where am i

every now and then someone (that would be you, right now) stumbles onto this blog (i guess someone can stumble 'on' to something...) and might wonder where i am.

well, i'm not here very often at all. your best bet to track me down is to go to either of my websites. i do have another blog, but i have yet to hit my rhythm with it, although i will be blogging regularly starting in late Spring 09.

see you around.

www.communicator.pro
www.writesite.com

moved

yeah, i'm done here. there'll be one last post about the new blog and its address.

thanks to everyone whoever stopped by.

peace

as close to an update as I've got

I'm not shut down, I'm on hiatus.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I will, eventually, have a link to a new, non-gagme blog.

the whole damn time thing

this has just been silly.

has it really been this long?

still haven't set up the independent site, but it's coming. i'm only doing this post so that there's no possibility of a surpirse shut-down by Gaggle.

if you're reading this, i have to ask - what the heck are you doing here? no disrespect intended, by the way.

really, I am still here...or is it there?

Usually, I spend a journeyman's amout of time crafting my posts, but I'm doing this one on the fly, just to let my loyal yet small group of readers know that I am coming back to a regular posting schedule, and that I'll be moving this blog to its own domain in a few weeks.

It's been an interesting transition to the new year, and I'll bring some fresh posts to you soon. I am still doing the retail thing (although I had to 'quit' to take off during the holidays, and 'ask' to come back), and I'll bring y'all up to date on the book, share some info about another profile article I'm working up on someone -- it's amazing how many people there are who's work is so recognizable while they remain almost anonymous) and share my new approach toward my own creative process. Swear to gosh on that last bit that it won't be a self-centered dirge, meandering (like a pebble in your shoe, eh RW?) or too metaphysical.

See y'all tomorrow.

That's Entertainment...maybe

I'll leave the retail world behind for now, save for these: it's not as mad as I had thought it would be during this buying madness season; the slobs and campers are unaffected by the intrusion of real shoppers; and young people who have never had a retail job before don't know diddly about customer service.

I did a second show of my solo performance piece last week. An organization held a large conference not too far from here and had invited me to perform as the 'entertainment' at the end of the conference. I had to write up a description so people could have a good idea of what the performance is about, because what is 'entertaining' to one person sure might not be 'entertaining' to another, and that's really the case here.

I am one who is entertained by the full range of subjects and approaches. I'm entertained by jugglers and comedians, and I'm entertained by Chekhov and David Lynch. I can also use the phrase, "That was great," after watching Bill Irwin, Harvey Keitel, Janis Joplin or Noam Chomsky (and hundreds of other people or forms of entertainment). I consider any performance that touches my soul, evokes a response and engages me intellectually or emotionally as entertaining.

But, that's just me.

Over the course of my life for as far back as I can remember, I have had an inherent curiosity about what truly entertains someone, and, to this day, I am often intrigued by people who stay away from any form of entertainment that will make them uncomfortable, might make them question something about themselves, might make them squirm or might make them think. Those of you who know me also know that I am not referring to something like the Freddy Krueger movies; to be fair, there are aspects in that genre that have merit, i.e., if you have not seen the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie, you should give it a go. Keep in mind, though, that it sure as shit ain't suitable for kids, ain't suitable for many adults (referring back to those who might have a breakdown if they watch anything but The Santa Clause 1, 2 or 3) and that, upon watching, you should be cringing and laughing your ass off, sometimes simultaneously. With respect to Keitel, if you've never seen Bad Lieutenant, you'll never see a better performance of human depravity and self-destruction in a character who has no apparent reason to be so despicable.

But, again, that's just me.

My performance piece had its birth during my work in a Katrina shelter in Louisiana. This, in and of itself, doesn't necessarilly keep things horribly sad for the entire performance, but it does mean that the audience is not in for a nice walk through the park. And, as I say in an early stage of the show, it ain't all tears and despair, really. Therefore, I am reluctant to describe the show as entertainment, even if I consider it to be so.

The show went well, even though I still can't rate my performance at 100%, and I was surprised at some of the places where I was cruising on all cylinders, because they were in different places than the first performance. That's the way it should be in live theatre though, because the psychic environment, the vibe of interaction, trust, doubt and tension between the actor and the audience changes every performance.

I received audience feedback via the person who had invited me to perform, and he said it was all good, positive, yaddayadda, save for one person who had a problem when I took the name of her lord in vain. Considering the lengths the conference had gone to in letting attendees know what they'd be in for, I don't have much empathy for the criticism. There always has to be at least one.
If I couldn't get someone to be that uncomfortable, it wouldn't be entertainment, would it?

But, that's just me, I guess.

Black

"The black guy?"

"...They're our black neighbors..."

"...and the ER nurse was just wonderful, this great black gal..."

Nope, not decades ago. Happened within the last year. And, the weird thing is, it came out of people who I KNOW don't believe, and I don't believe, that there's a racist bone in their bodies. That in itself is different than a relative, but not by blood, who is a bigot but would strongly disagree, even as he explains that when he was a young man, you didn't see people like Tiger Woods on the golf course because, "well, maybe it had to do with economics..."

Uh-huh, the economics of letting them clean the tables in the clubhouse and shooting them if they set foot on the green or if they walked through the 'Whites Only' door. This wouldn't-believe-he's-a-bigot also expressed surprise during a drive through the countryside when he saw a non-anglo couple sitting on the porch of a house: "Dont' usually see them out here."

But I digress.

These other people have never expressed any other statments, nor acted in any manner, that conveyed any leanings toward racism or bigotry. There is that descriptive thing though, and it's a toughy to deal with, because, well...let's digress again into backstory, just for a moment.

Some time during the summer of '71 (could have been '70, but I don't think so; couldn't have been '72, because I'm in basic training in lovely Ft. Polk, LA, by mid-June), I'm the passenger and Ken is driving, we're on the Eisenhower expressway, and we're either headed to Hillside or downtown Chicago. Traffic slows, we're just talking shit or whatever, and, maybe it was a hat or something, but I make a remark about the guy in a car close to us, and Ken asks, "What guy?"

"That black guy there."

"Why do people do that?"

"What?"

"Say 'black guy', instead of just 'guy'?"

The insight and maturity of both the question, coming from a goofball teenager who, like me, wanted to be a stuntman someday (you're fucking kidding me, right?), and his non-accusatory approach to the conversation, was one of those whack upside the head moments. "Why" indeed. The insight I could understand as having come to him as it came to me, from someone else. Not that I can't believe that Ken couldn't have had that kind of insight on his own at his young age, but it just seems more likely, given the time and place, that someone had shared that perspective with him, and they may have presented it to him in the same way: he didn't ask why "I" did that, he asked why "people" do that.

And we all know at least one of the answers: when you're young, and the norm of things is to describe someone of a different color than yourself by ALWAYS noting that other person's color, well, then that's your norm too. At least, that's your norm until someone like Ken comes along. Sadly, as close as were, I haven't a fucking clue where he is today. I last saw him in '76/'77, Kansas City, I think. I even had the opportunity to talk with someone five years ago who knew him intimately for a while, and she said that last that she'd heard, Ken got on a motorcycle one afternoon, took off and never came back.

Here's the thing: I got my perspective on "that guy" thing almost thrity-five years ago, at an age when I could use it as a foundation for the rest of my adult life. The people I'm talking about now, shit, they're in their sixties and seventies. And I can be fairly certain that they are, indeed, not racist, per se. Even though I've known them for between three and six years (not the 'no golf for black people because of economics' guy though...him I've known for, shit, long time...), their description by skin color statments only came up recently. And when they did just throw that out at me as we were talking, it was a bit, well, I guess surprising. Fuck, I don't know...I don't want to say I was shocked...actually, I think I was a little bummed.

See, I think that if you live in a place where either it's a highly diverse population, or in a place where there's a willingness to be diverse, you may become retro-naive, you forget what you had to learn once before.

So, I have another one of those 'swastika' things (an earlier post for those who don't know what I'm referring to; haven't been back to get my truck serviced yet, by the way). I suppose I could point out, like Ken to me, the undercurrent of meaning when they say "that black guy/that black gal", but, it's different when your older. For any of you who might've jumped up on the soapbox and started to take some sort of hard and fast position along the lines of, "You can't coddle them...", as I might have done in my younger, angry-Irishman days, I say this to you: shut the fuck up for the moment. As one gets a little older, one observes that there is far more gray in this world than black and white (geez, no pun intended, really), and one has to find the balance in this occasional mess.

Here's what I'll do, the next time this sort of conversation happens, and that 'black' thing happens, I'll come back to you and tell you how I handled it...or didn't...

I can't help but wonder, though, if the people I know were talking to a black person at a social gathering, and they wanted to point out someone across the room who was of a non-anglo descent, and the conversation partner asked, "what guy?", would they respond with...