New Show - Stones In His Pockets

The premise - 2 actors playing 13 characters, most of them Irish, 2 of them women. 2 acts. Not a small play. A few weeks of rehearsals and then a solid weeks worth of shows. While my girlfriend is preparing to leave for two months on her own acting odyssey.

OK, I'm a little nervous. Put this together with the fact that we had some issues with the casting initially, and you have a rocky beginning to the process. We initially had someone else all set to play opposite me, but he had to drop out, so we had to do a few days of casting, and it was tough finding anybody who was up to snuff. Luckily we found the guy we did, as I think he will bring up the level of funny from my semi-ha-ha to rollicking rofl levels.

We do our first read-through tonight. I've been listening to dialect instruction CD's and Irish podcasts, hoping to absorb the accent. Scottish is dead easy, and English I've been doing since I was a little boy, but Irish is tough to do without sounding like an Irish Spring Commercial reject, or a refugee from a Lucky Charms factory.

I took this job specifically because I knew that it would challenge me, and so it has, already. I just want to make something beautiful and funny and fun.

I'll be writing impressions (hopefully more cogent than the above) of the rehearsal process as often as I can. Talk to you soon.

Lovecraft in Brooklyn - by the Mountain Goats

Gonna be too hot to breathe today
But everybody is out here on the streets
Somebody has opened up the fire hydrant
Cold water rushing out in sheets

Some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey
Asks me for a cigarette
Companionship is where you find it
So I take what I can get

Hubcaps on the cars like fun house mirrors
Stick to the shadows when I can

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Well the sun goes down
The armies of the voiceless
Several hundred-thousand strong
Come without their bandages
Their voices raised in song

When the street lights sputter out
They make this awful sizzling sound
I cast my gaze towards the pavement
Too many blood stains on the ground

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Head outside most everyday to try to keep the wolves away
Imagine nice things I might say, if company should come

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid
Headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jars
And then the girl behind the counter
She asks me how I feel today.

I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.

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(cf. The Horror at Red Hook and this.)

What's all this, then?

Why did I start a new blog?

Because I wasn't posting here, and sometimes it takes a new enterprise to reinvigorate my enthusiasm for a form.

Because I was reading this compulsively at work and thought, "Man, that looks like fun, but I can't draw."

Because I'm thinking that, if I do it every day, I might do some posting here by accident.

Because I know that if I have a form that is constrained, I will inevitably think of things that don't fit in the form, and then I'll write them here, and that will be nice.

Because I think I'm just crazy enough to do something ridiculous and have it work out OK.

Because some people have more than one creative outlet, and some of them end up being kind of interesting.

Because little steps are just as valid as big steps.

Because I wanted to notice and appreciate things more.

Because in noticing and appreciating things more, I hope to become more grateful for my life, and therefore more in love with it.

Because I am trying to save my life from time, but I am restricted by my own laziness and so therefore must make arbitrary games in order to trick myself into enlightenment.

Because I am trying to save my life, period.

Because I am afraid that things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

Because I will stem the tide of fear with humor and lighthearted-ness.

Because I still believe that life is worth living.