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!

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!