Gettin’ shit done

A friend of mine from New York was in Mpls for business and needed a ride from the airport.  Along the way there was a car in front of me that was being driving by, for lack of a better term, an idiot.  I, being the patient midwesterner I am, politely waited for him to figure out where he was going despite his obliviousness and inability to use his indicators.

“Yup.  This is not ok.” Piped up my buddy in his matter of fact, New York way.

“Yeah.”

I got asked to go with a friend to a wedding.  I told her that my week was pretty crazy and that I’d check my schedule to see if I could make it.  When I finally got around to it, I sent her a text message saying that I’m pretty sure I could swing it.

She replied by saying, “I don’t want any pressure at all… it’s cool if you can’t.”

“I’m saying I can.”

This seems to be a phenomenon that only happens in the midwest.  We don’t want to ruffle feathers, make anyone feel uncomfortable because it makes us feel bad.  We care what people think, assume they are easily offended, and want to remain likable.  Ok, it doesn’t only happen in the midwest.  It happens in a handful of Asian countries, too.  So not only do I have the midwestern thing going for me, but I’ve got that layered in with the Filipino thing.  I’m double-fisting collectivism.

Amid my rather stressful last two weeks, I got really sick of all that bullshit and just wanted a straight answer from someone for once.  None of this, “I hope this isn’t too much trouble…” “If it’s all right with you…” stuff.  This lasted about 48 hours and I left a handful of people in my wake.  I don’t think they minded, in fact, I think they appreciated the extremely low level of bullshit on my end.  And I felt pretty good about it.  I don’t know why I don’t demand that from myself more often.  Call me an asshole if you want, but at least we didn’t have to go round and round just to get down to the meat and potatoes.  And when I think about it, anyone who would call me an asshole for just speaking my mind and being straight up with them isn’t someone who I’d be too keen on hanging out with anyway.

So, yeah.  I’m gonna stop with all that “Aw shucks” bullshit and just tell it like it is.  Expect that from now on.

Just Balls

I’m not much of a gambler.  I’ve done ok at a few poker nights in my day, but all in all, not much of a gambler.  I had dinner with a friend of mine the other night whose boyfriend lives in Denmark.  She lives in Minneapolis but will be moving in a few days to teach English in Seoul, S. Korea.  From my calculations, they’ve been together for about a year, maybe more.  He in Denmark, she in Minneapolis.

As I continue on my quest to boil all the complications in my life down to their simplest forms, I’m being reminded of the simplicity of choice.  Long distance relationships are tough, and my experience tells me to steer clear (short distance relationships don’t seem to be any easier, anyway).  But then I think about these particular friends who have the balls to make a simple choice to roll the dice on each other.  Just to see what happens.  No guarantees, no promises.  Just balls.  It can be as simple as that.

Words Words Words

During a class with Andrew Wade, a voice coach and former head of voice for the Royal Shakespeare Company, we began to talk about words and how back in “Shakey’s” day, words were used in a completely different way than they are today. They evoked feelings, whether onomatopoetically or through their meanings or interesting juxtapositions. These days, words are used to deliver facts. While they still have the potential to be a vehicle for ideas, that potential is not being realized. Neale Donald Walsch writes in Conversations with God, “Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation. Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are not the real thing. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”

I’m constantly intrigued by words that have no exact translation in english. Think about words like Schadenfreude in German, which basically means happiness at others’ misfortune, or Han in Korean which is a kind of extreme sadness due to oppression or injustice. These are words that point to concepts that are so ingrained in a culture that it’s almost impossible to truly understand their meanings as an outsider. On the flipside, I wrote earlier about the fact that there is no word for art in Balinese because they consider their lives to be art. To live is to give of oneself. Try wrapping your head around that little chestnut.

If words are so unreliable, why use them? “They” say that 60% of interpersonal communication is nonverbal, so the majority of what we’re saying isn’t in the words anyway. Bruce Lee said, “It’s like a finger pointing to the moon, don’t focus on the finger or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.”

Words are the finger. They point to ideas, concepts, feelings. So often we get wrapped up in semantics about what does a word mean rather than deal with the reality of whether or not we are seeing the idea that the word is pointing at. That, I think, is where misunderstandings happen. Walsch is right. The Truth is behind the words. At first glance, it looks almost as if he is suggesting that we circumvent words altogether, but I think it’s our job to look through them to see the Truth rather than rely on words to convey the truth.

That is where art lives. Self-expression and communication. While our culture is growing increasingly passive in the way we live our lives, I find myself having to struggle to tune into those moments where real art is taking place. But they’re there, and it’s just a matter of being willing to work a little bit more to see past the black and white on a page to really understand what is being said.

A 115 lb woman kicked my ass

I’m sore.  I’m sore even 3 days after it happened.  I got my ass kicked by a 115 lb woman.  Her name’s Timotha, and she’s a dancer who worked with me on West Side Story.  And she’s a trainer at my gym.

I knew that she was gonna work me, I just didn’t know that I’d spend the last 10 minutes of my training hour sitting on a chair with my head between my knees and a fan blowing on me.  She kept telling me that she wanted to push me cuz I was in such good shape, but I don’t really believe her.

The hypermasculine side of me, that sometimes comes out when I’m at the gym surrounded by all the muscleheads who are three times my size, thought that it must look pretty funny to the outside observer:  This cute, tiny girl yelling in my ear as I sprint down the running track, searching for my misplaced breath. But I got over how I might look a long time ago.  If I were worried about that at the gym, I might as well stay home.

But I’m still sore.  It just goes to show that I have been slacking way off at the gym lately and need to really step it up if I want to get back up to my cage-fighting weight.

In other news, my friend Steph ran Grandma’s Marathon this past weekend and finished in just over 4 hours.  She’s also a pretty, 110 lb.-ish girl.  I’m pretty sure she could kick my ass too.

The Blues

I cry.  That’s right.

Being the manly dude I am, I’m not afraid to admit it when I cry. None of this, “there’s something in my eye” bullshit. “Dude, I’m cryin’,” and that’s all you’ll need to know.

Last night, I did NOT cry.

But I was very moved by the 5 piece jazz/blues group that’s playing in the show I’m performing in. Standing in the wings listening to them play the New Orleans Suite moved me to near tears. There’s just something about the blues that always gets me. There’s a part of me that just wakes up to the sounds that can come out of a trumpet. In my opinion, it’s the closest instrument to the human voice.  A wail, a cry, a shake, a stutter; it’s pure expression.

It’s rare that I get to hear good blues in a live setting. And standing 5 feet away from the wall of sound and emotion was almost more than I could handle.  Add some beautiful dancing and you got the recipe for some real awesomeness.

But back to the blues.  Something about it speaks to me.  A local artist, JD Steele, was talking in one of his classes about the Blue Note and how it was created by the feelings that were pervasive in African men and women enslaved here in the states.  It’s something that gives voice to raw emotion.   There’s just something about the blues for me that transcends words.  It’s a higher level of communication, and much more evocative for me.

There are three pieces in the New Orleans Suite, spanning the width and breadth of the emotional spectrum.  It does what any good piece of music should do:  Take the listener on a journey.  So for the next 2 nights, I get to go on a ride that might fill me with joy, make me laugh, and bring me to tears

Not Remembering Joe Sodd

I didn’t know Joe Sodd. But as I walked into rehearsal for the tap show I’m performing in this weekend, I had heard that he was a tap dancer. A few minutes later, through a tearful speech by our director and choreographer, I learned that he grew up dancing in the Youth Tap Ensemble for the company I am working with.

I didn’t know Joe Sodd. But I’m sad for his death.

He was stabbed last night near the University of Minnesota and Augsburg College’s campuses. According the the article in the Mpls Star Tribune, he was attacked in the early morning while he was on his way home from a night out with friends. The details are sketchy. Even among those who knew him.

We’re dedicating our shows this weekend to him and there has been considerable discussion about who he was, his spirit, and the impact he’d had in the 20 years he’d been alive. We’re gonna celebrate him and cry for him when we need to. I would like to remember him, but I never met him.

Being an outsider to this situation has left me a little less emotional than the others, and a bit more objective. But I found myself feeling extremely emotional considering I didn’t even know the guy. I started to wonder how I’d be remembered if my life was suddenly interrupted. I would want as much laughter as there is tears. My friends recounting the joyful and funny times, the embarrassing moments where there was nothing else to do but laugh, and remembering me with fondness instead of sadness. I would like people to feel glad to have known me and smile when something reminds them of the time we spent together.

Here’s the part in the blog post where I say “life’s too short” but I think I’ll forgo that one and just move on to the idea that it’s time to start living the life that will be rich and full and worthy of such remembrance. How do I do that? I’m gonna tell my parents, my sister, and my friends that I love them. I’m gonna make sure that they don’t have any doubt in their minds. And I’m gonna back it up with my actions. I’m gonna get out more. Spend more days with friends instead of just running errands by myself. Make life less about the things I need to get done and more about the things that make me feel whole. If it’s true that there are only two motivating factors in life, Love and Fear, I’m gonna choose love. I’m gonna fail big. I’m gonna dust myself off each time and make the best of the time I have left.

These are all fine and good, but they’re not the most tangible things… so I’m counting on you, fair readers of my blog, to hold me to it. I wish I could remember Joe Sodd. I wish I could tell him that his death has had an impact on my life. I hope it won’t take such dire situations for me to see my life for what it is and what I really want it to be.

I’m gonna go now and remind TGID that I love her.

Wanna Play?

Whatever happened to going over to your friends’ houses just to play?  I have a palm pilot that tells me what to do most days.  If it says go to work, I go to work.  If it says I’m having lunch with a friend, I’m having lunch with friend.  These days, I usually schedule playtime a few days in advance.  The 8-year-old me wouldn’t be able to relate at all.  But he’s probably more right about how he lives is life than I am.  Thoreau wrote, “Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.”

I’m bombarded with friends who tell me they don’t “have time.” This is a very adult concept.  They have time; they just choose to spend it doing things they decide are important.  The idea of being “too busy” or not “having time” has always bothered me.  Of course, I’ve used this excuse from time to time, but what I mean to say is that I am not willing to make time for certain things.  I guess saying that I’m “too busy and don’t have time” sounds better than telling someone I care about that there are more important things for me to do.  Yet another thing that the 8-year-old me wouldn’t understand.

I feel as though I’ve failed at a lot of things in my life.  But I’ve also succeeded at a lot of things.  I guess you could call that life experience.  But when I think about that I think about the lessons that have accompanied my failures and I call that wisdom.  But am I really wiser?  Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”  Maybe my failures have taught me limitations and fears… along with a few lessons worth learning.

An actor friend of mine, Randy Reyes, before an opening night performance, encouraged the rest of us in the cast to “make huge mistakes.”  I guess that’s the only way to know that you’re really going for it.  Crash and burn.  Accept the mistakes and move on.  Maybe learn from them, but don’t hold on to them.  That’s the most important thing.

What else is there to do than plug on?  Yesterday’s reality is not necessarily today’s reality.  Just because I’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean I’ll fail again.  Perseverance is defined as “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.”  That way you become the kid who falls down on the playground and gets right back up, dusts him- or herself off, and continues playing, instead of the kid who falls down, takes his ball and goes home.

On Being a Chump

My problem is that I lead with my heart.  This is something I would have thought was desirable.  I could be like the typical view of men and lead with my penis, but no.  I lead with my heart and that’s problematic.  Mainly because the stereotype of men is that we think with our little soldier’s brain instead of our real one, so naturally if people assume that all guys are motivated by sex, it makes people suspicious when they run into someone who is actually motivated by love.  They end up spending their time and energy waiting for the other shoe to drop or trying to figure out the ulterior motive—the one that leads to me getting sex.

Something about movie love has always intrigued me.  But what I’m realizing is that kind of love is the exception and not the rule. That’s why those stories are told, because they’re extraordinary.  The lesson I need to learn here is that I’m the rule and not the exception.  My natural tendency is to believe that if I just stick it out, if I work harder and go that extra mile, if I prove to her that I am who I claim that I am, she’ll one day see me for who I am and ultimately choose me.  Cue the orchestra, roll credits, fade to black.

The trouble with that is I end up waiting.  Waiting around for some girl to realize that she’s got a great guy standing right in front of her.  I cringe when I hear my female friends bitch about how there aren’t any good guys out there because if girls want to find a good guy, you’d think they’d be aware enough to realize when they have a good guy.  But alas, most girls are so fixated on proving the stereotype right than seeing things as they really are.  So I’m relegated to being “that guy who I went to that thing with once,” or worse, “too good to be true.”

Here’s something potentially controversial: there are even fewer good girls than good guys.  And by “good” I mean “capable of getting out of their own way to recognize a good thing when they see it.”  Most girls I’ve met start out defensive.  They need to make sure that they understand the situation, are in control, and are not giving anything away.  They are more inclined to see the potential for dishonor in a man than the good in him—at least in the beginning.  But is that the foundation you want to build a relationship on?

A friend of mine told me that girls get weird when they think they don’t deserve something.  I suppose that’s true of most people.  If you think you don’t deserve something, you end up taking it for granted or feeling guilty about having it.  Suddenly, your actions are motivated by either your ignorance or your guilt instead of something more pure.  So when the universe presents you with a guy you don’t think you deserve, you start pushing him away whenever things start to get really good.  It quells the guilt, and you’re back to your blissfully ignorant life of wondering where all the good guys are.

I could be the guy who says, “Fuck it, I’m just gonna go out there and bag as many trophies as I can.” But you and I both know that’s not me.  Why should I change just to prove them right?

I suppose some women will never see me for who I really am.  There’re plenty of people who think they know me but really haven’t put in the time or effort to understand me.  They’ll pass me by with a fleeting thought or one word description like “he’s nice,” or “he’s cute.”  And that’s ok.  I’m ok with being the guy that could have been the love of your life, as long as you’re ok with taking the chance at losing me.

So, ladies, close your eyes, tell yourself that you don’t know anything about me, and when you open them, let’s start from square one.  I lead with my heart and at least one of you will eventually be ok with that.  Let me be who I am and if that’s not what you’re looking for, we’ll go our separate ways.  You can either be the story or the prologue.  Your choice.

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain,” -Longfellow

It’s raining today.

As I drove down Hennepin Av to the tea place, I saw this person in a parked car open their door just enough to shove their umbrella through. The door closed on the umbrella before it could open and the person struggled with it, trying to find a way to free up the umbrella without opening the door the whole way.

When I was little, the whole topic of Acid Rain came up. I always imagined it like the plagues in the Ten Commandments where Yul Brynner is the BA Pharaoh standing out on the balcony when the hail falls and starts burning stuff. I thought Acid Rain was gonna fall from the sky and start dissolving buildings an burning holes in people clothes.

I can understand it to a point. You don’t wanna get wet, that’s fine. You might catch cold. After all, Zuzu caught a cold just because she walked home without buttoning up her coat. So I get it. I don’t like wet socks cuz that often means cold wet feet. But barring some highly acidic rain burning a hole in your skull, the rain’s not so bad, is it? Is it really worth spending the extra time struggling with your umbrella against your car door instead of just opening the door and risking getting hit with a few droplets of water? You don’t see too many woodland creatures fashioning umbrellas from maple leaves, do you?

Rain is a necessity. Plants get greener, dust and dirt washes away. It’s like a baptism. In the bible, the Acts of the Apostles talks about baptism as washing away one’s sins. A renewing of life.

Thich Nhat Hahn’s book Living Buddha, Living Christ talks about a farmer who prays for rain while some picnickers who pray for a sunny day. The question becomes: who’s prayer does god answer? Does god value one over another? People, myself included, seem disappointed when it’s rainy. Rain is talked about as something that ruins outdoor plans. Then the drought hits and people start talking about how we need rain. It cools things down, it becomes a welcome change, a break in the tedium of the ordinary.

Is it simply wanting what we can’t have? How can we learn to appreciate the balance of the natural world without waiting until the situation is dire?

Looks like I’ve taken the off ramp to tangent-town.

What I’ve been wondering is: Do we make our lives more difficult by struggling against the natural flow of things? Obviously, this person in their car could have been out and on their way if they weren’t so worried about getting hit with a few drops of water before they opened their umbrella. Maybe the 10 seconds it took didn’t really matter that much to them. But for my money, the rain drops on my clothes will eventually dry and I’ll be 10 seconds ahead of schedule. It’s a small thing, but things add up. Sometimes accepting the way the world works means getting out of our own way, releasing our kung fu grip on what we might want, and allowing life to happen.

Look at you! Standing all by yourself! Good Job!

I’m working on a show right now with a married couple that has a baby who’s just under a year old.  We take turns keeping an eye on him while we rehearse.  The other day, he crawled up next to a bench, stood up using the bench as a support and tried to let go and take a step.  Several of us watched as the drama unfolded.  One of us even tried to call him to encourage him to step away.  As babies do, he fell right on his butt.  No crying, just a questioning look to all of us watching.

And the whole group erupted in applause.

When we start out, nearly everything we do is amazing.  Of course there are all the firsts, and all the cute things that are only cute because a baby is doing them.  But maybe, just maybe, the reason why there are so many jaded and bitter adults out there is because we don’t get nearly enough positive reinforcement in our daily lives.  I wonder how they start to feel when we stop applauding little kids for doing things that, to us older folks, are simple and pedestrian?  Is it that we’re setting the bar higher as we age, or do we just have unrealistic expectations about what is considered “special”?

There are plenty of people who just don’t want to stand out; people who want to blend in with the crowd and don’t want to be seen as a different, weird, or worse yet, a freak.  But the flip side to that are the people who we regard as extraordinary:  The Mother Theresas, the MLK, jrs., the Nelson Mandelas.  These are all people who in one way or another, stuck out.  Stood out.  Did they choose their destiny, or did destiny choose them?  There’s a tug of war that goes on within us between being perfectly vanilla and remarkably distinctive.

It’s kinda Stepford Wives-y in a way.  We have flaws.  We need to learn to embrace them instead of being ashamed of them.  Often times, the person we see in ourselves isn’t the person that other people see in us.  They see this great person who is cool and sweet and funny even though most of us would never describe ourselves that way.  We’re too hard on ourselves.  We don’t celebrate our own victories for fear that we might come off cocky or conceited.  But whenever I start down that road, I think about Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s acceptance speech when he won Best Supporting Actor.  That was pure joy.  And I think that’s what the world is missing.

It’s like the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, who said, “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

So I say, next time you get out of bed in the middle of the night and make it the whole way to the bathroom without falling down or busting your knee on any furniture, give yourself a little pat on the back.