tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85471772024-03-08T08:18:37.558-08:00polyformSome Notes from a Strange, Strange Place.paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-21880200398823915282013-03-26T15:27:00.001-07:002013-03-26T15:27:22.140-07:00Letter to ELately I've been continuing to plow through my Mom's remaining papers--birth certificate, naturalization documents, college transcripts, diagnostic files--it's startling to see, the flotsam of a life trailing in her wake. It's taken me so long because it's so hard to grasp. One acquires a very different perspective on your parents when you confront the forensic evidence of their human errors: the mis-balanced checkbooks, the extortionate loan agreements, the youthful, blurry photos.<br />
<br />
I have distinct memories of our lives when I was 3, 5, 9, etc. The world appeared to me to be a cohesive place, its pieces interlocking, events succeeding one another in more-or-less orderly progression. Overwhelming, of course, and scarcely comprehensible, but the essential unity of it all I never questioned. But seeing all this, in my Mom's effects, all this apparent confusion--the carelessness, the forgetfulness, the unfinished sponsorship/naturalization application my Mom never filed for her sister, the forgotten, half-finished sheet of old stamps--it knocks loose my sense of that world that we lived in, together. The fabric of it was far, far flimsier than I could have thought possible. A deeply rooted disorder lodged in my Mom's very heart--quite literally, from a cardiovascular point of view. And no matter how stubbornly she fought for what she believed in, and the life she wanted for herself and her family, yet that deep disorder wormed its way through her arithmetic, her marriage, her pension plans.<br />
<br />
I feel that we, as a culture, have a fair amount of literature and thought concentrating on how to transition from adolescence to adulthood. But I never really prepared--I don't know how you can prepare--for this part of it, where I'm beginning to see how my youthful world really was a sandcastle, whose remains I'm now excavating after the tide has rolled away.paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-7322310013909997452012-04-25T17:04:00.000-07:002012-04-25T17:04:29.550-07:00Letter to S--, 24 April 2012Dear S,<br />
<br />
I hope this finds you well and happy in Firenze. Please say hello to Brunelleschi's dome for me, and to the stern ghost of Savonarola.<br />
<br />
Portland is blooming right now. Little false summers strip away our layers with delectable warmth, only to dissolve overnight into the familiar overcast pallor of Portland's perpetual no-season.<br />
<br />
I'm super busy with on-call shifts, PlayWrite, dragonboats, tech stuff on the side, and building a solo show. It would take far too much time and paper to convey a fair sense of each of these bits of me, so I choose one facet arbitrarily for you to share:<br />
<br />
Yesterday was my first experience tilling (that is, steering) a dragon boat. I'm part of a team, the No Teachers Left Behind team, which is a sweet collection of yoga-athletic and yoga-paunchy middle school teachers, a smattering of their partners, boyfriends or roommates, and then me. Last year I painted their faces in Maori war-patterns, and we took 4th Place in the 4th Division (the last which qualifies for medals).<br />
<br />
I'm a regular paddler, and I signed up to be a backup tiller. Yesterday's practice I spent half paddling, and half tilling for the first time. It was a perfect day on the Willamette, with some occasionally stiff breezes and currents, but otherwise warm, bright and everything buttery and splendid, like a Maxfield Parrish painting.<br />
<br />
Steering a dragonboat requires surprisingly strenuous effort and cunning. It's like being the puppeteer of a self-propelling runaway train, but on water. There are 8 benches of paddlers, with 2 paddlers per bench, plus the caller who sets the pace, and the tiller. And the boat itself, which is a plywood-laminate dragon, wayward and fussy to steer, liable to catch cross breezes on the elaborately sculpted head and tail. All this translates into surprisingly profound motive power and momentum. Turning this monster, while balancing on the exposed aft deck, using a big cartoonishly heavy steering-oar, requires poise, river-wide awareness, and the kind of physical strength that unites thighs, shoulders and arms in week-long soreness and stiffness. All of this is ridiculously fun.<br />
<br />
At one critical point, I was maneuvering us around a massive construction barge (which created an artificially narrow passage), when no less than 4 other dragonboats, two fishing boats, an outrigger kayak and a big stupid luxury boat all decided to converge on the same narrow passage, from different directions, all at the same time.<br />
<br />
You'll be surprised to learn that I didn't sink anything, nor did I nor anyone else drown. The paddlers pushed us through the treacherous wakes of all those bigger and faster boats. The sea monsters dwelling in the deep sensed our collective valor, and chose to hide their gruesome heads even deeper in the murky ooze. The mayor called, asking to decorate the bridges with spotlit portraits of our dragonboat team, but we modestly declined...<br />
<br />
Come home soon, dear S. There are gallons and gallons of chocolate milk just waiting for us to joyfully imbibe.<br />
<br />
best,<br />
<br />
paulmonster-steersmanpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-47955170228267817932012-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:002012-04-19T14:02:23.291-07:00Letter to B.--A very happy Easter to you, too! Thanks so much for your letter!<br />
<br />
I did in fact observe the vigil this year, for both the Western and the Eastern dates, but in both cases I was up all night for work here at the homeless youth shelter.<br />
<br />
I'm sorry to hear of the physical obstacles you face; it's true that if you were in town, I'd be happy to make time to attend both our respective services with you. Easter Vigil was always my favorite service when I was an acolyte, both for the spiritual magnitude, and for the unabashed theatricality of the ceremony.<br />
<br />
This time of year, from just before Roman Easter to now, tends to be hard for me. It's the anniversary of my beloved Grandpa's passing. In my life, unlucky things have tended to cluster around this date--relationship problems, trouble at work, car accidents. It always requires an effort on my part to remember to look for the good and the lighthearted, particularly at this time of year.<br />
<br />
This year was no exception to the pattern: here at work, one of the youths staying at this shelter nearly overdosed on heroin while I was on shift about a week ago. We called an ambulance in time to keep him from dying, but it was a close call, and his addiction has made him extremely difficult to deal with, in the aftermath. In my one of work I've found that I have endless patience for those who have self-awareness and humility, even just a little bit. I have absolutely no patience for smugness and obliviousness, even when that's due to their addiction itself. It's definitely a problem I work on, both professionally and personally...<br />
<br />
Anyways, I should close this letter shortly, as my shift ends soon and I have rehearsals to prepare for...<br />
<br />
Thanks again for your letter. It's great to hear from you, and I wish you a joyous Easter season...<br />
<br />
best,<br />
<br />
paulmonster-exsultetpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-59461078073345448392012-04-14T05:36:00.002-07:002012-04-14T05:56:43.178-07:00Letter to S, 13 April 2012Dear S--<div><br /></div><div>Hello! Thanks so much for your letter!</div><div><br /></div><div>I appreciate the effort it takes to reach out, across time and space. I'm glad these last few years have done so much good for you. It's daunting to realize the thickening currents of change that have pushed these years through us both.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was startled to realize, as I opened my trusty old PO Box, that it's actually been some years since we've exchanged letters, much less seen one another. It amazes me, frankly, that such time has passed, looking even just at myself. 2005-2007, for me, was an entire epoch, and yet the distance of time since 2007 feels like just a short season, certainly nowhere near as long as 'five years' sounds. I think of the debilitating, inexpressibly long and tumultuous stretches of time just six months represented, when I was in high school, and I'm at a loss to understand how this happens.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm doing alright, all things considered. I'm writing from the tail end of an awful, busy 12 hour overnight shift... The last 4 shifts in a row that I've worked here, I've had to send residents to the hospital, 4 different residents for 4 different reasons...</div><div><br /></div><div>This job is better than my last, which was similar but working with juvenile sex offenders in a different residential program. Consistently for the last 5 years, and off-and-on for 5 years prior to that, I've worked these 'line staff' positions at a depressingly comprehensive number of Portland's social services agencies...</div><div><br /></div><div>I struggle with feeling trapped in this world. I can do this work well--and, in crisis, particularly well. But it's a false idol. My adrenaline and my courage and my blood all get up, I feel the surge of emotion at DOING SOMETHING, being somehow engaged, in the profound, unending dispute with the voices of hopelessness and rage at large in the world. But this DOING is only illusory, or transient at best--rather like performance. Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost. Or gained. Except that, over the course of these long and terribly busy shifts, and years, I know that my emotional body grows knotted and scarred, and fraying the way paper frays after being creased over so many times that the fibers start to part.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tonight I had a heroin addict who had relapsed and was OD'ing, curse and kick at me for calling him an ambulance, because he thought that meant that the police were coming to revoke his parole. Yesterday, as I was about to start teaching with PlayWrite, one of my writers picked a fight with another street youth, on the sidewalk immediately outside the building we were working in. I came out and split them up, which worked only long enough for them to mutually agree to meet up again two blocks away (the perimeter of staff competence, an utterly arbitrary perimeter), and continue the fight then. They refused medical attention repeatedly, though I could see already that they both needed it. After they strutted off, I had to go back inside to check in with my colleagues and document details for the all-important Incident Report. Too late, I was then sent off to find the writer and maybe bring him back to the workshop, in which quest I utterly failed...</div><div><br /></div><div>...But I succeeded in finding about half a dozen other current and former writers, clients, residents, etc., of this and other programs I've worked, all the way back to a homeless man I recognized, in precisely the same apparent condition as when I first met him 20 years ago...</div><div><br /></div><div>As I wandered the downtown core, soaking in the arm rain, footsore and tense, visited by all these ghosts of my recent past, it struck me that this is what Homer must have felt, and Virgil, and Ovid, on their lonely, unfinished, endless journeys...</div><div><br /></div><div>...so conceited am I, that not only did I just compare myself to those three, but I am furthermore creating a solo piece built of my long experience with the Iliad, incident reports, sacrifices, and the aftermath of trauma and sex crimes. Dates and a venue have been secured at the end of July and the beginning of August...</div><div><br /></div><div>Between now and then, I'm rehearsing and then performing in NW Children's Theater's production of "El Zorrito: The Legend of the Boy Zorro," a bilingual musical opening on 4 May. I play El Berserker, who is basically the matador/Mexican wrestler version of Tybalt. I'm so stoked.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm also in the running to join the staff at a wilderness/rehab/outdoor school for at-risk and recovering teens in central Oregon. They're hiring youth counselors who can tutor during the week, lead hikes and mountain climb on the weekends, and live in the cabin onsite with the students. Their schedule runs 8 days on, 6 days off. For the first time since when I worked for the Library, the pay scale is nominally enough for my expenses, plus medical coverage, too. In all this, and more, I live in hope...</div><div><br /></div><div>best,</div><div><br /></div><div>paulmonster-Lucretius</div>paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-3131021544812617112012-02-26T17:10:00.003-08:002012-02-26T18:01:36.973-08:00the LesserThings have changed. A lot has happened in the 7 years since last I was in the Philippines (recorded on this blog, too, see Feb-March 2005). <br /><br />I think I'm both greater and lesser than I was. <br /><br />In the Iliad and in the Gospels, there's this funny thing that happens with ancient, semi-mythical personages with the same name. There's Telamonian Ajax and Ajax the Lesser, both fighting at Troy. And there's James son of Zebedee and James the Lesser, both Apostles. In both traditions, it even splits into thirds. <br /><br />Ajax has a brother/conscience figure, named Teucer, who is always fighting by his side. The English translation of "Ajax" is, strictly speaking, incorrect: the singular Greek is Aias, multiple Ajax. But whenever he was fighting, it was written Ajax, and closer scholarship assumed that meant both Telamonian and Ajax the Lesser always fought side by side, but now we think it means that Telamonian Ajax and Teucer were always side by side (Teucer was his shieldbearer, perhaps).<br /><br />James son of Zebedee is the Santiago of Spain, to whom the Virgin appeared on a pillar (hence, Nuestra Senora de Pilar). His temper, and that of his brother John, earned them the nickname "Sons of Thunder." Tradition has it that he was the first of the Apostles to be martyred. James the Lesser, by contrast, is also identified with James the Just, the first Christian bishop of Jerusalem and one of the major authority figures of the early church, after Peter and Paul. James the Just is responsible for conceding to Paul's mission to the Gentiles, allowing them to become Christians without having to observe all the traditional strictures of Jewish law (i.e., circumcision). (Catholics equate James the Lesser with James the Just, because James the Lesser doesn't do anything in the New Testament, whereas James the Just figures in the letters a lot, and St. Jerome said they were the same guy, and Catholics do practically everything St. Jerome tells them to. Also, I think they felt bad for the guy stuck with the sobriquet "the Lesser." Orthodox and Protestants differentiate the Just and the Lesser, I think just for the sake of differentiating themselves from the Catholics.)<br /><br />Myself, I was a greater man when last I was here in 2005, more hopeful, more stricken, feeling things with more impact. The sensory details, the overwhelm of people and heat. I had huge ambitions to write and create and perform on a brash scale. <br /><br />Now, I plod. I sweat and watch. Maybe more shy. I'm Paul the lesser, or perhaps the Just. <br /><br />Ajax the Lesser (also referred to as Locrian Ajax) was the calculating, wiry, wily counterpart to Telamonian Ajax's brute strength and massiveness. Where Telamonian Ajax had a shield as big as a tower and would heft massive boulders to crush Trojans, Locrian Ajax preferred to range against enemies with his bow and arrows, and was the fastest of the Greeks after Achilles. Tellingly, it was Locrian Ajax who raped Cassandra, stirring Athena's wrath, as the Greek fleet left the ruins of Troy, such that Athena scattered the fleet utterly. Locrian Ajax, as he clung to a rock after the wreck of his ship, boasted that he could survive whatever the immortals threw at him, and for this Poseidon split the rock with his trident, drowning him.<br /><br />I still plot and scheme. I still have deep ambitions. I think I've learned deeper philosophy in these seven years. I definitely feel older, now. I'm in love with someone back home. I think my doings and my thinkings are more measured, more weighted, like literally heavier things that I heft like boulders, swinging them around, thoughts and actions with power to crush people.<br /><br />I feel emptier. It takes me longer to work up a head of steam and get excited about things. It takes me longer to recover from feeling emotionally spent. When I feel joy, it feels more deeply rooted, more true, not the brash ephemeral thing it was 7 years ago. <br /><br />A new world doesn't sparkle like it did; it's not new anymore. <br /><br />Clearly, I also have less to say, or maybe more to say, in fewer words, over time. <br /><br />Traveling through Luzon, I habitually see spreads of rice drying on pavement. I see shoots of rice ripening in the fields. Farmers picking weeds from the rice paddies in the blazing sun, or raking the spread grains, covered in rags from head to toe to shade themselves, even in spite of the tremendous heat. Every grain of rice involves so much effort, it's amazing to me that it's evolved into the staple food source that it is for so many. <br /><br />I'm past the shock of insights like this (not that it's a particularly extraordinary or original insight, to begin with). I sit with it more, I soak in it, and it dries out of me, like I'm a grain of rice on the pavement.<br /><br />more soon,<br /><br />paulmonster-the justpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-41459440410957167222012-02-19T06:19:00.000-08:002012-02-19T06:21:41.220-08:00First Manila Galleon<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>786</o:Words> <o:characters>4483</o:Characters> <o:company>Upon These Boards</o:Company> <o:lines>37</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>10</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5259</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> 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I want you to know that I'm grateful to maintain even a tenuous connection to you, and that I'm ever looking forward to when next our paths may cross.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I hope things go well with you; congratulations on the Metro victory (or was it the County? I'm not so up to date as I ought to be, I'm ashamed to say). I grow more and more convinced that this city's salvation rests with a small circle of you able, determined, oracular reference librarians, and I live in fear that you might choose to use your powers for evil, and not for good.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">===</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Recently I've been working as a stagehand for BodyVox, up on NW 17th and Northrup. Their latest is a quartet of performances, set to Haydn's and Arvo Part's music, among others. It's modern dance in the best sense, with thorough and skillful use of balletic forms, as well as trapeze, and other more experimental stuff. I adore Arvo Part, I adore Haydn, and these are marvelous dancers; every night it's a conscious effort, on my part, to keep focused, keep composure: because, when they're on form with one another, these dancers are deeply moving, and I'm almost in tears at the sad, exultant wonder of it all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm also teaching, during the day, at Rosemont School for Girls, a women's teen rehab in outer SE, teaching through PlayWrite. It's strange to say, but I feel most satisfyingly engaged when I'm working with adolescent women-in-crises. The equivalent male cohort, in my experience, are a simplistic, brutalizing assemblage of bullies, by comparison. (I'm generalizing terribly, but the point still carries, for me.) When confronted with analogous traumas and worse, I generally see teen girls respond with a deepening of their character, and emotionally rich and wholehearted choices--particularly as creatives </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, I don't take naturally to teaching, particularly within conventional modes. At a very basic level, I'm far too prone to the subversive instinct, that which challenges and despises received authority. It may be that there's a connection here, between the adolescent male's fundamental regard for authority, being as based on a broader, stereotypically masculine acceptance of force as a legitimizing process: for even in adolescent rebellion, we males train ourselves to conform our ideas and actions around a coercive principle, whether it's disciplining ourselves into submission, or breaking our way through to the other side...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">By contrast, as a teacher I'm rooted in what I claim to be an essentially inverted educational experience, wherein all the seminal, formative "lessons" I continue to learn, happen in spite of, and outside of the sanctioned confines of the educational establishment. Confines that for so long functioned so efficiently in excluding women.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thus, even as I'm emphatically rooted in that stereotypically male narrative of submission and breakthrough, from time to time true insight comes through to me from outside; and it's in this recognition of a similar dynamic at work among young women, that my affinity for them as students springs from.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">===</p> <p class="MsoNormal">By now, most of this letter has been written from the plane en route to Manila. I'm traveling with my Grandma and two of my Aunts, acting as my father's surrogate in caring for Grandma and shepherding the trip along. My Grandma is quite frail, and she inexplicably listens to me in ways that she wouldn't listen even to my father.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In fact, it hurts me, a little bit, when I realize how strange I am, what a strange place I inhabit within my massive family. Of my 40+ cousins, I am perhaps the most assimilated, the most articulate, both accomplished, in some ways, and surprisingly not. And ever since I was very little, my Mom held me apart from my father's clan, enough to alienate me to this day. And finally, I helped my Grandpa die, nearly 8 years ago, while I was training as an EMT.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That experience, which I have yet to fully resolve within myself, has created for me the parameters of this insider-outsider role, both of profound affection and of permanent alienation. And this is all to say nothing of my self-conceived status as a working, conscientious artist and teacher/social worker, worlds that are that much farther removed from the rice paddy my father grew up on...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So this fully immersive trip, which demands the fullest caregiver skills, and physical stamina, and bureaucratic cunning, and composure, all has me at my most introspective, and, in some ways, at my most vulnerable. Here on this endless flight, crammed with children, and grandmothers, and awful movies, as my aunts gossip, and my Grandma dozes, and I fret over my responsibilities, and this exhausting feeling of pervasive other-ness...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">...it was like an emotional tethering, for me, to recount Rosemont, and remember myself, even as I literally fly as far away from that world as I can conceive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The air thickens with heat and humidity. I find myself weighted with customs documents, passports, baggage claims. I am inevitably excited and curious to travel through my origins, even as I'm equally anxious and saddened so to do. And I am also looking forward to feeling weightless, coming home, and perhaps catching a drink with you someday...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">best,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">paulmonster-galleon<o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-53292985800160671872011-12-25T03:19:00.001-08:002011-12-25T03:20:21.639-08:00Root and Branch<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>222</o:Words> <o:characters>1268</o:Characters> <o:company>Upon These Boards</o:Company> <o:lines>10</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>2</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>1488</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> 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<w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">This one diffused and startled moment</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When the light drifts on the current,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And you are far away, but emphatically connected,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Because these gardens of memory grow within me,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tendrils scrolling through the low crumbling stones,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Great swaying trees, evergreen monuments to the endless words,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Branching from one another, spoken and not, the understandings,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The mis-taken, the branches that are bare fruitless lines</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of what we failed to say,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Whole hillsides of rolling wildgrass faces, voices, strays,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Deep roots unseen and unsuspected, coiling within and into</p> <p class="MsoNormal">One another, moments into each other, hours that tap wellspringing</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Years and nights and seconds,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the rich pungent soil of me,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The wet</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Pooling in the cupped loam,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The wet of your kisses, of your tears, the wet between your legs,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The mingled wet of sweat and the salt trace of pure body, de-composed,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The elemental grains of decay and life, dust impregnated with nourishment,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The unending thirst for you, the gravity and the reaching, root and branch.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You are far away, but emphatically connected, you are the root and the branch,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My garden is overgrown with you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In these moments, as the light ebbs, and my wakefulness</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is the low berm of heavy stones crumbling at my feet,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The taste of your soil lingers, the grains and the wet,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The cup of the belly swells in the starving dark,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The soil slowly mingles memory with longing</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And nourishes improbably,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The autumnal garden made to bloom again. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-31432782370109901462011-12-19T23:01:00.000-08:002011-12-19T23:02:25.901-08:00OR 7Every smell<br /><br />And every stone and<br /><br />The turning lip of brine<br /><br />In the bend of the running stream<br /><br />Are all precious facts,<br /><br />Spraying like the mist of your breath in the cold,<br /><br />And I am faithfully tracking<br /><br />All of it,<br /><br />Because I'm still looking for you.<br /><br /><br />I know these roads.<br /><br />That's the rock face<br /><br />I lost my light to.<br /><br />There's the beach where we kissed,<br /><br />Beyond the tunnel,<br /><br />Mingling, starfishes<br /><br />And handprints.<br /><br />I still have no light<br /><br />And the road is longer<br /><br />And colder than<br /><br />I remember it should be,<br /><br />But I am still looking for you.<br /><br /><br />I can still hear<br /><br />My mother's howls.<br /><br />It's possible, just,<br /><br />To be joyfully sad,<br /><br />To long for what I willfully left behind.<br /><br />Because I am still looking for you.paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-25270735846151107752011-12-07T01:37:00.000-08:002011-12-07T01:39:11.188-08:00Untitled<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>There are these great trees out my window,</div><div><br /></div><div>They live exuberantly. They live</div><div><br /></div><div>Balanced on the surface of the seasons</div><div><br /></div><div>Throwing their long-grown colors at me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their hands are stiff in the naked air, </div><div><br /></div><div>Their shadows ignore the light altogether,</div><div><br /></div><div>They whisper in the language of tides,</div><div><br /></div><div>They do not know the words for regret,</div><div><br /></div><div>That we know, have always known, so well.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I wish I knew</div><div><br /></div><div>How to feel</div><div><br /></div><div>The way they must feel</div><div><br /></div><div>The passage of time. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It must be</div><div><br /></div><div>That their days are our years,</div><div><br /></div><div>That our hours are their moments.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The running lights of night and day</div><div><br /></div><div>Are exhalations </div><div><br /></div><div>That we unknowingly</div><div><br /></div><div>Release from within,</div><div><br /></div><div>Without, </div><div><br /></div><div>In,</div><div><br /></div><div>Out,</div><div><br /></div><div>Light,</div><div><br /></div><div>Night.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>They live exuberantly,</div><div><br /></div><div>Because they live careless</div><div><br /></div><div>Of those hours, those running lights,</div><div><br /></div><div>The many colors thrown at my feet.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>And my hands are stiff in the cold air,</div><div><br /></div><div>I do not always see the light,</div><div><br /></div><div>And my moments last hours, </div><div><br /></div><div>Falling like leaves </div><div><br /></div><div>From the sky of my opened heart.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>best,</div><div><br /></div><div>paulmonster-wintering</div>paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-17350952309488600712011-07-29T13:46:00.000-07:002011-07-29T14:17:49.709-07:00Letter to K, 10 April 2011(Aside: I'm still working on this Iliad thing. I'm just moving in a strange timesense, is all.)<br /><br />Dear K--<br /><br />I'm working on a strange, heathenish, practically self-immolating piece about the Iliad and social work. Enclosed you'll find a rough copy of my notes.<br /><br />I performed a version of what you'll be reading a week [sic] ago, at the Someday Lounge, a bar and music venue in Portland's Old Town. I wore a ragged set of mechanic coveralls, I used a microphone, and I had onstage a milkcrate concealing 2 bota bags of cheap Shiraz. I merely read off what you're seeing, plus some additional lines about what a Sacrifice is, and whether the Gods prefer flesh or wine, and then I demonstrated how to proplery sacrifice to the Gods, concluding by emptying half-a-bota-bag of wine over myself.<br /><br />This piece is already growing of it's own volition. It wants to be more physical than these notes convey. it's a mingling of the radioactive obsession I have with Ajax and Diomedes from the Iliad, plus my equally radioactive vocation for Incident Reports--<br /><br />--also enclosed please find an Utne article discussing why I love Incident Reports. Now, my IR tone is not quite so dispassionate as a police academy would require, but the purposefulness, and the incisive, persistent agendas are definitely there, hidden yet inexorable in the identity of the writer, of their authorship.<br /><br />The Latin 'auctoritas' is at the root our words--and, I argue, our understandings--for 'author,' 'authority,' 'act,' and 'actor.' Auctoritas signifies a creator's responsibility for their work; the ability to call things as you see it; the 'doing' of things, more so than the 'planning' of things.<br /><br />When I write Incident Reports, I see it both as a (supposedly) dispassionate act of recording, of witnessing what's happened; but more so I see the writing of it as an act of auctoritas, an exercise of the subliminal agenda...<br /><br />...for more often than note, the Incident Reports I write tend to be a cry in the dark, the only response our purportedly rational world will sanction, in the face of such terrifying things as whatever I happen to be writing about.<br /><br />And that's pretty much exactly how I feel about the Iliad, and about really good and penetrating performance work. At their best, so many of the works I really care about in this world are cries in the dark, hopeless but desperately brave confrontations against obscene odds, ultimately useless but also, mystically, enough. Profoundly enough.<br /><br />There's a vein there that I need to mine, about loyalty in the more current context, or surrender; and piety or trust in the meta-context...<br /><br />As it is, there's solid stuff for maybe 7 minutes. But the veins are rich beyond telling. As I write this my mind's eye ravenously wanders throughout, as distracted in the detail as I am in the telling of all this. I'm confident of building something really special, but there's quite a lot of work to do, clearly.<br /><br />And I'm just beginning to realize, in the wake of performing what I have on 1 April, that in fact the real work is happening through and during actually performing, with an audience on top of me... Jad Abumrad talks about how he designs Radiolab's sound for the 4th or 5th listen. What if that deliberate meticulousness was radically mixed with the ultimately ephemeral ethic of performance? Stringent, manic, visceral qualities evolving each time I perform, with new and freshly discovered substance/text, borne aloft by a durably built structure, a set of fixtures, pole stars around which all these constellations revolve.<br /><br />Thus, in, say, a 6 show run, every night is different, a progression through the themes, but each night is held together by the same hinge-pins. And each of those hinges grow, and emerge more and more clearly with the telling...<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-auctoritaspaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-74390296239810256072011-06-29T01:17:00.000-07:002011-06-29T01:25:46.234-07:00The Clackamas ProjectI just finished teaching in a kickass project in Clackamas County. The <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/milwaukie/index.ssf/2011/06/milwaukie_high_stage_will_host_collaboration_between_clackamas_county_arts_alliance_juvenile_departm.html">link</a> is to an Oregonian article, talking in broad terms about it. Below are the answers I sent to some questions the Oregonian reporter asked me via email, recorded here for old times' sake.<br /><br />===<br /><br />I’m a professional theatre artist and educator in our fair city. I am being paid for my time. I also work for PlayWrite, Inc., working with at-risk youth to write and develop plays, and then stage them with professional actors. And I work for Janus Youth Programs’ Buckman House, a residential transitional facility for juvenile sex offenders.<br /><br />I believe very strongly in the totality of community. That is, in order to be a fully-functioning human being in community with others, I believe that we must accept and acknowledge the dysfunctional, the underprivileged—the adjudicated—just as much as the functional, the privileged, the innocent. Roman playwright Terence, himself an emancipated slave, wrote, “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.” And I believe he meant that we all have the capacity, and, in some ways, the responsibility, to look to the horrifying as much as the beautiful, the tragic and terrible and sublime all together. We are derelict in our responsibilities as citizens if we simply ignore what we do not understand. I believe much suffering we experience as a community arises from the collective amnesia and myopathy that we impose on ourselves.<br /><br />I’ve led performance workshops for advanced drama students, for at-risk/homeless students, for students with behavioral issues, for students with substance abuse issues. I believe that performance is more than flashiness, or sexiness, or even talent. Live performance is a means for an individual to speak clearly and specifically for their own perspective, to an audience assembled for that purpose. Shelley believed that poets are “the unsung legislators of mankind,” by which I think he meant that real art is not merely an exercise in vanity, but an honest and meaningful attempt to make sense of the world, to govern ourselves in the best way, to harness creativity and passion for the greater inspiration of us all.<br /><br />I’m working with these students to discover and refine that which is redemptive and honest in their own experiences, and give the beginnings of form to that. The stakes are real; audiences are wonderfully equipped to see through bullsh*t. My goal with these students is simply to open the door of possibilities that giving voice and audience to their creativity can mean for each of them, individually.<br /><br />I do this work because, at my core, I identify with the prejudices and obstacles they live with. I was an angry, dysfunctional young student with a troubled home life, I’ve never been comfortable with authority structures, I deal with assumptions about my behavior or attitude that bear no basis in reality to this day.<br /><br />As an artist, I’m exhausted by work that merely perpetuates a privileged, myopic, superficial perspective of the world. I’m sick and tired of endless productions of the same misogynistic, milk-toasty plays or movies or music. Now, ironically, Shakespeare—who epitomizes “safe” establishment work—saved my live when I was 14. Theatre performance was the cathartic channel that allowed me to develop healing perspective over my own emotional traumas.<br /><br />As an educator I’m specifically drawn to the underprivileged, because as an artist I know that the real work to come, is not going to come from people emulating Shakespeare or even any other mainstream figures now current; the work that will save lives, the way Shakespeare saved mine, will come from those who break rules and struggle at every level, and mightily, the way Shakespeare himself once did.paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-42326566187617107932011-04-11T19:42:00.000-07:002011-07-08T21:48:41.474-07:00How to Fight GodsThese are rough notes for a one-man piece I'm developing. I performed a version of this text at the Someday Lounge on 1 April, with a microphone, myself in dingy mechanic's coveralls, and a milkcrate hiding two bota bags of cheap Shiraz. Note that this wants to be more than these notes indicate now. I don't know what it will be, but it's already growing. The version I performed included a section on How to Make A Proper Sacrifice, addressing the question of whether the Gods prefer flesh or wine or both. At the end of which, I emptied a bota-bag over my head. <br /><br />=== <br /><br />1. Try not to fight a God. This is hard. You usually don't actually know if you're fighting a God until after S/He's finished unwinding your guts for you. But there are signs. Say, your knife breaks. Or a bird sh*ts on you. Or an earthquake and a tidal wave and radioactive disease wipes out a bunch of your people. That's when you know you're fighting a God. You should back off. <br /><br />2. It's hard enough, fighting mortals. Have you ever, actually, really fought someone? The human hand has 273 individual bones. That's 273 moving parts that can break, that can send little shoots of pain to crawl up your rippling arms, to sear your massive shoulders, grab you by the neck and take you down to your knees, sobbing like a child over the mangled, bloody ruin of your once splendid hand. (I don't actually know if there are 273 bones in your hand. I made that up.) <br />But I don't give a f*ck how brave you are. I don't give a f*ck about your brains, or your strength. How pretty you are. How much money you have. Your Mama or your Daddy. What counts for more than any of that, is How You Handle Pain. <br /><br />3. There are more kinds of Pain than there are people in this world. And you don't have to get hit to feel pain. You can't take the cream out of the coffee, you know. Bullets only travel in one direction. Talk all you want, talk all day and all through the night. But you will never un-say that thing you said. <br /><br />[Briseis Section] <br />It's never actually about the thing right in front of you. Achilles quit the war because of Briseis and you think, what the f*ck?, right? A girl? He steps away because of a girl. What's the sense in that? Bullsh*t sense is what that is. Let me talk about Briseis for a second. <br /><br />She's the 20-year old with her tits popping out all the damn time, she's the one with the pale eyes and the parted lips, the thighs you can't stop thinking about, the neighbor's daughter that you can't get out of your head. Or maybe she's your own daughter, you sick f*ck. Because this is the thing about Briseis: it's wrong. <br /><br />It's f*cking wrong. All of it. This whole godd*mn war is a f*cking sex crime gone nuclear, our lives are getting f*cked in front of our very eyes. Helen, sh*t. <br /><br />Briseis was just some pretty young thing who Apollo loves. Or doesn't, depending on your point of view. And because she's sacred, okay, because she's off-limits, like you don't touch her with a finger much less your diseased little prick unless you want the Divine Archer to mulch your nuts with a corkscrew-- <br /><br />Because of all that, why, of course you can't take your eyes off her. She's forbidden. Sacrosanct. She's hidden in plain sight, she's the One Who Got Away, she's the coy pair of eyes that belie the little "no" her full, gentle, sweetly parched lips whisper in your ear. <br /><br />I'm speaking now to the men in this room. Sons. Do you not feel the rage welling in you? You're a working man. Your work is personal, you work with purpose. We were brought here to do something real. And hard. A task for grown men and heroes. You're not asking for anything less than your due. <br /><br />You glimpse the small of her back, the arc of her throat, the easy mellow wine of her voice, and these are your riches, this is your worldly wealth. Her freckles are stars on the sky of her body, and you can count each one of them. She hums softly in the kitchen, in the car, in the bath where she thinks you can't hear. Her arms fold around your shoulders just so, and her legs wrap around you the way a net wraps a gasping fish. <br /><br />I don't think he's heard the bad news, that his best friend is dead. But I can't see any Greek who could do that job. They're all lost in dark mist, their horses too. Father Zeus, deliver the Greeks from the dark. Make the sky clear. Allow us to see with our eyes. Destroy us in the light, since destroy us you will. <br /><br />[Close Holds]<br />4. In a Close-Hold Engagement, the objective is not just to neutralize the subject. The objective is to remove all uncontrolled elements from the situational context. What does this mean? Regarding the hostile subject, this means definitively, and if necessary forcefully denying that subject the means to violently dispute your authority. Close-Hold Tactics are designed to immobilize, to incapacitate. Your body is a lever. Your tactics, your choices that you make: what to say, how to say it. A lunge, a thrown fist. The kind of knot only you tie. The way you pivot against a wrist, the slow squeeze, your knees against his chest, the firm, steady grip on his throat and your open palm smothering his face, holding him down under the water... Close-Hold Tactics magnify your physical strength, your body, your will. You're built for maximum force in minimal amounts of time. It's not just instinct, it's systemic reaction, cascading operations designed and directed to maximize force in a specific, highly confined moment. <br /><br />You have a god inside you. This is where you remember who you are. <br /><br />best, paulmonster-ajaxpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-53617516316843737642011-03-17T22:33:00.000-07:002011-03-17T22:53:30.324-07:00Letter to L.Dear L--<br /><br />I don't know where to start. All kinds of drama, and good things, too. I miss you, of course; daily I encounter at least half-a-dozen stirring or strange things blooming throughout our conceited little city, things I note down in my addled brain to talk to you about, but then I always remember you're in another hemisphere, and then I get all curt and snappish, if at the House, or mopey and distracted, if at Workshop.<br /><br />We're at WS right now. My writer is having twins. She nearly gave birth on the last day of Week 1, and they had to rush her to OHSU before we even saw her that day, because her babies aren't actually due until the end of May. And we've just started Week 2.<br /><br />I've evolved into the resident Willy for every demonstration of Death of a Salesman; previously, I'd been the reigning Hamlet. I'm personally happier--Willy has more ground to cover, with less cultural baggage, fewer cognitive obstacles than Hamlet. But there's also some pressure. Wily is not an easy piece to play. I usually get wiped out on Day 1 as a result.<br /><br />Due to the vagaries of the Workshop hierarchy, I now possess sufficient rank to regularly lead day 3 or 4 of Week 1 and compete with M for leading workshops L or K aren't available for. Which is strange, considering I don't believe myself to be that more skilled than P or A, who are next in standing. But with C gone, T unwilling to lead whole workshops and likewise A, and with this glaring you-shaped hole in the room, we make do with what we got.<br /><br />And I'm not even going to go into all the sad disasters at the House. Suffice to say that Mr. P is gone; I now assist V in the Level 2 groups; someone f'ed-up next door and now we can't afford paper towels or relief staff; the guys have come out to every single Workshop performance except RM, and I'm already looking at other jobs. And that's just the big-picture stuff.<br /><br />There's a rhythm now, that I know you're familiar with, between the Workshop world and the House world. I'd built similar rhythms of my own in my other working-life setups. It's dangerous because, as I get better at it, I get safer. My ideas and my tactical choices--how to handle writers/clients in crisis, how to apporach the long days when they all stack up on top of one another, how to write a proper progress note--which is a whole new thing, by the way, we now have to note everything with real attention to detail, and we can't give a guy units unless their MSP reflects the activity as an established objective... you can imagine how thrilled N is by this. The guys, too, such as they are... so now the last hour or two of every shift is spent noting what's been done, and while I personally kind of enjoy and appreciate this--it makes us more communicative, more deliberate and ultimately useful--I also know it takes time away from actually working with the guys. And on a busy day, this is crippling...<br /><br />But my point is, as time goes on and I gradually get better at stuff, this work gets tamer, it loses my interest, as the urgency to solve things cools, and the not-sexy drudgery of simply doing the long, not-mysterious work it takes to actually do things, emerges.<br /><br />But by nature I'm built on triage principles, and my ability to deal effectively with crisis stems from a kind of amnesia I suffer, an emotional amnesia, where the grand and staggering insights or the truthful and epic experiences are, not so much forgotten, but sealed away in various chambers, cleared from the decks in order to be ready for the next thing. <br /><br />This 'clearing of the decks,' is what makes things get successively easier over time. It's troubling to me, that I've drawn myself together with essentially self-confining and self-sabotaging features, a built-in and gradual self-destruct mechanism, without which I would probably be busy destroying the world right now. <br /><br />Instead of which, I'm now finally moving, inch by excruciating inch, on developing my own work--about which I'm too close and too vulnerable to go into detail here just yet. But I am performing on 1 April, which is apt, as I'm pretty much a fool for doing this, and in so little time.<br /><br />B is making more noises about developing post-Workshop stuff for successful writers, and of course in my insomniac moments I toss and turn and wrestle with half-formed, fiery ideas about what to do and how to make it work. I'm in touch with Clackamas County Youth Corrections to put together a performance program there, too. <br /><br />But these are like a small pageant of paper lanterns floating along on a vast, long, dark river, of which I can only see so much. These and more beatiful and terrible little things, proud of themselves, but only so much, while the endless current carries them along, and I do not know where this current leads, I only know it's strong. <br /><br />Travel safely, you. I can't wait to compare notes with you, and share a drink, and maybe plot our next podcast again--<br /><br />affectionately,<br /><br />paulmonster-argentinepaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-56221915845293799882011-02-08T16:02:00.000-08:002011-02-08T16:16:57.489-08:00Letter to S, 3 Feb 2011Hey S--<br /><br />It flatters me, of course, that you think of me as a hidden guardian of Portland. it's true that a great deal of my masculine psyche has been built on crimefighting- and masked-hero- foundations. Thus, our mossy city broods under the weight of its many hidden crimes, and I am its avenging conscience, flitting about with only my bike and my pack for company...<br /><br />...actually, I spend less and less time actually biking, and more and more driving the PlayWrite carpool. We're at Rosemont right now, which always makes me wish I had daughters of my own, strange to say. These writers have so much imagination and feeling, as you know, and yet I live such a starved and secluded life, quite literally a sentence for most of them to endure. Most are clearly in desperate need of a hug, which is of course so strictly forbidden. <br /><br />Prior to this we did New Aves, which L ably led, and prior to that the Showcase and Portland Night High School. We have Mt. Scott immediately after Rosemont concludes in two weeks, then White Shield actually overlapping a little bit. As far as I can tell, there's no real reason why our operational tempo has stepped up so dramatically, excepti8ng the usual varying requirements of individual sites. Concurrently, it seems like PlayWrite's current coach roster is the thinnest it's been in a long time, with the old guard all but gone, and the newbies not quite sticking, for various reasons. When I think about it, the weird synergy of B, the fatalistic exuberance of A, the strange grandiosity of T, the cold fervor of C--it's a wonder that any of us can sustain the centrifugal forces at work throughout. <br /><br />I remain as vulnerable financially as I've ever been, perhaps more so, and it gets harder and harder to justify the sacrifices necessary to maintain my PlayWrite availability. This, I know, is the core of my difficulties right now, a tough little knot to solve. It's deeply important to me that, of all the work I'm doing, I can honestly say I fully and deepl.y believe in their core missions. All my works are built on roots of service and selflessness, the conviction that meaning and purpose are indispensable, in all things; and to do anything without meaning is ultimately wasteful. The problem with these values, is that selflessness necessarily leads to a neglect of self, a fundamental dynamic that I believe is responsible for why, in our fair city, a typical individual in social services makes so very little, compared to the vast majority of our peers; and that same dynamic prevails in performance, where work of substance and quality is somehow held to be far less valuable than the insubstantial, the superficial.<br /><br />I take it on faith that my information remains incomplete. Ultimately, I refuse to conclude that these values, as thus described, are as unsustainable as my current experience indicates. But this is a close-run thing. It's a high-stakes game here at PJS HQ, and we play for keeps up in this here piece.<br /><br />"Elsewhere" V. II is a pretty big success right now, I'm happy to say. We sold out all but one of our originally scheduled 5 performances during the scattershot Fertile Ground Festival, and we've thus decided to extend two more performances, just for the joy of it, really. Ellen wrote 4 new pieces, and even though, once again, we generally felt rushed and strained through the rehearsal process, Tech and Dress felt like an ample and healthy process, for once, and quite suddenly--without actually putting that much thought to things, really--I find myself surprisingly proud of our work, in a way I rarely am, in my experience. <br /><br />Now, Shaking the Tree Studios, where we're performing, seats only 55 in our current setup, so a Sold Out house is not, in fact, all that hard to engineer. But it is authentic and truthful, to know that we as a company have grown in the interval since August, and the pieces we've carried over since then have grown quite a lot, too...<br /><br />Let me know how things go in Lombardy, as you can. I've been remiss in following your blog, I'm afraid, but I will check in there soon, too. Know that your friendship and your talent are very dearly missed out here--<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-mayhempaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-28444768019528017952011-01-13T16:57:00.000-08:002011-01-13T17:17:51.816-08:00Excerpt, Letter to C, Draft...I closely identify wit the need to love and be loved. I regularly brim over with grief and bewilderment at my own loneliness. But ultimately, I'm rooted here in this kind of impoverished exile, because I believe in the work I do, and I see no distinction between what I do and why I do it, and I own the fact that these are crippling standards to maintain. There is no room, realistically, in my cracked and worn-out heart, to fully love another in the way I would need to in order to be so beloved in return. And that's a terribly difficult thing for me to accept. <br /><br />I just finished a short piece for an evangelical NGO's benefit fundraiser, here in Portland. Compassion First builds and staffs shelters and social agencies for rescued victims of sex trafficking in Indonesia. For all my talk about high moral standards, and how why I do something ought not to be distinct from what exactly is being done, this was an instance where I could happily silence any of my own misgivings about evangelical Christians in SE Asia, particularly as their moral integrity dwarfs mine, the way cedar trees dwarf a patch of scrub grass.<br /><br />There was very little text, just a handful of statistics supplied by the NGO. There was a small stage, maybe 20 X 20, set in the center of a sea of dinner tables, in the Jantzen Beach Marriott Hotel, which is the kind of sleepy, slightly seedy, down-at-heel corporate establishment that looks like it lost its real luster just after Reagan left office. Seven of us performed a ten-minute piece, that progressed in an arc from playfulness, to violence, to the kind of oppressive sexuality that I necessarily abhor, and, in my professional as well as artistic capacities, I find I spend altogether too much time with (which is another reason why I rely so heavily on Splendid Isolation). All this was thinly veiled in abstracted physical gestural languages, abstracted enough to fit the parameters of our commission, but clear enough to seriously affect our audience, and our own selves.<br /><br />The Executive Director of Compassion First told us that the main goal in commissioning us, was to give some sense of real faces to the numbing lists of names and numbers. To his credit, the man spoke of how he'd been to an insane number of fundraising banquet functions, and the only ones that had meant anything to him were the ones that had used some form of original, authentic performance to distinguish the reality of their work from the necessary, hollow pageantry of the events themselves. Thus, even as my crypto-Catholic sensibilities were repulsed by the overly earnest, short-sighted and self-centered theological rhetoric typical of the Catholic experience of evangelicals, my instinctively contrarian, anti-establishment artistic self daily grew righteously militant in this cause and these aims.<br /><br />This is the kind of work I was built for, only I wish there were more of it. And yet it's a matter of no small concern, that I've just effectively wished for more opportunities to perform some seriously fucked-up shit. <br /><br />Next week is the big PlayWrite Showcase, a big fancy-dress to-do that's a long day of work for me. I won't be performing this time, which is alright, because I will be wrangling writers, hanging lights and getting up onstage to ask for money. <br /><br />This is, I think, the toughest part of all my non-profit obligations. I exist and I do my work on the sufferance of the idle privileged, those with enough dispensable income to afford not to engage directly with the injustices that assail their consciences. Now, of course I'm grateful for their generosity, but at it's worst I'm made to feel like a servile draught animal, chartered to haul their heavy loads for them. The money is everything, and it's ultimately so little, a pitifully meager resource among a great many others that are far more urgently needed; above all, the need for presence, of mind and heart, real engagement with the real work that needs doing, the kind of unflinching strength and resilience that's beyond price, beyond measure...<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-draught-animalpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-22986898940011236012010-12-29T01:46:00.000-08:002010-12-29T02:07:57.444-08:00Letter to J, 27 December 2010Dear J--<br /><br />I have a half-written response to your last kicking around somewhere, and I'll be sending that quite soon. Suffice to say that I love you dearly, and I can't guarantee I won't punch this new Orpheus in the face if I ever meet him, but ultimately, you must do what you must, and I must support that. And my own heart knows how critical it is to love and be loved, and I know what I myself have done to those around me, to those close to me, in the name of such passion, and thus, even as I myself have desired you, and tested y own heart against my own truths, I know your heart is true, that you do what you do for the right reasons and meaningfully.<br /><br />That aside, I write tonight in crisis. I'm getting as drunk as I can at my neighborhood bar. These days I work at an independent living program for adolescent male sex offenders, which is, as you may surmise, arguably the toughest job I've ever held, which means something, coming from the likes of me. <br /><br />Tonight, the devil came to pay me a visit. Tonight was one of the toughest shifts I've ever worked--I'll even say right now THE toughest. And keep in mind I've worked with deaths on the scene, several times, and brawled with drunks twice my size, and I've had a twelve-year-old pee on me during a performance.<br /><br />The shift had 3 distinct phases:<br /><br />1. I had to ask two guys for U/A drug tests. Now, I've done roughly a million of these in my professional life. Asking grown men to pee in a cup for me is, disturbingly, practically second nature. What was different this time is that I was required to U/A two adolescent male sex offenders, who themselves inevitably have histories of trauma as well as perpetrating abuse. This made a situation already awkward, triply so. It was pulling teeth just to get these guys to comply in the first place (because normally, we do saliva swabs but tonight we're out of saliva swabs so we had to do pee-in-a-cup tests, which require staff to witness the test in order to verify that the client isn't substituting someone else's urine or such.) My guys were none too happy about this.<br /><br />2. My friend S is looking for an extra hand in her wig dept at OSF, and she thought of me. The contract is ten months. <br /><br />Now, to be clear, OSF is, for me, the Theatre equivalent of Josef Stalin. I've seen I don't know how many embarrassingly crappy plays there, even as I've seen some good, sterling work, too. (I'd guesstimate the ratio at 1 in 4.) What gets me is that S' offer is $12/hour with unbelievably good benefits, albeit at the Josef Stalin of Regional Theatre in the US as I regard these things. Wheras my current work at Janus Youth's Buckman House pays all of $10.05 an hour, with bullshit benefits, and I'm doing essential work for my community, and it allows me to pick and choose the theatre that I believe in. <br /><br />I'm convinced there's no right answer to this situation. So much crap springs from OSF, and is perpetuated by their aesthetic, that I don'[t know if I could endure that proximity intact. On the other hand, Buckman House is arguably the most difficult position I've ever held, and I took a pay cut to do it. I've lived beneath the federal poverty line and without health insurance ever since I left the County Library 7 years ago. <br /><br />3. Tonight, one of my buys disclosed to me the full extent of his offenses. This guy is very warm, very positive, very outgoing, has a good heart, and has some physical and mental limitations. He's bonded with me as a trusted staff member that he feels he can confide in. And tonight, what he disclosed to me... consider the worst, most terrifying scenarios available to your imagination, and then explode them. T's demons are so insidious, so horrifying that I can hardly bear writing about them even as obliquely as this. The SBD therapists at Buckman, who between them have over 30 years experience in the field, have both told me that T's is the worst, most difficult case they've ever seen. For myself, knowing what I now know in his own words, and having dared to verify even the barest facts in his case files, I basically want to stab my eyes out. <br /><br />Usually, I'm really awesome at being resilient and steady. I see my own work, in a continuous line from Hooper Detox and DePaul straight through now, as a means of fighting living monsters. I'm not even doing the real fighting--obviously, my guys are--and the monsters are basically immortal, confined in each of us, and so each day is a long, grinding, simmering confrontations between these hotly confined forces of good and evil, long hours of patient listening, and the most pig-headed, jackass-stupid and stubborn arguments I've ever had in my life, and then these terrible nights that you just can't predict, that you do your best to be ready for, and now here I'm holding on with all the poetry and philosophy, all the art I know, and all the training I've had, and all the people I love, I'm holding it all in my heart as closely as I can, just to get past this night.<br /><br />I'm in no state to make any kind of decision on the OSF gig. I've a healthy legion of projects running right now, plenty in train. January and February will hustle past me with alarming quickness, just as these last several months have. I'm at a stand, though. For all my effort and care, I've no community to speak of, no peers who share my values. Even R and CH, they're too invested in a complacent performance world for me to be able to get behind. I can't say I know what to do instead, I wish I did. I've only my own arrogant conscience, my slowly percolating projects, and these monsters to watch day after day, out of which I barely eke out my living...<br /><br />Know that I adore you, and I'm sending you as much New Year Luck as I can spare--<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-monstrouspaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-24344051240651706312010-10-13T11:16:00.000-07:002010-10-13T11:45:20.376-07:00Letter to M., 13 October 2010Dear M,<br /><br />I hope things are going well with you in LA. As per usual, I've missed you a great deal.<br /><br />We never really had a proper summer here, the weather constantly shifting from one extreme to the next. Taking that as my cue, it seems I never really gained my footing over the course of these last few months. It feels as though I've worked very hard for very little pay, and given a great deal of myself to my friends with almost no support in return. For some reason, it's getting harder and harder to remember my role in the decisions I make, and it gets that much easier to cultivate the old patterns of resentment and isolation, which I've known far too well for far too long.<br /><br />These days I work with adolescent male sex offenders in an "independent living" program, adjudicated youth who have completed their sentencing and treatment requirements. Our program is the final gateway to their reconstructed lives.<br /><br />Aside from housekeeping duties like medications, record-keeping and head counts, the real meat of my work is in listening and counseling, perhaps two steps shy of true "therapy," but nevertheless delicate and deeply draining, arduous work. Some shifts are sleepy, uneventful parcels of hours, with only the monotonous routine of the hourly headcounts and medication distributions providing any kind of tempo. But most shifts are a complicated dance between this mandated monotony, and successive waves of the most melodramatic, infantile, or the most terrifying and insurmountable emotional and physical crises imaginable. I walk out of most shifts with the full spectrum of emotions firing simultaneously--something I know I've come to value as the ultimate criteria in all my work, theatre- and day-job, and thus I know it's a dangerous high, a kind of addiction that I've engendered for myself. It leaves me exhausted, but I do love it so. <br /><br />Similarly, in my theatre world, I've been blessed with a steady current of meaningful, exhausting but ultimately limited work, at an unreliable tempo. It's a distinct advantage to know enough to know when to say no. And it becomes a most effective advocate, when meaningful work, difficult work does cross my path, and here I have this internal process, bourne of expensive experience, that goes to great pains to show how a potential project may be either worthwhile or utterly wasteful. I'm surprised, honestly, to feel utterly grateful for this tremendous fund of experience that I draw from on a daily basis. I'm surprised because I know how often I've felt hemmed in and weighted down by the very same thing.<br /><br />Currently I'm working on a strange, beautiful little project for a local playwright's group, a monologue set in a suburban backyard, kind of a nervous breakdown extended over 8 pages. there are about 7 or 8 playwrights in the group, and as a fundraiser they've commissioned themselves to write short pieces, all taking place in and around a specific house belonging to one of the writers. I'm given to understand that most of these pieces are monologues. Each piece has been given a site in the house--dining room, bathroom, kitchen, basement, etc. I have no idea how much of an audience to expect, or how big this house is (I'll be visiting it for the first time Friday night, and performing on Saturday). being in the backyard, I definitely feel I got lucky with the luxury of an epic space, ample room to really test and explode things.<br /><br />New work, specific work--work that's about clearly defined and illuminated people or ideas, and not merely pretty ciphers or overwrought cleverness--more and more I gravitate to this level of ambition and performance, and, surprisingly, away from Shakespeare. We are all at the mercy of our own growth, I suppose. <br /><br />There have been a predictable succession of passing infatuations, incipient relationships collapsing under the burden of my neurotic misanthropy, or her comparatively uncomplicated worldview, whichever comes first.<br /><br />Choosing to be worthy enough, whether of exceptional work, or deep love, or simply of a good night's rest, or gratifying sex--for a long time I assumed the choice to be worthy of all this was a simple choice. But as I watch my friends struggle with devastating breakups, and as I experience myself the price my "career" pays for my "principles," to me it seems too simple to say that we choose these things. None of us, so far as I can see, can be so emotionally ruthless and inwardly numb as any of these catastrophic circumstance expect us to be. <br /><br />Increasingly I'm finding what I thought to be wisdom is really mournful courage, sometimes grim and sometimes joyful.<br /><br />I wonder if any of this makes sense, or resonates in any way outside of my own head. The next PlayWrite workshop I'm teaching and leading begins next week, after the experimental monologue, and as this will be at Portland Night High School, one of our more disaffected sites, I'm aware that my growing nervousness affects everything I work on, including this letter.<br /><br />I miss you more and more as time rushes by. <br /><br />lots of love,<br /><br />paulmonster-abidespaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-25029103005724676092010-08-18T15:33:00.000-07:002010-08-18T15:52:43.079-07:00Letter to E, 8 August 2010Dear E--<br /><br />As you know, I, too, spend a great deal of time thinking about how not to waste my time. You mentioned (back in June) how you feel both young and fresh and jaded and cynical, an ambiguity to which I closely relate.<br /><br />Particularly in the (weird, sad) world of dating. I've had enough relationships, enough experiences now that my List of Danger Signs to Watch Out For now practically encompasses every woman I've ever been attracted to who may themselves be attracted to me. Which is perplexing, to say the least. I like to think that, over time, I've explored and learned enough to be an emotionally competent, if not accomplished, partner (wow this letter got ridiculous pretty quickly). So in some ways, it's basically as though I've grown shy just as I'm beginning to get good at stuff... if that makes any sense. I suppose it's also true that I've always been, not shy, it's not quite the right word, but rather a deep distrust of masculine heterosexual norms, that makes me reticent to initiate things like flirtations and such. (My professional experience in mental health and addictions recovery communities only enhances these tendencies.)<br /><br />Thus, the more I know and the more experienced I get, the higher my threshold for action becomes...<br /><br />Lately, in [my professional world],I've gotten to know some new colleagues socially. It's surprised me how many people I consider my peers identify themselves as polyamorous, and how nuanced the meanings are within that label. Seen through the lens of my clinical world, at one level I can't even distinguish between 'polyamorous' as a healthy intimacy norm, on the one hand, and what could quickly be labeled impulsive emotional promiscuity, clinical classifications meant to be independent of moral judgment (though clearly pretending to be free of value judgments, in anything regarding sex and intimacy, is a tricky proposition at best).<br /><br />It's not my place--nor is it really my function as a friend--to in any way evaluate or diagnose the emotional behavior of my friends and colleagues. Now, I can't help but frequently access, and positively benefit from what diagnostic skills I do possess. But in relying on that boundary--to not treat my friends as patients or clients--I'm given to seeing and understanding a great deal more.<br /><br />A similarly ambiguous experience occurs whenever I get really drunk or high, or witness friends or partners so doing. Conversely, I've dated women in recovery, and experienced myself the awkwardness of being on the other side of a (in her case, much more stringent) boundary. In all of these instances, I'm as much an observer of my own interior tensions--between wanting to engage and enjoy myself, on the one hand, and awareness of my professional obligations the next day, on the other--so much so that the actual experience of drugs or alcohol becomes magnified by the act of self-observation, a heightened awareness--which, so I'm told, is frequently the point--that can be just as exhausting as a day at work.<br /><br />In this context, I strongly relate to your stated need to scream and holler from time to time, particularly at the frustrations of an obstinately ignorant world. Where your indignation springs from righteously progressive feminism (and that substantiated in spite of so hostile an establishment as the Catholic University of Portland), mine is the brittle and corroded residue of the thousand little compromises of the working day world, compromises only ever made for the sake of the merest outliers of our identities. By which I mean, the petty situations, where we're asked to stay late to finish work properly belonging to others, where we're asked to tone down intrinsic differences for the sake of unity and workplace solidarity, where the priority of doing the right thing is abandoned for the sake of the convenient.<br /><br />These are the ethical and moral characteristics, I think, behind questions as innocuous as, "what play should we do next, and why?" or, "should I apply for that position knowing I would have an uphill battle to deal with, knowing what I know?"<br /><br />I do agree with your observation that theatre is a place where we can create ourselves, in the fullest sense. I guess in my experience, much as I love and am devoted, ultimately, to that ideal in theatre, I've experienced too many dissonant creations. Caught in the tremendous exhileration of self-creating, we too easily neglect to listen to one another.<br /><br />It is the classic struggle between discipline and liberty. Focus dissipates in favour of giving ourselves, and to each other, free rein to establish our own individual presences. I worry at how strong work requires some version of this struggle, this tension, to in some way play out in just about every rehearsal process I've ever known. When I was less experienced, I felt this was a fair price to pay. Now, I'm not so sure.<br /><br />Where your lovely letter needed swelling string music, mine, by contrast, needs some howling, plaintive Northern soul.<br /><br />I hope your summer is going splendidly. Look to hear more soon--<br /><br />Affectionately,<br /><br />paulmonster-pomeriumpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-52815366103467434762010-07-27T20:24:00.000-07:002010-07-27T20:27:33.154-07:00Excerpt from my Letter to C.Dear C,<br /><br />I work with this population every day. They come from all walks of life, have all kinds of faith, have experienced terrible abuse, or no history of abuse at all. <br /><br />1. None of this is your fault. These things simply happen, an artifact of our world we live in. You're both loving parents and it's clear you've been amazing in raising J. and K. to be strong and vibrant people.<br /><br />2. This gets better. An experience like this can be empowering and defining for J., and for K., given time and healing. This does not need to define her negatively.<br /><br />3. Her diversity of friends can be a strength. People with different perspectives unconsciously show us different ways of looking at the world. That kind of wisdom does not come easily any other way. If there are obviously negative or harmful individuals associating with J., then of course they should not be tolerated, but otherwise, it's important to examine what we do not know before passing judgment. The worst case scenario (which I've seen in my professional work countless times) is the forced isolation of an individual, which only fed a stronger resentment and anger and catalyzed worse behavior later.<br /><br />4. There does not need to be a reason. Drug-seeking behavior is a disease, not a character flaw. We do not need reasons to have a cold, flu, or cancer. There are things we can do to make us more vulnerable, like smoking or wearing wet clothes or whatever, but that's not a guarantee, nor is it really a reflection of our moral values. My point is that it's easy to cast judgment and say that someone is a bad person because they sought out drugs. But we are not bad people because we catch colds. At bottom, these are flaws in our neurological chemistry that we all have in subtly different ways, that manifest differently. <br /><br />Some people drink. Some people have a temper. Some people get unstoppably curious. These are all examples of impulsive behavior that, when they act on it, trigger our brain chemistry to react with an adrenaline rush, and what is called, 'the dopamine cascade', where the chemicals and hormones in our system make us feel excited and energized, like the world is a fascinating place. In and of itself this is not a negative thing--it's how we experience all forms of pleasure. But when our system learns that the same physical actions result in the same pleasurable feelings consistently, our system starts prodding us to do those same physical actions over and over again. This is the basis of addiction as we currently understand it. The same chemical reactions happen in alcohol addiction as in drug addiction, pill-seeking, gambling addiction, sex addiction, etc., etc. <br /><br />There is always hope. J. now has a precedent to reach out for help. That's something that the vast majority of individuals who have had similar experiences struggled to find and did not find. She has a strong support network. I have every confidence, from a professional as well as a personal perspective, that she will emerge from this stronger and healthier as a result.<br /><br />Please know that I'm thinking of you all, and I'm willing to visit with J. and K. whenever possible. <br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-kuyapaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-33852211141236239102010-07-05T22:34:00.000-07:002010-07-05T22:42:50.105-07:00Excerpt from my Letter to C...It's true; I am, in fact, a hopelessly addicted letter writer. It began years ago, when I was doing a fair amount of traveling in AmeriCorps, then on my own, then on tour with various productions. Letters kept my friendships healthy, and nourished me in a way journalling never did. <br /><br />My passion for stamps is purely ancillary to my love of writing and reading letters. Whereas most stamp collectors favor cancelled stamps and postmarks, I collect stamps purely for use, and particularly the interesting postage of other countries, no matter how remote the possibility may be of me writing from the Ukraine, say, or Bhutan.<br /><br />In these recent years, letter writing thrives in my work environments, which typically involve long hours of minimal activity punctuated by highly concentrated moments of tremendous emotional heavy-lifting. (I work at a local nonprofit agency serving a broad range of at-risk youth. This particular program deals with young male sex offenders in residential treatment.) <br /><br />In that context, I entirely agree with your point about mail being like flowers: it's astonishing, really, how an almost insubstantial gesture of awareness can have such a restorative effect. In that respect, it has a bit in common with live performance--I believe it's by disarming our expectations, by disclaiming that it's just for a limited run, that live theatre is capable of the tremendous insights and the real work; and likewise, that these merely ephemeral letters, simple bits of paper with scarcely more forethought than a grocery list, can and have kept me sane, simply by being signed, sealed and delivered. I've witnessed deaths firsthand, immediately before me, and I've worked long hours with clients, co-workers, friends and loved ones grappling with honest-to-goodness life and death issues; and in every instance, the most meaningful breakthroughs were made only after grasping the gesture that counts for more than just the sandcastle it seems to be. Like letters, or theatre, but also heartfelt apologies, or admitting responsibility, or letting go of resentment, or choosing to go, or stay...paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-80825394333606828732010-06-11T11:28:00.000-07:002010-06-11T12:01:46.784-07:00Excerpt from my Letter to J.Dear Pirate,<br /><br />It is not beyond the realm of possibility, that I might get my shit together and somehow contrive to visit you, much the way the Mongol horde visited central Asia, or the plague visited Egypt. I say possible, but many kinds of things are possible in June, and I must await the ripening of certain possibilities before I could possibly say, with any certainty, whether California has cause to dread my approach, whether it's time to start digging trenches and evacuate the non-combatants.<br /><br />Truly, by this point in 2010, I'd hoped to be far better grounded than I yet am, to have a firmer grasp on things. But I continue as impoverished and uncertain as ever before, though I am at pains to remind myself that I'm rich with evidence of the worthiness of my decisions.<br /><br />Thus, my days are brimming with good things. I spend too much time sleeping, and I wish I were more assertive and more thorough in my works and days. But the core of it is true: I have the rudimentary tools necessary to be of use to my friends and my community, and if I'm not in action as often as I'd like to be, at least those few actions are memorable ones, and there's a great deal I can point to that would be worse for my absence. <br /><br />I'm writing to you now, having just seen a production of The Cherry Orchard at one of the new little repertory theatres in town. It was a fair-to-middling piece, but I don't necessarily hold that against anyone. The production carries a number of dear friends and colleagues--though I'm happy that so many work so often, it is wearying to see the same tactics employed repeatedly to unvarying effect. <br /><br />But neither are my friends helped by the script, even in this new translation of Stoppard's. Surely I'm not the first to remark that Chekhov simply wrote the same play over and over again; or, at the very least, our contemporaries regrettably keep designing, directing and performing roughly the same structure, just with slightly different verbiage. I can certainly understand how this state of affairs came into being; actors, but particularly actresses of a certain age practically groom their own social circles to reflect the family and class dynamic reiterated repeatedly in Seagull, Vanya, 3 Sisters and Cherry Orchard. All the more frustrating as I'm certain that each of those scripts are authentic and expansive enough to be capable of fresh discoveries, if only we could free ourselves of the oppressively predictable Stanislavsky legacy.<br /><br />No doubt I'm shamefully neglecting Chekhov's real achievements, and the context in which he worked. And we all operate in reaction to our immediate predecessors. It is of some consequence, I expect, that during our time Chekhov ranks as worthy either of emulation or reaction.<br /><br />The night before, a dear friend gave me an extra ticket to see Maya Angelou at the Arlene Schnitzer concert hall--which, in spite of its primarily concert function these days, is in fact a close contemporary of the Geary in San Francisco in all kinds of ways. An epic space in the old style, back when they designed prosceniums--proscenia--with diligence and affection, before the ruinous influence of amplification. The space was absolutely packed, as to be expected. I was apprehensive, at first: my fuzzy memories of Clinton's first inaugural are of a splendid voice, resonant with first-hand experience of all the salient points of 20th century America. But when I read her poetry, even when I was very young I thought her work simplistic and maudlin. <br /><br />I'm happy to say that I was much impressed. As a presence Angelou is worthy of the space, even if she doesn't technically fill it. (It's a surprising and saddening effect of amplification, I believe. Surprising because I would have thought a broader range of artists would've developed a likewise broader range of technique by now. As you and I know well enough, it's about so much more than mere volume, and even if shackled to a page, the tactical possiblities for connecting with an audience are myriad.)<br /><br />But Dr. Maya Angelou is now roughly 80 years old. If she wants to sit onstage with a mike stand the whole time, and some nice Stickley furntiure as a backdrop, I'm down with that. As to my impression of her poetry, I found that her mind and her heart animate her work the way the sould does the body. She herself delivered a very telling remark: she is not a writer who teaches, but a teacher who writes. It is no wonder, then, that I found so little to be moved by on the page.<br /><br />More even than her own work, Angelou spoke of the poetry that saved her life, poets and writers that convoyed her through terrifying times. It was all deeply inspiring. Throughout I was conscious of the fact that she is among the last of the living generation that ended Jim Crow; she told us of the six or seven large white men who tried to lynch her uncle, mirrored 40 years later by the six or seven large white men in crisp uniforms, sent by the first black mayor of Little Rock, to escort her to that same uncle's funeral with all due ceremony.<br /><br />She said something very important to me: she said that we've all been paid for. We wander our lives with these massive burdens of ignorance and shame, we brood and worry against the impossible debts we live with. And those are real debts, to be sure. But the only way to lend any meaning to centuries of slavery, violence, pogroms, autos-da-fe... is to own them all as our ancestors, all those innumerable and forgotten victims. "I am a human being," Terence says. "Nothing human can be alien to me." Whether lovely and glorious or terrifying and worse, the roots of all that suffering extend into each of us, bequeathing us with equal heritages of hope and horror. And the only possible meaning this could have, is to decide that all that sacrifice means something to us, for us. We've been paid for. Our time here is the only gift they could have given us, from out of the terrible reach of all that trauma. <br /><br />And it is a gift, for it removes the question of owing anything to anybody. Or if we do, it is only to convey the limitless balance of our own redemption forward to those who come after us. <br /><br />In writing this all out--and it's important to note, if it weren't altogether obvious already, that these are my own faulty and incomplete glossings of what Maya Angelou said--it strikes me that the rhetoric reflects no small amount of St. Paul and St. Augustine, but bursting the prism of Christ into endless refractions of sacrifice, not one Son but countless Stars illuminating all of us. <br /><br />The current Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith, which is what used to be called the Holy Inquisition, is a prelate named William Cardinal Levada, who was previously Cardinal Archbishop of San Francisco, but before that Archbishop of Portland. When I was an altarboy it was a fading distinction to serve at the Masses he celebrated, for he was always a dour and grumpy, self-involved cipher, and people seemed to have neither understanding nor regard for ceremony in my day. It is an interesting question, if the grumpy Cardinal, now effectively the Grand Inquisitor, had been even a little bit kinder in his orthodoxy, then maybe today I might not be so wholly heretical.<br /><br />For it's true that, as far as Maya Angelou goes, I lovingly embrace my heresy. And that anachronistic distinction between heresy and orthodoxy, for which otherwise intelligent and godly people tortured and burned one another for 20 centuries, still endures in the stigma of mental disease, in the which paradigm I am like the agnostic masquerading as a Dominican in my line of work...<br /><br />...wow. I really had no intention of wandering so far into my lapsed Catholic consciousness when I began this letter. I blame your infernal influence, and my growing awareness that June is already destroying all my time and money, which of course feeds my growing, lapsed-Catholic guilt at failing to visit those I love. But Maya Angelou says I'm paid for, so fuck you, Cardinal Levada. <br /><br />Congratulations on opening Opus! I should like to hear more about it, and of your no doubt sterling work. When next you visit Portland, there will be a whole battery of fresh discoveries to convey to you: midnight waffle carts, a new apartment and roommate, how best to crack a bullwhip.<br /><br />I am so happy things go so well with you, in just about every quarter of your world, as far as I can see. Except that, once again, you've abandoned your partner in the middle of a hell of a case, chasing down your damnfool crazy-ass hunches while the real detectives do all your work for you. Chief says nobody wants to partner with you ever since you 'accidentally' shot that state trooper last year. You know that poor guy still has to wear a poop bag because of you? They put him on the dispatch desk so he could keep his pension. Chief keeps sending me down there to make nice so the staties don't jam up our caseload. It's like hanging out in an overturned portapotty. I hope you're happy.<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-terentiuspaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-78127749635399839312010-05-29T15:38:00.000-07:002010-05-29T15:59:18.684-07:00On PlayWriteSo this is the third time I've been asked to MC the semiannual PlayWrite Showcase. I find this kind of thing challenging. It's a delicate task to set the right tone for this work, enough that people understand what's going on, but not so much that the whole event becomes maudlin or cheap. Below is the full draft of my intended remarks; in the even, the wider-angle-lens paragraphs about the world around us were truncated, understandably, and just like both other times I've done this. (I still feel that the wide-angle-lens about art and truth and fear is essential to say, though. And I really wanted to wear the red dress a friend lent me for the occasion, but that, too, was vetoed, in consideration of more conservative sensibilities that may or may not have been attending. Yet another instance of how the good and progressive broad-minded ones always get shafted by fascist homophobes.)<br /><br />===<br /><br />Thank you all so much for joining us this evening. I'm Paul Susi, proud actor and coach on the magnificent PlayWrite team, and I've been detailed to help walk you through what we're doing tonight. <br /><br />For those of you new to PlayWrite, here's how it works. A crack team of 8 or 9 professionals helicopters in to one of any number of underserved youth organizations, right here in Portland. The first four days are spent urgently exploring the core of what makes a strong play: conflict, tactics, character--and all that makes a strong character: needs, secrets, fears. We strip away whatever feels settled, whatever feels like a story. If there's any hing of a predetermined plot, or of a character's inevitable fate, it's the coach's job to challenge the writer, at the very least that the writer might earn their conclusions, really learn and experience themselves what they propose for their characters.<br /><br />To that end, we spend a lot of time encouraging our writers to be specific. How does it feel to be a hungry buffalo? How would a fat rattlesnake move? Does a calculating, edgy knife experience rage? And--my favorite question as a coach--why?<br /><br />This is what makes the coach's job so ticklish, and so crucial. Like Chiron, the half-man half-horse tutor of Achilles and Hercules, the coach readies the writer for epic things, but we do not, we cannot fight their battles for them. We can't even answer the very questions we so endearingly ask, over and over and over and over again. Our object always is to spur our writers to discover <u>their own</u> truths, and face <u>their own</u> fears. <br /><br />And this, in my view, is the real core of what any of us do in the arts. In our daily lives, this reality we all share binds us with terrible truths, things so powerful that we as individuals only dimly grasp their meaning: ballooning oil spills, police violence, or the death of a lover, or the loss of a home. And we fear what we so dimly understand: we fear the stigma of addiction, the blind rage of a child, the burden of consequence, the loneliness of the labels we wear.<br /><br />All great art--insofar as such a thing could possibly be defined--all great art operates on the things we know to be true, and the things we fear. As artists we seek to reshape and reveal, discovering for ourselves these things we all struggle with, in our own desperate way, every waking day. In this seemingly small and inconsequential act of creating something our own, the great and terrible truths and fears that surround us become subject to ourselves. From slaves and debtors, we crown ourselves monarchs and heroes.<br /><br />In the typical PlayWrite workshop, the heavy lifting happens in the second week, when the writer faces the blank page alone, the coach writing down the writer's words only, and no two such journeys are ever alike, and no the most accomplished and brilliant writer in the world can ever write the plays that these writers have given us. If they cannot say what needs to be said, then no one can, and we are beyond fortunate that they chose to write. They chose.<br /><br />Now, tonight, you'll hear what they chose to say, and how they chose to say it. Sometimes it's a single speech. Sometimes it's a full-fledged play. And sometimes the writer commits to a whole new level of work, shaping their words into music. They all chose to share this tonight, but not every writer could choose to be here tonight, for all kinds of reasons. Nevertheless, we acknowledge every writer's work, even if it's with a simply, empty spotlight. We are here tonight not only to celebrate what they've given us, but to experience for ourselves the reshaping and revealing of our own truths, our own fears, profiting by their extraordinary journeys. Think on this--no other art form so critically requires a living audience to complete itself. This work is never finished, never can be finished, unless and until you join us in this room, tonight. This is your cue to turn off cell phones, pagers, recording devices of any kind, things that flash, buzz, vibrate or explode. Consider this your initiation, o heroes, your rite of passage, for by turning off your ipad, you join an epic confraternity older than Aeschylus.<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-red-dresspaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-56199100213580619102010-04-23T10:30:00.000-07:002010-04-23T10:49:21.826-07:00Excerpt from my Letter to K....Only recently does it feel like I'm emerging from this past harsh winter. In many ways, I'm actually still quite lost in it. 2009, redemptive and astonishing in some ways, predictably decimated and besieged my spirit. Life and work deteriorated into a terrible and humiliating crush of stuff, just STUFF that never stopped pushing and crushing. I began 2010 prepared to seek vengeance for 2009's abuses; now I'm approaching yet another birthday with even just a little bit more exhaustion and dismay as before, and an even longer tale of indignities for which to seek satisfaction.<br /> As demoralized as this may sound, however, there is, in fact, a great deal of joy in my days, grand little pieces in which I take some pride, things that are worthy of my love--<br /> --for that's where my great bitternesses and griefs are all rooted, so far as I can see: as I grow older, the citadel of my pride only strengthens, and I rush that much quicker to the conclusion that the world is not worthy of my love. This citadel grows out of grief; it is in fact a lament written in bluster, for all the heart-blood poured out quite uselessly, as much for myself as for others. <br /> There is something true, here, though. I know enough to know that my pride, my heart-blood is worth something, and I feel its wastage practically as an act of aggression:<br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">How dare they?</span> How dare they drop the ball at Copenhagen? How dare they tolerate such crappy work in this theatre community? How dare they continue to sanction such grievous acts of police violence in this city? How dare they...<br /> I do not mean to draw neat equivalencies between all of these things, and it's true that I do little enough to justify how personally I take all of this. Still, to me, that only underscores how tough this problem is. For I am notorious for my emotional firewalls: I have few close friends, and fewer of these know enough to begin to understand my impossible families. My professional world in the addictions-recovery/mental health community exists in an entire other universe from my performance community, as that is likewise almost literally a hemisphere away from people I care quite deeply for, and that quite apart from my families entirely.<br /> The problem here is that I am the flying bridge linking all of these emotional provinces. And so volatile are they all, that a full-fledged crisis in one of them never fails to somehow coincide with another crisis, in an other emotional province... And I have a hard time defying the accusation that I am, in fact, the agent of crisis, transmitting from one such remote emotional province to another...<br /> Oftentimes, my vestigially Catholic self will take quite seriously the Apostle's enjoinder, to live each moment as a sacrament (I forget which Apostle so memorably said this). And so I lurch from project to project, meeting to meeting, day to day desperately seeking to expiate my all but sinful contagions. As silly as this sounds, I cannot help but point out the etymology of the word, 'tragedy,' translated literally as 'goat-song,' from whence 'scapegoat.' My theatre and my work are the sacrificial offerings I make to atone for my unwitting crimes. But by that measure, I'm failing indeed.<br /> Again I reiterate that there is more joy, in my day-to-day existence, than this angstiness allows for. Right now I'm teaching at Rosemont, a residential rehab for adolescent women in custody for behavioral and/or substance abuse reasons. I'm teaching with a group called Playwrite, Inc--a local nonprofit that leads two-week workshops teaching at-risk youth how to write plays. At the end of those two weeks, their works is staged with professional actors. Both as a teacher and an actor, this is the finest work I do.<br /> Concurrently, I'm rehearsing, and am about to open a production of 'Madeline and the Gypsies' at NW Children's Theater. I'm playing the Strong Man, and I'm having an extraordinary time. Secret: I've always loved the Madeline bookes. That alone is more than enough to counter my habitual theatre people misanthropy...<br /> ...I did not mean to ramble at such length, and in so scattered a fashion. Know that this is all by way of saying, in my own, inscrutable way, that your friendship and company is much missed...<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-rar-rar-rarpaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-19041910412497284702010-04-09T03:34:00.000-07:002010-04-09T03:35:10.121-07:00Excerpt from my Letter to E....I hear you. <br /><br />A part of me says that all of us are unsuited for one another. Since we each contain Whitman's multitudes, what right can we possibly have to find the suited one? Who themselves may or may not be looking? In this context, 'settling' is not a compromise. It is almost a moral imperative. <br /><br />In my chequered history of intimacy (which reads like an Abbott and Costello oral history of the Thirty Years' War), the good bits are where my flawed insuperable multitudes clamor a kind of harmony against her flawed insuperable multitudes. Such things cannot be choreographed, not really...paulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547177.post-77577989816884406322010-03-11T02:37:00.000-08:002010-03-11T02:52:33.858-08:00Little StrokesThere's this thing that happens, when you're driving along in unfamiliar territory, and you're trying to follow directions while you're noting the world around you. Because you have to look, you have to pay attention, to note the landmarks and the curvings of the roadway, so you know where to turn, where to stop, where to go slower and so forth. It's basic sense to do so. <br /><br />But it's so easy to lose track of the directions, or of the landmarks, or of both, really. Unfamiliar territory is by definition devoid of routine, cannot be taken for granted, does not behave according to predictable rules, otherwise it would be familiar. Things change, detours and washouts and new buildings happen all the time, and maps and directions can lie, sometimes egregiously. <br /><br />I believe I've been following just such flawed directions, navigating an even more tortuous landscape. I know I haven't been faithful to those directions as I ought to have been. And the ground continually shifts beneath my feet as I go. <br /><br />A beautiful moment happens, when you realize that you are not where you expected to be. For a fraction of a moment, anything is possible. Down is up. South is east. One way could be any way. You get your bearings and you move along, but in that tiny piece of a moment, I believe that your heart is suspended in a forever place, a seam of realities that unzips into the next piece of concrete information, from which you take your point of departure. <br /><br />There are moments when I as an artist realize that I am not as good as I thought I was, that my narrow field of expertise is precisely that narrow. In the Great Library of Potential Achievement that we all borrow books from, what I thought was the sum total of everything there is to be said on a given subject only turned out to be half a shelf from the discard handtruck. There is so much more to be said, so much more to learn. My ego, of course, winces and crumples to realize such things. But the other half of me honestly savors this. It is what I imagine the exhileration feels like, after you've jumped but before you pull the ripcord on the parachute. I'm immensely grateful.<br /><br />best,<br /><br />paulmonster-white noisepaulmonsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11740034654108442230noreply@blogger.com0