. The word means little to me. Or…or nothing.

Bruce Brubaker, Max Cooper – Two Pages (Donato Dozzy and Danielle Di Gregorio Variation) – 2021

To write – from a centered place. Not centered as if everything is in balance. I – no, centered as in, firmly within my body and also without it. Because it stands to reason that if I can be within my body I can be without it too – and that I’m never perfectly anything. So I can at least notice.

The pain, the tension, the feelings of ennui. I used to think that word was pronounced EN – YOU – I. And a pang – it gives me a bit of a queasy feeling in my stomach.

I have a queasy feeling in my stomach. My tongue, ticklish against the roof of my mouth, and now I want to cry. Why? Why want to cry? Don’t I – want to sleep? Yes. I do want to sleep. I want to sleep the sleep of the forgiven and the allowed. The sleep of someone who doesn’t leap up in terror every fifteen minutes because there’s something I should be doing.

I have too much free time.

There I said it. My fingers are tingling. Hasn’t that been the subject of these free writes and my blog all along? That I have so much free time, I enter a labyrinth of my own making? Not mad about it. Not even regretful, that seems pretty unhelpful. What’s the point? No, rather proud actually, and glad that I noticed that many of these entries, much of my thoughts, do come from a kind of stasis – an echo chamber – a little bathtub prison here in my studio apartment that I leave at night to rehearse, and has become the sight of true progress with my love and work, but that also functions as…

…a little echo chamber.

Like a rat in a tank. Or a brain in a rat.

I often feel guilty about my blog entries. Or my journal entries. Boo – hoo, comfortable man, who can live as he pleases (within reason). But that’s not actually the problem. Or rather it is – but now I see the problem – not that I was born into something that I can’t, and don’t, want to change. The problem is what privilege allows me: too much free time. Not enough gauntlets. It’s an illusion that it’s safe at home. And every vantage I have made from love to work to freedom has come from thrusting myself into gauntlets. Into the world.

I place a lot of value on cultivating my time. On growing things little by little. But it can also be a comfortable rut.

School will rid me of that.

Maybe I should walk to rehearsal today. Get out of my groove and groove. I feel surprisingly light. Surprisingly…optimistic. There’s a surprising optimism. Energy released by the relief of repression.

I will go outside today, I will probably remain sunken into my routine, a face embossed on a cavern wall, a slot car on a track. But also know – there’s a deathly anesthesia to it all. And living – has happened in the moments outside.

Hiroshi Nagai – Illustration – 1980s(?)

Sunlight

Neh. Here. Sit. Nah. Hah-hah!

Things are clicking today – a wonderful, fulsome feeling. It began last night when I realized the castle in the play should actually be a wall – with a bulwark. That’s right from the text and it makes SENSE. With maybe different ways up and down the wall.

Pressure. (Feeling. Unpleasant. Pressure) I think of the blog. Will this free write go up on the blog? Should it? Iciness spreads through my loins. I don’t think so. I don’t want it to, and I especially don’t want to sit here and try to write something blog worthy. Just think of all the strange judgements in that sentence: try to write (aren’t I writing?) Blog worthy (what makes something that? And what does it even mean?)

Things are clicking today, and that feels like momentum. Clicks about a good theme for tonight’s rehearsal: seeding imagery, lightly, and not holding on to it. Like dropping a tea bag into clear water, but you can’t dictate how the tea spreads, how the colored water blooms. Or like those tea flowers you drop into water and the blossom … unfurls. Imagery.

A castle. Bulwarks. Ramparts. Guards on the walls. Cigrettes. Helmets. Dragons. Imagery – moving on, transforming. Because now I see green fields. Now I see my old computer game, Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster, where you go to the castle. I remember the tombs of the knights. They were supposed to have fought a great wyrm, but only blood and shame remained. I can’t remember why. Because they rode across a white desert. Because they did what their lord asked of them – and their lord was mad. And they died in blood and gore fighting the great dragon, and then you have to kill them afresh.

Black Isle Studios – Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster – 2001

That’s where my mind went.

I’m excited, more so than any day in the recent past, for tonight’s rehearsal. Is it because we’re getting past the midpoint in the show? But now, an unsettling but not unpleasant feeling of doubt creeps in. If what I watched last night were the actual show how disappointed would I be? I don’t want it to simply continue in the same direction it’s going. I want it to … CHANGE directions. It has a little tiny beating heart, just a few little blips of human life and behavior – now I want that human behavior to expand and subsume the rest of the experience.

We are alive. We are the knights fighting the dragon. We are lithe. We are the soldiers in the mud. We are the soldiers in the basement. We are the soldiers on the march. We are the soldiers, for whom we will do this piece. For them and for Lee and for the history of this bloody world. Whatever that means.

Because we live in oppression (bear with yourself here, Sam, things are getting heavy) we went out to fight the dragon, and were met with only blood, shame, viscera, and white dust. Whiteness that blinds. Whiteness that binds. Whiteness that eats the world.

I want to knock myself off the pedestal a little bit, the pedestal of pretension. But I do want to have fun, and if I feel excitement today, I think it’s because I can sense what fun we might have tonight. I’m curious, could my suggestions about the sins bring out anything new, anything interesting in the actors? And could our work on “suggestion” or “image”, that gentle blossoming, help to bring us more into the room? Can it help me come more into the room – right now?

I have the play on the mind. Feeling. Unpleasant. Exhaustion. I also don’t want to think about after rehearsal, though it should be pleasant enough. I need to not stay up until two or three in the morning.

I feel good. My limbs feel light and sensitive, tingly, almost as if my flesh is responding to the morning light. It can barely make it around the corner in my apartment, but I sense it. And the walls and below my floor are probably crawling, fair teeming as Tolkien would say, with roaches. But that’s life for you – my feelings are no more or less out of control than those roaches, no more or less acceptable, and not much different than the sunlight either. I’m not in control of any of those things. They all give me reactions of various kinds. The same will happen tonight at rehearsal, for the next month, throughout the run of our seven shows, and into the future…nothing ends, and nothing really begins. Things morph, mutate, and twist. Things blossom. Like that little seed pod in the cup of tea. Blossoming, unfurling, twisting, contorting.

We blossom, friends. Cultivate your garden. Cultivate yourself. And as Tame Impala says…

Let it Happen.

That’s it for this one I think. I enjoyed tingling this morning. I’m enjoying this morning. I look forward to another cup of sunlight.

Killian Eng – Shadow of the Colossus art print – 2019 (?)

Sam, Sam, and Sam

Here is a sentence I thought before I started writing today:

“And so one day’s nightmares slip into the dreams of the next.” Or, “And so one day’s nightmares find relief in the next.” Or maybe even, “And so, the nightmares of one day morph into the next day’s dreams…” Or something. Pretentious? Sure. Why am I even fixating on that thought? Good question, self-talk Sam.

I’m fixating because yesterday was a difficult day. I had many thoughts. Pressures. Worries. Self-doubt. Fears. Just abject terror at various points throughout the day. And rage. Does that mean yesterday was special? That it was particularly torturous? Out of the ordinary? A gauntlet even? A test that I passed?

Passed in the past? Past passed?

Fuck. I sneezed. How distracting. I like the ridges of thrills that run down my arm, the pleasure, the air exploding with force out of my nostrils, the little hairs on my arms all standing on end. Sneezing. It’s…well, if you slow it down and really sense it, it’s fantastic. Or gross.

All throughout my childhood my older sister Ruthie accused me of milking my sneezes. “YUCK!” she’d cry from the front seat of Uncle Frank’s car. “You’re doing that on purpose!” “No I’m not!” I’d say, and then wind up a fantastically long, honking snort. I would bellow when I sneezed. Then suck the snot back in very loudly. “Yes you are!” she’d say. And then, to Uncle Frankie, “You can just tell they’re extremely wet and snotty sneezes. That’s why they’re so gross!”

You know what? She was right. I was doing it on purpose. I liked the feeling of dominating any room, or at least drowning out other noises, with the proud performance of my profligate schnoz.

Pretentious? Probably. Pee pee. I like P words.

Here, in brief interlude listen to this Lambchop song: The Rise and Fall of the Letter P. You’ll like it, I think. (Hello, I have already decided this will go on my blog. Apparently.)

Lambchop – The Rise and Fall of the Letter P – 2006

Where was I?

I feel I’ve picked up half a dozen threads in this one writing session, dropped them like old news, and followed my sniffing schnoz to the next thought. Don’t we want completeness? Don’t we want conclusions? Didn’t high school teach us to write in a five paragraph structure, the last line of each paragraph leading to the first line of the next, the last paragraph all about wrapping up one’s arguments, or summing them up, and drawing some sort of conclusion?

Fuck that.

Not that it’s bad to do. It’s not bad to be good at writing. But I – really don’t want to do so today. I just want to follow my train of thought, like a string that leads to a ball of yarn somewhere in the forest.

I was saying something interesting though. Yesterday was “difficult”; it felt like a nightmare. At times. then I went to rehearsal, and quickly got into the moment with a wonderful group of artists, and…felt comfortable. Present. Alive. Able to maneuver. Able to have fun. Concerned, at times, self-doubting, at times. You know how it is: I sensed doubt within me. Is that a crime? Am I getting defensive (or defesnive, as my sluggish fingers first sallied)? Defensive towards whom? Towards what charge? Towards myself, I think, and this charge: YOU’RE A SELF-DOUBTING ARROGANT SACK OF CRAP AND ANY TIME YOU THINK SOMETHING’S GOING WELL, GUESS WHAT, YOU’RE WRONG, AND PUTTING THIS WRITING OUT THERE FOR ANY SORT OF DISCERNING READER WILL VERY QUICKLY REVEAL THE CRACKS IN YOUR FACADE MY BOY, MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

You see. Thoughts can and do spin out of control. It doesn’t mean much. It’s like rapping on a subject; like fractals drawn by a pendulum at the Exploratorium; fantastic shapes on the floor. Can the shapes be beautiful? Sure. Intimidating? Sure. Debilitating? Thought-shapes can seem so. But does that mean the fractals have some sort of abstract meaning, or eternal, binding, physical reality? Nuh-uh. They’re beautiful shapes. Clouds that looks like dragons.

Sometimes I want to be free of my thoughts. I never will be. Sam and Sam and Sam are stuck together until their dying breaths. Is that so bad? I don’t think so. I’m growing to be okay with Sam and Sam’s company, even when they whisper fearful things in my ear, kick me in the bollox, tell me I’m not good enough, or destabilize me. 

Frankly, that’s overblown. They do lots of things. Like clouds do. Like fractals on the floor. Like snowflakes. Fascinating, endlessly differentiating: meaningless.

Sam, Sam, this is Sam. Remember when we used to sneeze as loudly as we could in the back of Uncle Frank’s car to get a rise out of my sister?

Yes, Sam, we do.

That was fun wasn’t it?

Yes Sam, it was. And even more fun when Uncle Frank stopped at Wendy’s and got us spicy chicken nuggets.

You’re not wrong Sam and Sam. Just don’t tell Sam about any of this. He’d only freak out.

This writing was fun. There are fun possibilities in each little pocket of the day. Why not? Why not?

I’m done.

I want another sip of my coffee.

I feel light bubbly and tingly now.

Pleasant.

Farewell.

Anonymous Manuscript – Geometrical Figure and Perspective Drawing – 16th Century

The Getty

This. Blog. I. Must.

It’s Friday. I’ve written all week but not wanted to throw anything up on the blog. So this has to go up on the blog.

I’m mad today. Just pissed. It’s Friday, my workweek is not over. I only have a pencil to write with (in my journal before I transfer it to…you know, you get it, THIS IS NOT CLEVER.) I hate this pencil, it’s hard to write with and hard to read. I’ve started combining my w’s and r’s, my m’s and y’s. My handwriting has gone to shit since school.

What do I want right now? An escape ladder. From what? Myself: my thoughts, my feelings, my aching but fully functional body.

Fully functional. I take breath. Like a spiral, my body seems to uncoil, released from clamps my mind bore down on it.

I’m scared to start school. I’m – disgust – it flows from within me, seeps like gas when I look at the internet. My first world problems flap around my head like bats and I see the disapproving eyes of my college friends.

White enabler!

Part of the problem!

What have YOU done to help the world?!

Hello voices in my head, I’ve come to talk with you again.

This guilt. What’s the point. It’s not action – it’s a gas (GUILT IS A GAS – read it, know it, begin to grasp the cinematic universe that is BLUE NOTES! Sam’s blog. Or just enjoy schadenfreude. Or relate. Or learn something? Or just feel refreshed? Or get a voyeuristic thrill? I dunno! Why are you here? Post in the comments below!) Guilt, ahem, is useless energy disguised as revelation.

Once, long ago, I lived near the Getty Center museum. The one on the hill in LA.

One night, drunk, Megan, my girlfriend of the time, Pancho, Alex Vlahov, and myself, climbed to the top of the hill facing the Getty Center. In the night, it looked like a space station from Start Trek. I felt free, like I’d come home; in love, allowed, comfortable.

Another day, Ryan and myself dropped acid and went out into LA. First to the hill across from the Getty where we giggled and sang, then up the monorail ride to the Getty itself. I felt illuminated, peaceful but in flux, at home in the changes of the world and at their mercy.

Years later, I returned to the Getty alone. I was in LA, sleeping on my sister’s couch, acting in an abysmal play. In the parking garage I remembered other times I’d come. I wondered where Megan was, what she was doing. I felt lost, alone, corrupted. I wandered the exhibits, a strange 29 year old, a stranger to myself, feeling I’d lost the way somewhere. Love, friends, even inspiration, lost.

BUT (always a but, right? Can’t just leave it at something unsettling…) I drove up the coast a week later. I drove the California Highway 1 alone. My loneliness was so much smaller than the cliffs, the redwoods in Big Sur, the sea lions, the glittering Pacific sea – the whale calls in the night. I was small. I reminded myself then that all that vastness existed. That nature was HOLY and UNKNOWABLE: and I tasked myself never to forget it again, wherever or however I was.

God, nature, vastness: eternal. You are there. I can’t know you, but I can feel you. You are there. What else can I say? Is it a delusion? I don’t know.

It would be nice to round this off with something less unsettling.

But I don’t know. I’m here with you, in the maze of life, beautiful and blind as we are all.

Goodnight.

And good

morning.

Paul Cezanne – The Curtains – 1885