#28- ART. IT MAKES YOU DO THINGS

It's been awhile since I've written to you all. The past few months included me moving, adjusting, bringing my dog up, him adjusting, and launching and building my new business. My absence in "the scene" is due to my after show commute almost tripling as well as my dog requiring 6am walks. No excuse for the wicked, I know. But sometimes adjustment is necessary.

So I am back living in Washington Heights after two years of subletting my place so I could complete a feature film I produced AND finally finish healing from a pretty suckey break up. It was an eight years plus relationship. Take a note from my life, no matter how relieved you are, never underestimate the tole a broken relationship can take on your spirit. You must heal. When you seek healing do it with people who genuinely love you. It's sort of like weening of narcotics, not that I'd know. But I imagine weening of a long term relationship is worse that quitting caffeine. Maybe cigarettes. Regardless, do it around people who love you because they will be the only one who will tolerate your mood swings.

So I've been working at my business, teaching, directing, and yes- waiting tables. My weekend waiting gig hasn't been so bad and the food service always makes me feel like I'm really in the trenches- busting butt. If you are reading this and you do not live in NYC, just know that having this many pursuits and jobs is common among many of my peers. This city is expensive and success is all about relationships with other people. I've made incredible connections at VERY fancy parties through my new business as well as when I'm serving eggs. It can happen anywhere in NYC.

Anyway, lucky for me Penny and the gang have held on tight to Samantha Jones. Regular calls and pleading me to come perform help me remember why I am here. To perform and to write. In fact my new business is taking so much of my focus because I know it will succeed and ultimately bring me more time for my art.

At the moment I am on Cape Cod. The twists of my life continued when me retina detached for the second time on the second day I was here. Needless to state, I was panicked. For many reasons. One was I was six hours away from my doctor of choice. Two, my health insurance wasn't completely up and running yet! This is where my family stepped in once again. By day three my insurance was up, my surgery complete, and we were one day away from closing on a vacation home we were purchasing together. Let's just say the stress was at a maximum.

Then John Murdock began calling. Pretty regularly. He said he needed to discuss a few things with me. He doesn't know this, but those calls made me really happy. Like all of the nuttiness of the last week or so suddenly dropped to the floor because one of the soldiers of art from the Lower East Side needed a chat. Knowing him it was a huge project. John loves huge projects, particularly is they involve politics or anti-religious themes. He's the best.

We finally made contact. On a warm summer day my family was off to the beach. I was back at the house doing anything I could think of that would help me keep my heard down (doctor's orders). I was on the deck playing guitar when my phone rang.

I won't tell you what was said because I think it's meant to be a surprise, but I will give you some hints:

Politics
Media
Shock

and after a brief chat with me it also includes a happening involving everyone in "the scene".

These are the kinds of people I like talking to because the have huge ideas and want to make a difference. So do I. I like that I don't have to have all the big ideas. It gets tiring and I'm happy to support other people's big ideas..assuming they're good ;)

I should mention my sister and I won an award for our band, "The Sister's Rock". Best comedic performance from this organization we've done a few fundraisers for. The reason I mention this is because my sister and I did this just for fun. Not really seriously. I should take a note from that and perhaps allow myself a little more fun with my art. Maybe that will be my new goal this fall.


PHOTO ABOVE IS OF MY EYE POST OP WITH A FLOATING GAS BUBBLE INSIDE TO HOLD THE RETINA IN PLACE

#20- BLESSED UNREST

Nine stories down the sidewalk squeals with a twenty something woman and some goofy guy she clearly has a crush on. I got an unexpected call last night from someone who wants another chance...or maybe the first official opportunity he has to take a chance with me. Funny. I just finished a song about him but was only able to write it once I thought that chance had passed. Maybe it was just waiting to spring up on me. Dunno. Something to noodle about.

A computer in the other room makes sounds resembling politicians in the bottom of a tin bucket and I am suddenly so aware of the undying sounds of this city. It never ends. I wrote here on my bed earlier to the familiar rapping of a jackhammer in the apartment upstairs. The steady confusion growing in my brain as I tried to prepare for the gazillionth class I've taught this past month. Why must they jackhammer a floor just so they can raise the rent to ten thousand a month which nobody in their right mind should be spending if they are lucky enough to have it...particularly now. When I say ten thousand I am not kidding. That's how much it will be and the sick woman who pleasures herself with the title "landlord" can put yet another notch on her bed post. Three lemons in a row. Again. Some corporation will pay it for the six months when some disillusioned family transfers here from Chicago. Then the family will run somewhere they can afford groceries.

I have a stack of books on Buddhism. Another stack on stand up comedy. Oddly they all go together in this unofficial Masters Degree I've concocted for myself. The ffinish line will hopefully leave my bills paid, my heart beating at a normal pace, and callouses as thick as leather boots. I can't seem to read any of these books at the pace I deem necessary not to fall off the rope I'm clinging to with every ounce of strength I have.

One night I took myself out of my rat race to Penny's Open Mic. It was a treat for me. I hadn't been there in two months and the emails began to trail off. Uh oh! I'd missed too many weeks and was slowly fading from their fabric...or so I thought. I arrived and was pleased to be there but had a different head set on. I'd committed to doing a piece I hadn't done in years. Short and hilarious. Just how I like it. Penny is a dream and puts me up in the fourth spot so I can leave early and sleep like the ol' lady I've become. So much of being there is simply about being there. I watch the performers deeply and watch the audience as well.

John Murdock's family was there. Incredible. I thought they were there for Thanksgiving. They were there to celebrate his two year anniversary of being sober. I met his sister for a brief moment. Beautiful blond, newly engaged. Clearly overly excited to see her brother perform. Very thrilled to see Penny...who is dating John. I could tell she thinks Penny is super cool. In a way a young newly engaged woman would feel about Miss Lower East Side. I saw so much in just a minute or two. Could they see me see them? I felt privileged. Penny and John. People I want to keep knowing.

After my set a woman came up to me while I waited to enter to bathroom. She said, "Great set. You know...this is fine...but you really outta make something of yourself". I looked at her. I was in the Twilight Zone. I wasn't sure what to say. I said, "I'm filming my own TV show Friday". She paused, "That's good....but you really outta make something of yourself". I turned around and entered the tiny bathroom which suddenly became my Nirvana.

Things are shifting. Money is staying in peoples pockets. People are moving in together to save themselves. I ate a meat pie for a buck fifty today. We are peeling back the onion skin to reveal the raw. We don't believe we could be headed for ruin, yet we could be...maybe...maybe revolution. Maybe a surprise. Maybe Obama is Santa Clause and all of this was a dream. My mother is 65 and I want her to be done with teaching. She's done her duty and it's time for her to write and have a house in Cape Cod.

I grasp onto the ideas of THE SECRET fully. Lets all do that. Even if you think it's bullshit. Lets tell the universe we are ready to receive abundance. All of it. Lets make something of ourselves.

#18-UNADULTERATED MAGIC IN THE MORNING

A man and a woman stand on the Brooklyn bridge at 6am having not yet slept. They watch and wait for the threatening sunrise as they marvel at the miraculous knowing of each other. Waiting for the ball to drop, when they will no longer be allowed to conspire. To plot their destruction of all that threatens to hold us back and instead infuse inspiration to the point of shock waves though man kind. A noble pursuit for two humans.

The man is overwhelmed at his sudden desire to see Ground Zero. Not for the death. Not for the tragedy. Simply to feel the vibration of what stops a city from building...or at least reaching a place where they feel "ok" to build. Even a place where they can come up with something to build that someone might want to look at and admire...instead of shiny glass crap...ola.

The woman takes the mans hand and leads him away from water through a park. A shortcut to their final destination. But rather than a green side thought, the woman is accosted by a sign of restrictions. Rules. A list of no's in a place her tax dollars contributed to. Rules she never agreed to:

No radios.
No dogs.
No picnic-ing.
No open fires.
No gatherings.
No breathing.
No listening.
No living...and the kicker..no performing.

The woman's sense of herself felt jangled and she thought she would cry. All that moved her and her people was banned in her city. A place where she danced and prayed in her incredible collection of argyle knee socks and biker boots. Freedom. This was not allowed.

She shook next to the man and the man stopped and turned, jangled by his own mission towards Ground Zero and uncertain of the woman's sudden silence.

With a gentle letting go, the woman released the man's hand and walked to a nearby fountain. The water still flowed but the moss was dead from the subtle arrival of autumn that had slid into New York. She slid off her boots and socks and without hesitation stepped into the fountain. She dipped her pretty toes into the water. The same toes which had been photographed only a week prior by a renegade photographer with a fetish...for her. The bottom was slimy and cold and tin and the woman suddenly felt alive. Even with a sign of laws staring her down, they suddenly slipped into the same importance as graffiti on a bathroom stall. No performing? Give us a break.

The man stood and looked at the woman in awe. A renegade himself, he was suddenly faced with a "love it or leave it" moment as a stuffy woman walked by and pointed in horrified silence towards his brave, dear friend. For whose benefit is she pointing, he wondered. Her dog, perhaps. He decided to love it and suddenly Ground Zero wasn't so important.

These are the people who live in this city. The people who keep the heartbeat alive. They keep me up late, but never late enough. They make me want to stop everything normal and just create and write and live.

Seek the people who are doing something outside of their own boxes. The people who don't sleep much but manage to function. Ask what they do at night. Ask what matters to them. They are here and they are gathering. They are the ones who will lead us when it's time to rumble.

#11-HOOKED IN

Tuning in to a new phase of creativity can be a challenge. It's clearing all the pathways of mass media muck and disciplining yourself to be quiet for more than 10 minutes at a time. The rat prattle of the world comes in and barrages you in a way that stops you from listening. It's our challenge in life to remain clear to our ultimate purpose. What are we here? Once that question is answered everything about what we do about everyday must be in pursuit of this goal.

No. People say no. They say it a lot. They say it when we're little. No! Don't touch that. Don't eat that. Don't speak too loud. Stop. Don't be weird. Beeeee normal. Fit in. We grow up and suddenly our bodies do things we have no control over. This makes us mad and crazy. Afraid. We have no control over how we look...to a certain point. Puberty is a nightmare. This is when we stop looking like everyone else and we become what we are supposed to be. But what do we do? We squeeze into small jeans. We lay on a ton of cosmetics. We grease and gel our hair. We pluck and tweeze and tame and stop whatever makes us different. Whatever makes us stand out. We shun those who stay true to themselves and claim that we are DOWN...TO...EARTH. The nerve we have.

I sit here on/in Cape Cod trying to leave the city behind. That which has inspired me most I have left to itself and I sit here in a loft of a barn seeking my muse. I am developing a piece inspired by "the scene" I have discovered and find myself having to dig very deep. To rile up the essence of this world and get to the core of it very quickly. It's itching at me...it's bubbling up. I'm impatient because living in NYC makes me that way...but I can't rush process.

I ask myself what it is that brings me there. What is it that sends me to open mics and shows that last well into the wee hours of the morning when I have auditions and jobs to tend to? Why am I energized when I wake up even after a beer or two? Why aren't I spent and drained?

As I've talked to each one of these artists I have learned a bit about their lives. Jobs, kids, relationships...just like anyone else. They congregate more than once a week at the various performance venues they've taken over and that is where many of them remain. They don't know about places I've been performing in all of these years just as I didn't know about their shows. They perform together so much they even perform each others work for each other and even perform pieces that reference each other...like celebrities. A friend of mine who came to a show commented on a piece performed by one of the regulars. It was about how this performer was going to wrestle another on of the performers on some other night. She referred to he wrestling partner as if we would all know who that was. Of course I knew who it was...but my friend didn't. Neither did her husband who was also there. I thought this was FABULOUS! The best part is it didn't even occur to me they wouldn't know what this woman was talking about because I have been so sucked into this group...well to me they are celebrities. Everyone should know who these people are. That's crazy and AMAZING!

I have been in the main stream as on offbeat personality for some time. I've produced shows for the general public for years and years. Universality and common understanding has been a goal of mine. It's a way for me to bring very different people to a common ground they didn't know they shared. We are all one. That's what my work does. It makes us all on the same playing ground. I love this idea that the "Art Stars" and stars in their own right and speak of each other as if their world is every ones world. Not in an exclusive way. It's "IN-clusive". It draws you in. You WANT to know these people immediately. It's like coming into the SOPRANOS mid season. You have no idea who anyone is but once your friend gives you the 5 minute run down you're HOOKED! That's these people!

I'm slowly getting it. I am. By the time I'm back home I will have one kick ass monologue ready...and it will HOOK everyone in.The same way they're hooked me.