Category Archives: Background

Because Why Not

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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Hey there.  Checking in.  How have you been?  More or less the same?  Me too, I guess.  So little is different now, it hardly seems worth writing.  But I’ll tell you, that tiny difference is worth the mention.  Because I like this, where I am right now.

I got to participate in a really cool staged reading of crazy/amazing absurdist Polish play; I’m regularly attending Japanese class at a local gakuen (Japanese language school); I seem to have hit a good rhythm with getting to the gym (*knock wood*); I have really great friends who have alternately offered me a place to stay, cheap truck repair, solid advice, delicious hugs, terrific cocktails, or simply access to their general greatness.

Sure it could be better.  It could always be better.  I feel like I’m weaving my life out of bits of fluff that float by on the spring breeze.  But the bits of fluff are really pretty and soft.

And that staged reading was really, really cool.

I know. I should write more often… I keep saying I will.  But then cool stuff comes along, you know?  Forgive me?

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Korean Spa to Walla, and Dallas to Dallas, with a layover in the kitchen; and what I learned there.

30 Monday Dec 2013

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If I put together all the voice over that I did this year that wasn’t in a class, it would probably take three or four, maybe five days.  Maybe six, when counting email, the Web site, business cards, etc.  But the last professional thing I got done this year, before holidays and overeating killed all forward movement, was a walla session.  So I am doing stuff.

I just need to do more.

It’s been a hell of a year, huh?  I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been figuratively booted in the head at least once in the last 12 months, and plenty of us were still reeling from previous sucker punches from life.

I knew it would be trouble from the moment I decided to stop stage managing FOOTE NOTES through yet another extension. It sucked up my January and I really wanted to get going on my goals…  The problem immediately manifested as how was I doing to get anything done without any structure to my days.  To say nothing of the added chaos that comes with living with someone who is schizophrenic.

Though, the truth is I did start to get somewhere. And it started on my last day at FOOTE NOTES.  (The two one-acts were located in a small town outside of Dallas.)  After several good-bye whiskeys and hugs to the cast, I met M and we went to a spa in Koreatown.  I’d never been so I had a few minutes to get used to the idea that the “co-ed” section one wore the facility-provided uniform of t-shirt and shorts, making it look like a bus station overflowing with Korean tourists to Disneyland, and in the women-only section one wore only one’s birthday suit.

I’ll skip over the details – which I remember keenly – and get to what I’ve taken with me.  And it’s that I’m enough and there’s nothing really wrong with my body.  And if I change it’s just a change.  In the years to come I’m going to lose as much as I could possibly gain when it comes to physical looks, and the point of that is it doesn’t mean jack when I’m laying down on hot clay marbles and my mind is wandering while impossibly insane Korean TV shows are playing in the background.  From the tiny little naked girls chasing each other around to the old grannies pushing walkers and letting it all hang out, we’re all here.  It’s all good.

The last trip to Dallas was aboard DALLAS NON-STOP, stage managing with a tiny bit of voice over thrown in for shits and giggles. I’ve always loved theatre for the chance to see the world through different eyes and this was something new and different still.  It was all located in the Philippines and imagined and realized by Filipinos and Filipino-Americans… and as much as it reflexively touched on the realities of Filipino life and culture, it was situated so that it looked squarely back at America.  I found I was looking at my own country and my own (Western) culture through their eyes.  Quite a heady experience.

Layovers are such a pain in the ass.  Enough time to not know what to do with yourself, not enough time to really go find an adventure.  That’s what it felt like this summer.  True, I was hitting a patch of depression by late spring, so I was forced to get up and take care of things when my mom had surgery.  Nothing else was getting me to productivity.  But some two-three months of pretending to be mom, cooking and cleaning, etc, at the same time that mom was around being mom and no one else was helping it out…  It just put on pause any attempts to work for myself while I couldn’t do anything to get away and relax.

And at the end of all that? My sister moved in and I started sharing my bedroom with my niece.  Hey, I love these people, even my asshole schizophrenic brother, but this house is ready to pop.  I was staying up until the wee hours before simply from being nocturnal, but as I tried to rearrange my life so I could get life moving in a more productive direction, I was starting to make good on getting some decent sleep during the night.  Now I’m back to nearly fully nocturnal because it’s the only time I can hear myself think.  This is the hardest part.  Making the life I’m aiming for work while the place I live in is slightly completely crazy.

At the least I have awesome friends who are generous with their resources.  S let me crash at her house while I worked on DALLAS and on a few occasions I got some recording done there.  It maybe that I have to do all my recording there.  It’s still not a studio, but it’s far calmer than my house.

Those are just the places I landed.  Spots where my feet touched the ground and I saw clearly what I was trying to get done, whether I was close to or far from my goals.  I coasted over fitness & weight loss, sometimes going to the gym regularly, and sometimes taking a month or more off.  I skimmed some Japanese without serious demands that I improve and commit more to the long-term memory banks.  I’m trying not to get too frustrated about these.  They’re important to me but I can have only one No 1 goal.

Walla is a term for the chatter produced when a group of people in a sound booth fill in the background conversation for scenes on TV or movies.  I can’t get into detail about the ones I’ve done, but I can say it’s a fun exercise in semi-free form improv.  Anyhow, I like that someone thought of me and called me in.  Next up: getting someone to think of me and pay me to come in.

The Thing as It’s Become: CIVILIZATION

13 Sunday Oct 2013

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At Son of Semele Ensemble we’ve just put the play CIVILIZATION by Jason Grote into production.  The thing it’s pretty much entirely about is my life and yours too. (Also, I was the dramaturg.)

Through the last few entries I’ve been leading to a point of trying to explain the sensation of balancing my life on the toes of one foot.  My safe ground has fallen away until now there’s just a patch under me where I can be without feeling like I’m imposing on other people.  I feel hemmed in, compromised and stressed out.

And there’s nothing really special about me.  All around me, every where I go, people are getting squeezed in much the same way.  I don’t have to work hard to find people stressed out by bills, unable to get ahead in their careers, unable to find full time work, unable to get to a point where they can take a full, unencumbered breath and stand on two feet like a fully realized human being.

Even as a society we look around and easily people who have it worse than we do.  We’re not in a war zone, we’re not living in the midst of toxic material (actually, we created that toxic material, most of the time), our strife is nothing like slavery or institutionalized sexual exploitation or a lack of access to education or mass censorship.  We can learn whatever we want, say whatever we want, say yes or say no to sex whenever we want and in theory merit is the only thing that lands or limits employment – not race or creed or gender….

And yet.  And yet… and yet it’s so fucking hard.  how?  Why?  What the hell happened that got all this chaos going, and not in the ordered way of society that we were told we’d get back when we were in school?

We ask those questions and self-appointed authorities try to step in and explain it all.  They promise pathways out.  They claim they’ll teach us how to anticipate things that could go wrong.  Or tell us who or what is to blame.  (We really like that last one.)

But in actuality the questions are rhetorical.  It doesn’t matter how we got here, or it doesn’t matter that much.  Because asking that question betrays the longing for things to “go back to normal.”  And that is never going to happen.

What the thing is, the thing IS.  More importantly, the course of events aren’t going to slow down and wishing they would go in reverse is so ridiculous it’s almost insane.

KAREN: Do you ever feel like you’re made for something different than everyone else.

DAVID: Everyone feels that way.  That’s why life is so disappointing.

But when we’re upset – okay, when I’m upset – childish reactions are to be expected.  I pout and blame others and ask unhelpful questions like “WHYYYY??” and complain about life being unfair.

Our civilization seems to be made of supposed adults running around not at all sure how things got to be like this and holding on to the deep seated feeling that it’s not supposed to be this hard.

CIVILIZATION is a terrific look at life this very minute, on the last patch of ground we feel we can own.  We’re all losing our balance in real time.  Our civilization is falling apart and the only good thing about it is that we’re now allowed to make up whatever the heck we want about what is next.

Present Works

17 Monday Sep 2012

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This summer has either been feast or famine with projects and labor.  I’ve either been juggling a show or a project and class or workshop or I’ve been flat on the couch, watching cartoons.  When I’m busy I have a lot I’d love to write but I can’t sit still long enough to post anything.  And when nothing is going on I can’t think of a thing to say.

Well there’s plenty to say now…and of course I haven’t the time to hammer them out.  Between voice classes, imrpov, a weekend retreat with my fellows at Son of Semele where we were off being creative and more than a little drunk, coming back to a weekend of crafting the next play we will devise, and now a show to stage manage at Open Fist… there’s been a lot of stage-y stuff going on.  It’s quite exciting!

Of course, it’s not exactly what I was hoping to do, precisely.  I kind of need to get paying work.  Like a lot.  And I haven’t been pushing for it.  Like at all.  (At least the Stage Managing gig does offer decent-ish pay, but not until the show goes into production.)  So I haven’t been working on auditions in a while; I’ve barely been keeping a feel for VO work with a couple of workshops here and there.  I need more than that – I really need a couple more coaching sessions to feel grounded again…and of course that takes money.

Eek.  I really get suspicious when people say things like following one’s passion with every expectation that money will follow/take care of itself is totally reasonable or even a positive way to go.  Working on making money is what makes money.  Working on making theatre is what makes theatre.  If my efforts managed to combine them then I may be able to get a combination that satisfied my need for both.  I just don’t buy that following my bliss is all I need in life.

Although I hear, with enough bliss I may forget to be hungry which could solve the problem of money for food as well as getting me to lose weight.

 

Anyway, off to rehearsal.

A Bottom Line

23 Wednesday May 2012

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Many years ago I went to a wine tasting and struck up a conversation with the representative of the wine maker.  I don’t remember how we got on the subject but he talked about how joyful he was with his job as a rep.  He said that previously he’d had a job that he didn’t much like and his love for wine was something reserved for off hours.  He told me that he came to the conclusion that he needed to put what he loved and how he made his money “on the same page.”

I remember that image.  A hypothetical ledger of “stuff that bring in money” and “stuff that makes me happy to get up in the morning.”  and getting those to columns to be one and the same.  I don’t honestly remember what I thought at the time (I had been drinking, mind), but I think I was just admiring that he could do that and I thought no way I could emulate such a drastic plan.  Walk away from my job to do something I loved?  Crazy talk.

Well.  The job walked away from me instead.  It wasn’t until I had moved back in with my parents and needed my mom to cover my bills that I realized that I was free to talk that crazy talk for myself.

Once the uninspiring middle class lifestyle had left me – no more tiny apartment with the wine fridge, no more compact, gas-efficient car, no more occasional vacations traveling hither and yon – that’s when I realized the day job had never been an absolute necessity.

Also not a foregone conclusion? The continuous mild depression… I was told I should get therapy and possibly take drugs for it for the rest of my life.  Maybe. Or maybe I should build a life that actually suits me instead of trying force myself to fit the prescribed roles.

It’s hard work.  Mad hard work and I haven’t had what anyone would call conventional success.  But hard work is unavoidable in life.  At the very least, hard work in the service of achieving my bottom line doesn’t feel nearly as frustrating as hard work in the service of achieving someone else’s bottom line.  It’s hard work getting the money and the love on the same page, but I prefer it.

Now, funnily enough, I’ve had to dodge the assumptions that the money voice over can potentially bring is what makes it so attractive.  It certainly helps that there’s more money in it than, say, Equity-waiver theatre.  But the idea of chasing the big payday of a national TV commercial spot is almost laughable.  (Hey! I COULD do it! It’s just not my goal…right now.)  I started nosing around VO because I like anime and even some domestically produced animation is pretty darned good.  It’s still what I want to do most.  If it doesn’t pay as well as a tag for a national chain, so be it.  As long as it does pay.

I tried talking about that once with other VO people who didn’t know me very well, and whom I didn’t know well.  Bit of a mistake.  Their attitude was never fail to chase down the big time.  I can absolutely see their point.  I don’t want to _fail_ to chase it.  However, it’s just not my goal to get up first thing the morning meaning to land the big time before dinner.

I don’t need or want a big house, an expensive car, or much in the way of fancy, pricey toys.  (I will admit, however, an underground wine cellar has a certain appeal.)  I want to pay my own way.  And I want to work on projects that are interesting to me, that get me excited to tackle.  I want to work toward that day when I can joyfully say that I have doing what I love and paying my bills on the same page.

God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’m pretty sure I can do that.

Stripping – No, not like that

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Have you ever been working long and hard and get to the point that you should change your clothes and wash up but don’t quite want to because the fresh air and scrubbing feel like they’ll bring on an invasion to the mojo you’ve put together? Sure, it’s childish, but you earned that grit why not just press on?

It’s kind of felt like that over the last month and change.  I didn’t quite notice August slip by without blog updates, though I had started the month quite gung-ho about getting this site rolling.  I even paid for my own URL and everything.  But…stuff happened, like it does and I forgot to get back around to this, no matter that this blog is specifically for documenting such …uh…stuff.  But as time kept sliding by without writing anything of substance in public I found myself even more reticent to make the time.

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Intentionally Outward Facing

10 Sunday Jul 2011

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Hello World!

I like that coding sample. I don’t know much about coding but I know that, and I like it. This entry is mainly to test out the word editor. (And it’s already crashed on me once, inauspicious, WordPress, inauspicious.)  So behind the cut, I think goes more detail about me.  But I won’t toggle to full screen.  I’ve learned my lesson. Continue reading →