What country, friend, is this?

Overlooking the Kaua’i ocean with my med-student friends, dressed in scrubs and bikinis. Our room overlooks a black rock outcropping, and we’re 30 feet from the water. Surfers brave the rocks below.
Looking forward to falling off the map of the world.

Waiting in between locations, in between lives, I find myself in Kaua’i with the destination after this unknown. The waters are different colors here, darker, to my eyes, from Los Angeles waters. It’s the ocean, but neither the east coast nor the west - the waters here are free of allegiances to hip-hop and to literary theory.

And I am here, after a year spent in rehearsal rooms across the country, staring at pictures of trees, paintings of horizons, the recorded sound of the ocean and the artificial light resembling sunrises - here being woken up by the sound of the waves.

This is an environment that defies my theatrical conception of the universe. The ocean is neither audience nor actors. I once imagined, with TCS, that we would perform a Greek play on the beach, in a natural ampitheater, for the waves as our audience. But these waters seem too powerful to simply watch.

This is a place that makes me think without theater, and yet all my thoughts go back to it, like (I’m sorry) the waters coming back to the shores. This island is not about theater. But theater is what brought me to this island - the freedom of time and spirit of working in our world.

I haven’t gotten rich making theater, and I never will. But I’m glad to have continued to live my life with the flexibility to be able to go to an island when the time comes for it. I think this is the gift we have that makes up for the many privations of the business. A sense of freedom.

I imagine, as I always do when I get to a new location, a traveling band of actors, Moliere’s players, arriving on a new shore. This is Illyria, lady.

from passing strange

Great show. Live musicians on stage the whole time. And this is what I realized: The (epic)chorus is a chorus of characters: it is composed of many people each in their own one-man show: portraying many characters, at once, consecutively, etc. It is composed of a group of epic poets.

I think this is why ADing on GOLDA was so pertinent to my work. Although the actress was a chorus of one, she was still choral in the fluidity of her identity.

well, I’m the kind of guy who likes to roam around

I’m never in one place,
I roam from town to town…
And when I find myself
a-falling for some girl
I get right into my car
And I drive around the world
Cause I’m a wanderer,
Yeah, the wanderer,
I get around, around, around, around, around…

I leave New York tomorrow morning.

press free

I can’t go to this but I wish I could - a media reform conference in Minneapolis, June 6-8. MoveOn sent it to me.

“Please consider joining members of Congress, new media visionaries, civil rights trailblazers, top grassroots organizers, and thousands of concerned citizens at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis/St. Paul this June 6-8 (Fri-Sun)—organized by our friends at Free Press.”

senator from california

From CNN: Feinstein waiting to hear from Clinton about superdelegate strategy.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a key supporter of Clinton’s White House bid, said Wednesday that the drawn-out race for the Democratic presidential nomination is producing “negative dividends in terms of strife within the party.”

Feinstein, D-California, said she wants to talk to Clinton to “see what her view is on the rest of the race, what the strategy is.”

Feinstein, who described herself as “very loyal” to Clinton, said “the question comes whether she can get the delegates that she needs, and I’d like to know what the strategy is to do that.”

She said she called Clinton two days ago but hasn’t heard back.

it’s-about-time-ary

I find it very interesting to read all this stuff about the character of Indiana after spending February doing experimental theater there. I fell in love with the state, as I think everyone we brought in from out of town did - and especially with the honesty, integrity, and friendliness of the folks we worked with. And now it’s interesting to think of them deciding, in effect, the Democratic nomination. A tiebreaker, as Obama said today. A good metaphor for a sports-loving state.

I think what’s going to break that tie is a sense of character. Really. That’s what seemed to be the most important to everyone who I met in the state of Indiana. Character, family, community.
I felt like I understood the US much better, for better and for worse - but mostly for better - after my month there. I’m looking forward to returning to Indiana next February, and every February for the foreseeable future, for the Convergence. Of all the places I’ve stayed this year, Indiana felt like it had the most to do with home. That surprised me, but it’s true.

I really don’t believe that the Indiana citizens I met would vote against Obama because of his race. Not for a second. I also think that they are not going to be distracted by bad economic gas-tax gimmicks, or by the dead-horse political issue of Rev. Wright. I think they’re going to vote on a sense of who they respect - whose character, whose values (remember that word? maybe I should say whose ethics, whose political philosophy - but I think the Democrats should make a stab at reclaiming the word “values”) they admire.

From the Washington Post:
Brian Howey: Indiana does not have a lengthy history of minority representation. In our 192 year history, we’ve had three African-American mayors, all from Gary. We’ve elected two African-American sheriffs. We’ve elected three black Members of Congress and Katie Hall of Gary lost to Pete Visclosky after just one term (the third, Rep. Andre Carson, is fighting a tough primary to keep his grandmother’s seat). We’ve had two Hispanic mayors. Indiana has not elected a female governor, though the past two lieutenant governors have been female. So while we’ve had lots of minority city councilmen, there hasn’t been much congressional or executive power in black hands. An Obama victory would be historic.

Historic and timely. More Q and As with Brian here.

Brian Howey: [...] The national media has sometimes portrayed us as a change resistant state. In the last three election cycles, Hoosier voters have tossed out an incumbent governor, three incumbent congressmen, the President of the Indiana Senate, the Senate Finance Chairman, the mayor of Indianapolis and about 40 percent of his incumbent brethren. We’ve switched to Daylight Saving Time. We can change and do change if someone can logically make the case for such change. If Obama wins Indiana, it will say volumes about our shift as a progressive state. By the way, Hoosiers helped invent the automobile, TV, 2 percent milk and tomato juice. The Bloody Mary wouldn’t exist without Hoosiers.

I have refrained from asking my Indiana Democrat friends who they are voting for in this primary. It’s none of my business. I am thinking of them a lot today, though, and wishing them luck in making this decision that the whole nation has had such a tough time with. Gentlemen, and ladies, cast your ballots.

lazy sunday

Yesterday, went to the Bronx Botanical Gardens with Tony and some Deep Springs/H-Med friends. Awash in cherry blossoms. One of them (the friends, not the trees) was the second earnest young rhyming poet I’ve met since coming here. We talked about Gerard Manley Hopkins, comics, hip-hop, sound poetry, Jay-Z, Eminem… There is a lot of comfort in finding other people occupying the same narrow subtopic-landing strip of the mind. And other people who are willing to introduce themselves as poets.

And today, going to see PASSING STRANGE, the first play I’ve seen since being here, and perhaps the only one since I leave Friday. It hasn’t been the whirlwind of theatergoing I expected, perhaps because this past year has been so awash in theater.

Tony and I were talking about metaphor yesterday, and technology. Things like “memory full” and “holding pattern” - the way that, as we work more with computers (or airplanes), we think of ourselves as more like them. And them more like us.

C-ya, C-train

Yesterday I moved to a new location in Brooklyn, shaving a good half-hour and one train off the commute. My trains are now numbered, not lettered. I’m staying with friends of friends for eight days or so until I leave on vacation. I had a great time with the Pratt/SVA crew on Taaffe, but it’s so much easier to wake up when you can see light through your windows, and hear birds singing. I didn’t realize that waking up without birds in a basement apartment was part of why I’ve felt so sleepy.

It never takes me more than an hour to pack any more.