I fully expect to be walking down the street and have an arm drop off. Or feel a little thump as my kidney implodes. Something abrupt and permanent. Because so far the aging thing is being very sneaky and slow. Something's got to give.
I've got to give my younger friends a lot of credit. When I was their age, I would have brushed off a parental age friend no matter how deeply immature they are from brain damage. I was never as open minded as they are. Their generation is more tolerant in general.
I was raised in an era when acceptance was being grown. When I was born, black people were just beginning to make leeway in the fight for their rights. Gay people were whispered about if they weren't in the closet completely. Woman had lit the match but not burned a bra yet. If you got preggers out of marriage, it was a tragedy. Divorce was not unusual but not usual either. You were brash and sassy if you said the word "orgasm" aloud. We never heard of "recycling trash" although in my childhood I was terrified of acid raining on my head and nuclear bombs destroying Callicoon, NY specifically. I see myself as a person who has lived several times in worlds that don't exist any more, all crammed into one person.
There was the life time when a disease killed so many young people around me until it was staved off by a handful of pills while friends stood on the edge of their death sentence, rescued at the last minute. That's the time in my life when my parents were still young enough to be parents like in the movies. I lived in the East Village and always felt wonderfully dreadfully alive. That is when I saw now famous rich people naked living in then poor people shitty apartments. High on life or down in the New York City gutter with no in between. It was going to last forever. But it didn't.
And there was another life time when I was sick and my life quit completely. Those are the years when we became permanently dependent on computers and cellphones and I became dependent on, well, everyone. At the end of that time, so many people in my family disappeared, taken by old age and illness that the majority of the people I associated as adults in my childhood were essentially erased. We moved to New England at the end of that one.
And this last one? I stand at the top of the hill ready to fall into the hole that my parent's generation left so empty, vacating it with the end of their existence this time in this world. Not feeling old. Just up to my eyeballs in debt from the other lives. Still looking for new stimulus, new people, new stories to tell. But with joints that are damaged from injuries that never would have bothered me before and a head full of screws. The body has shifted a little too but that's okay because I am not alone and my goals are still keeping me focused. I am less afraid, more accepting, grateful for the people left in my life.
We all just want to live without worry and sometimes there is a price. Practicality. Playing it safe. There is nothing wrong with it. It just isn't me and I doubt it ever will be. Every time I write a damned script or come up with another five minutes of an act I am opening myself up to a process that could end badly. And there is no room to let my body deteriorate. I need all of me in tact mentally and physically. There is pain that doesn't heal easily now if I don't.
So now when I take those steps out of my comfort zone, I am used to it because I have lived it those other times. And I know well that I could die any second because I've missed my demise so many times before. Physical exertion hurts more and, paradoxically, is necessary to insure that I can physically exert myself. Humiliation is not welcome but when the gambles I take creatively go out an ugly death, I know there is an end to the sensation eventually. People are going to cease to exist around me and never before have I felt so certain that there but for the grace of God go I. And the ticking clock tells me to work harder. Because as young or old as I feel, it is finite. A cat only has so many lives.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Define Friend
Two years ago, at a time I would define as the worst period of my life, I was standing on a street corner on the perimeter of Harvard Square distributing sample packets of a popular vitamin supplement. It was in February. I remember this because it is my least favorite month and if the company who hired me wasn't so damned nice, eating glass would have been more appealing. It wasn't a bad product. There wasn't a feeling of selling. It was just cold. And I hate cold with a passion. I was looking forward to wrapping up and defrosting under warm covers.
It was our last day of the three that we had been hired to work and Cambridge was at least a familiar area. The comedy club that I frequented was on one end of the neighborhood. Harvard Law school where I did occasional work as an actor in negotiating classes was near the spot I had been placed. Lots of college kids and tourists from different parts of the world bundled up so thoroughly that even in this exotic mix so rarely found in this part of New England, everyone took on the same dull sameness. Well, most everybody.
I don't know how it started. Probably just me handing him a sample and he saying, "What is it?" But somehow it metamorphosed into a full conversation about food and music and comedy and philosophies of life. He was a musician. I was a comic. It was an excellent conversation between two people who were in the right place and the right time with equally gregarious personalities in a mood to talk.
25 years earlier I lived in the East Village in Manhattan. It was a fairly decent sized neighborhood but I stuck mostly to the 20 blocks or so south, west and east of East 11th Street and 1st Avenue. Neighborhood diners and cafes were very important to the culture of young artists of different ilks in our community. We would venture a little west on weekends and hang out in Washington Square Park in warm weather by the fountain. Go out to the same music venues were many of us also performed occasionally. I would see the same person everywhere. He was a fashionable looking man with a striking resemblance to one of the guys in Milli Vanilli. One day I passed him on St. Marks Street and stopped him. "Hi," I said. "I see you all of the time." He told me his name was Ellis. And from then on we knew each other.
In our society, especially in the acting business, there is a certain amount of bullshit spread around, promises that a soul makes in a moment to check out each other's shows, keep in touch, follow up, whatever sounds polite at the time. But you go home and forget because you are tired. Or you may feel like it is a little creepy for whatever reason.Or you just don't want another human in your life at that moment. Michael told me that he had been a music student at Berklee and performed with a band called NoizTank. I found them on facebook, as promised. And I liked them a lot.
Facebook is a profound new way of vetting friendships. It has altered our way of determining who is going to remain a stranger in your life. The truth is, I don't think I would have been real friends with Ellis if we did exchange that particular information. There is always the silent prayer that a new artist in your life doesn't suck because you don't know how to communicate with someone you are always going to have to lie to about their work. But I discovered during that first conversation that I had with Michael that I admired his work ethic. He was also funny and came from a school that isn't for the half-assed. We share a semblance of ethics.. We like each other's posts. I think his new band is great and hope to see them live.
So does this qualify as a friendship? A person that you met on a street corner that you communicate with via the internet. Someone that you have had a real conversation with exactly once. The information about things like family and friends are contained in a carefully selected filter. It is almost like a work friend. Except the origin to begin with this one was a little different. Our communication was based on some form of mutual respect that caused us to stop and continue the first conversation. Something triggered this thing inside our mutual brains that said, "I want to know more. This person makes me curious and I feel safe enough to reveal who I am."
Its a new world. It is possible that we won't physically meet a lot of people we interact with some day. But I like seeing faces and I love live performance. Human energy is lost with a wall between us. If I met him on the internet, statistically we are so different we probably wouldn't have paid attention to each other as human beings. Maybe listened to a song or read a piece of writing produced by one another. But the spirit would be a little flatter and the music that this band plays comes from a real human being who worked so hard to create it because I met the soul it came out of.
So I guess it doesn't matter if he is a friend or not. He is his own category. It is a good one and I consider myself lucky to be involved in the transaction and I guess that is what counts. The universe has offered me the blessing of this good human in my life no matter how briefly in whatever form to make it better. Giving it a name ain't going to change that.
It was our last day of the three that we had been hired to work and Cambridge was at least a familiar area. The comedy club that I frequented was on one end of the neighborhood. Harvard Law school where I did occasional work as an actor in negotiating classes was near the spot I had been placed. Lots of college kids and tourists from different parts of the world bundled up so thoroughly that even in this exotic mix so rarely found in this part of New England, everyone took on the same dull sameness. Well, most everybody.
I don't know how it started. Probably just me handing him a sample and he saying, "What is it?" But somehow it metamorphosed into a full conversation about food and music and comedy and philosophies of life. He was a musician. I was a comic. It was an excellent conversation between two people who were in the right place and the right time with equally gregarious personalities in a mood to talk.
25 years earlier I lived in the East Village in Manhattan. It was a fairly decent sized neighborhood but I stuck mostly to the 20 blocks or so south, west and east of East 11th Street and 1st Avenue. Neighborhood diners and cafes were very important to the culture of young artists of different ilks in our community. We would venture a little west on weekends and hang out in Washington Square Park in warm weather by the fountain. Go out to the same music venues were many of us also performed occasionally. I would see the same person everywhere. He was a fashionable looking man with a striking resemblance to one of the guys in Milli Vanilli. One day I passed him on St. Marks Street and stopped him. "Hi," I said. "I see you all of the time." He told me his name was Ellis. And from then on we knew each other.
In our society, especially in the acting business, there is a certain amount of bullshit spread around, promises that a soul makes in a moment to check out each other's shows, keep in touch, follow up, whatever sounds polite at the time. But you go home and forget because you are tired. Or you may feel like it is a little creepy for whatever reason.Or you just don't want another human in your life at that moment. Michael told me that he had been a music student at Berklee and performed with a band called NoizTank. I found them on facebook, as promised. And I liked them a lot.
Facebook is a profound new way of vetting friendships. It has altered our way of determining who is going to remain a stranger in your life. The truth is, I don't think I would have been real friends with Ellis if we did exchange that particular information. There is always the silent prayer that a new artist in your life doesn't suck because you don't know how to communicate with someone you are always going to have to lie to about their work. But I discovered during that first conversation that I had with Michael that I admired his work ethic. He was also funny and came from a school that isn't for the half-assed. We share a semblance of ethics.. We like each other's posts. I think his new band is great and hope to see them live.
So does this qualify as a friendship? A person that you met on a street corner that you communicate with via the internet. Someone that you have had a real conversation with exactly once. The information about things like family and friends are contained in a carefully selected filter. It is almost like a work friend. Except the origin to begin with this one was a little different. Our communication was based on some form of mutual respect that caused us to stop and continue the first conversation. Something triggered this thing inside our mutual brains that said, "I want to know more. This person makes me curious and I feel safe enough to reveal who I am."
Its a new world. It is possible that we won't physically meet a lot of people we interact with some day. But I like seeing faces and I love live performance. Human energy is lost with a wall between us. If I met him on the internet, statistically we are so different we probably wouldn't have paid attention to each other as human beings. Maybe listened to a song or read a piece of writing produced by one another. But the spirit would be a little flatter and the music that this band plays comes from a real human being who worked so hard to create it because I met the soul it came out of.
So I guess it doesn't matter if he is a friend or not. He is his own category. It is a good one and I consider myself lucky to be involved in the transaction and I guess that is what counts. The universe has offered me the blessing of this good human in my life no matter how briefly in whatever form to make it better. Giving it a name ain't going to change that.
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