Memoirs of a Lunatic

I wish things felt okay when I'm not 100% immersed in my next big project, but they don't feel okay.. They feel bad.

I think the only thing I'm honest about is how I feel, (usually). And half of the time that is a lie too.  I feel empty and sad.. I do.  When I'm not feeling sad about not working on something I love, I feel an overpowering feeling of nothingness. Neither is really better or worse, I guess.

Sometimes I forget what I like or even what kinds of people I want to be around. Sometimes I literally forget even what I want to do... Do I want to do anything? 

Maybe I never wanted it enough. Maybe I just didn't ever think I could get it.

Sometimes my goals start to feel like the goals of somebody I used to know. A vague memory of some old friend talking about what they wanted while I listened and nodded to the things that seemed cool to try to seem encouraging.

I wonder how that friend is doing, I can't even remember why we lost touch. We used to like each other a lot.

I've been spending too much time looking at an object or listening to the same five songs on my head phones while walking down Eastern Parkway to the 3 train. Whatever I'm going to go do, whoever I am going to go meet with, It's not going to feel like it did. Like it should. Like I need it to feel.

I think deep down I know in my heart that this (overwhelming) desire to pump out the next big thing is fueled by a loneliness of not believing in god. And there isn't anything anyone can do about that.

There is nothing I can do about that.

It is hard to accept that we are alone here. That the only thing looking out for us while we orbit around is just evolution.. Propelling us to adapt, accept, breathe... Live. 

How many times do you need to leave for the hills of mystery and 'white boy adventures', before you aren't bored anymore?

You will want to find a place to be for a long while, and eventually you will go back to wearing all of your sweaters that were in storage.

It will hit you one afternoon when you have nothing important to do. You begin to make tea in the kitchen, now the kettle is whistling.

You are distracted. Looking out the windows that face the street. a noise outside reminds you of something from years past. and you cannot let it go.

For letting it go, and turning around to tend to the kettle,

would be abandoning it all over again.

The kettle whistles louder and louder,

It is all about what is outside of the windows, though.

This isn't the time for tea.

(You wanted something I couldn't give you.)

(I wanted something that doesn't exist.)

It reaches its highest level of volume now.  You hear it, but cannot turn it off. You refuse to diss this moment of remembrance. So you continue to face the windows, looking at the street.

The room fills with steam

and you disappear.

No one is left to remember, so the sound outside trails off until it is completely gone.

My third and final Play has been completed. I have no real deep thoughts to report on the process of this show. Feeling things (emotions) has been exceptionally hard lately. I don't know why, but the good thing is , I also don't really care why.

It was cool recreating a Hieronymus Bosch type of nightmare for the final death scene in Space Twin & the End of the World. But all in all I feel like I am done writing and starring in plays. At least for a long while.

It's weird how much shit you get for doing them. I don't even really mean in terms of reviews..It was reviewed (mostly) well. And everyone in it was fantastic. But in each of these plays my patience with humanity was stretched to its absolute limit. I had to channel zen master to get through so much of it, and I don't like zen master. If i'm gonna do it i wanna do it while screaming. But you can't.

The thing I miss about writing in a small tight knit group is how bizarre and horrible it is.  You become enemies and lovers with these people simultaneously and when you put on a show it is epic because so much shit is being thrown into it and then it has nothing to do with comedy anymore. It becomes bigger and wider and deeper than that. It becomes this hologram of fear, love, and HATE that you all have for each other and you put on the show in fear  about said fear that you feel, and with an intense understanding that this is probably your last show together, as a group (even if you've written the best material of your life with these people), and all that fearJuice you are feeling as you are putting on the show, all that emotion of love and hate you have for these psychos, all of that shines through your performance and people who don't know you see that and feel that and they don't know what they are watching, persay,  but they know they are experiencing something real, and something weird. And I miss that.

I have been writing completely by myself for about a year now and it is strange and mostly sad and lonely. But can also be really awesome when I can get it right.

I have felt in a weird mental state for a couple years (maybe now more than ever, though) about feeling really young and really old at the same time.

I feel independent and self sufficient in ways that I never knew  would have been possible a few years ago. I had no idea I could be happy doing something by myself and for myself. I had no idea such happiness existed beyond the boarders of doing something with somebody you wanted to bone. Or were boning. But I also feel like everything i experience is through this filter of observation from a little kid on a park bench eating an ice cream cone but it's so hot outside that it is melting faster than I can lick it clean and so it is dripping all over my shirt and I know in my brain that this means my mom will scream at me for hours for having a dirty shirt, but I can't stop to clean myself up because i'm being hypnotized by the people at the park and watching their slow motion whirlwind of an existence that I feel the need to observe completely.

And so i irresponsibly watch all this commotion happening before me, even though I can see my mother in the distance parking her car coming to pick me up and bring me home. I can hear and see the kids screaming, and grown ups fighting, and dogs barking and I am too in awe that there is this movement beyond myself that happens whether i am paying attention or not. And so I always pay really close attention because it makes me feel so sad and so lonely to have things happen without me witnessing them , so i try to witness all that i can because i am selfish and want it all.

But then I get screamed at for hours because there is chocolate ice cream all over my t-shirt, to which she claims cannot be washed out with detergent.

And I am ten again. Incapable of making decisions, or having clear thoughts.. Because the world is huge and complicated and i don't understand it.. and more depressingly, it is much more infinite than me and any thought I could ever, ever have. So I just watch. And Breathe. And try to ignore the people who are yelling at me; while getting dripped on by the melting cone.

This is the month I will look back on for a long time, I think, and reminisce about how special this time in my life was. Every moment was so fucking full of emotion and passion.  I can’t help but cry little confusing tears all the time at any given part of the day when I think about the journey this month was and how much fucking stuff I learned about life.

I feel like i am going to burst with emotion at all times, so bare with me because I am a cockroach in a frying pan. Jesus Christ. Okay, let me begin..

It all started with the production of a play I wrote: 'Ugh, A Christmas Story' - about a person named Andy going home for Christmas to fulfill a tradition/promise that he and his best friend Jack, have. ( to go to Blue Sky Diner at midnight on Christmas Eve. )

The story mostly focuses on the let downs of family and friends and the need to feel whole around Christmas in wanting the magic back in your life just for that day and not being able to handle that you have outgrown all of it. It is also about how you never really get what you want , but that sometimes you get something else, something kind of random that can be sweet and special, even if you didn’t want it. It is important to sit with these ‘gifts’ and just try to soak them in. Experiences are so special and I was really trying to go for something that highlighted these small moments.. How sad , beautiful, and strange something could be like talking to a very old man at a diner who is sitting alone and spilling coffee all over the table, accidentally, on Christmas morning.

The man who played the old man in the diner in the play is my friend Jim. He was a comedy actor in the 60’s and he is so fantastic (hilarious, hilarious improviser and wonderful actor). I wish i could explain every reason why he is special, and such a poignant fucking person for me to have spent time with, and all the lessons he has shown me these past couple of months.. but I know that some things should be kept internal. But what I can tell you is…

While Louis (The director, who is TheFuckingBest) and I were casting the show one night in November at some weird diner in Chelsea, I told him something along these lines: Look Louis, I can’t have a 25 year old dressed up as an old man. I need the real deal. Someone with glasses so thick his eyes are as big as footballs. Do you know anybody like that?

Louis paused, which he does a lot while talking to you one on one ( i think because he is seriously trying to talk himself out of saying what he is about to say- but losing the battle )

"yeah, I know a guy"

Lou took another sip of his coffee and paused again.

"..He wont ever remember when the rehearsal is-- in fact it will be quite hard for him to even show up. He has a lot of doctor appointments and moves very slow. He’s old. He will do whatever he wants on stage so trust me there is no point in giving him lines because his memory is kind of shot anyway. , but mentally, physically, he is exactly who you want. But be aware.. it could go up in flames. But its just.. He's perfect. He's exactly what you want but you have to decide if he's worth the risk."

I remember feeling really over whelmed with this casting decision. Especially because I don't make casting decisions. I usually do sketch comedy shows and the characters are laid out to me by virtue of knowing who would be great at playing that part. I was out of my league with having a long important scene needing an elderly man and I was dumbfounded what to do about it.

It was so important for me to get this scene right because it was not only the most important part of the play.. but taken from a real experience I had and I am a freak about authenticity. I just really want things to feel honest because when I write something like this I am laying it all out there. All fucking out there just bleeding to fucking death with every emotion I got. It has to feel right.. Yanno?

I wavered relentlessly about what to do. Cast a 60 year old man and make him look 25 years older and get him to say exactly what I want? Or take a chance on Jim, the aging actor on the fringes of dimentia. I decided I had to meet him. I knew that if i met him I’d know either way.  If we connected then it was too late, he’d be cast in the show and it was out of my hands. And if we didn’t connect, if i didn't feel anything, then it was whatever — i could get somebody else. Somebody younger. Somebody who could deliver the lines that were given and forget about this guy i had heard about one night at the casting meeting with Louis.

Jim and I walked one night (very slowly) in Chelsea after seeing some comedy shows at the theater. He told me stories about the 60s and what it was like to be an actor and comedian then. His disposition was kind but there was a lot of shit behind his words/stories. Lots of pain and regret. Lots of lessons learned too late.

The most important story he told me was about his friend Vaughn Meader, who in the 60s was famous for impersonating JFK and was extremely successful- doing sold out shows all the time.. But when JFK was assassinated his friends career quickly came to a hault. The beloved president had been murdered and no body wanted to be reminded of the tragedy anymore- so all of the clubs blacklisted Vaughn because of the distress his act now caused the public...forcing them to remember JFK was dead. Jim told me the effect this took on Vaughn and that he began to slowly loose him to drugs/alcohol.. That he really had nothing besides that act and that jfk being murdered really altered the trajectory of his life in a strange and inconcievable way.

I remember bringing Jim to the Q train and he was about to go under but I had one more question for him.  I asked Jim if he and V were still Best Buds...and what V was up to now a days. He looked sad and said that V had died a long time ago. Then he tried to recount just how many years it had been. He thinks 9. He said something (casually) about how you can’t have just one act and rely on it like that.  I knew then 100% that fate had brought this special human and I together. That Jim never had to read a fucking script to understand the scene of Charlie at the diner, because he had lived it 10x over.

I knew that night meeting Jim was more than just meeting Jim. It was also meeting a special level of art and poignancy. Life imitating art imitating life, etc... And it was a really beautiful experience.

..Not the type of experience I had always felt I needed, or dreamed about.. But it was, however, the experience that I got.

And it is mine.  and it is forever.

-Roosevelt

Does anybody read this? I'm not sure. But that's okay.

This summer started off with a bang. I'm not sure how to describe which kind of bang. Not a particularly positive one. But not a negative one, either. Just a bang. Lots of surprises. It was really exciting for a little while too .. even if it hurt a lot in the end. Lots of alarms that never went off until it was too late and I was like  " whaaaaatttttttt??? "

In your absence I will make sense of this whole thing by myself because that's how it was when I wasn't by myself anyway. I just didn't know that yet. Just learning and figuring things out in a non bitter way. This is just growing up. Being self sufficient and trying to place as little confidence in relationships with crazy people as possible. Why? because they are crazy. It's all mysterious but I don't need the answers right now. You are there. Far away. I don't just mean in terms of a car ride. But you are just like fifty feet into the ground and wearing ear plugs and closing your eyes. And I am here. Looking at everything.  Bummer. Oh well.

enough about you..

Writing an epic David Lynch type of spoof comedy show with Adam this month. Preforming it August 11th. That's soon! First rehearsal is tomorrow. I 'd like to rely on lots of improv if possible because I cannot act. I can only improv and those creepy characters david lynch writes deserves a good portrayal. I think I can only do that if i'm not trying to do that by writing them to a T beforehand. If that makes sense. control control control. And the art of letting go of it.

Had the best show of my life a few nights ago. I don't know what came over me but it was the first comedy show I was ever truly happy with. I left with the feeling like "Yeah! This IS what i'm suppose to do!" After the show, this guy said I should try out for this movie because I am ''just like the main character'' - in the character description it read "angry antagonistic queer tomboy desperately trying to fit in with misogynists". hmmm..Thanks bud!

(As a side note.. I am not trying to fit in with anybody. Nobody is cool enough to warrant that. I already got what i need.)

He gave me all this information and I am in contact with the producers currently because I thought: why the fuck not. I wish they'd send me the whole script, but so far just parts of 'my' sides.

Anyway. Yanno what's zen? or weird? that I will spend two months working on a sketch show or play every single free moment i have and then feel completely miserable afterwards (even if it goes well) and I could do a show like i did the other night, absolutely no pre - work involved (it was improv) and I could come outta there feeling like I nailed it. There was no pressure. And it was so fun. I didn't even know anyone there... like in the show. And none of my friends came, either. And it was still amazing and couldn't have gone any better, really.

I know that should be telling me to pursue improv harder, and sketch/written works less. And I will... Pursue improv harder. But I just can't NOT write. And I can't not tell the stories inside me. I just gotta do both even if i hate my life after a sketch show/play. Obviously I would like to feel more like I did the other night more frequently after my shows but there is something to be said about the stories that I am telling. How could I really feel happy after I've told them? They aren't happy stories. Sometimes the point isn't to be happy. It is to be honest.

I think i'm doing the right thing but who knows? More importantly... Who the fuck cares.

Over n out,

Someday a hog is being poked by a sliding glass door in heaven

  vs.

It's like this; We are all scared. I suppose that is the short version of everything.

I guess because of this, people end up confusing others out of their personal madness/insecurity. And so now there is a modern day Trail of Tears that follow at the back of you. Clawing at your shoulders begging you to stay-as you descend towards an emerald green mountain filled with flowers and sunshine that is only for you.

In this moment I have lots of epic lessons to proclaim unto the world about what I learned this year... Kind of like in the spirit of New Years Eve - I wish there were a poignant way to celebrate these lessons/sum ups of this period of time, and present them louder and wider than the boarders of my brain.

Sometimes I think the whole point of life is to constantly be working on this very difficult puzzle you are just dying/waiting to see the final image of. You have heard the legends from others that the end result is beautiful- and will make you feel amazing.. So you keep working at it.. All billions and billions of pieces.

...But if you were to fast forward to the finish product of the puzzle - it would just be this slogan:  " You Cannot Rely on Anyone & All Your Belongings Are on Fire "