Telling Stories

Storytelling matters.

That's why California's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals timed its decision on Prop 8 to coincide with Youngblood's queer brunch. Because the judges knew that the legal future of gay marriage will depend less on their ruling than on the stories we choose to tell ourselves about, well, love.

I'm perpetually delighted, surprised, and moved by the messy, sensitive, wild, and quiet stories I get to hear each week in Youngblood.

So, in that vein -- the vein of messy, particular stories -- I hope you'll check out this bit of storytelling from my non-playwright life as a sometimes rather confused homosexual.

Defense Mechanisms, Part Two

Or, "Hog-tying Despair with the Daisy-Chains of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism"

(Or, "Can You Tell That Alex Really Likes Posting Emma Goldman's Face?")

Today's Facts: I don't always like everything I see in the theater. I find myself getting cranky -- about the "bad" work that gets celebrated; about the "good" work that doesn't; about how no one "gets it"; about the muddle I find myself in over how to communicate to the rest of the world, once and for all, my correct opinions on art, truth, life, and everything.

Today's Reasons to Despair: Some "bad" work will always be celebrated. Some "good" work will always be ignored. I'll never actually have correct -- let alone coherent -- opinions on art, truth, life, and everything.

Fuck.

Today's Act of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism (ARSEI): Theater is a bunch of people sweating in a room together. No matter the theater, no matter the people, there's inevitably a lot of heart, a lot of wisdom in that room. Be a craftsperson, sure, and know your craft -- and make the best damn plays you know how to make -- but when it comes down to that moment when the magic is happening, clumsy or exquisite, don't forget to be a person in the room. We don't get anywhere, as people or as artists, if we're nothing but cranks.

Source of today's ARSEI:

We may agree on the premise that each work of art is at least in part perfect, while each critic is at least in part imperfect. We may then look to each work of art not for its faults and shortcomings, but for its moments of exhilaration, in an effort to bring our own imperfections into sympathetic vibration with these moments, and thus effect a creative change in ourselves. These moments will of course be somewhat subjective, and if we don’t see one immediately, we will out of respect look again, because each work contains at least one, even if by accident. We may look at the totality of the work in the light of this moment – whether it be a moment of humor or sadness, an overarching structural element, a mood, a personal association, a distraction, an honest error, anything that speaks to us.

~

(Matthew Goulish, the guy on the right)

BONUS BOOST THIS WEEK: Another balm for this week's Reasons to Despair is to go see the Unfiltered plays at EST. All of 'em. It'll be very easy to avoid feeling cranky about the future of American theater. Trust me.

Defense Mechanisms, Part One

Or, "Castrating Despair with the Lightsaber of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism"

Today's Fact: It's kind of impossible to make a living as a playwright.

Today's Reason to Despair: You're a playwright.

Today's Act of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism (ARSEI): Do your work. Do your work. Do your work. You're a playwright, not a salesman. (And all playwrights know what happens to salesmen.) Do your work. Do your work. Do your work. Fall in love. Be generous. Do your work.

Source of today's ARSEI:

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

~