I was trying to think of a title, and the phrase "I think therefore I am" came to mind. I remember first encountering that phrase in a chincy Star Wars expanded universe short story collection my Mom and I read when I was 8 or 9 called "Tales of the Bounty Hunters" (if you were at one time as much of a sci fi/star wars geek as I was, you may have seen or read it) and it had this super awesome IG88 short story about how he gains sentience and does all this cool stuff and takes over the second Death Star, at which point it kind of goes over the rails for me, but it was a cool book and I remember when he first breaks out of the imperial lab where he's created he stabs a scientist through the chest and his robotic hand comes out the other side clutching his still beating heart. This was like, the most violent thing I'd encountered in my young life at that point, with maybe a few exceptions but in general really extreme violence kind of freaked me out, but in this case it was pretty thrilling.
What does that have to do with my starting a new blog for the first time in several years? I don't know, I just want things to talk about. In general, I want to reflect my mental state and events as they occur to me, primarily around my budding acting career, but also more generally. If I can't go off on a tangent in my own blog, where else can I do so? In conversation with strangers? That does happen, I'll admit.
I hear someone shouting what sounds like weirdly militaristic commands outside the open window of my apartment. Probably a crazy person.
Back to the short story collection, I associate that memory very vividly from my childhood visiting California with my family while my brother must have been going to UC Santa Cruz. My earliest memories are of California, even though I was born in and consider myself to be "from" Boston, where I've resided since I was about 7, I suppose. I remember loving the place for the time I spent there that Spring or Summer, and wanting to get back to it for a long time after. Before becoming fixated on New York as my eventual future place of residence, I wanted to go to college and/or move out to northern California. I remember I was going to be a scientist, and marry someone in the arts, that was the plan at the ages of 12 and 13. Ironically, I'm pursuing the arts, and my girlfriend wants to be a pharmacist, ten years later.
I miss allowing the associations of moments and memories to bounce around and on to the page. I used to do that in my poetry, but then I stopped writing it, I think because I worked through what I needed to work through, my loneliness, the passing of a very dear friend, among other things. But this blog can be that! And more topical, as I chronicle my transition from student to starving artist, hurray!
Artistically, a lot has been going on this year. I've counted, and I did *counts on fingers* six plays from January to now in 2011, that's so much acting! And I didn't make any money for it! Actually, that's not true, the other day I did a shoot for the Dana Farber Institute, playing a medical assistant demonstrating how not to abandon a cancer patient in a hallway by... abandoning a cancer patient in a hallway! Played by one my fellow Harvard Extension acting classmates, which I thought was funny. That paid $40. Next month I start running a bar quiz in Kendall Square, that'll pay $50 a night plus $25 in free food and drinks, my first real income. I've also shot some cool film stuff, I played a character on drugs for a webseries, and half of a podcasting duo, a leading role (!) in another webseries which was super awesome fun cause I got to do whatever I wanted in the scenes, within the framework given, and ohhhh I did.
Now that I've graduated, I'm starting to think about how I can expand my craft. In particular, I want to learn to start writing and performing for myself, possibly by doing *gulp* stand-up, or writing and filming or performing my own sketch stuff. I say gulp, because in case you weren't aware, stand up is fucking difficult. How do I know that!? I've never done it! You say! Well I've been listening to hours of WTF with Marc Maron, and before that The Sound of Young America, and from my podcasting that is the impression I get. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it well. But then again, I'm really funny. And I do improv, and I'm good at that, and that's basically like writing spontaneously, so if I can get the juices going in the right direction, shouldn't I be able to apply that to other forms, ala sketch and improv?
These are the things I've been thinking about. Also, auditions. I have a bunch of them coming up. Including Stagesource, which I'm yet to start seriously preparing for, tick-tock, tick-tock, etc. I've been trying to arrange some monologue coaching and kind of failing, if all else fails I can start emailing professors or director/actor friends and generally preparing on my own. I have a callback for a kind of wonky sounding production of Hamlet this Sunday, then over the next few weeks, Rosencratz And Guildenstern Are Dead, a short film at the Art Institute, Boston Actors Theatre, Happy Medium Theatre Company and... Stagesource. Probably more will pop up too. I sort of feel like I should take a break from acting in plays, being in so many over such a short period of time has kind of drained me. But after a week or two of not doing anything, I'll probably be hungry to get back in rehearsals and on stage.
Oh shit! I'm burning through topics for future blog posts! Better cut this off. I think it'll be nice to repost old poems from when I used to write, in tribute to my former livejournal. Until next time. If there is a next time.
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California Murmurs
From my memory, murmurs of California
Snippets of people and places surround me
Consuming what serenity I possess.
I'm haunted by voices from the playground
The sand beneath my feet at Santa Cruz beach.
Sealion's song rises to the boardwalk
Raising with it nostalgia to take me
And sweetly overcome my five senses,
Pulling me back to San Francisco Bay.
A chilled wind comes in on the ocean tide
I pull in the woolen cloak of memory
To keep whatever warmth will remain
Before the breeze brings back the present.
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