There is no "Right"

Posted 11:04 AM by sean
I had to go to an audition yesterday where I had to strip down to my underwear. In the final commercial, the character I was trying out for would be completely naked, his critch pixelized. Naturally, this would be funny, if they're calling in guys like me. Jordana mentioned that it would terrifically amusing for Ian if I got my first national commercial by being fat and funny.

The interesting thing it that I was at about the 30% mark for fatness in this room of guys. There were a couple of guys smaller than me, but almost everyone was huge-mongous. And everyone was shirtless.

I'll say this, if they're looking for body hair, I got everyone beat.

They probably aren't looking for body hair.

The thing with auditioning is that you have to just decide that you are you, and they are either looking for you or they aren't.

(Sorry, quick aside, there is no "thing" with auditioning, and no advice that anyone should ever take or give in this matter. There is nothing in the world so completely based on visceral reactions than casting, it's a first second yes or no that stays with you, or maybe it's a long thought out process, but there is no way to tell. As my agent said, "you could be third on everyone's list and get cast, just because there is infighting and no-one wants anyone else to win". It's a ridiculous life.)

There are actors who compile as much information as they can and they try to mold themselves for an audition, which always struck me as strange because their performances are almost always just versions of themselves. I go into an audition and figure they aren't gonna cast me anyway, but if they do I can start working with the director on creating the character once I've, y'know, *read the script*.

You want to be "right", you want to be "good". It's interesting to me, this musical we are writing has had totally divergent reactions to it. Everyone who is a fan of musical theater, particularly anyone who has a love/hate relationship with old musicals, has loved the music we recorded and loves the ideas and humor in the book. My friends who are outside this world have been *silent* about the songs and the show. It's the same silence usually reserved for other friends who make terrible movies or write awful songs.

But, there isn't any "good" or "right". I said the other day that I hate almost all the music I heard while in Chapel Hill, and I said it because I've thought it a thousand times. I would go hear live music and wish I was doing *anything* else. I *loathe* white boy funk, I *loathe* dirty guitar based southern rock, I *loathe* self referential inside jokes and sloppy edge-of-your-seat drumming.

But these things aren't "bad". I understand why people love the Chapel Hill scene. For me, there is a difference between the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Vernon Dalhart, and I just prefer Vernon Dalhart. I am uncomfortable with proud sloppiness, with bold diletantism, (and yes, I say that as a man who is writing a musical despite having no advanced degree in music composition) but I also understand that to someone else, it has an immediacy and an energy that the over-articulated pop, hip-hop or musicals songs don't really have.

I do sometimes wish that there was a way all of these things could be discussed without it seeming like feelings will be hurt. Unfortunately, my own disregard of most people's opinions is probably the first major problem with having a free flow of ideas. I'm extremely thin skinned, but I slip quickly from disagreement to disrespect, and that really sucks on my part.

I'm proud of the fact that there is some art that I like despite disliking the artist, and that I can generally separate my friends from the work they produce, but I have always found myself in the unfortunate position of disliking most of the people who like the same stuff I do. I have a punk-rock attraction to my friends and an uptight approach to music, all of which makes for strange bedfellows.

Some Pictures

Posted 12:19 PM by sean
They don't want us taking pictures of the subway, I understand that. I mean, I don't understand that, but I understand that they don't want us to. But this is one of the most breath-taking places in my daily journey to and from the city, and there's only a little bit of subway involved.

This is the N platform, looking out over the Triboro

And, just one more because I wasn't actually *in* the subway when I took it. I'm fascinated by the way the train sometimes looks like it's carrying just heads, rows and rows of head wear, and they sometimes put up adverts that help with that look.

The girl in front is real

And, for all you New York theater types who are rehearsing a show right now, I thought I'd post a picture of the space where we're rehearsing. It's absurd.

You could fit three downtown theaters into this performance space

Crying Wolf

Posted 12:59 AM by sean
Best to avoid this one. Don't come crying to me if you don't.

I don't write this blog for you. That is, unless you are one of the people that I normally talk to or send email to. Those are the people I write the blog for. And I'm not writing it for them, I'm writing it so they can take a deep breath and deal with me when they want to, they don't have to have me invading their inboxes with either sappy long winding anthems about how lovely and lucky I am or hateful missives about how cursed I am. I write it to fulfill my pathetic need for attention without imposing any of that on my loved ones. This is my blog, if you come here, you're gonna get what you came for.

I'm writing at 1 in the morning. I'm doing this despite the hideous headache and the taste and feel of vomit in my back teeth. See, I made the mistake of eating Tai food at 7:45 tonight.

It may not seem like much, but that's because it hasn't been added to the laundry list of other things I have done wrong. I spent a couple of years smoking. I spent a couple of years eating more calories than I burned, and I've stored those calories by expanding my fat cells.

Huh. I guess it's not so much a "laundry list" as it is, y'know, basically what everyone else in America has done. Except for the part where I actually quit smoking and spent two thousand two hundred dollars and countless hours in a gym trying to lose the weight, only to wake up one morning fatter than when I started. And then, I made the mistake of ordering and eating a standard portion of Tai food. Yeah, I smoked for a coupla years, I gained some weight, and then I ate dinner. Not everyone suffers much from having done these things, in fact it could be argued that most people treat their bodeis way worse than this, but, y'see, I'm fucking *delicate*.

I have made this mistake before. In fact, last night, when I hadn't eaten dinner until about 10:00, I got a turkey sandwich and ate it. I knew I was running a risk, and sure enough, by about one in the morning, I was *actually vomitting*.

Yeah, see, I have GERD, or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. You might think you have it as well, but since it effects about 7 million Americans I doubt you're right. The acid in my stomach kicks up in to my throat when I lie down, if there is too much of it. It's like the cap that is supposed to sit on the top of my stomach is lose, and acid spills up unless I am sitting *all the fucking way up*. And food goes with it. Into my throat, back up into my mouth, bathing my esophegus and vocal cords in acid.

GERD isn't just heartburn. GERD is when the sphincter to your esophagus doesn't work to the point where your life is altered. Like, let's say, it's one in the morning, you got no sleep the night before because you were up all night vomitting, and now you have to sit upright in a chair with a pounding headache and vomit in your teeth, which you can't brush out because you're so naseous that putting a tooth brush in your mouth will make you vomit more.

And more good news. It's ruins your ability to have any kind of stamina as a singer or a performer. I have been able to do plays largely because I am obsessive about controlling my voice. I've stopped going to clubs, I never listen to live music any more because I can't risk trying to speak over the crowd. I went to a party two nights ago and had to leave at eleven because I had *lost my voice*. I'm a musician who can't go see other bands perform, I'm a professional singer who loses my voice at the drop of a hat, I'm a guy who is essentially useless except as a party clown who has to leave every party the second the decibel level gets up to the point of "fun".

I'm extremely careful, and my wife is stridently diligent. It's a wonderful existence, looking at the clock, thinking "can I eat this potato chip, it is past 8 PM" and looking up and noticing that look of concern on her face. The concern is because I wake her up *VOMITTING* in the middle of the night, but after a lifetime of being the fat kid, it's hard not to respond with hurt feelings when someone reminds you not to eat.

So, I'm careful. I quit smoking because my doctor told me it was making the reflux worse. (I've since found out that the weight I gained after I quit *definitely* made it worse and that the smoking had nothing really to do with it, but at least this way I'll get cancer of the throat instead of the lungs. I'm sure there are lots of roles that call for one of those South Park Ned neck buzzers.

Y'know. Roles. For my acting career.)

I'm careful, I don't eat after nine. I even find myself panicked about it, begging everyone to *get dinner now*, because I know if I don't eat until later I'll be puking all night. I know that pizza will make me sick no matter what, so any time there is pizza I try to eat before or wait until after. Or, y'know, have a couple of bites and then stay up all night vomitting.

There isn't a single item, all day, that doesn't get the once over before it gets eaten. Like a neurotic thick glassed-asthmar ridden nebish, I plan for the end of day meals first thing in the morning, figuring out when I can eat so that I'm not left at 8 PM, still hungry and waiting for a delivery boy or water to boil. 8 PM is too late for me. If I start digesting at 9:30, I'll be vomitting by one.

That's the other special wrinkle. I'm not sure if I've yet mentioned that I vomit when the reflux hits, but, yeah, I puke. Never in one flash sitting, the way you might when you are actually poisoned. It usually takes three visits to the puker, about every forty five minutes. I puke out whatever is in my throat, go lie down, wait for it to fill up again, puke that out, start over. Three is the average, which, right, do the math, is about two and a half hours. Starting at about one in the morning.

So, I've learned. It's a capricious ailment, there is no way to control it. If your Tai food comes at 7:30 and you're done eating by 8:10, you might be fine, but there's probably enough fat in it to drive your acid production through the roof. So, if you're like me, you have some choices to make. If you are disoriented and exhausted from the rounds of puking you did the night before, you will keep gagging on your vomit, occasionally throwing up into a tee-shirt or something by the bed and convince yourself that *that* should be enough, you can sleep now, only to have it repeat on you the second you slide down off your six stacked pillows.

So, you've got a decision to make. Are you going to go to the bathroom and spend half an hour making yourself puke up everything in your system, or are you going to find some place to sit all the way up? Because those are your only options. I've spent night after night with a finger half way down my throat, praying that I could get all the food out of my body in enough time to have five hours of sleep. And I've woken up, gagging, laying sideways on a couch that I thought I would stay awake on.

But, don't think that, just because I'm vomitting all night, that I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow. Tomorrow might be the day. Opportunity will knock on my door some morning, and I don't dare be in bed when it happens. I've sent out headshots, I've layed the seeds, I've put my best foot forward with a shine on my shoes and a melody in my heart and I don't dare sleep in for fear of missing it when my big break comes along. Tomorrow will almost definitely be like all the other days, days where success is measured by headshots mailed and phone calls placed and quarter notes written rather than anything coming to any kind of actual fruition. But there is a tiny chance that tomorrow will be different, and that the difference might be better. And, when a contract is mailed to me or a phone call comes my way, or those quarter notes become a song, you, my faithful blog slogger, will be the first to know. There is almost no chance that tomorrow will be better, but that tiny sliver of doubt is the only thing I have, and if I sleep through it, I will never forgive myself.

For now, I sit up, in my chair, sipping water to remind my peristalsis that it should be heading ass-wards and pray for sleep.

Squalor

Posted 1:46 PM by sean
Good grief, it is just horrible outside right now.

In New York, you get days like today in January, there's just no way around it. Wait, let me try to take a picture...

Yeah, you can't really tell.

I've said before that I have been told that only poets and madmen take the weather personally, but let me see if I can put my finger on what it is about this weather that is so frickin' horrible. It is cold, but it isn't kill-you cold, it isn't the kind of cold that creates any real *drama*. It's not like I can say, "Oh, shit today is *terrible*" without some asshole (probably you) writing me and saying "There are mudslides and tsunamis, you jerk, you can't handle a little frozen rain?"

Yes, for the record, I can handle it, and I know that my west coast friends are having it tough, but this weather is worse to me because it is *boring*. *It* is boring, and it makes the rest of my life boring. It doesn't inspre a cuddle by the fire because, of course, in weather like this it is worse looking than it actually feels, so every building is heated to a cozy 87 degrees, including our apartment. It's thirty eight degrees outside, and I have mushrooms growing under my window sills.

But, you have to go outside on a day like this because if you don't you can actually hear the sound of your muscles turning into fat whistling in the silent moist hot freezing rooms of your apartment. Going outside isn't simply that, however. You have to put on your seven layers of clothes, despite the fact that even two layers makes you uncomfortable in the swampy heat of the apartment. Each shirt and sweater is designed to either go over your body or one layer, and you have to convince it that it's got to stretch over two, three, sometimes four layers, so that inhalation changes from an involuntary to a labored muscle movement and the inside two layers are immediately soaked in sweat from the heat.

But when you go outside, you are confronted by what the weatherfolk call "freezing rain" but which we in New York know to be "thawing rain". Sure, it was frozen, right up to about ten seconds before it hits you, but during that time it has warmed to about 36 degrees, ready to become completely liquid and roll down the curve of the back of your ear, slide behind your scarf and travel the length of your neck before hitting the collar of your jacket. Once the thawing rain hits your jacket, it's released as steam back up toward your glasses.

Even worse is that all of the thawed rain gets trapped in your jacket. Each step and your clothes weigh more, there's more mud on the cuff of your pants, there's less possibility for movement. It's like your jacket is a whale and the moisture in the air is plankton and you're just coffee-flitering your way down the street, getting mustier and heavier and sweatier as your pant legs refreeze for some reason and rub against the chicken skin on your thighs. You can actually smell your own exertion from inside your well-named sweater, but your legs are chafing against your dungarees.

If it was eleven degrees, then at least you'd be fighting for your life, if it was 46 and sunny, you'd wear a jacket and it would feel "brisk". But 37 and freezing rain... With Mac's permission, I'm gonna quote my favorite play. This is one character describing February 1998 in New York.

The city seemed... unearthly, all "Blade Runner" and shiny in the downpour. Like mercury, these thin, viscous, silver stabs of ice all down my back and down my chest. I felt like they must be freezing onto me, imprinting on me permanently, like if I looked under my shirt later I would see this living silver map all over me, forgotten countries and lost seas, "Here there be dragons."