Neil de Grasse Tyson at Rice's 100th Commencement

This past week, Rice graduated it's 100th class,  wrapping up a year's worth of Centennial celebrations. And Rice couldn't ask for a more fitting speaker to bring it all home than astro-physicist badass, Neil de Grasse Tyson. Not only did his wife graduate from Rice (Baker!) but he embodies Rice's marriage to NASA and the American spirit of exploration, commitment to the future, and to the great unknown. 

I don't feel like I live in that America. But I'm glad Tyson is around to remind us to keep pursuing the unknown, the spirit of innovation, of advancing, and of defining the universe-- and thus, the universal. That our pursuit of these things is tied to so many other important aspects of our perspective.

I often miss my time at Rice, and what it represents. But this was one of the most stinging. 

Congrats, class of 2013!

Aurora Borealis in New York?

Though I'm significantly farther North than I usually find myself these days, I'm still probably not as far North as I'd need to be to see Aurora Borealis tonight-- though some predictions say tonight's projected showing might reach as far South as New York. 

I'm a big fan of the Northern Lights. But seeing them somewhere other than Northern Europe might feel rather alien. As if they aren't alien enough to begin with. 

In case you won't see them, here's a showing from Norway in 2010. 

Haviland's HOT new dance track - MKE Maximum Energy

Friend/Performer/Mover/Shaker-Extraordinaire Haviland Stillwell has been working on a new dance album since I got to LA. I remember listening to some early tracks in her prius my first week here and loving  the super different direction she was going in. I mean, afterall, she's a legit soprano, not to mention the first person to ever sing VOTE! besides yours truly.

Well, this is nothing like musical theatre, but it has drama and theatricality to spare! Not to mention, enlightened ideas and a beat that made me instantly download and add to my hiking/running/cardio onslaught playlist. 

Also, I've heard the concept for the impending video and I cannot wait to see it fully realized. I'm even thinking about lobbying for a cameo. Maybe not. I don't know about my intergalactic dance moves...

Get your very own copy right here on itunes! 

Learn how to place music on itunes at ReverbNation.com

Hav is supported by a whole bunch of other cool people I love too. So let's give them their due for some stellar (see what I did there, intergalactic friends) work on this!

written by Haviland Stillwell

produced by Mike Schlosser

mastered by Sonic House Post

cover design by Heather J. Weiss

photo by Sabrina Bringuier

Jane Badler - My New Personal Hero

During my editing process for Birthday Cake, Jane Badler, original baddie in the eighties show V, became a new personal hero of mine. Like, I want to be Jane Badler when I grow up. She is nothing short of spectacular in B'Day Cake-- that special blend of bitch and comedienne. She's a singer too-- hint hint. I'm looking forward to more of her in my life coming up soon. 

Check out her most sinister moments from the eighties. And follow her on twitter (whispered, "at JaneBadler...")

Stubborn Love

For a while, it has seemed to me that with most people, their strengths are also their weaknesses. That old "the way you do one thing is the way you do everything" principle. The same traits we possess that make people love us, that make us good at what we do, are the ones that get us in trouble. Do you feel that's true about you? I know it's true with me. 

It poses a real conundrum because with traits like this, it's not as simple as just breaking yourself of a bad habit. You'd also be breaking yourself of a good habit. And be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. 

For me, it's most especially two things and two things that-- laughably-- do not complement each other. I am both a teacher's pet, and a stubborn rebel. Being teacher's pet gets me into less trouble than being stubborn. But it also yields fewer rewards than being resilient and sticking to my guns; never quitting. 

I've been really stubborn with my family lately. These are also the same people I'd pretty much do anything to please. Annoyed at my own delayed ability to reconfigure the challenging puzzle I've laid out for myself, I've resented their advice, I've taken it all as the same message I end up telling myself: that I'm failing. I suppose somewhere lurking in my teacher's pet complex is the need to test it out.  If I can't get a 100% on the test, I'll try to flunk it with aplomb. To push people to absolute limit to see if I can get them to abandon me. 

The thing about developing sophisticated coping mechanisms and handling difficult situations well as a child is that then your family cements that as who you will always be. But sometimes, the things that made you good at getting out of a dangerous situation or making the best out of that situation when you were ten, will backfire in your ability to read situations at age thirty. So you recalibrate, adjusting the levels on the dial of these traits. 

I've been listening to a lot of The Lumineers lately. I'd recommend you do the same. 

I can't be told ah ah it can't be done

I don't know where I belong. I don't know where I went wrong. But I can write a song.

Everything All At Once Links

Everything is happening all at the same time, guys! As positivity-centered and optimistic as I am, when absolutely everything is at stake... but seemingly on-track, I start to get a little suspicious. You mean... I can get ALL the things I want? At the same time?? Like... all of it? This is when the trust part comes in. Universe, I need you to have my back right now. I know it's going to get harder than this. The challenge part I'm okay with. As long as all the plates stay in the air, I don't mind how much they wobble. Wobble away. 


The thing I'm realizing about what my year and a half of mental and emotional recuperation and exploration in Scotland meant is not that the world gets any harder or easier. You just let yourself get lax. Or... I think in this case, you just get better. 


Anyhow. I'm up at the crack of dawn this morning heading out to BumbleEff Croydon to make sure they'll let me stay in this beautiful country. Here's hoping all goes smoothly and by the end of this weekend, I'm feeling settled in my new spot on the Earth with a bang-up presentation all finished and ready to go for the job I just can't stop thinking about. While we're standing by, here's what's what from the internets this week.


- Some cool Zodiac drawings. I like how the Aries girl has blonde curly hair. Duh. 
- Vulture has really been on it lately. Thirteen Blonde Movie Villains. 
- Also this. Novelist as Marlboro Man. 
- The GOP is so. off. the. rails. 
- One of my favorite twitters is the Sorkin Dialogue "Sorkinese." You should follow. 
- Gordon made such a sell of this book about a Kenyan corruption whistleblower, I had to pass it on. 
- Congrats to uber-awesome Matilda on leading the Olivier Awards with 10 (aka ALL the categories!)
- I knew I was right about ALWAYS painting your bedroom. 
- Just in case you want a tour of my house. I plan on replacing pretty much everything on those walls. 


- Finally, a March Madness I can get behind! Vulture has a greatest tv drama of the last 25 years bracket going. Up this week was Mad Men v. Lost with Mad Men advancing to the next round. I should say. While I have mixed feelings about some of the advancing shows, I applaud the idea and the general candidate pool. I foresee a final match up between The Wire and Sopranos with Sopranos taking the title. (People get so hot for Sopranos...Sigh.) Which of course I will hideously and vehemently disagree with. 

Reading The Anglo Files with my new pal Sarah Lyall

When my dear pal McC told me I needed to read Sarah Lyall's The Anglo Files (she showed up with the book on a visit to NYC right before I moved) I sort of dismissed the idea. I mean, I was going to Scotland, right, so I didn't need to know quite that much because Scotland would have their own quirks. And they do. However. 


Certain things continued to haunt me. Why don't they rinse the soap off the dishes? How come I don't know ONE Brit with a full-length mirror? Okay, those are really the main ones, but there remained something else more general, still elusive, even after over a year completely submerged. It's the difference between loving it because it's different, and feeling completely at home. The way I've noticed that my whole body posture relaxes when Taylor and I retreat to a corner at any party to speak a short-hand of language and feelings about any given social situation. 

So, once I dove into the book, it was like Sarah Lyall had been watching me for the past year and half. Thank you, Sarah Lyall, for reminding me that I'm not crazy. I also read Watching the English, on loan to me from my friend Kate. (We call her French Kate, and she is. But she sounds American. Because her mom is American. On the other hand, we have another Kate who we call American Kate, but she sounds British. Because her mom is British. Follow?) Watching the English was good, but didn't quite strike the same chord with me largely because Kate Fox (neither of the Kates just mentioned, but the author of the book) is British. 


People taking a good, long look at themselves is just a different observational lens than someone from outside looking in-- and, in this case, someone from exactly where I'm from, looking from a very similar place that I'm currently standing. I love that Sarah Lyall is a New Yorker, a writer & mostly standing in the spot of someone working in the arts and around other writers, journalists, etc. 


It works because that lens allows her to look at politics and parliament (a section which was totally and completely laugh out loud funny. People on my plane looked at me funny when I would bust out.) as well as social customs and drinking culture that happen naturally around the kind of lit events Sarah Lyall frequented. Basically, it didn't feel like a sociology experiment. It felt more organic than that. Only the Cricket section(s) I couldn't get through. One, because they felt a bit more forced (even for her) and two, because no amount of clever writing could ever make me care about Cricket. 


And it works for me, like the NYTimes Review said of it, because: "it is warm, blunt, confessional, companionable. Which is to say: it is very American." She clearly loves both places dearly. And so do I. 


So, as I've said many times before about/to (as I send my request out into the internet cosmos) Sarah Lyall, can we be friends? I think we'd be good friends. I'll babysit if you want. 

the little ballerina rebel

In another life (a life where I was graceful) I think I would have liked to be a ballerina. Even as a child, despite being muscular (and I guess, in a way, precise), everyone seemed to exclude ballet as an option for me. I always ended up in tap dance (and in fact, was known for wearing only tap shoes for about a year-- imagine how obnoxious that was).  Probably a wise choice by the supervising adults in my life so that I could get out all the excessive energy I had. But I suppose in the way that I'm attracted to all exotic "otherness" in relation to myself, I've always had a fascination with ballerinas. A thing I could never ever be in this life. 


David Eustace, the Scottish photographer I like so much and blogged about right before I left for St Andrews, has made this beautiful short with Scottish Ballet principal dancer, Tomomi Sato. It's just very...mono no aware. The color, the way she looks like she has wings. It's an atmosphere thing. The dreamy truth place. 

At least I know there's always going to be my comrades in klutz-- the rebels of ballet class, like Keira-- who will never abide by the rules. As told by her mother, here is the story of Keira's first (and only) ballet class.

It started out well, I think... But there are rules. 

#1. No Talking.

#2. No running. 

#3. No doing your own moves. 

#4. No touching other people. 

#5. No hanging on the bars. 

Getting in trouble. 

Sometimes, you really do just have to dance on your own. 

the funniest thing I've seen in a while

Wow. Just wow. There are so many hilariously awkward things about this video. I cannot get over this girl's totally awkward body language, speaking cadence and strange beveling. Do you guys think she's in on this joke or not? Just watch.

At some point, I start feeling self-congratulatory. this is a mistake.

Drawing by the amazing Allie Brosh

I have an ever-expanding list of people I'd love to be besties with if I ever met. I mention a lot of them here... Jonathan Harris, Liz Gilbert, etc.


The funny thing is, especially with this one particular element, I actually have an odd knack for putting it out there and then it coming true! Someone will say to me...or I'll say to myself, "Ryann, you should be friends with So & So." And then somehow, so many of people I admire or people I'd like to be friends with get jumbled into some kind of social mix with me (because, as Morgan said, and thus Danielle's mom made a line of merch for, I'm the nexus of the universe ;) and then we're friends! 


I love stuff like that.


I also love Allie Brosh, of Hyberbole and a Half, who is cool for so many reasons. And for quite some time now, even though she lives in Montana, I've wished that the two of us were friends.  I bet we'd get into a lot of trouble riding around Montana with the windows rolled down (I'm visualizing this-- we're in like a Bronco or something-- something with good tires) and just messing with people-- saying funny things to them on the street (in my visualization, there are lots of people on the street, but actually now that I think about it, I bet there probably aren't in Montana...who knows). 


I like her warped sense of humor & logic and I like that she says "you can't trick people into liking your blog." Word. (Also, I like that her blog name is alliterative.)


And this week (this whole time in general, actually) when I am totally overwhelmed by my adult obligations and things I've promised to myself to get done before I leave the country, it's nice to have Allie Brosh and this post to remind me that sometimes I'm good at being and adult, but sometimes, I feel like I'll never be a good adult.

It gets to the point where I don't email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility.  It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP. 

 For your weekend enjoyment, just read her whole website. It's a gas. 


Also check out her store. I could spend about one million dollars in this store at about 4AM in the right insomniac mood, so....yeah. 

infinite jesting again

"Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. "

Sometime after sophomore or junior year of college, reading with any sustained concentration became a really frustrating endeavor. My eyes would wander, my mind would wander. I couldn't get comfortable.

It was around this time that I first picked up Infinite Jest. I loved David Foster Wallace. I loved every single thing of his I had read up until that point. Exasperated, vulnerable, mostly manic, seeking, seeking, seeking. I love him. And I was still in denial about whatever form of ADD that was happening with me and reading.

Man, I have almost never had such a frustrating experience. It wasn't because of the writing. It was because I could not get comfortable to settle into it. I kept trudging through, but there seemed like no spot I could get to (in the beginning, the back end weighed too much, in the middle the spine broke, etc etc) where the brick felt comfortable in my hands, even. (I have really small hands.) I kept up until the end, largely because I'm insanely stubborn and I refused to accept that I didn't love this book.

But at the time, I really really didn't. I didn't ever sit with it for long enough and any one stretch. I spread it out over months. I never felt attached to anything because I didn't give it a chance. I did finish, but I felt defeated...like a little piece of my identity was no longer true. Who was I if not the reader and lover of intense texts?

But I still loved DFW, still continued to read everything else, and was so truly upset to hear the end of his prolonged battle with depression and anti-depressants. Just another example of how so often the raw material of what's best in all of us is the same stuff as the most terrifying in us-- the only difference is how we channel it-- a process which seems unwieldy at best. Especially when the intensity of that material is as genius and frightening as DFW's was. That's his mind, of course.

When Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself came out earlier this year, I jumped-- but then went back to my recurring mantra of the year-- no more buying books! You're moving to foreign country. You can't lug all these.

 And then I got my kindle, and it seemed like a cure for a painful ailment I'd had for 8 years. Reading was easy again! I was only about a third of the way into David Lipsky's DFW roadtrip book when I stopped to re-buy Infinite Jest. I started again (Dave Eggers' intro is wonderful! I didn't remember that there before... maybe it wasn't) and I'm having the time of my life, like I always wanted to.

I've never been as good at analyzing fiction as I am just appreciating it. I've never had the desire to be a critic. I don't see the seams very often (like I do with musical theatre) nor do I think of them much while I'm actually in my own writing (only later). That's why I never even considered going back to school in English lit. I knew I'd only do it if the result was my own fiction and not the analysis of someone else's.

Despite that reluctance to interpret the thinking of other writers that I admire, I have to say that, to my thinking, there's a great part of DFW that is/was/or at least was trying to be Buddhist. I mean, if this isn't the point of Buddhism, I don't know what is:

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship...

Finally, I am just enjoying again. Most especially, dear David Foster Wallace.

Just listen. And check out the rest of these interview clips here at The Takeaway.

mid afternoon happiness

The new Sia "We Are Born" is a perfect summer album. Just the right amount of bubble-gummy mixed with the fact that Sia is nobody's pop princess, even if she does reeeeally like pink. I just wanna strut the NYC sidewalks in short shorts and platforms, which is exactly what I did this morning.

Other fun things about this album
1. The cover of Madonna's "Oh, Father." It's a very different song when Sia does it.
2. "Never Gonna Leave Me-" if the theme song from "The Office" were a pop song. Seriously. Check it.

Sia certainly has a unique sensibility. I've never seen a video of hers that was less than totally weird, and this one is no exception. I love it. Listen, and feel wacky.

in my place

Last week was all about place. Emotional geography. I’m someone who has always felt pretty comfortable in my own skin, but have almost never been comfortable in my place. Perhaps I’ve always felt older than I am. Maybe, I just wasn’t satisfied with the amount of authority I had… to do… anything. Most of high school & college, I felt like I was sitting on my hands, prevented from doing what I really wanted to do, being with who I wanted to be with, being taken as seriously as I wanted to be taken.  

Or maybe, being a 4 on the enneagram chart  (another big thanks to McC on that one. Made my whole life make sense when I found that out) I’m a romantic or an individualist. I’m fixated on being unique and occupying a singular role in everyone’s life. Nothing can be by the book—I take it all to the next level. There can be no ordinary relationships. Dad can’t just be Dad, he’s Dad plus. Plus best friend, plus business partner to the point where he’s something beyond my dad. He’s his whole other category occupied only by him.

Also being rather obsessed with inclusivity—the nicest thing anyone can ever do for me is think to include me, this sort of becomes the ultimate form of including me—creating a place for me. Integration.

I got to see the contrast last week of truly truly having a place amongst my amazing Steamboat Springs family and being in limbo back in NYC in many things, and in many long-standing relationships.

I know people who talk often about how easy things can be. And for the most part, I’ve never believed them. Nothing’s ever been that easy.  

But when I thought about my stress level, the difference was night and day! Nothing bothered me, (not an airline strike or lack of sleep or the sadness & withdrawal I knew I’d feel when the end of the weekend would split is all up)  nothing could phase me at all in the world where I knew who loved me and what they loved about me. Nobody held any cards. Nobody kept any secrets. Nobody got marginalized. There was no withholding of love or appreciation. Nothing was conditional upon me being any certain way. Everything flowed in all directions and everybody won. It was… easy.

It was the answer to the exact communal issue I was referring to here.  

All that striving we do to come to the right place. But if you’re lucky enough find that bunch or bunches, clusters of people who not only see you for what you are on your own, but also what you are amongst them, then you’re set.

More about enneagram and 4’s (which one do you think you are??) after the jump

a healthy neurotic

"We worked out all our issues. And the issues we didn't work out, I turned into a career." 

I never knew I related to John Waters so much! Other than being the source material of some Broadway musicals-- a very good musical, as well as the only show I've ever left at intermission-- I didn't give him too much thought. But he has a new book out called Role Models, and did this lengthy, wonderful interview on NPR.

For all the obvious tonal reasons, I'm about as far from Waters as you can get. But then.... From the love of cemeteries, to to living alone, to the way he kept trying to make his therapist like him, by the end of  the interview,  I felt surprisingly connected to him.

Guess it just goes  to show that if you get to know anyone well enough, it's hard not to be compassionate. And empathetic.

photo by Greg Gorman


Happy Friday!

i always knew that empathy was dangerous...

As much as I love positive energy, I might love a well-worded rant even more. This is one of the best rants I've ever seen. And even more wonderful-- a multi-media rant.

"empathy leads you to very bad decisions...many times." --Glenn Beck

For the record, Glenn Beck made about 1000x what I made last year. Maybe if I can just find something absolutely ridiculous enough to say, I too can be experience the beautiful America he cries about so often.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

the together people & the alone people

Maybe it’s part of what it means to be a writer—to be an observer more than a participant. (Not that I don't participate...just... indulge me in an unemotional sociological tangent for a moment [that's why I'm wearing my scientist glasses in the photo <--------]) But it seems to me, and always has, that there are the people who spend their whole lives in some form of together, and then there are the alone people. 

The together people are almost always together and the alone people are almost always alone—except for brief, exotic moments where the together people allow one of the alone people into their world temporarily. And for a glimpsing minute, the alone people have the anthropological experience of living the life of (or at least in the midst of) the together people.

Together people (this will come as no shock) stick together…with other together people. They’re the kind of people who are always in relationships, really put their family first and often adopt other people into their family of togetherness. But the only ones who stick, really stick are other together people. An alone person can be loved and even accepted as the fun, eccentric fill-in-the-blank relationship, but will never be included to the extent that the other together people will be included.


This is possibly because the alone people, of their own accord or compulsion, will need to remove themselves, if only for a bit, to go inward, to think about the events, maybe even to write about them. But in that moment, the one where they stop living the moment and pause to ponder it, record it, analyze it, describe it, the together people have already moved on with the living of it. And you're one step behind. 

I’ll let you guess which one of these 2 kinds of people I am. And which kinds of people I mostly admire. Maybe I am subject to my own hold-outs—the way I hold a part of myself back from being known too well. My life seems more like a press junket-- moving from one still moment of connection to the next. Meaningful, but fleeting, and very spaced out. A collection of moments in between work phone calls. Blips on the together ones' radars, but that add up to my life. I don’t doubt that I am loved. But even my own hopeful self has a hard time not believing that I am best loved in small doses. I can see that.


Loving someone in small doses will never make for them becoming a together person. I don’t know what actual qualities go towards making someone a together person (perhaps it’s really a gene or something) but I do know this much: If you’re best appreciated at alternating intervals and no one can handle you everyday, the alone life is where you’re headed.

Which might even be okay for me. You've read some of my thoughts on the mind-blowing hurt that people inflict on one another. Sometimes I really do think I'd rather be on my own-- I know how I'll treat myself. 

Oh, but I can spot a together person from a mile away. The serial monogamists, the family folks, the "Groups"...I've known them all and at certain times in my life, I've studied them thinking, "What is it that they do to always be so surrounded?" As though I could somehow turn into one. Is it like citizenship? Do the alone people need the legitimacy of a together person? Like a passport. If you can somehow attach yourself to one, you can can gain a kind of legal citizenship? Or can an alone person only seek to find some tentative arrangement with another alien? Maybe we'll never know. 

we feel fine

Do you know of www.wefeelfine.org? I've been obsessed with this website for 3 or 4 years...back to my most demeaning job of all time-- when I was a receptionist for a children's television company. They treated me kinda like an idiot while I was translating the Japanese business deals for one of the VPs. Yeah, it was a low point.

But when your job doesn't require much of you, it means you can start writing musicals while you're there (VOTE), research the limited PhD opportunities in Scotland (or anywhere) in creative writing. Funny where things are born.

It also gives you lots of time to truly get lost on the internet. Which is what I did with the phenomenal, truly modern multi-media artist, Jonathan Harris.

All his stuff his amazing, but I used to spend ages on here, looking at the feelings pulled from blogs all across the world. In some ways, the process is more like computer science than art (essentially, it's large scale blog analysis) but the results are nothing short of luminous.

I could isolate by my area, my age group, my gender. It felt a bit like poetry and looked an awful lot like art. Especially the photo montage area that pulled photos from blogs with the feeling or a phrase posted on it. No matter what, they always seem to be inspired. Ironic or hilarious or touching. There's also the ability to email that image as a postcard to people. Beautiful.

It's also a kind of fellowship. To see who is feeling what you're feeling. And a kind of hurt to see how many days I would check the site and see the most common feeling was "abandoned."

Part of Jonathan's bio goes a little something like this: Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, Jonathan Harris designs systems to explore and explain the human world. He has made projects about human emotion,human desire, modern mythology, science, news, anonymity and language, and created the world's largest time capsule, which was translated into 10 languages.


I mean, who is this guy, right? But it seems to me that his work is just one more really brilliant way to experience appreciation for the day to day.

It's kind of been one of my New York goals to meet him. He gives amazing lectures too. So check out We Feel Fine, which was recently made into a beautiful hardcover book. I also recommend love-lines.

Story telling. Amen, brother.

More story telling after the jump...

Sponge-y

S ince I talked about VOTE! yesterday, I thought it was funny to see the first real time I talked about it in my old blog. So I've excerpted it here...man, I really used to be on fire. A part of me misses that. Another part of me is happy to be mellowed out (a little. I mean, I'm pretty sure most people would still put me more on the manic end of the spectrum than the mellow end).

Orginally dated December 4, 2007

What can I say, except that the line between feeling dried out and utterly saturated is very very thin.

More and more, I am channeling my energy, recycling exhaustion back into energy, but all in a chase of the three things I have chased my whole life... to inspire people with Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, to see my work on a Broadway stage and to encounter the kind of love that the mere idea of it makes us both want to be the best people we can be.
All of these things have been happening in various degrees all my life, but now...now is really the crucial phase.

Each day, I feel it move the earth more, rumbling below the surface. I feel it shake the way things have been, the way the subway shakes the foundation of my building.
 A guess a little explanation: I feel like I work with every waking and sleeping moment of my life. It is absolutely paying off...and when I think about where I was one year ago, it seems like a cut to another movie.

For anyone who could somehow not know, I work on Broadway all day and I write musicals too.
 A producer I used to work with asked me for my project, which is called VOTE!

From there, the big word seemed to be inertia, or I guess momentum, because inertia suggests a certain powerlessness, but the word is certainly true in the sense that a lot of the great things with this project have seemed to catapult themselves simply by their own weight. Sometimes I felt like I was pushing (indeed, I work until 2 AM, I work all day in my mind on it. I always always working), but mostly, I feel like I made some extremely correct decisions, aided by the wisdom, support, and fearlessness of my father and the weight of the material-- without a DOUBT the weight of my life condition; the weight of my daimoku and prayer-- propelled them in the direction I wanted to go.

I know things are really moving when I feel everything. When everything makes me want to cry-- Legally Blonde even!-- when my skin feels as tender as a peach. And every letting go and pushing forward, every song, every strike and strike's end has made me long for the first moment I could get myself to my room, all seafoam and white and fresh, to cry.
With things in my life so poised for triumph, it makes the missing of people sharper. Everyone really. Everyone I've lost and not lost, the ones I can't lose and the ones who just can't be here. I feel them there too and...every once in while, if someone tells the right joke, I can hear them laugh, and it breaks my heart that they aren't there for the perfect moment I'm having.

My mind has always spun, and I have often been prone to spinning out of control with it. But more and more, no matter how little sleep I've gotten, when I can wake myself up, as early as I can, to chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, the more I feel the words of Nichiren are true: "summon deep faith that Nam Myoho Renge Kyo IS YOUR LIFE ITSELF."

And I experience boundless joy in the law. And even when I feel self-conscious, as though I am reaching past my capabilities, I try to remember that the wise will (Always!) rejoice, while the foolish will retreat.

By challenging my life, these past few months, I have met some of the greatest people in my life so far...some people who redefined my standards, some people who made me understand why the standard I made was worthy of being the standard in the first place, some people who reminded me that I might NOT be an alien after all, people who SELL it, all the time, in great and sincere ways, people who've helped me sell it. Lots of new people. People with joyous, travelling spirits, people who reminded me of random Nevada pride, and Georgia pride, and taught me about Alaska, and planes-- both real and invented. A new person named Charlie Woffinden was born, and even though new, he was one reminder in a daily stream of reminders how much I love the ones who are still around: my heroes- Erin and Emily and Lauren and Texy and my friends from when I first moved here.

In my chase to understand what people say and what they do-- to understand the hearts of others-- my pursuit of dreams, of family, of changing the world, I am in the Second Act. I am both mentor and disciple all the time. A sponge, sometimes dry as bone with nothing to give that day. But mostly, saturated with all that I feel. So full you could wring me out.

And ready. Ready for what's next. For what I deserve. Ready to work. Ready to meet the next great love . Ready to welcome back the old. Always.
Ready to listen to music and to write it. Ready to sing it and to sing it with you.
Ready to talk about anything with you. Who will win the election, my musical, your boyfriend, the best hair products, love, the Saha World, Buddhahood, and the Human Revolution.

And finally, I want to say this: "When we find something important enough that we are not willing to lose it; when we can say that pursuing or keeping this makes us want to be a better person-- that is the moment when Human Revolution begins."

I know the exact day that happened in my life. July 31, 1999. 

But the inertia and momentum of that moment has served as a model for my human revolution in every instance.
While so often I may be like a sponge, my determination? Never. Never dries out. Never saturates.

Earthly desires are enlightenment.

addicted to florence + the machine

I have this feeling that Florence is so delightfully weird in real life. She's got all these random covers floating around. Many of them from her myspace page where she's basically just karaoke-ing it up in her dressing room. I recommend her freestyling on En Vogue & Madonna.

children & art

Just about one month until the amazing Tigerlily (TL) is born. I’m getting really excited. I’ve gotten her some of the cutest things ever from Mountain Aven Baby—check it! http://www.mountainavenbaby.etsy.com

And in the midst of that excitement, I get the news from Erin (I called it completely, about a week ago, before she mentioned anything) that she, too, is going to have a baby!

I do get genuinely more excited about my friends’ children than I used to. Although, it’s matched by my sense of feeling left behind. Which is certainly not a feeling I feel towards my friends, but towards myself. Or perhaps, just about my life.

I think about my choices all the time. I wonder, even, if it’s wise to leave New York at this stage. I’m so eager to be somewhere else, but already, the things I’m going to miss out on by not being in New York are starting to stack up. Productions I want to see, concerts, opportunities. Does leaving now mean the end of me writing for theatre? If I wanted to come back, would it be the same?

But I just feel, that if I don’t get out right now, at least for a little while, that I’ll never devote enough time to writing to get anywhere. And I’ll keep running on a wheel trying to scrape some kind of life by on an arts salary. And worst of all, that if I stay in New York, I will never get married or have a family.

I saw RED on Tuesday, a play about the painter Mark Rothko and I keep thinking about it. Painting is the one art form that I don’t seem to get. I don’t have the kind of visceral reaction to paintings that some do. Indeed, the idea of spending $50,000 or whathaveyou on a painting is downright ludicrous to me. Maybe it’s because I’m not so much a visual person. A painting could never make me feel what a song does or a poem does. The way old books feel in your hands or smell. (I just got a 1899 copy of the full poems and letters of Keats and I’m in heaven with the thing.)

The only way I’ve ever really gotten a window into the emotions of it all is as a metaphor for something else, or—as is the case with RED or Sunday in the Park With George—as the topic of something philosophical through words and music. I see the point with the permanence of a painting. That you make something that wasn’t there before. It’s a fixed image, whereas live events, even songs have a beginning and an end.

I  guess it’s just one more way to view that I live my life with my mind and not my body or even my eyes. And I might have a hard time having a family all in my mind.