Just Wrought

Recovering playwright, once won a STRANGER Genius Award for theater. Now writing a bloated novel about… G-d help me! Theatre.

Category: Writing

  • May 24, 2005

    In this entry from my on-going attempt to filibuster my unborn child out of my wife’s womb seven years ago, I whine about writing, and whether or not I should stop.  For about a decade this was a standing question for me.  I thought, talked, and wrote about it constantly until I realized, “Hey wait a second!  Writing about whether or not I should write is just a really lame excuse for writing.”  I have since moved on to other lame excuses.

    Tue May 24 2005 at 1:30:14 UTC

    Five hundred words.

    This is the daily quota that JohnnyGoodYear reminds us that Graham Greene suggests we writers try and meet to stay in shape. And–good God!– who would want to argue with Greene, possibly the most prolific and compellingly readable author of the prior century?

    It’s just that . . . well, does it apply to playwrights? And does it apply to playwrights who often fervently wish they didn’t write at all? It seems to me this discipline that Greene demands, and GoodYear promulgates, presupposes a devotion motivated by . . . what? That one’s writing betters the world? Oneself? More often than not it seems to me that this sort of devotion requires a faith that I long ago forswore. I cannot abide a God that insists I believe in Him any more than I can dedicate myself to a vocation that demands I ante up all my dutiful attentions whether or not it feels meaningful to me. And yet . . . and yet . . . Here I am writing.

    I promised I’d keep you all posted on the progress towards my second child’s birth ever since my wife lost her mucus plug three days ago. But now, with so little progress to report, I’m starting to regret it, in a way not unlike my regret of the vow I made to myself some decades back to be the best playwright possible.

    We get caught.

    We get caught in these ideas of ourselves and what it is we’re supposed to be doing. It’s all so noble I could be sick if I focused too long or too hard on it. We get into this writing business because we’re convinced that our minds might make the world a better place, and then we discover that the wisest men understand that the world needs no bettering.

    We bring children into the world because, let’s face it: it’s fun— both to make them and then to be with them once they’re here. Only a fascist fool could honestly believe he has anything to teach a child, except maybe how to blow a bubble or use a kazoo.

    So for now, I’m going to stick with this, through downvotes and upvotes, through your boredom and mine, through frustration and occasional elation, until I become a better playwright, a better writer, a better husband and father, a better man . . . or . . at least until the baby comes.

    Okay, so about that, here’s the nitty-gritty: Heather went to the doctor today and was told that she’s dilated to 4 centimeters, and that her cervix is 50% effaced. And what does that mean in bottom line layman’s terms? Well, that she’ll be having a baby. Some time soon. How soon? Only the Credophage knows.

    And I know yesterday I said I wasn’t anxious— but dammit!—it’s creeping up on me.

    Come on, baby. Come on! You’re almost here.

    And I am almost there . . . five hundred.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • May 22, 2005

    From exactly seven years ago, the second day of my filibuster for Kiwi’s appearance ex utero.

    Sun May 22 2005 at 22:32:28 UTC

    I have a theory that the twenty-plus years I’ve spent doing theatre have somehow warped my natural anxiety response to looming major life events. Lawrence Olivier once contended that the amount of adrenaline coursing through the veins of an average actor performing say, Hamlet, on a given night was enough to kill a normal man. I have no idea if this is true; it certainly sounds dubious. As a playwright who has a side specialty in writing plays that deal with science and technology, I can never underestimate the capacity of artists, even venerable ones, to get the science of nearly everything wrong. Still, there’s some sort of Picasso-like truth in this, I think. When faced regularly with situations that tend to make you feel like crapping your pants, you’re going to make an adjustment—psychologically, physiologically—however.

    My involuntary adjustment to countless openings of original plays I’ve poured my all into has been a shortening of the advanced dread period, down from a month, to a week, to the day before, to the day of, till now, when I open a play, the terror only starts to gut me a few hours or so before curtain. Somehow my body and my brain have decided that diminishing the time I’m exposed to the anxiety is healthier. Who am I to question them?

    So when the attractive mom of two, who occupies the cube across from, asked me the other day if I was starting to get excited about my baby coming, I explained how, no, it hadn’t really hit me yet.

    And it still hasn’t hit me yet. Heather’s lost her mucus plug. Yesterday morning she had a bout of contractions that lasted about an hour. And still, it hasn’t hit me– at least not on any visceral level– that another life is coming into the world very, very soon: one that I will be responsible for until the day I die, and possibly, if you ask the Mormons, beyond. (Or maybe it’s the other way around. I must confess I never really understood what has always seemed to me to be the comic book version of Christianity, or perhaps more fairly, the graphic novel.)

    So here comes this life. Healthy? We hope, and have no reason to doubt. Male? Female? We don’t know. One more detail to raise the stakes on my anxiety when it finally punches in. Of course, I’m leaning in my hopes for a girl, but only because I already have a son and he’s so special it’s hard to imagine having another one.

    Of course, it’s all pretty hard to imagine, isn’t it? And that’s the best part of living life: you could never dream this stuff up.

    More to come . . .

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • May 21, 2005

    Seven years ago today, on a bizarre, pre-Facebook social site for writers called Everything2, I began an endeavor to filibuster our second baby out of my wife’s body, writing a minimum of 500 words every day.  Had I known that it would actually be another 18 days before Kiwi would come into the world I might have thought better of the effort.  But that’s one of the highest glories of parenthood: even when you think you know what’s coming, you actually have not even the rawest idea.  Heck, had I known then what I know now about the restlessly wriggling energy ball of fierceness and joy that was hurtling his way toward our family, every night up until his birth would have been a sleepless Christmas Eve (and since every night for a year and a half after was semi-sleepless, I’m glad I got that rest instead.)

    So I’m going to share some of these filibuster “Day Logs” over the next week or so because sometimes, when you force yourself to write in circumstances you don’t normally, you dig out some jewels you might not otherwise ever know were hiding. 

    Sat May 21 2005 at 23:28:15 UTC

    Heather lost her mucus plug yesterday.

    Oh, you don’t know what that is? Isn’t that funny? How many countless scenes of birth have been brought to us by Hollywood and yet not one of them employs the words “mucus plug”. No, we have to wait until we prepare to experience the real thing before we learn about that little friend. The mucus plug is about what it sounds: a snotty bung for a barrel designed to keep things where they’re supposed to be until, well, they’re not supposed to be there any more. In any case, what you need to know is that its demise signals that labor’s a pretty safe bet in the next couple weeks.

    An even stronger signal is the fact that Heather was up from 4 to 7 am this morning suffering contractions, back pain and cramps. She quietly took herself into the living room couch, deciding not to wake me until she was sure this was the real thing. It wasn’t. The contractions subsided. We had a normal breakfast of french toast. Then we took Declan to the Pacific Science Center and had a good time poking around there, though the boy was a bit scared of the animatronic dinosaurs and super-sized insects. He was even a little freaked out by actual fly-bys in the butterfly room, but on the other hand his dad reckons this is the coolest thing I’ve experienced in a long time. Living gossamer leaves of color flittering right past your face in all directions. It’s enough to make you glad you’re bringing another life into the world to share it with.

    Then we went to the Red Mill, the best “fast” burgers in Seattle. Heather and I each had one. Declan, per usual, happy to merely poach our fries and some of our shakes. The boy would rather eat dirt than burger. Go figure.

    Anyway, I got this nifty laptop that my work has loaned me because my boss wants me to spend as much time at home with the baby as I can. (Sometimes even corporate America can be cool.) I’m thinking I may take it with us to the hospital and tell y’all as much as I can during the process.

    Or that might not happen at all. You parents out there know how these things can go.

    In any case, wish us luck. It won’t be long now.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • doyle

    doyle

    Imagine a science fiction species that loses weight by breathing and poops bacteria instead of digested food. Can you picture it? If not, my friend doyle has a suggestion: go look in a mirror.

    I met doyle on the internet. I feel closer to doyle than some people I have shared a bathroom with for years. I have only met doyle once in person. I want doyle to bury me.

    All of that is tangential to the main point, which is that doyle has a blog called Science teacher and I think you should follow it.

    Michael Doyle was born in Northern New Jersey, a good-for-nothing Mick like so many no-good-for-nothing Micks born in Northern New Jersey. (By the way, he prefers to refer to himself as “Oirish” as if that were somehow more PC.) He worked briefly as long shoreman. He went to med school. He became a pediatrician and worked in the ER and the projects. Think about that for a second. An emergency room pediatrician in Newark. You may think you know hell, but doyle has a crisper acquaintance with the place.

    The reason I call doyle “doyle” and not “Michael Doyle” or “Michael” or “Dr. Doyle” or even “Doyle”, is that “doyle” was all I knew him by for months. We met as contributors to an on-line gathering site for weirdos and writers and weirdo writers called Everything2, a quasi-prophetic mash-up of Face Book and Wikipedia if the former only allowed text and the latter had a sense of humor. I’m not sure the following piece is the first thing I ever read  of doyle’s, but I do remember it arrested me. He  was on pilgrimage to some mid-western city where his sister had recently died in a car crash.

    December 9, 2004 (person)

    The driver seat is still intact–inside scattered cd’s with burgundy stains, her impossibly colored scarf, glass, pens. A bottle of chardonnay meant to be shared with her love survived. The other side of the car is splayed open, a gaping wound letting in rain, letting in sunshine.

    I picked up a couple of cd’s–Frankie Allison and the Odd Sox….and now my hands with bright red blotches, my sister’s blood when she bled for the last time. I absently rubbed my hands on my jeans–the bright red dulled to burgundy again. I took the scarf with me.

    Last summer a feral cat mutilated a mourning dove near my garden. I gave it water. It took a little. It hopped a few feet. It died. Its partner would not leave. It looked sad. A tiny puff of feathers still marks where the broken bird fell.

    Her ashes are in a cardboard box, decorated with construction paper, stickers, sparkly glue, and (of course) hearts.

    I kept going back in the car, not sure what I was looking for, but sure I would not find it.

    At least I got something right this week.

    Doyle and I hit it off early. He seemed to like my plays about science and my doggerel poems. I liked pretty much everything he wrote.

    During my teaching rounds, I will occasionally show pediatric residents wheat berries, and ask them what they think they are. These fine young minds have been charged with teaching nutrition to parents, so quizzing them about the most common source of grain calories in this part of the world should be fair game.

    I have yet to have an American born physician get it right.

    My other Everythingian buddy “iceowl” grew up with doyle and liked to fascinate me with stories about him. (Keep in mind when you read the following that iceowl has been to Antarctica three times and has written about it better than Hemmingway ever could have.)

    [Doyle’s] done much more for humanity than I have.  I’m just a silicon valley idiot…  He is one of those guys who is blessed to do well doing exactly what he wants in the world.  Classic Joseph Campbell example of, “Following your bliss.”  He wants very little from the world, and gives a lot.  So, Doyle couldn’t possibly do anything he didn’t want to do because the worst that happens is he gets nothing for his efforts, and he’s perfectly happy sleeping under the highway overpass if it comes to that …..  He just wants to do things none of us could stomach for more than a day – like dodging bullets and the cops both while illegally vaccinating kids in inner city Newark.

    Five years ago doyle hung up has white physician’s coat and traded it for the white lab coat of a high school science teacher. He calls his students his “lambs”, though I suspect few of them understand how closely he has observed the slaughter in his former life.

    In his blog he mixes the same blend of adoration and frustration that I came to love him for at Everything2. Here he is breathlessly elevating a discourse on respiration to a paean of the universe, because as he sees it— and trust me, doyle sees it as it is— there is no meaningful difference between the two. (I’ll do my best to capture doyle’s rapturously manic formatting.)

    Carbon dioxide that traveled through the hearts 
    of every child in our class.

    Carbon dioxide expelled as a sigh, 
    broken down by a few brain cells that would
    rather do anything but this school thing.

    We ruin it, this carbon dioxide communion, reducing it to hieroglyphics on a page, to be regurgitated by spilling bubbles on a sheet, a religiously messy communion of sorts sterilized to a formula:

    C6H12O6 +6 O2 =>  6H2O + 6CO2

    And yet, for a moment, the moment before eating the bean, a few students allow themselves the beauty and the power of the story to let them believe what they’ve always known to be true, that this whole life business, as messy and complicated and incomprehensible as it seems, gets down to this:

    Each living thing, every living thing, shares an intimate bond that goes beyond the language of science, beyond the language of art, beyond human boundaries.

    The universe belongs to all of us, as we belong to it.

    No matter how we do in school, no matter what we know, now matter what we do.

    I would trade all the biochemical pathways we “teach” for a child’s grasping, for more than a moment, that we are indeed the stuff of the universe around us, and that this stuff cycles through us, is us.

    Without an iota of the effort I put into it, Doyle writes the way I yearn to, with a high-wire walker’s combination of improvisation and precision. Because he flat-out knows so much, thanks to an enormous education and equally enormous experience, he can produce an uncannily free of flow of ideas without the so-much-smoke-blowing of so many formally educated, professionally self-identified “writers”. After I’ve been steeping myself in his prose for a while, I start to feel my own prose improving, taking flight. It could just be my imagination; but given how much both doyle and I believe in imagination, I’ll take it.

    Neil Gaiman first introduced me to the Talmudic legend of the 36 Tzaddikim in his Sandman series. “They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints – 36 unselfish men and women. Because of them the world continues to exist. They are the secret kings and queens of this world.” I’m not going to come out and say Doyle is a Tzaddik. Such a pronouncement would be absurd, given the the legend’s clear and emphatic stipulation that no one can know who the 36 are. 

    I just have my suspicions is all.

    Photo by Susan LaRusse Eckert, used with permission of the subject, who only asked that I note: “She’s a little pissed off at me now–I tend to do that. I’d be much obliged if you mentioned that I’m truly sorry for my, um, knuckleheadedness.”

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • Horror, Terror, Dread

    Horror, Terror, Dread

    “Horror”, “terror” and “dread” are terms often used interchangeably, but it is important to remember there are no true and total synonyms in any language, let alone the enormous and endlessly supple English lexicon.  As we dig deeper into the problem of horror in theatre, it behooves us to tease out the differences among these concepts so that we can better understand what we as theatre artists can reasonably hope to engender through a live stage experience.

    Despite what you might think of Orson Scott Card’s social politics—and they are pretty reprehensible—he is at times capable of important insights, especially when it comes to story-telling.  In his introduction to his collection of short fiction, Maps in a Mirror, Card illuminates his perspective on the differences and interdependencies among horror, terror and dread. Technically, according to the vaunted sci-fi scribe, I should list “dread” first, since this is the anticipatory emotion, the harbinger of fleeting “terror”.  Thirdly comes “horror”, terror’s lingering residue. Says Card:

    Dread is the first and the strongest of the three kinds of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is. The fear that comes when you first realize that your spouse should have been home an hour ago; when you hear a strange sound in the baby’s bedroom; when you realize that a window you are sure you closed is now open, the curtains billowing, and you’re alone in the house.

    According to Card, terror is what happens when the dreadful unknown becomes known: when the vampire finally bursts out of its coffin, when the airplane finally plows into the building, when the proctor says pencils down, and you realize you haven’t written anything. Terror is powerful, but transient. It only lasts as long as it takes to fight, flee or die. As Card points out, “. . . At least you know the face of the thing your fear. You know its borders, its dimensions. You know what to expect.”

    Horror happens after the fact, and thus, says Card:

    . . . is the weakest of all. After the fearful thing has happened, you see its remainder, its relics. . . . with repetition horror loses its ability to move you and, to some degree, dehumanizes the victim and therefore dehumanizes you. As the sonderkommandos in the death camps learned, after you move enough naked murdered corpses, it stops making you want to weep or puke. You just do it. They’ve stopped being people to you.

    So Card’s schema of fear in a nutshell:

    Dread / pre-cursor / powerful in cumulative doses / ductile

    Terror / cursor / extremely powerful / transient

    Horror / post-cursor / weak / easily degrades to apathy

    I quibble a bit with Card’s definition of horror. I think he is jamming it into a semantic slot for the sake of neatly rounding out his schema. Horror to me is a larger thing, not just following upon, but also encompassing, terror and dread. After all, it’s significant somehow that we don’t call them “dread stories.”* Nonetheless, Card’s theory is undeniably powerful in breaking down what does and does not work in some of the most famous examples of the genre.

    Shirley Jackson‘s The Haunting of Hill House offers a quintessential serving of well-constructed dread which ultimately lacks the particular punch of terror at the climax that would make it an unquestionable classic. Jackson builds the menace of the house nicely throughout the bulk of the book, and gently allows readers to discover for ourselves Eleanor’s psychic deterioration, with deviously gentle hints, such as having the poor girl remember prior fancies as fact, etc; but Jackson’s handling of the terror piece of the puzzle right near the end does not rise to meet dread’s hand-off, and the nearly non-existent denouement offers no meaningful lingering touch back to the cancerous anxiety that had us, as connoisseurs of the form, so horribly hopeful during the buildup.   H. P. Lovecraft  is another vaunted master of the form for whom evoking dread is easy money, but spicing it with actual terror when the right time comes proves elusive.

    For a pitch perfect example of Card’s theory in practice, I submit for consideration Stephen King’s early novel, ‘Salem’s Lot. Here King instinctually employs all the right tricks to pull these three important pieces together in a literary symphony of fear.  First, instead of ending with horror, King begins with it, placing the reader in Mexico, at the end of the action, where the protagonist Ben Mears and his boy sidekick Mark have fled as far they practically can from the evil Maine town that gives the book its title. Clearly both are shattered by whatever happened to them, though the boy seems a bit more resilient.

    Upon returning to the narrative proper, King’s next trick, or more accurately, running series of tricks, is to dribble in small chunks of terror as he simmers the stock of dread. This makes sense from several points of craft. First, it serves to amp the dread as he builds it, leaving readers ratcheted up another quantum notch of anxiety from which we cannot return until the book is done. Second, it places less structural weight on the final climax, so King does not have to resort to breathless rushing like Jackson, or vague insinuations like Lovecraft to meet his mark. When our reluctant vampire hunter Mears has to climb down into that infested basement armed only with wooden stakes, you feel along with him his dogged determination as well as his near-certainty of doom. Pockets of terror catch us off guard, and leave us reeling. Terrible things happen when we least expect them, perpetrated by the most unusual suspects. It’s a fascinating testimony to King’s canny genius that the most terrifying moment (using Card’s definition) in a book about a town literally crawling with bloodthirsty vampires is when a perfectly normal woman punches a perfect normal infant in the face. (Though, agreed: I’m using the term “perfectly normal” in the loosest of senses.)

    Card’s tripartite schema, slightly strained as it is, proves an excellent guide to those of us who are trying to figure out new ways of frightening the fuck out of people. But he digs even deeper as he concludes his introduction to Maps in a Mirror:

    [This] is the artistry of fear. To make the audience so empathize with a character that we fear what he fears, for his reasons. We don’t stand outside, looking at gory slime cover him or staring at his gaping wounds. We stand inside him, anticipating the terrible things that might or will happen. Anybody can hack a fictional corpse. Only a storyteller can make you hope the character will live.

    So as with all great story-telling, and indeed, great art, the trick lies in cracking the nutshell of the other– to climb inside and drive them around for a ride. This happens so rarely that billions of human beings have never experienced it, or if they have, barely realize they have. But it is incumbent upon us artists to keep hammering on that shell. This is a trick which is both more difficult and easier in the theatre.  Easier, because “climbing inside and taking someone else for a ride” is the very definition of acting; but in a modern American theatre stuck revving representational realism, an audience can very quickly lose connection so completely that there remains no chance of instilling genuine terror, horror, or even dread, beyond the dread of sitting in a cramped seat and wondering how long and how bad the show you are about to see might be.

    *It’s also telling that we don’t call terrorists “dreadists.”  Human beings can, and often do, tolerate long comfortable lives lived within an ambient state of dread.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • St. Peckinpah

    St. Peckinpah

     
    “Come” she told me, “with your shame and your gringo.” I looked up & stepped toward
    the old woman, black habit
    standing under the sun-white arch of the church.
    She was called Agatha, mistress of God.
    And I would be called graverobber, trapped in a movie
    trapped in Mexico, some hundred & eight miles from the border,
    with a man’s head in a Scotch plaid hatbox. Fucking flies. And not a whorehouse in sight.
    This is a dirty old town without clear pavement markings
    & I drove right into the doorway of the little apostolic house of Jesus
    before I noticed the labored eyes of Our Lord looking down on me.
    I parked the sedan. It purred raggedly, panting exhaust
    like a hole in a lung. Then the engine stopped altogether & I took my cue to get out
    & get religion. Head, I’m taking you with me.
    There’s nothing sacred about a hole in the ground. The Church
    cuts off lips, fingers, the petrified genitals of saints made merchandise …
    but me I’m seventy miles an hour
    out of midnight, the village cemetery in Jalisco,
    men shouting in Spanish on brown horses, women on horses
    shouting & everybody’s got a gun.
    Hypocrites, double-crossers … Head, you’re the only one in this country who’s not trying to kill me
    & I appreciate that. Bygones are bygones, the past is the past & the past
    wants us all to be happy. I’m going to stagger into the confessional
    & stagger back out. Then we’ll go see Mr. Big
    & his boyfriends. So don’t touch anything on the tables. So stop looking at me
    with your goddamn fucking eyes.

    David Penn
    1995

    “peckinpah”
    by Omar Willey

    (more…)

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • The New You Boat (Mini-Act II)

    The New You Boat (Mini-Act II)

    Continued from Mini- Act I

    Mini-Act II
    by
    O.C.C.A.M.

     (The following countdown takes place in darkness.)

    CAPTAIN:  Seven.

    COMMANDER:  Seven.

    LIEUTENANT:  Seven.

    ENSIGN:  Seven.

    BOSUN:  Seven.

    HELMSMAN:  Seven.

    SEAMAN:  Seven.

    COMMANDER:  Six.

    LIEUTENANT:  Six.

    ENSIGN:  Six.

    BOSUN:  Six.

    HELMSMAN:  Six.

    SEAMAN:  Six.

    LIEUTENANT:  Five.

    ENSIGN:  Five.

    BOSUN:  Five.

    HELMSMAN:  Five.

    SEAMAN:  Five.

    ENSIGN:  Four.

    BOSUN:  Four.

    HELMSMAN:  Four.

    SEAMAN:  Four.

    BOSUN:  Three.

    HELMSMAN:  Three.

    SEAMAN:  Three.

    HELMSMAN:  Two.

    SEAMAN:  Two. One.

    (Lights up.)

    ENSIGN:  ¡Ping!

    COMMANDER:  What?

    ENSIGN:  Something.

    COMMANDER:  What?

    CAPTAIN:  Ensign explicate.

    ENSIGN:  I… I… scanning… scanning…

    COMMANDER:  What?  Something?  What?

    CAPTAIN:  A ghost?  A glitch?

    ENSIGN:  Gone.

    SEAMAN:  Go then, Commander-Man, your switch.  Punch the button, bastard.

    CAPTAIN:  Belay below.  Avast bastion blasts awhile awaiting a future–

    ENSIGN: ¡¡Ping!!

    COMMANDER:  Again?

    CAPTAIN:  Ensign extrapolate.

    ENSIGN:  Close.  Closing closer.

    COMMANDER:  Captain?
    CAPTAIN:  Aye.

    COMMANDER:  Shall I?

    SEAMAN:  Aye, knew you eyed three key live/kill.  Use or lose.

    CAPTAIN:  Hold fire. Helmsman, do die for your New You depth invasion evasion.

    HELMSMAN:  Aye, aye, I do die for declination dot mark dash dot dash mark dash.

    CAPTAIN:  Seaman, a head engine’s awful.

    SEAMAN:  Rot sure negative, Captain.  Fear/desire drive died dry of new U launch lust lost and found foundering.

    CAPTAIN:  Silence.  All hands and semenful silence.

    (Silence.)

    ENSIGN:  ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeyingyangyangyangyingyingyingyangyangyingyang!!!!!!!

    CAPTAIN:  Lieutenant, tend the Ensign.  Bosun, man the scanner.

    LIEUTENANT:  I eye, consummation containment crypt cracked.

    BOSUN:  Breach leaking New U blue-black.

    LIEUTENANT:  Imminent wave array decay.

    COMMANDER:  Recommendation.

    LIEUTENANT:  You knew New You’s posited position predicates primary protocol.

    SEAMAN:  I aye.  Kill/die.

    ENSIGN:  Oh!

    CAPTAIN:  Ensign, report.

    ENSIGN:  Oh come!

    CAPTAIN:  Ensign, repeat.

    ENSIGN:  Oh come!  Oh come!

    BOSUN:  Captain, I eye sounds bounding, but something–

    COMMANDER:  Something else?

    BOSUN:  Something other.  An indistinguishable, inextinguishable echo goes over the whole hollow hull.

    ENSIGN:  Awe comes!

    HELMSMAN:  Captain. I eye dying drift dive decline climbing to asymptote of total imp lotion. Shall I continue to die for

    you? To dive, perchance to–

    BOSUN:  Blow the whole hallowed held hull.

    CAPTAIN:  Hold held course coordinates: invasion evasion.

    SEAMAN:  Who knew you New You to fool?  Where do you New You to go?

    CAPTAIN:  No one.  Nowhere.  Need to know only.  Nothing knows again new again now, all hands and semen, knew you of New

    You to live/let live another daze of all days to fight another night of all lights.

    SEAMAN:  Live/let live’s long gone.  On or on or on and on.

    LIEUTENANT:  Knew you New You, when nothing’s something sees through Schrodinger’s cat can, all’s over and out with an

    ever-rending boom through the Chinese Room.

    ENSIGN:  Awk’em!  Chink the Chink Clink!  Awk’em!  Awk’em!

    CAPTAIN:  Knew you, damn you, to extricate, Ensign, and excogitate escape from stated state.

    ENSIGN:  Aye I one woe wallowing whale’s wail waking mermen and maidens mating making oracling orcas cause calls across all

    of us: “Awe comes occaming all ye fate-fools of faded faithfulishness.  Be not be afraid/brave I eye-tide in/out tidings of

    great joyfoolish noise.”

    BOSUN:  Behold low hell hellos!

    ENSIGN:  Aye!

    BOSUN:  Pain pang pings pound!

    LIEUTENANT:  Chink the Chink Clink!

    SEAMAN:  Blast a bastard button, pusher!  On or on or on and on!

    COMMANDER:  I eye I catch as cat can can’t!

    HELMSMAN:  New You course closing on imminent infinite atmospheres asymptote!

    CAPTAIN:  I eye from one breach breaking wave good-bye.

    ENSIGN:  Occam’s rays–

    BOSUN:  Heard me.

    ENSIGN:  Occam’s rays–

    LIEUTENANT:  Hurt me!

    COMMANDER QUARK:  There’s something–

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  –nothing but a little–

    SEAMAN MESON:  –push would scuttle but a little–

    COMMANDER QUARK:  –blasting bastion of–

    BOSUN BOSON:  –sounds truly–

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  –human in–

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  –and doubt of all–

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  –this–

    SEAMAN MESON:  –that–

    COMMANDER QUARK:  –never was–

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  –always will–

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  –not stroke–

    BOSUN BOSON:  –one when we’re–

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  –Occam’s razored!

    (Blackout.
    End of “The New You Boat.”)

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • The New You Boat (Mini-Act I)

    The New You Boat (Mini-Act I)

    A note on the generation of the play…

    The playwright Matthew Fielding died in 1984, having only completed the first act of his last play, “The New You Boat”.  Unfinished works are a fact of life– or rather death– in the world of literature, but there are those that believe that this was no accident.  Fielding mentioned no other work by name in his will, but the first act of the mini-two act play “The New You Boat” was specifically designated to be placed in the public domain where anyone who so chose could attempt to finish it.  Also, in eerie contrast to his habit, Fielding left no notes on the work, no outlines for the second act, no references to its conception or development in his journal– nothing, but the perfectly formed first act.  Finally, the script is rife with digital and quantum imagery as well as linguistic conundrums and self-referential, anti-algorithmic riddles that could have only be intentionally designed for one purpose: to confound an artificially intelligent creative consciousness.

    Writing the first act of “The New You Boat” was a consummate act of defiance on Fielding’s part: a reaching back from the finality of death itself to throw down one last gauntlet before his late-life intellectual adversaries– the proponents of artificial intelligence.  Most artists have an inherent antipathy and distrust of the scientific method.  Matthew Fielding embraced it.  He welcomed contending viewpoints from those who challenged the anthropocentric idea that only human beings are capable of consciousness and creativity.  He was as willing to be proven wrong by them as he was eager to prove them wrong.

    In fall of 1995, under the auspices of an unprecedented co-bequest of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Security Administration, an elite team of thinkers, scientists and artists called the Creative Cognition Development Group, was formed to meet the challenge of completing a master work of art solely using computer generated artificial consciousness.  A mega-program, made up of literally billions of complex, interconnected algorithms needed to be designed, tested and implemented.  It was.  On January 1, 1999, OCCAM (Omni-interfacial Creative Consciousness Algorithm Matrix) was born.  In a little over two years (roughly two-hundred times longer than experts believe it took Fielding to write the first half) OCCAM completed the “The New You Boat”.

    We at the CCDG, on behalf of the late Matthew Fielding, and indeed, OCCAM itself, invite you to judge the results.

    NEWYOU formula image

    Mini-Act I
    by
    Matthew Fielding

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Accept no substitutes.  This is the New You Boat.  Rot your Roger.  We’ll go wilco.  Seaman Meson, state your state us.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Aye, aye, Commander.  Fear/desire drive alive and churning our screw through the New You blue bluer blue bluer than blue black-blue blacker than blue bluer than blacker than bluer than bluer than blacker than bluest blacker-blue-black back to you new boat.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Rot your that.  Helmsman Hadron.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Aye, aye, Commander.  New You of course bearing naught stroke one not one stroke one approaching asymptote of ascertaining our approach on points pertaining to why we lie below and die with always something shy of sky’s the limit asymptotically speaking of course…  bearing…  naught stroke one not one—

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Helsman—

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Aye.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Cut your jib and maintain prescient course.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  I, Commander, will go–

    COMMANDER QUARK:  We’ll always go.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Wilco.  Aye.  Shall I dive for you?

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Aye, Helmsman, do.  Dive for depth perception zero nautical knots naught stroke one.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Rot your that.  Will do dive.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Bosun Boson.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Aye the hull is sound the hull is true sounding truly true sounds sounding through function of faith further function of fear further function of falling facing turning churning our screw through the new you black and blue back to blue black to you new boat.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Wheel go.  And scuttle button?

    BOSUN BOSON:  Check, set, wired, tested, all systems go for detonating preset charges blowing bright holes in the hull holes opening hell holds flooding all held hells blowing all holes whole crushing us blinder than we already are.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Rot sure.  Ensign Neutrino.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Aye, communications check.  All bands scanned reading random noise with single signal exception.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Explicate.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Explication: constantly variable incessant inbeaming binary beacon begins again new…  again now…  again…

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Transcribe.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  I eye transcript sans script:  all in code.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Crack it.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  We’ll go.  Cracking…
          Standby….
          In crypt cracked.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Transcribe.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Sans script transcript crypt cracked:  “Begin in crypt:  Knew you u no u r Schrödinger’s Cat in a Chinese Box garbage day in and garbage day out.  Only amplitudes abound, always anchors away angers awash encore’s a wish awhile awaiting a future in crypt.  End in crypt.”

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Rot sure.  Lieutenant Lepton.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Morale modems monitor multitudinous mutinies multifariously manifesting melanomic demonic mnemonic nominal monomaniacal numb mum hum.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Recommendation.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Punch scuttle.  Blow held hull holes.  Collapse wave function.  Annihilate boundlessly abounding anger-anchored amplitudes.  Commence consummation devoutly to be wished awhile a waiting future in crypt.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Duly noted, negated, belayed and belied.  Standing course and orders stand still.
          Fire control command commander, I, Commander Quark, report all fire control systems all systems go set to blow ballistic bastions blasting out of the new you up through the black blue into the true you who new nothing mirvs spurt from seven brahmaning bridegrooms for seven continental eggs benedicted to break fast break hard over easy.
          Your new you crew stasis state us stated and standing for inspection, Captain Quasar.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  All hands and seaman:  this is your captain.
          This night of all nights, eve of day of all days, it’s apt and auspicious to remember this mission’s vital import and portent.
          It’s not unreasonable to reason that the surfaces served have unremembered never knew you.  In their seasonal celebration of crisp coming bright they overlook that new true black blue heavy water U light: salvo salvation of nations.  You, New You, alone blow the glow coals that flash the steam that churns the turning screw through this bluer blacker than blue.  New You knew alone the crypt code, held hull holes, and ballistic bastions basking below.
        Last day I asleeped from a recurring reality, an ornery ontogeny oven on conscious corrective: little legged spermed-eggs doing the Chinese roomboom.  “Never knew you, New You.” Say they you away.  “Never knew you, New Nothing.” But whenwhere nothing exists, nothing’s something liable to litter little nothings and break brittle little somethings into anything new you want.  What’s to be?  What’s to become?  What’s to be becomes becoming through what little little legged spermed-eggs beg they never knew of New You.
          Tonight, Eve of all eves, a decision must be come to: a becoming to be come and gone.  Always knew you that this point in space of time would come.  One switch to give two options, two of which to give four, only one of which can be, taking three to key.
          Bosun Boson, man your switch.

    BOSUN BOSON:  I eye scuttle button, one push to blow held hull holes.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Commander Quark, man your switch.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  I eye fire control set to blast bastions ballistic.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Ensign Neutrino, appraise amplitude array.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  I eye amplitude array all appraised:  four singular states in play.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Pray, Ensign, state states arrayed.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Off and off.  On and off.  Off and on.  On and on.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Translate arrayed stated states.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Live/let live.  Die/let live.  Live/kill.  Die/kill.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Lieutenant Lepton, commence crew key conviction config query.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  I eye key config query commencing in sub conn descending rank order.
          Captain Quasar, select your suffrage.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Live/kill.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Commander Quark.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Die/kill.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Lieutenant Lepton:  die/let live.
          Ensign Neutrino.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Live/kill.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  I eye two to key live/kill.
          Bosun Boson.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Die/let live.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  We’ll go two to key die/let live.
          Helmsman Hadron.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Die/kill.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Rot sure two to key die/kill.  Three out of four suffrages be two to key.  What say thee, Seaman Meson?
    SEAMAN MESON:  Suffrage me to live/let live.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Nothing cums, Seaman, of nothing.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Rot sure, Captain.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Recast, Seaman.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Rot your recasting, Captain.  Resuffrage me to live/let live.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Suffrage denied.  Switch or surrender.

    SEAMAN MESON:  I switch off and off.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  No.  On or on or on and on.

    SEAMAN MESON:  I eye but off and off.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Damn you.  You knew you damn new you to lose, never loose, the name of action.  You knew New You to live/let live is nothing but not nothing.  Switch one on.

    SEAMAN MESON:  No on.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR (simultaneously):  On, on, on, on, on, on, on.

    SEAMAN MESON (simultaneously):  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. 

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Captain.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  I.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Permission to break the stale Seaman mate.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Explicate.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  I to eye switch conviction recon fig. from die to live/kill.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Knew you to do this?

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Aye but only new newly now.  Night of all nights.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Eve of all ease of all griefs.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Three now to key live/kill.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Then commence live/kill key confiq sequence.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Eye, Ensign Neutrino, key in.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Keying.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Commander Quark.  ¿Quien?

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Keen.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Captain Quasar.  Kin?

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  King.  Of all kin a little less than kind, of all knights a little more than dazed; wrecks raineth omni-pittance in salve ocean.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Key confiq complete.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Fire control armed.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  Fire at will.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Request countdown.

    CAPTAIN QUASAR:  I eye granite.  Seven.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Seven.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Seven.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Seven.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Seven.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Seven.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Seven.

    COMMANDER QUARK:  Six.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Six.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Six.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Six.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Six.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Six.

    LIEUTENANT LEPTON:  Five.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Five.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Five.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Five.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Five.

    ENSIGN NEUTRINO:  Four.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Four.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Four.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Four.

    BOSUN BOSON:  Three.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Three.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Three.

    HELMSMAN HADRON:  Two.

    SEAMAN MESON:  Two.  One.

    (Blackout. End Mini-Act I.)

    Continue to Mini-Act II by O.C.C.A.M.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • The Blogs are Alright

    The Blogs are Alright

    Does it automatically mean you are stuck in a self-referential rut as a playwright when the same talented young actress who, back in 2008, played a character based on your wife, less than three years later gets cast in a completely different play portraying, not a character based on you, but actually you, the playwright?

    Rehearsals have begun for The New New News: A Living Newspaper, and true to our promise, NewsWrights United is publishing blogs from members of the cast and crew.  You can get ‘em while they’re hot over at NewsWrights United: The Blog.

    I really couldn’t be more delighted with the material that the New New Newsies are generating, while simultaneously managing to rehearse the show, take care of their families, go to school, and/or hold down full-time jobs.

    • You can read It’s Not in the P-I-veteran Brian Thomas Gould ranting about “The Table Read” and how he uses it to read his director based on the roles he’s been cast in.
    • Or check out “Memories of Homemade Bombs” in which NewsWright Actor Tammy Batey recounts her days as an actual ink-and-paper journalist covering Stratton R. Maxey for the Federal Way Mirror.  On April 14, 1999, Maxey accidentally blew off his left hand while handling a homemade bomb.
    • And then, of course, there’s Courtney A. Kessler’s “Playing the Playwright”, in which she relates her experience as an actor playing both my wife, scarcely disguised as the character Jenny Wolfe in The Don Juan Cult Concerto, as well as more recently myself, in a brief scene in The New New News about how NewsWrights United decides to cover our stories.

    By the way, you can order tickets for the upcoming New New News here.  We know you wanna.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write

  • Demons’ Year Off

    Demons’ Year Off

    I started in show business as an actor.  Well, strictly speaking I started as the lead singer for a rock-and-roll band, but given that I was thirteen when I auditioned for “Paradox” in Jimmy McNally’s cramped basement, and that the pinnacle of our public performances was playing the midnight “Rock ‘n Bowl” at the Timonium Fair Lanes, where Jimmy also worked as a fry cook, let’s just say for simplicity’s sake that I began my show business career as an actor.

    No one, least of all I, should argue that an actor’s work is easy; but the discipline it requires, in my experience, can be leveraged largely from external sources.  If you have some talent and ideally get a little training, then you can start auditioning for jobs.  If you manage to land those, then someone other than yourself will be telling when to show up, what to do when you do, and when to go home when the rehearsal or show is done. 

    Anyone who decides, like I did back in the late 1980’s, that they also might want to wright for the stage, soon learns that the coterie of people in place to whip-crack— the teachers, directors, and stage managers—are simply not there for playwrights.  This is because– and we all know it is true, whether or not we care to admit it– no one in or out of this business really cares if anyone ever wrights another original play. (I promise I will dedicate another essay to this subject, so save your outraged disputations to this easily provable fact for when I do.)

    So what do you do when you want to create new work in an art form that does not want new work?  And how do you drive yourself when you are used to others imposing the necessary discipline?  Well, if you are me, in the late 80’s, an impoverished, arrogant and charmless college drop-out, working as a day laborer at the National Archives, you do what your Irish Catholic forbears taught you to do: you create demons.  With time and careful nurturing, these demons will grow strong enough to drive you to create.

    I won’t enumerate the various demons I have spawned to spur me over the years.  Some are deeply personal, others closely held trade secrets.  If you want demons to propel you, conceive and grow your own.  I will share, however, a fairly prosaic one which I have employed probably with the most success over the longest periods of my career: the demon of hours tracking. 

    Here’s how it goes.  Decide how many hours you can devote to creativity in a given day, week or month.  Shoot for that goal.  If you make it easily, adjust it higher.  If you miss your mark, consider adjusting it lower, but first try again to hit it.  Keep upping your goals over the weeks, months and years of your career.  In 2010 I put in more “creative hours” in a single year than I have since 1997 when I was working full-time as a freelance documentary writer; and to my credit, I have been more conservative over the last half decade about what counts.  Back in the 90’s, when I was single and had little to care about besides putting food and booze in my mouth, getting laid and becoming the greatest playwright you might ever meet, everything I did that was even remotely creative counted against my “writing work hours”: all the movies I saw, all the books I read.  I remember describing the discipline to someone at a party and joking, “Hell, even this conversation counts.  I can count sexual fantasies against my hours, though they usually don’t take me all that long.”

    About three months ago I began to toy with the idea of giving my demons, especially the “hours-tracking” demon the year of 2011 off.  The fantasy felt delicious.  When you let demons drive you, you often find yourself feeling like you work for them instead of the other way around.  Even as I write this I’m thinking to myself, “Well, this is taking quite a while to get right, but that’s good, because it’ll count against my hours for the week.” Only it won’t, because I am not tracking them anymore.  It feels odd, like I’m writing this essay for free; but of course, I’m always writing these for free.  My only payment before was the satisfaction I got from beating back my demons for another week.

    Messing with one’s discipline has consequences.  One result will soon become apparent to readers of Just Wrought, as the output here is sure to diminish.  That is part of the plan though, since I am looking to listen more than talk going forward.  Other consequences are less predictable.  I could slip into a slough of laziness: watching more TV, reading more trashy books, staring more often out the window at nothing but the trees.  Frankly, all of that sounds pretty good right now.

    Potential upsides include happening onto new veins of creativity to mine, ones that were obscured by a slavish devotion to appeasing my demons.  Or I might finally decide to give up writing all together.  Seems unlikely, but odd things happen when you cut yourself loose.

    Posted at 9:25 AM in Writing | Comments (0)

    Tags: daily writing goals, everything2, Graham Greene, Paul Mullin, playwrights, whether or not to write