I'll Know, There and Then

Posted 1:05 PM by sean
This blog goes out to my recently married and those in the conversation of marriage.

If it is actually hard to know when you have met the right one, it's harder to know when you've met the wrong one. We have criteria that stretch all across the board, from hair colour to religion to sense of humor to shoe size, and when you have accepted, as we all must, that some of your criteria will not be met, it's hard to know where to draw the line.

For some of us, it's easy. We picture a life with the person we're dating, and we see a path that is just so obviously one thousand times better than the path we are on now that it makes it easy to commit. I think, for a lot of people, being rich and handsome helps clear this up. If you are a rich and handsome man or woman than a) everyone pictures a life with you as easy and b) your life is already kind of easy, so you can move to the next set of criteria for choosing a mate.

I'm sure we'd like to pretend that this doesn't still happen, but it does. People right now, our age, are getting married to people with money, people with American citizenship, people who own pizza parlors, because it clears up a bit of our future.

This hasn't really happened with the group of people that I am friends with. We are sorta mired in lower-middle to middle-middle class, and we all know each other, and we're all getting married anyway. And some of my friends who are doing quite well are finding it hard to find that special someone, so money doesn't seem to be too much of a factor.

Ehtnicity doesn't seem to be a huge factor, but I have to admit that none of my friends are dating outside the accepted ethnic structure. Everyone's white, and you can go as far afield as Italian, Asian, maybe a little Spanish, but for the most part the ethnic specifics haven't really been a point that has whittled down the field for too many people.

Just outside ethnicity is religion and politics, and honestly, for the most part, those things are so fluid that you really ought to not make a choice based on *only* this. My sister has said she wouldn't date anyone who voted for George Bush, but, she's still willing to date all of Washington State and, y'know, Illinois, so this shouldn't be a problem. Besides all of that shifts under your feet, you can certainly change your mind about politics. And religion is something that becomes more important as you become more part of your community.

Looks... I mean, it really is mostly that, and you can't argue against it. I'd always claimed to live a life devoid of such crass beauty issues, but when it was pointed out that I was willing to date really good looking dumb girls, I quit claiming it. I definitely have never had a *specific* thing I was looking for (like a big breast fetish)...(No, Ian, I'm not talking about you)...(why are you getting so defensive? I said I wasn't talking about you)..., I've always had an appreciation of different kinds of beauty, but I also have generally steered toward the blowing skirts of ladies who gather me to their breasts, so to speak.

But, fine, that all fades and I know it. Not that I've ever been married to someone over the age of 28, but I have the hots for Mary Steenburgen, so hopefully I won't turn in to an asshole. Beauty isn't something you can rely on.

The truth is, there is no answer, no one thing. But I can tell you what it is for me, and if it is this for me, maybe it will be this for my pals and friends who are just married or are considering it.

It isn't the girl you want to be in the foxhole with. The foxhole is an actual life threatening situation that you are pretending the two of you are in together. For me, it's the opposite. A non-life threatening situation that you think you are actually in, and she jumps in with you.

My wife and I both have the crazies. You have them too, and so does the person you're dating. I get the crazies sometimes, and I say, "I know I shouldn't be taking this personally. I know it isn't as bad as it feels. But I can't sleep, I can't eat, I'm fucking miserable". When I tell her the sky is falling, she doesn't even look up. She tells me to get inside and take cover, and she'll let me know when it's all over. She never tells me that the sky isn't falling.

I know my friends hate this, that they might have to do it with their current or future girlfriends. I can think of one friend in particular who's stomach is turning at the thought of having to make someone else's crazy their own. (No, not you, Jonathan.)(Dude, I said not you!)

(Okay. Yeah, you.)

But a great relationship is one where the fine line of embracing the crazy without infantilizing or coddling is followed. "Yes, the sky is falling" met with "but you are strong enough to handle it, now put on your boots and keep walking." Remember, you have to do it for them. But if you can, and if you can find a partner to do it for you, that's really all you should be waiting for.

Fat-ish, funny, and sure... handsome

Posted 11:05 AM by sean
I have been going through a horrible bit of soul searching lately, wondering if I even want to be an actor, which for my level of achievement is *hilarious*. There would be a little bit of outcry, certainly increased if I made an announcement and had a party. But most people in my situation slip out of being an actor like they remove a jacket on a long spring walk, everyone can see your discomfort and losing the jacket just makes sense.

I have stopped acting on several other occassions, so I don't even take myself seriously when I talk like this. But in my recording work and my music writing, I actually feel like I'm building something. If I spend six hours writing a song, there is some hope that the song will go out and build something for me. It might get recorded, it might be performed in the context of something larger, it could earn me royalties.

And the recording work is just something that isn't terribly precious to me. If I record something that I hate, it gets the same attention as something I love, and I do it almost as well. In the last session I did, my mom was producing and she wanted a change to a song. As I was trying to make it happen, she got on the talkback and said, "Do you think that's a bad idea?" and I bellowed, "I think it's a *TERRIBLE* idea, but I don't know anything, let me just do it for you." I don't know which of us is right, I haven't listened to it since I recorded it.

But acting for me has always been something that I take way too seriously. There is a level of fulfillment that is indescribable. What comes to mind are some of the musicals I did as a kid, and some of the straight plays I've done in the last ten years. And, to tell the truth, Lady & the Ladle. Extraordinary that this children's show should end up meaning so much to me, but it's like a tuning fork in my heart. It could be my Mormon upbringing, but there is something about the work I do that involves teaching and inspiring kids that goes straight to the pit of my heart.

The theater is just too precious. It's too important, and I don't have enough control as an actor to say what I want to say. The frustrations I sometimes have are withering to me, body and soul.

I roll my eyes more at myself than you possibly could, believe me. But, I also have to admit that the apparent pretention isn't pretend at all. My working associates know my dedication, they know I live and die on stuff, and maybe I am a drama queen, maybe I go off and rant and bitch, maybe I am a hell of a lot more frail than I pretend, and maybe if I was tougher all of this wouldn't matter. I think about my friends sometimes when I'm writing this blog, and I know they roll their eyes at half of it (the half where I say "My friends roll their eyes at me" - written exclusively so they will call me and say, "we take you seriously, Sean...") but I also know that they probably see me wading through my life with a sense of crippling lack of accomplishment that is quite serious.

Paul Giamati did not get an Oscar Nomination today, and it pushes me ever closer to wanting to walk away. I am nowhere near the actor he is, Jesus Christ "American Splendor" is amazing and "Sideways" is pitch perfect, but he's got to be thinking that it's a really tough road for a guy who doesn't have the genetic gifts of the rest of the nominees. Sure, he's handsome in a way, and he's funny and he's a little fat-ish, but that shouldn't stop him from getting the credit he deserves.

Not even a nomination.

And I am light years and eons behind him in building any kind of a career. I said I would quit when I was thirty, but I gave myself some space because of the divorce. I just never said how much space. It's possible that I may be unable to do much else, I have no marketable skills, but even a lower rung ladder job that I hate is better than frustrations with a career in something I love. It's gotta be.

Perfect

Posted 8:47 AM by sean
I like to leave ten day chunks in my blog to drive down readership every once in a while. Also, there are times when my thoughts really should remain private. I don't have the ability to do anyone any harm, but I think people may think I'm trying to injure them at times, so it's best that I don't say anything.

There is a funny dichotemy that I've discovered in the theater world between, and these are terrible terms so bear with me, "musical theater" actors and "straight" actors. Despite the fact that there is so much similarity between being an actor on stage who sings by himself and an actor on stage delivering a soliloquy, the kinds of personalities it draws are totally different.

I started out as a musical theater guy. For years, there was a sense that the people I was in the show with were all either not living up to my standards, or that they believed I wasn't living up to theirs. In order to succeed in musical theater, there is an understanding that you have to be a triple threat, able to sing like the very best singers, dance like the very best dancers and act with as much skill as the best actors. Hugh Jackman who can do all three is the model.

Because there are three disciplines, there is no way to survive without an almost militaristic work ethic, and that bleeds into the productions. There is a perception that a joke has a correct delivery, that blocking can be devised that is the *ultimate* use of space and contrast, that there is a mysterious set of perfect light cues that need to be uncovered and discovered. I don't mean to describe this as humorless, because there is also a lot of love in musical theater, in fact there is a lot more of a sense of "magic" being created than in straight theater, where it leans more toward "expression". In straight plays, I never hug my director, in musicals, everyone gets little cards and gifts for each other on opening night.

If you have eschewed the idea of being a good singer and a good dancer, then you focus just on acting, and you find that in order to live a complete life as a character, you need to be afforded a lot more latitude. In the same way that there is no perfect way to order a sandwhich (you may order it a thousand different ways, even if your motivation is the same) you realize that there is no perfect way to do the blocking, no perfect way to deliver a joke.

Straight theater can be really frustrating, especially when, for the sake of freedom and expression, your castmates or director start improvising shit that has nothing to do with the script. It's a lot like people who believe they were Catherine the great in a past life, these actors want their characters to have fantastic storylines that they think will reveal some kind of truth. The number of times I've heard about a character's relationship to their dad, which sounded suspiciously exactly like the actor's, is beyond my ability to count. They keep journal entries, they take to wearing similar costumes in regular life, and they are unreliable to *deliver the lines that are written*.

I'm describing extremes here, but the theater world has, on one end, a group of micro-managing emotionally explosive musical lovers who quote the show "Fame" without realizing it, and on the other end you have a group of free-wheeling darkly brooding professional pretenders who sink into their characters so much that they ignore the scripts that their characters are based on.

Obviously, I don't find myself at home with either group. I have a deep love of musicals, but I'm always surprised at how very little fun people are having in rehearsal. There is a sense that opening is impending doom, that one must have a perfected set of business and blocking in order to be prepared to go into the show, and every single run before opening has that desperate air of either proudly remembering every "bit", or of feeling lost when left to your own devices.

But I have to say, I'm usually less at home in the casts of straight plays. A total hands off technique when it comes to lines and blocking, and I certainly feel, y'know, *respected*, but I don't feel like the material is. The rehearsals are always confusing affairs for me, stretches of time playing children's games and talking about scenes our characters might do that *aren't* in the script.

It's easy for me, I'm just a actor, I can talk as much shit as I want and go into every situation and say, "That's not it, nope, that's not it." But I can also tell you that I've been in several plays in the last five years where the actual lines were the lines we all delivered, and we had a sense of when and where it would be best to enter and exit and when to cross, but we also had the freedom to play a moment, to use the audience and the other actors to shape a performance. There is some really nice common ground, that I have found when I work with directors that, to be fair, I have hand-picked.

I will say this, if I had to chose a side to fall on, I'd chose to quit. I enjoy the shows where there is no structure and the shows where there is a micro-managed veneer, but only as much as I enjoy a recording session or a writing session. It's very rewarding and it's better than digging ditches, but it doesn't make me feel any more alive, and it's an incredible amount of work for what amounts to very little pay. I have, unfortunately, set the bar at what is rewarding, and sometimes it's just too high.