Senseless Evil

Hello fellow seekers of truth and life,

Well, by now, we've had a few days since the horror unfolded in Colorado early friday morning. Normally, I don't like to do topics right after an event just for the sake of being topical and up-to-the-moment. Certainly, as with anything of this awful nature, everyone and his brother is giving their opinion on it, and I don't think just giving an opinion would be worthwhile. I believe this culture of disaster media has gone way too far in giving out all the details and tidbits of the crime, and we need to give the victims space. That said, there are a few reactions I have had in the days since, and I think they merit me putting them up here, and you reading them.

First off, we (my family) had relatives of ours come in from Colorado the last few days. I wrote an email to them that said that between the fires, and this, Denver has not had a good year. Add to that the heat wave and drought that nearly all of the country has been experiencing, and life in this country has been tense this summer. Sadly, this is the second time they've had  a mass killing of this type. The sad thing is, there have been so many shooting sprees since. The only worse thing than how shocking this is, is how unshocking tragedies like this have become. In just the last 5 years, there have been mass shooting and killing sprees in Virginia Tech, the University of Alabama, Fort Hood, Texas, Oakland, California, and, of course, Tucson, Arizona, as well as the terror killings in Norway a year ago. I'm sure there's some that I can't remember right now, and we're not even talking about the infamous Trayvon Martin death this late winter/early spring. Just last Fall, a crazy guy walked into a beauty salon down in Seal Beach, close to where I live, and killed 8 people, and wounded 1.

In the aftermath, people search for meaning to this tragedy. This is only a human thing; we all want the events in our lives to have meaning. This is what distinguishes humans from animals without higher brain function. So it stands to reason that people would look for an explanation, an easy answer that people can latch onto, and act on. I'm sad to say, I don't think there are any simple or easily explanable answers to events like this. I've been racking my brain for many years about what causes people to be so senselessly cruel. I haven't had an answer. I don't understand what kind of madness would drive a person to do this horror, and to be honest, I don't know if I want to understand it, because that would mean that I could conceive of such horrible corners of the mind and heart. I don't have the stomach for that.

Predictably, political factions both left and right are framing this with their own answers on the issues. On one side, you have the reflexively pro-gun guys. No amount of guns is too much for their liking, any kind of gun will do. They'll argue that our Second Amendment Rights are being infringed. They argue that if only we all had the right to either concealed-carry or open-carry gun laws, we'd all be safe. To be honest, I'm sick of hearing people say "If everyone had a gun, there'd be no criminals." They use patronizing, simplistic slogans like "Gun control means using both hands," "When you make guns criminal, only criminals will carry guns."
Apparently, the few states that do not allow you to take a gun anywhere and everywhere, and shoot someone for any reason, those states are now infringing on the essence of our freedom. Because we know how well you will be able to see the perpetrator in a panicked, fleeing crowd. What if 30 other people all pull their guns, too? Will they all be able to tell who the original deliquent gunman is? What if the cops show up? How will they know who the bad guy is, when there's just a whole bunch of people shooting at each other?

In this culture we assume that weapons equal safety. That's only true in the same way that drugs make you happy. In the beginning, you get the high of power and control, respect and safety. There will come a day when one gun is not enough to scare off or kill all the bad guys, because they've got guns too, so you need more guns, more powerful ones, but they get more guns, and so you need tasers and poison gas to really keep the bad guys at bay. It becomes an arms race, a quest to demonstrate ever-growing power. At that point, your weapons become property that also needs to be protected. The hope of being able to shoot your problems away can only last for so long.

We all have this fantasy that if only we could pick a gun, we could be a cowboy and go in there, shoot the bad guys and put a stop to it. This idea stems from the time we're kids. What are we told to do with a bully? Punch his lights out. That way, he'll never harass you again. After all, a man takes care of his business, so it's only natural that we assume that superior force equals superior strength. Not only does this have holes in it, but it reinforces this blame-the-victim ideology so prevalent in our culture of "the self-made man."

It's as if you deserve to be killed if you can't shoot back. I also have no use for this lethargic argument, made by both the right and left, that it won't really do anything to have any limits on gun purchasing and who can own guns. As if, "We can't stop every bad person from getting guns, so let's not even try." Having some limits won't stop every bad person from getting a gun, but will it stop a lot of crazy people from getting guns that shoot 50 or more bullets at a time, allowing lots of people to be killed? Yes.
By the same token, there is the other side that calls for more gun regulation. They say that assault weapons can't be used to hunt (unless you're hunting a 25-foot-tall elk that can only be taken down with 50 rounds), and therefore guns need to be gotten off the streets. They tell you the chances of someone breaking into your home are very small. So the solution is to make it illegal to buy them if you can't meet certain criteria. Most of them are on the losing end of the argument, because they're dealing rationally with an issue that is not a rational one. It's not about guns, it's about having the power, authority, protection and control over your life that owning a gun represents.



This is why I have come to realize that arguments over gun laws and regulations are just missing the point. Do yourself a favor: watch the above video, and ponder most of the media discussion on the Aurora shootings. What are they talking about? What could they be talking about, but aren't? Also, if you're in a more edgy mood, you could watch this video, which makes the same points in more vulgar terms:


Though I beg to differ with some of the points this guy made, it did get me thinking deeper about the issue. Is it really about guns? Is it really fair to assume that guns are inherently destructive, insane, or evil? Are they to blame for all the violence and destruction in the years since Columbine? Or is it that the killers have this drive to cause pain and destruction? Even if we were somehow able to make it so that no violent criminal could get a gun, they would find some other way to hurt, maim, or kill the person or people that they hated, or kill for some nihilistic sense of control in an often unpredictable life.

Guns are really a tool. A gun has no determination in whether it will kill, or whom it will kill. Nor does a canister full of serin nerve gas, or a drone bomber. The decision has to be made by a human with control over the tool. Now, unlike many other things you could use to kill a person, a gun is only designed for that purpose, nothing else. Referring to what this man said above, Licoln Town Cars are not trafficked by dealers to places like Syria or Colombia for the purpose of killing and fighting wars. I couldn't throw 50 knives into a crowd of people and kill 50 or more people doing that. If you picked up a hammer and decided to bludgeon somebody to death, it would take a minute or so, if you were able to work quickly, and if the victim hung around long enough. There's only one thing that is designed to kill a mass number of people, at close range, as quickly as possible, and that is a high-round automatic.

Having said that, to argue that guns are the only problem here, and that if only guns weren't around, we wouldn't be killing each other is a simplistic argument. Moreover, it distracts us from the other part of this problematic equation, the part that happens before the gun and bullets are acquired. This relates to what I said earlier about this kind of madness. Even thuogh we don't know the level of it that would make finding a weapon and killing several people in a movie theater, we need to understand a few things about it.

When faced with questions like this, we also hear a lot of talk about violence in entertainment and media. You hear a lot of people say "Oh, movies and video games are so violent these days. They're causing our kids to be more aggressive." Actually, mass communication scholars back in the 1970's came up with a theory that a greater danger was that people would believe that the world was a scary, dangerous place. So sure, some wackos will copycat violent acts they see in the movies, as Holmes did, but most people will just resign themselves to it.

This relates to our culture's role in all this. Why do all these massacres happen? Is it the guns? Is it violent movies or video games? Is it the bad economy that's forcing people out of work and home? Is it mental illness? All of these things could push you closer to the breaking point, but none of them is enough to make a person a killer (even all combined). Based on some things I've seen, I posit that it is about five things.

First, the fact that, as I mentioned, our entertainment, news, and the attitudes of our friends foster suspicion of others, and other groups. Second, we tend to be very defensive about our property and status, which necessitates violent retribution to "wrongdoers." Third, we tend to believe superior force equals superior strength (and thus moral strength). Fourth, we have no education on how to solve our anger without beating the other guy down. Fifth, and perhaps most crucial, we have an imminent sense of threat. That last one may be the igniting factor among all the other "push" factors.

Those are just things to ponder. Don't take this at face value, though. Take a walk through any town in the US, talk to people about dealing with violent criminals. Chances are, you'll see these assumptions surface. Now, I titled this post Senseless Evil. Invariably, when some horrible tragedy like this happens, we wonder how there can be any justice (or a loving God) in the world. We wonder how a person could do such cruel, evil acts.

People then say "Oh, they're just evil people." I, however, believe evil is about what you do, rather than who you intrinsically are, or are believed to be. It's about the choices you make in life. It's whether you give in to the darker, baser parts of your psyche out of weakness, cowardice, or ignorance, or whether you allow it to pass. So the only thing I can leave you with is, just make the sensible, fair, wise, morally strong choices in your life. Don't be afraid to take some time, or ruffle some feathers, to figure out what those choices are. I'll have more material for ya soon!

See ya, and don't forget to live!

Tribune to a Genius: 7 Things I Learned from George Carlin

(An interview of George Carlin by Tim Russert in 2005)
Hello Fellow Seekers of Truth and Life,

I want to talk today about a figure who has influenced my creative life in a profound way. I remember the first time I heard George Carlin's material. I had just turned 18, and I found lots of points in the material. However, his material got very violent, which often disturbed me. I am the type of person who just hears about and sees horrible events happen in media and news, and it scares me, makes me mad or sad. It was almost as if listening to it too much would bring the catastrophes he was talking about into being. So I decided to give listening to Carlin's routines a rest.

Two weeks later, I was visiting my grandmother in Virginia. She had the TV on one Sunday morning, and the newscrawl underneath proclaimed that George Carlin was dead at 71 in Malibu. I remembered that was the same guy that I had been alternately amused, inspired and taken aback by just two weeks earlier. Although I didn't think much about it at the time, it turned out that this man's 50-year body of work would help give my ideas a framework, a means of expression that I hadn't known was possible.

First of all, the reason I am writing this is because we of the anniversary. Not only was this past Friday, the 22nd of June, the fourth anniversary of Carlin's death, but it would have been his 75th birthday. I meant to write this on Friday or Saturday, but it just got so hectic around here that I had no time until this afternoon to write. There are many passages I could write about the life and work of the late, great George Carlin. For simplicity's sake, though (or so I don't bore the hell out of you), I will make each of my main points in one of the following seven bullet points.
Here is my list of seven things I learned from George Carlin. To pay tribute to the common comedic form, I will present them from last to first.

7. Language is an amazing thing, have fun with it. Have you ever taken the time to take apart a word, and then wondered where it came from? The fact is, every word is an interesting and unique concept that came from somewhere. Language is something only humans can use and understand, it is the reason we don't spend all day grunting at each other.

Allow yourself to notice, and be amused by, the ways that words and concepts line up, contradict, make sense, don't make sense, sound similar, sound different, cover up and reveal things. Now if all this sounds too academic for you, remember that Carlin, the guy who took all of this language play into new territory, dropped out of school in 9th Grade. Clearly, you don't need to be an academic to do this.

To give an example, just yesterday, I was grocery shopping, and I picked up a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. This name baffled me. First of all, what does the term virgin even mean in this context? Is it uncured, unsaturated, not heated up? And second, have you ever come across a bottle of virgin olive oil, because I never have. Your only choices in the grocery store are olive oil and extra virgin olive oil, which leads to the third point. What does the extra virgin mean? I always thought that something could be either virgin, or not virgin. There aren't degrees of virginity, it's something you have or you don't, it's that simple. My grandfather first brought the term to my attention, but it is little phrases like this that George Carlin made we who listened notice.

6. It matters which word you use to describe an object or concept. Whatever you may believe, the words you use actually do matter. One of Carlin's running themes was his love of tearing down euphemistic language. When some idea or thought makes us uncomfortable, we try to soft-pedal description of it, so we don't experience the full brunt of what is happening. This is a natural human urge, we want to protect ourselves from the idea of harm. Often, we also want to ignore the idea that we could be wrong.

While this is a natural urge, it does us great harm. It is dishonest, and it hides us from dealing with life as it is, and often, it keeps us stuck in a place that may feel comfortable, but robs us of life force, insight and genuine compassion. For instance, we love to say "I'm getting older," rather than "I'm getting old," because we don't want to face the fact that we will grow old and die too. Such a thought shocks and frightens us at first, but it could also help us treat others with honesty and decency. After all, if we are going to die, too, that means everybody else will die at some point, so we share this "marked" fate, terror, and sadness with everybody else.

I'll give you a macro-example from the Carlin files. After World War I, soldiers would experience a condition of terror, anguish over past battles, regret, and a mental fraying over what they had seen and experienced. This was called "shell shock." A simple name, that told you what you needed to know, with vivid language that gave you the sensation. After World War II, the same state was referred to as "battle fatigue." That name seems to hurt less, like you just need a good night's sleep for it. Then after Korea, it was called "operational exhaustion," a highly mechanical term for a human condition. When soldiers were coming back from Vietnam, they got "post-traumatic stress disorder." This word dilutes the original meaning with several superfluous academic terms, when "shell shock" works just as well.

In fact, such a convoluted term hides a key reality of war from us. Even if you survive a war, it takes a toll on your psyche. I'll always remember one line of Carlin's: "I'll bet if they were still calling it shell shock, a lot of those Vietnam Veterans would have received the attention they needed." Think about the soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq now. What do they have? P-T-S-D. Now they don't even bother to come up with names anymore, they just give it a meaningless collection of letters. Since about the mid-1990's, our language has gone progressively more and more toward abbreviation. This is an example of how dangerous it can be.

5. Producing violent media doesn't make you coldhearted or cruel. As I mentioned above, I was initially turned off by Carlin's repeated wishes for people's deaths. As I grew, I also grew to dislike movies that were excessively gory or violent just for the sake of being excessively gory or violent. This made life tough when everyone around me was thriving on movies like 300 or Inglorious Basterds, and playing war-themed video games, while these were a big turn-off for me.

However, Carlin was different in that he didn't mind if carnage happened closer to him, where there was a chance he could be hurt or killed. I later saw this and understood the conscious nature of what he was saying, and the conscious nature of the audience's laughing in approval. While it still scared me that people could be so blaze about such material, I knew that the intent behind it was to call our attention to something. There was something inherently violent and ignorant in our human societies, particularly in the United States.


Remember this segment from Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine? This had to do with the scapegoating of violent media and video games in the wake of that tragedy. The reason I included it is this discussion of whether violent entertainment is really the boogeyman everybody claims it is. The fact is, there has always been some sort of violence and cruelty out there. Are supposed to just not  talk about it, and hope that'll make it go away? Carlin spoke of the dark urge to see someone hurt in people. If we don't address that, how will we ever move forward.

Whatever you may think of Manson or his music, listen to the last thing he says."I wouldn't have said one word to [the Columbine victims]. I would've listened to what they had to say, and that's what no one did." The people you hear on TV are constantly telling you how to think, and what to do. When you get hurt, in a small- or large-scale way, there is always someone there telling you what to think and do ("You need this product," or "Violence is rampant, and this group is to blame"). This is all to sell a neat narrative about the world, that you must always accept. Because of Carlin, and what Manson said above, I don't think the problem is violent songs, comedy routines, or movies themselves. I think the issue lies in intent. There is being shocking to pander and boost sales revenues, and then there is being shocking to prove a point, and offer insight, which I will talk about in the next point.
4. Take the things that piss you off, and convert them into creative insights about life. You may have noticed a lot of "angry rants" on this blog of late. Believe it or not, I think anger can be very productive for solving problems and helping people in pain. The problem is that people rarely deal with anger in a positive way. Most of the time, people deal with it in the most destructive way possible, by choosing scapegoats, rallying around "heroes" pinning all the bad in the world on the scapegoat, and then taking out their anger on them.
Unfortunately, people either handle anger this way, or cut themselves off from the anger entirely, trying to deny or destroy it. Another way would be to look at the anger, and keep asking "What is behind this?" You could explore what it is about the things that bug you or make you angry. Sometimes it might be insignificant, but other times, there might be something behind it. Carlin routinely talked about things that made him angry, exaggerating the anger for comedic energy, and it usually lead to some insight about life that you hadn't thought of before. Some people were threatened by this, but for many people, including me, this was the insight I needed to grow.
I've lately began making lists of things that bug me. One thing is people with earbuds in their ears all the time. Going to college, I see this all the time, people walking around with those blank looks on their faces, with the damned white headphones in, as if to say "I don't have to pay attention to anything." What bugs me the most is when I see people with headphones on skateboards and bikes. Focusing on this singular annoying thing led me to some creative insights. It led me to think about how people shut down reflexively, was there anything I did that was an easy way of shutting down, getting stuck in my own world. Here, an annoying occurence became an opportunity to reflect and grow. By the way, the things you complain about also apply to you, as I will discuss in a moment.

3. All people are hypocrites, and contradictions in people are a part of life. What was interesting to me is that George Carlin's career grew out of anger toward the Vietnam War, and the culture of Reagan, where it became good to do evil and evil to do good. However, Carlin was not kind toward the people in the government, the corporations. He hoped they were hurt-the same thing he attacked them for doing. As I watched his material later, I saw he was also lashing out at causes and groups usually defended vigorously by the Left of the 60's. Earlier in my life, I had believed that you had to support one set of ideas or another, but this changed my mindset. I realized that my own gut feelings mattered, and I shouldn't ignore them, or try to stuff them into a conventional wisdom box.
I had also assumed that because Carlin had this rough-edged, biting persona on stage, he must have been just bad to everyone he met. Not true. At least, not according to his memoir (which was transcribed by a friend of his after his death). In his memoir, he had only positive things to say about his fellow comedians at the time, and often worked with them anonymously to help their careers. He certainly said what he felt at a gut level, but some of it was brutal, some of it was very insightful. It was all very genuine. I also learned how to disagree. You don't have to accept or reject some point of view across the board. I used to believe that people had one persona about them, and that was what guided their life. I now know that what we say, and what we do, think and feel, often contradict each other. I have begun using this as a part of my life, rather than rejecting or trying to bury it.

2. Beneath race, gender, class, religion, nationality, et. al., there is a common experience we all share. You may have noticed that under labels, I will often include the phrase common experience. This is what  that refers to. I don't know a great way to describe it in words better than this: there are things in life we all have to go through, trials, joys, heartbreaks, and most importantly, those little awkward moments, and the little things you succeed at that make you go "Yes!" Let me let the late, great Mr. Carlin do the explaining.



Truer words have not been spoken.

1. Life isn't nearly as serious as it pretends to be. In life, there are many things, concepts, ideas, entities and processes that pretend to be so important, the most important thing in the world, in history, ever. They aren't. Part of Carlin's buzzsaw approach was exposing life, particularly human life, as a game. We really aren't as important, noble, or paramount as we make ourselves out to be. There will come a time when everything that is here now is dust, invisible particulate matter floating around somewhere. The room you are in, the laptop or phone you are reading this on, your house, your body, all of your possessions, all of that will disperse, and the same is true of me. It's a scary thing, isn't it? It often scares me.

However, our egos have become so inflated by the things of the world that we believe we are the only important thing. What can bring us up, can also tear us down, so the highs and lows of our lives lead to the same illusion of importance, permanence. What George Carlin did was to tear down this idea that human well-being is paramount. Ironically, this urge came from a deep, deep anger over the injustice faced by many people, and it led to many people, including myself, actually discovering something in life. George Carlin once said that each person, by him or herself, is an amazing thing, but once they start to form groups, that's when the bullshit starts. Beneath that statement lies lots of truth. There has never been, and will never be again, something that replicates you. It is imperative that you realize both that you are not as important as you believe, and that you can discover more than you ever thought possible.

This is why I wanted to pay tribute to the late, great George Carlin on what would have been his 75th birthday. Because he took comedy into a whole different dimension. He used to to make us realize things that you couldn't just tell a person. If you tried to tell them, it would end up a confusing mess. If you use humor, that opens people up, and that gives them an experience they can remember, and they can think back and realize, "I had never heard that before." This is what I hope to do with you, dear reader, of this blog, in my own small, humble way. If I can give you that, and you take that gift, open it, and are amazed by what is contained inside, then this blog is worth all the work I put into it.
I'll have more good stuff for you to sink your teeth into soon.

See ya, and don't forget to live!

First Impressions

Hi there,

The following story comes from something that happened to me once. I can still remember it clearly, and it marked a significant turning point in my social life. After I tell it to you, I will explain the backstory behind it, and why I brought it up. So here goes.

I was sitting in the second row, close to the stage, waiting apprehensively. I was listening to Jessica, the girl on stage, playing her guitar, and singing with a big vocal range. She was using the full sound on the guitar, and her voice really flowed up and down gracefully.

Oh, wonderful! I thought. You mean I have to follow that? With my little comedy act? I was waiting to present my passionate interest to the class. This was the second week of my second Fundamentals of Acting semester. The day earlier, I had an idea to share some of the impressions I did with my brother as my passionate interest. My older brother and I use a lot of impressions and obscure references when talking, which almost makes our communication a dialect unto itself.

When I asked Anna, the course instructor here, if that would be a good idea. She said it would be really interesting to see me do them. Later that day, when reviewing which of my "characters" that I wanted to bring out here, I got this huge smile, thinking about the riffs Drew and I had gone on with various different personalities. I thought of our riffs on Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men, and my uncle from back east, whom I told you about a few weeks ago. Today, as it would be my turn next to share these impersonations for the first time, I was getting those nervous feelings.

Then Jessica's guitar number wound up, and we applauded, calling our approval of her singing and instrumental skills. Lots of the people in the class had musical skills. Now it was my turn to show my observational and humor skills. As Anna called for me to get on the stage at the front of class, I got that nervousness in my throat. My nerves were starting to go, and my heart was racing.

I stood up at the front of the class, waiting for everyone to quiet down. "Well, this passionate interest is from something my brother and I like to do," I began. "We have all these inside jokes we like to do with each other."

Anna asked if my brother, Drew, was older or younger than me. I told her that it's just Drew and I, and he's the older one. "Now, I can imitate lots of celebrities, actors, political figures, and so forth, pretty accurately. I can't do everybody, but I'll let you know, upfront, if there's somebody that I can't do."

My legs were actually starting to shake now. I compare speaking in public and acting on stage to jumping off a tall diving board. When you're standing up on top of the tower, it looks really scary, but when you jump, and begin falling toward the pool, the fear dissipates. You are just moving, swinging your body and getting ready to go in the water. I had just jumped, and now the fear was blowing up like a firework.

The people in the class were asking me who I could imitate. Benji, one of the guys in the audience, asked me if I could channel Sarah, the instructor we had the previous semester. I paused for a moment, wondering if it was okay to do a caricature of a person I liked. I didn't know if it was disrespectful, or a putdown, to do this. Finally I just dove into it.

"Se, I don't really believe you were laughing at that!" I started off, playing on her energetic pace and motions," You were showing me you were laughing, but you weren't really doing it. You know?" I chuckled a little, as Sarah would do when she said that. This was always how she started off telling us to go deeper into our actions. "You just gotta...fuckin'...go in there and laugh your ass off...like this." Then I threw my head back and laughed with my whole body, much as she would have done to show us. The whole class was laughing by now.

"My brother and I like to go off on all these tangents," I went on, "Like we have all these lines and actors we riff on. Like one time, up in LA, we saw this flag for Google,  and we went on this tear about how Google was taking over the world. So we went off on this Jack Nicholson speech from A Few Good Men. So we said," I began my impression of Jack Nicholson's facial ticks, with the eyebrows and forehead, and the authoritative delivery as the bad-ass Colonel in that movie. Watch the speech below here.



"Yes, God Bless Google, son! I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself to someone who lives his life under the auspices of the knowledge that I provide, and then questions the way in which I provide it! I would rather you just said thank you and moved along!" I then went further with the "God Bless Google" line of thought, and added this thought I had recently to it. "So when you say your little prayers tonight as you tuck yourself in, you just thank Google for enlightening your SORRY ASS!"

"You do a mean Jack Nicholson there!" Anna exclaimed to me.

"That's as good as it gets!" I answered, still in voice, and with the impression. This had been the most daunting part of my act here. For me to step into this role as the ultimate authority figure, the ruthless Colonel defending, here, the huge search engine, seemed like the most daring place to inhabit for that. Like someplace I didn't belong, but I did it anyway. I switched gears at this point.

"Sometimes, I like to do these impressions of family members of mine. For instance, I have this uncle who owns a farm back east, and he has these games he likes to play with people. He has this gift for finding exactly the, you know, button you push, and it drives you nuts, and he pushes it again and again. Particularly, if we're all eating dinner, he'll say," Now I imitated his low, grumbly voice, "What's the most embarassing thing you've ever done without telling anyone? Starting with you, Caterina." I pointed at Caterina, the girl in class with whom I'd worked on our final scene the previous semester. She was flustered "What, me?" she seemed to be saying.

"That's just an example of the kinds of things he likes to do. And then he has this very unique laugh, it sounds kind of like this. HA HA HA HA!" I mirrored his distinct laugh, which has a loud quality to it, and sounds almost like a repeated quack. People in class asked me to do it again for them."You know that part at the end of the Michael Jackson song, Thriller? Where he says "No mere mortal can escape the evil of the thriller?" and then he cackles? That reminds of how he laughs." Then I did an impression of him saying to us, "No mere mortal can escape the evil of the thriller, Drew! HA HA HA HA HA!" That got another big laugh from the class. People were asking me to do more imitations, but Anna warned them not to ask me to do too many, at the risk of mocking others, perhaps in the audience. I had shown my passionate interest by now.

I can still remember that clearly in my mind. That happened just over a year ago now. It was my first year of studying acting at this university I go to. It was one of the first times that I got on stage, and got involved with something I was excited about. Back then I was not used to doing it. Since, I have started applying that philosophy of exploring the impulses and images that excite me. Back then, I viewed the role that I was stepping into as being so far away from me, that doing it felt like it didn't fit. Still, there was something that made it worth doing. It was just too fun a challenge not to take on. I went up there and showed it, though I was nervous. I was getting the sweaty palms, quick heart rate, I could feel my knees shake at one point, as I said.

Back then, I wasn't used to showing this to people. I had only done it in short bursts with my brother. However, in the year since, I have gotten more creative in what I show, what I talk about, how I talk about it, what I explore creatively. I have habitually begun to go after the impulse, the thing that excites me, to show what I am thinking and feeling. When I do this, it really changes the way I go through life.

So have any of you had an experience like this? Have you ever had a time when you revealed some attribute or talent of yours that people hadn't seen before. Did showing something make your way of life shift? I'd like to hear any responses, because these moments of revelation are what make this blog really come alive. I'll have some more material for you guys up soon.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

To Be or Not to Be (In the Theatre)

As You Like It, as performed by CSULB's University Players (Fall 2011).

Hi there,

I've gone back to class today. This is both good news and bad news. First, it is good news because I will be able to interact more, and thus I will have more material for this blog. My daily interactions with people, and with new discoveries, are what power my creative work, and thus this blog. Over the last year and a half, I have gotten to enjoy going to college. It was like, at that time, it suddenly clicked like "Oh, so that's how this whole thing works, and that's what everyone enjoys about this." This was the ability to relate, connect with other people. I began branching out, and enjoying it.

The bad news, however, is that with all the work, I will not have as much time open for this blog. As I have gotten older, I have had steadily less and less time to devote to my drawings and other work. I have gotten more space in college, in between classes, to read and write stuff to myself. One thing about college is that you can have as much as four or five hours in between classes. This has given me some blocks of time where I can exercise my own gifts of expression.

The highlight of my day was going back to my theater class I am taking. I don't know whether to spell it thea-ter or thea-tre, like the old English spelling. Anyway, this was a course called "performance and rehearsal." What this means is that we, the actors, will prepare our scenes and material, and then, the second half of class, a group of directors (undergrads joining us from another class) will enter, and we work with them, we get their notes on the scene.

I'll tell you, when I got there, I got excited to see my friends that I knew there. Half the reason I enjoy being in the theater department is the kind of people that I have met there. Most of the time before I got involved in theater, my encounters with people on campus were passing. I couldn't really connect with anyone. In most of the lecture hall classes (most lower-division classes required are in lectures), you don't have any more interaction with the person next to you than "Is anyone sitting here?" So, outside of a few club meetings I went to, I had few long-term interactions with people where I went. Certainly, I hadn't had anything that moved my life.

I have only been involved in Theater and acting activity for a short two years now. In that two-year time span, my life and the way I live it have had a sea change. This very blog is evidence of that change. At the end of the Fall 2009 semester, I needed 3 fine arts units, so I was given a choice between Studio Art, which seemed like a natural choice, and Intro to Acting. I forget exactly what it was, but something in me was telling me that I should take the acting. So I signed up for it for the Spring of 2010, even though I had no idea how I would survive the first week.

When I went in, we began work off impulse and visualization. Again, the memory is slightly cloudy to me now, but it clicked with me. All the activities we did were to get us interacting, not just for its own sake, but to realize what drove our actions. About three weeks into the class, it started to become the thing. It crept in as the thing I looked forward to doing, come Monday and Wednesday afternoon. It slowly began to filter out into my understanding of others, too. When I viewed people living their lives as characters on a stage, it inspired much more of a connection from me to them. I could see people honestly, and with empathy.

Once I decided to go into the classes that the majors in Theater went into, everything began to shift. I was no longer the same guy I was before. So, over the past year, I have been adapting to my approach to the way I live my life. This was what I meant when I said that 2011 was "The Year of Living Creatively." It meant applying the way I look at acting, and the collaboration of roles, to the way I have interacted with the people I knew and met, with the knowledge that I find, and with what I knew to be true. Slowly, I have been learning to look at the things I used to avoid, to deny, to look away from.

However much I have come to love the theater, there are things about all this that make me nervous. First, I am worried about becoming just the caricature people paint of actors. That is, the prima donnas who only know how to make themselves look good. The fear of it has largely disappeared for me. I assuage myself by remembering that there are prima donnas in every field who have no appreciation for anything that is not themselves. Also, when you know and care for people that are doing it, the stereotypes lose their importance.

Also, there is this fear about commiting totally to a life in the theater. Even with this wonderful thing that has entered my life, I feel this combination of beign trapped, locked into one path (after all, what are you gonna do with a theater BA besides work in theater?), and feeling like this commitment is too much, too soon. I still have lots of things I want to do in this world. It isn't that I have no idea what I want to do, it's that I have so many ideas of things I want to do. Call me the stereotypical male, here, but I've got some commitment issues.

Another issue is the money. Now, you probably know of the term "starving artist." People in the arts do not make a lot of money, and they have very sporadic periods of work. In the case of actors, they always have to be looking for the next role, unless they have some long-term contract and even then, it's tentative. The only way such a career would be recognized as valid was if the actor got famous and rich. So that's a sad commentary on how we treat the arts. They're useless to the society at large unless you can make lots of money and become famous. As a result, the people that tend to make it big in acting are the most competitive, type-A personalities. Unfortunate, since there are many people that have that gift, that have some message in their being that needs to be heard, that aren't great at making it in this type of world.

So what can I do? I am torn between the world that I knew, the world of safe career paths, of clear trajectories, of clear problems and solutions, and that of creativities, where each person I meet isn't just a person, or a caricature, or just a cog in some big machine. Here, it is as if each person has their own micro world that they carry with them, that they share with their friends, lovers, and family. There are things about the world I knew that draw me in, as there are things about this new world that do. It seems that this new view of the world has been with me all along, just waiting for the right influences to cultivate it.

I have currently come up with the idea to major in communication studies, and minor in theater arts. Part of me feels like this is a lame-ass compromise, but I really love both departments, and it feels to me as if that is the deal that will work best. I really do love the communications department. I'll tell you why, simply because I had one lecture class there my freshman year (three years ago), and it was just damn fun and informative. I could have listened to the professor all day. It had a similar affect, albeit on a more subdued scale, as learning how to act. Now, the field of communications is much more broad, in that it can be communications in business, advertising, counseling, organizations, and culture.

I honestly believe that if people knew how to communicate better, the quantity of suffering in the world would decrease greatly. Oddly enough, the theater experience, because it is about an experience, is about communicating too. It is about showing the truth of you, the actor, and the director and the crew have pieces of their truths, their worlds, which the theater needs to operate. The whole thing is happening right in front of the audience. So you have that experience of the actors interacting with each other, elements of the play interacting, and them all interacting with the audience's feedback.

So theater relies on effectively communicating. It involves picking up the tempo of these interactions, which is what drives the audience's interest in the production. It allows the audience to look at the story, the setting, or the characters, think back to it and say, "Hey, remember that thing? You remember it? That just blew you away, didn't it?" It is in these experiences that we grow, that we become better and richer, as human beings in our understanding of each other and this world. It is that experience that I want to give people, in whatever field I go into, whether it's the theater, or something else. As my first acting teacher told me, "It'll never be a waste."

My perception of time unfolding has also changed since I began studying acting. Before, I went to school with the idea that I would some day earn a degree, and then some time after that, I would get a job, which would one day lead to a career. Now, it is as if each semester, every week, every day, has become something significant, alive, important in and of itself. I can feel the change happen. This can be frightening, because so much change is jarring, but there is something wonderful about the discovery. I still don't have a good idea where I'll be in the next five, ten years, but that's not that bad anymore. That's why I sign off each post with "keep wondering, folks," because being able to keep discovering keeps you feeling engaged. I think everybody should have a chance to do that in life.

Well, I've got a few ideas in the works, but like I said, I've got more schoolwork ahead of me now. I'll blog whenever I can, and we'll have a good time. I really look forward to being able to write on this blog. I'm really excited about the direction this is going.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

"Eventually, Everything Connects"

Hi there,

Well, I'd like to talk tonight about Charles and Ray Eames, two people who I hadn't thought much about until recently, but have been a subtle influence of mine over the years. The reason I bring them up here is because I just saw a documentary on them (Eames: The Architect and the Painter), and I found that the way they worked and what they accomplished had a lot in common with what I desire. As you might know, here in the L.A. area, an exhibit will be shown on the Eames' well-known house up in Pacific Palisades that they designed for themselves in the 1949. Ice Cube did a promo for this exhibit. I didn't know Ice Cube had that background.



The Exhibit is on L.A. art. Anyway, what fascinates me about the Eameses is that they brought all of these elements and fields of design together. They worked in architecture, funiture and industrial design, photography, film and interior design. This diversity in work was inspiring to me, since I've always been a jack-of-all-trades type myself, and I have had diverse elements that I am attracted to. I am interested in politics, environmental issues, interacting with people, capturing images, designing worlds and telling stories that matter. I haven't thought of a good way to do all these things in my career life.

The Eameses also combined their personal, creative lifestyle with their work. For them, there was no separation between life and work and fun. That is really a model for the type of work I would like to be in in the long term. I was pondering this the other day, and I am beginning to realize that your work should really be connected to your joy. It should be something that grabs some part of your soul, and moves it, takes it on a journey. Otherwise, you'll end up like Peter from Office Space, schlepping to work every day, but hating it the whole time.

Breaking out on this new path was not easy for Charles to do. He had a wife, a child, and following an uncertain path in design was not accepted by his then wife. So they split up, and then he proposed to Ray. The two were collaborating on a design for a simple chair, but it fell through in 1940. When World War II was going on, and their design ideas worked well for building more efficient splints than what the military had. So they went to work mass-producing them.

After the war ended, they returned to the original chair design, forming this design. This time, they were successful, and they began mass-producing these. In the late 1940's, they began producing furniture ideas for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. No longer content to simply be furniture designers, Charles and Ray branched out into film and photography. They were commisioned by many companies to make these films, and produce these building designs. One of their main clients was IBM.

An interesting point, particularly for this time, was that Charles and Ray were serious collaborators, in addition to being married. Remember, this was the 1950's, when women had almost no way of achieving things, or figuring things out. Even though Charles was the one to whom the clients went for consulting, Ray was an essential part of the Eames office. Even to have the limited inroads into this collaboration was a significant frontier.

Anyway, Charles relied heavily on Ray's keen aesthetic tastes. On one occasion, the State Department asked them to commission a film on America, to be shown to a Soviet audience. Now, this was to be somewhat an advertisement for America, a tad nationalistic, however, the Eameses had some vision of their own. This vision was what made their design team so dynamic, so forward thinking. The point is, at the very end, they needed a shot to cap it off, which they hadn't decided on yet. So Ray told Charles "[use a clip of] forget-me-nots," these flowers being a universal symbol of friendship. Charles knew enough to take the risk of building on Ray's vision. This decision changed the whole dynamic of the film.

The Eameses made more than 80 films in their lifetime. Through said films, they explored nearly every subject they came across. Charles wanted to make a film about toy trains? Boom! They made Tocata for Toy Trains. They made one about the circus, after the Eameses visited a circus and went to town with photography there. The exhibits they put together also explored many different subjects, from mathematics, to Revolutionary War-Era history.

Of course, the one they are best known for is Powers of Ten. This film, in particular, used to give me goosebumps when I was young, in fact, it still does. It was originally made to make science more accessible to younger students. I remember that even when I was about 7, I didn't get all the concepts, but I got the sheer vast scale of these images and numbers. I was grabbed by the numerical part of it, 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, so on. That made an impression on me that still lasts.



The whole film is available above. It is about 8 minutes long, in its entirety. Watch it! I rarely directly tell people to do things like this, but here we are. Anyway, it taught me, in a subconscious way, about communication that takes place beyond words. This is something that powers my creative work, including this blog. In person, there is only so much I can say to people. With spoken words, I am not the most articulate guy. I often stumble, or have to correct myself. On this blog, or in writing, or on a drawing pad, I can lay out what I want to tell, what I want to show, the interactions I want to explore.

Charles was quoted as saying that film is rarely used as an art. I think this is, unfortunately, correct. Not that there aren't redeeming parts of film, however, film is rarely used in a way that actualizes its potential, in my view. It can be both an art form, and a means of communication. Another beautiful example of this is Koyaanisqatsi. While different in its subject matter from Powers of 10, to me, those two are highly evocative of those same experiences. They have goosebump-inducing musical scores that work well alongside the images, and the narrative structures, to connect you to the nonverbal essence. Even though Powers of 10 has a clearly-defined, scientific narrative structure, and Koyaanisqatsi has a more interpretive form, they both lead you on a journey of the soul, that physically moves you.

It is this type of creativity that I dream of emulating. I hope, in my own way, to create things, and to interact with people. Many times, people will ask me "Why are you so angry?" I am rarely, in fact, angry. I am usually just deep in thought, deep in my internal exploration. There, I encounter many things that pop up, but only some of them make me angry or annoyed. I really like people, as a whole. There are so many things that I want to be able to communicate to people that I rarely can adequately express in words. How I will express them, I still do not exactly know, but I believe I can use my creative mind to come up with the way. Where it will lead, is a discovery I will make. That's why I wanted to bring the Eameses up tonight.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Impressions and Storytelling

Hi there,

Well, today, we're going to branch out in "the arts." Because this blog is not just about my visual art, although that is a huge staple of it. This blog is about visual art, performance, discussions of process, meaning, and even music, on occasion. My brother is the musical one of the family, so I mostly borrow his music, but I will borrow, and look at, these, on occasion.

My subject today is doing impressions of people. This is part of my exploration of performance and character at large. The embedded video above comes from an Inside the Actors' Studio interview with Kevin Spacey. One of my favorite movies when I was in my teen years were LA Confidential and Glengarry Glenross. So I grew up following a lot of Spacey's work, and I was amazed when I fould this video.

For some reason, I really admire people who are able to do these impressions really well. My older brother is one such influence. For a long time, I have done impersonations with him, often in a casual or joking way, paying attention to the surface-level details. It is only recently that I have begun to understand this impression style as a legitimate craft on its own. So let me share with you some of what I have learned about doing impressions.

First, you can do impressions, vocally, physically, or both, of all sorts of people. The most-sought-after candidates for this are actors, celebrity figures, media spokes people, and political figures. Christopher Walken is usually first among choices for impersonation. Some of my personal favorites are Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. People with heavy accents or very distinct vocal characteristics are easier to imitate. If a subject has a more neutral voice, it is much trickier, but if you know what to look for, it is possible.

I used to think that I didn't have an accent. I thought that people from Southern California didn't have any accent. I knew we tend to talk vaguely like Midwesterners, since that is where many early Californians came from. However, even if you do not have an accent that jumps out at people, you still have a distinct way of speaking and using language. I learned in a voice class I just took that it has to do with the way you pronounce verb and consonant sounds. If you are impersonating someone with a distinct accent, pronouncing these sounds without exagerration can really change your body chemistry, putting you in the frame of mind for the "character."

Anyway, the person you choose to imitate don't have to be well-known. You can do one of someone you know well, like a family member, close friend, or someone else. When you do, however, you might take a different tone with them, since you have to talk to them again. Here, it helps to joke affectionately about them, as I do. One of the people I enjoy riffing on is my uncle from back east, for example.

Voice acting professional Jim Ward shows some tricks of his trade.

Another level to this is the physicality of the subject person. Besides getting their voice down, what are their ticks? First off, what sorts of phrases or verbal habits do they have? This is what the above voice actor, Jim Ward, a well-known impressionist, picks up on above. He takes a subtle, defining characteristic of each of his subjects' delivery, such as Al Gore's sighs, or Woody Allen's nasal, twitchy tone, or Jack Nicholson's intense forehead involvement (I've learned that it's harder to incorporate this for us younger imitators), or Bill Clinton's using the "curled index finger" pointing to drive a message home. Then he puts the emphasis on that point, exaggerating it, and building from that mannerism. Now, sometimes, said mannerism could be a physical tick, or some word or phrase the person habitually says.

For instance, the uncle that I just mentioned, at every time where our family sits down to dinner with him, has us do this thing where he asks us all "What's the most embarassing thing you've ever done without telling anyone, starting with you?" He's got this low, grumbly voice, and invariably, whenever he does this at the dinner table, it is to someone across the table, so he will not have to participate.

There are also little phrases people fall back on. On this blog, I always open with "Hi there," and sign off with "keep wondering, folks." For instance, the current president, Barack Obama, at the beginning of nearly every thought, will say "look," or "let me be clear." These are good things to start off with. Then, if they have a tone that they usually take, such as hurried, or agitated, or that of the know-it-all, using that would give some weight to it.

This goes back to something the late, great George Carlin said in his autobiography, "The important thing in [doing an impression] is not just their voice, how they say things, but what the person would say." This is a staple of playing character types. Representing what your subject would say, or how they would say it, would be an interesting character study. I am fascinated by looking at people as characters. To show them openly and honestly, even if making fun of them, is the best way to do it. This does a service for your truth, and theirs.

This element of the truth is what separates just a casual, exaggerated impersonation from something that really looks and sounds like the person you're imitating. I like to talk like the person, but consider what they would say. This is where the storytelling comes in. You are telling a micro-story of what this person acts like, sounds like, and is like.

This is the same purpose behind acting. What are actors but storytellers. Their job is to tell the story of the person they play. They must tell the truth of the person's actions, speech and life. Being an actor, I have discovered, is a great job for people who love people-watching. I like people-watching, even though I have times when I get tired, mentally, and emotionally, from it. You can even get tired doing something you love.

Well, this is the first post of mine in the field of performing, formally or informally, a story. I have stories, large and small, that I like to tell when I draw, and when I do these impressions. My hope is that even though these stories are sometimes ficticious, they are not, in any way, false. I hope, when I tell a story, that it will be true, sometimes to fact, but always to life.

Anyway, what do you think? Do you have a story, book, film, play, or routine, that you really believed in? Did anything make you go, "Hey, that is really true?" Let me know, in the comment box below. See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

2011: The Year of Living Creatively

Hi there,

Well, I know Christmas is past, and it's January now, but I thought I'd show you this anyway. I started this the night of Christmas, and it took me a while to color. I was out of town, and more importantly, away from my laptop, for the past week. I just got back into town yesterday, and I went out to Downtown Long Beach last night, so I haven't have time to blog since then. So here I am to cap off my blogging from 2011.

I started this off as a christmas memory, but it is also a reminder of the feeling of being in church. The feeling is an important theme in my creative work here. I like to create, in the viewer's eyes, the feeling of being somewhere. In this case, it was the feeling of being in a small, cozy church sanctuary on Christmas Eve. In this one, I used more dark tones. I also showed the lights coming down from the ceiling, and from the tree in the corner. The points of light are what give it that cozy feeling.

You know what I mean? Have you ever been in a church, or a house, or anything, at night? It's dark, but the little sources of light or warmth (this goes for cold and warmth, too) make you feel really warm, and secure inside. We all have our little places that we like to go to for this feeling. For some people, this would be a church, for others, it would be a restaurant, or a city, or a club or gathering. People are either given, or find, these places that give them a sense of comfort, constancy, meaning, and well-being. For many people, this is the function of a church, synagogue, mosque or temple. It is social, as well as religious.





The photo above is of the church that I used to go to when I was little, where I went on Christmas Day, as I explained last week. As I grew up, the church and I grew apart. Now, I am largely ambivalent about church, but I still believe that people who are religious can have good motivations. For instance, the ministers at this church run a number of after-school programs, since this is an inner-city church. I did volunteer work for them for four years, as at my high school, 40 hours of community service was a requirement for graduation. The kids who go to this church are often from poor families. They didn't have good educational resources back then (2005 to 2009, a few years ago), so the organization, which my Mom and I worked for, helped them with schoolwork and learning. So this drawing was partially based on this church that I used to attend regularly. I still attend, albeit less often.

I did this from an image I saw in my mind when I thought of going to church. I have been using impulse images more in my work lately than I used to. This year, 2011, I have devoted more attention to my drawing technique. I decided to use my first mental images more in my work. I'd try to think of something, look at what came to my mind, and record that. I used to want to plan out the right way to represent some image. I still do that sometimes, however, now, I am using a much rougher style. The big development of this year is I am branching out.

I said to my friends, It will be sad that 2011 has to be over. This was a good year, overall. In 2010, it seemed like all the news was bad. In 2011, it was about an even split between bad and good news. It was also a big year for my artistic endeavors. I got the idea to do this blog, putting my works up on it. I had to put it on the shelf for a while, then I finally got it up and running on December 16. The end of a landmark year, the beginning of a unique blog.

Well, what I can say is I have many good entries on their way in the year that has just opened, 2012. I will have some more good material up for you soon. Until then , see ya, and keep wondering, folks! I think that will be this new blog's sign-off line.