The Film Blog – Friday, September 18^th, 2009

 

“You sure are busy.”

 That’s what people say to me all the time.

Do you know something?  I’m really not.  I have lots of time on my hands.  I think people make that evaluation because they look at what I do and assume that it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to achieve.  I suppose if you wanted it to, the work could encompass you, overwhelm you or, I assume, even destroy you.

That’s too bad.  This assertion from our society has kind of created a “fear of labor” and removed all the love from the project.

People yearn to have leisure instead of passionately pursuing their pursuits.

I think the key to everything is not being afraid—to start. 

I’m beginning a new project myself, with a revival of a Broadway play I wrote called Mountain, putting together a cast next week at a rehearsal camp and then launching them on a two-week tour of the Midwest. 

I suppose the task would seem daunting, but I never look at the task when trying to achieve a purpose.  Because every task seems formidable. 

For instance, sometimes I don’t even want to get up and take a shower, because the concept of subsiding overtakes me with anxiety.  But no shower is ever achieved without taking a precious moment to pull back the covers and take several deep breaths.  Swing your legs around, feet landing on the floor.  Roll your neck to take the kinks out.  Take a big drink of water from the cup near your bed.  Think something nice.  Speak something nice to the room. 

Just those actions have removed the task and replaced it with moments towards movement. 

It’s all about the next thing.  We’re all stymied by the heap of trash that accumulates in front of us, blocking the sensibility of a straightened room.  Just pick something off the top and throw it away.  The journey has begun.  I know it sounds simple—perhaps to some of you, even silly.  But counting the cost and carefully considering your options is better achieved after the decision has been made to actually do something.

Because facts will always keep you away from fulfillment.  And statistics will lock you up in the status quo.  And fear is the great mother who never allows her children to escape the nest. 

So am I busy?  No.  I hope what I am is on point—to the next thing that needs to be done.  Or is it wants to be done?

I guess it’s all how you think about it, right?  And I think that I’m not busy—just involved. 

I wish the same for you.

Greetings from Cleveland , Ohio , where once again, I have been passed over from being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 

          Yours,

 J

The Film Blog – Friday, September 11^th, 2009

 

I am so grateful.  I finally have a name for it. 

I’m talking about those awkward moments when you make some sort of ridiculous stand about something that ends up usually being wrong or your fault in the first place.

For instance, I’ve gone through the house, yelling at my wife and children about losing my car keys, while reciting to them in vivid detail my memory of how I had given those same keys into their care, and they had foolishly lost them.  Then I would reach in my pocket and find them.

Or there was the time I got behind a car and I was in a big hurry, and the car just sat there, and the light was green, so finally, in a fury of frustration, I blared my horn—as a baby carriage rolled by the car in front of me, making it clear why the driver had stopped in the first place.  (Of course, I did have a flash of arrogance, to wonder why he didn’t just go ahead and kill the child so I could be on time. . .)

Yes—I have yelled at people about a variety of subjects, only to discover that the error landed in my front yard.  I’ve complained in restaurants about utensils not being available to me on the table, when there was a sign on the wall about forty feet high informing the public that silverware was available in the trays below. 

I have mocked the accuracy of people’s quotations, only to discover later that they were right and my mind must have been stuck somewhere in Mother Goose land.  I have told people they were liars because I failed to understand the information they had available to them, which I had only perused. 

Tonight I am so grateful because I have a name for this audacious, overbearing, repetitive, arrogant condition.  From now on, whenever I find myself doing something stupid that’s uncaring, blatantly unaware, and disrespectful of the fellow human beings around me because I am feeling particularly frisky or overly confident, I will know exactly what to dub it. 

I’m pullin’ a Wilson .

Yes—in honor of Congressman Joe Wilson, who thought he had a right to attack the honorary guest at a party when he was just there to have a slice of cake, I will always know what to call my stupid interludes of self indulgence.

You might want to consider it, too.  It could become a national treasure—maybe catching up with words and phrases like “dork,” “dip-shit,” and “senior moment.” 

So the next time you catch yourself being overly zealous about your own rights and reasons, call it what it is.

“Doggone it, folks, excuse me.  I was just pullin’ a Wilson .”

 

          Yours,

 J

The Film Blog – Friday, September 4^th, 2009

 

          Macho and motherhood.

          I personally have had my fill.

          This whole smokescreen of men being men and women being women, and “men like this” and “women like that” and after all, “it’s all about the kids . . .”

          I see people who are parents of young children, who are completely overwhelmed at the notion of taking care of a little person. 

Am I the only person who sees that these little folks are completely dependent upon us, and therefore can be manipulated to do our will?  Why are they running our households?  Why are women sighing and gasping in exhaustion from chasing down their children?  Why am I shopping in grocery stores, hearing kids scream for a candy bar with their parents standing haplessly nearby as if being held at gunpoint by Gestapo agents? 

My God, these little twerps get food, water, television, Internet—not to mention, shelter and love—from us.  Why are THEY controlling the households of America ?

          So men escape the burden of fatherhood by doing macho stuff like NASCAR, NFL fantasy football, fishing, hunting and, of course, that most muscle-bound activity, surfing the Internet.  Women hide behind fatigue, busyness and motherhood, while despondently conveying their displeasure with the whole concept of family life. 

          But don’t tell them that.  They will insist to you that they are “thrilled” with motherhood and that their children are everything to them, as they convey an aching expression conjuring the image of Atlas holding up the world.

          We have become a society of macho men and motherhood women, while co-jointly convincing ourselves that the sexes have really no emotional linkage and therefore are basically incompatible, yet mysteriously destined to be linked together by some sort of cosmic joke.  

          Maybe if we just backed off on the macho a little bit, guys. . .

           I’ve been on a tour for almost nine months now, and I will tell you bluntly that the men I meet in my show are just as emotional, if not more so, than the women. They just have to be given permission to emote.

          The women I meet are just as functional, strong and energetic as the men.  They just have to be given license to be something other than a toddler totter. 

          Talk about painting yourself in a corner!  Men and women in the American culture are standing on their tiptoes, afraid of the drying paint around them—at the mercy of motherhood and machismo.  They have lost the control in their lives, and their children have way too much focus and time given to them.

          Mom and Dad, you control the house.  You control the refrigerator.  You control the allowance.  You control the air they breathe.  You don’t need to be mean, but for God’s sakes, stop being afraid of your own spawn. 

Get together as men and women and make a plan to subdue these little urchins—because as long as they can keep Dad macho and Mom stuck making apple pies, they will control the household and cause our nation to be a mangled mess of miscommunication.

I am sick of macho and motherhood.  I love my children, but they are part of the family of man, not the only family of this man.  They neither control me, nor do they annoy me.  I include them and they are welcome to come along with me or find their separate paths.  But I will not fall into the American pattern of “macho men” and “mothering women.” 

There are times I make a damn good mother.  And there are

times that the women around me do the bulk of the carrying.  We are a race that was meant to be joined together, not separated by a discrepancy of genitalia. 

Macho and motherhood.

 I’ve had my fill.  How about you?

          Yours,

          J