An interview about feminism, literature, theater, politics, philosophy and On the edge of/a cure

Very happy to link to this on camera interview I did with the lovely David Andersson of Pressenza's Face2Face. 

The conversation was wide ranging and touches on feminism and theater, literature and politics, philosophy and perception and how that is all embodied in my newest play On the edge of/a cure (from which I read), that will be presented as a staged reading by Rogue Players in May.

I would love it if you would watch the interview, tell me what you think, and please share it if you like it. I have never done anything like this before, and I have to give a special shout-out to my friends Gina Dorcely and Julie Boak for helping me prepare. Many friends helped as well, but they made sure my look was right, and while that might sound superficial, trust me, when you are being interviewed on camera for the first time, that is as deep as it gets. For someone who has had chronic visibility issues (as in wanting to disappear but also somehow be seen), doing this interview and having it look and sound good is not only helpful (hopefully) for the ideas conveyed and my own work, but also deeply healing.

I was so impressed with David Andersson, how well he listened and understood the ideas and concepts I was airing. What a rare thing to feel one is having a real conversation about such topics in any environment, but even more surprising when it's on camera. As awful as the behavior is that has been exposed in the #metoo movement, I keep finding male allies who are sincere and caring. My theory is that the bad guys are not the majority but they have gaslit women and most men into believing they are, thereby masking their bad behavior as "normal." It's not normal. It's ridiculous. So, kudos to David who can listen, ask great questions and care enough to engage with the answers women give.

I have been neglectful of this blog because of so many things happening at once, which followed an extended period of grief, that still pops up once in a while. So, this kind of happy event is a welcome relief and respite. Something else I have been doing that has helped a lot is studying Qigong alongside my yoga practice. My energy levels have increased dramatically as has a kind of innate resiliency. Indeed after a couple weeks, I realized I was not depressed, but depression had become so normal to me, I didn't even realize there was another reality. Happily, I am no longer depressed after years of being so. Who knew?

In other good news, the fabulous women of the IWW workshops (there are now two!) invite you this Wednesday for a Full Moon Equinox Reading at Tannat Wine & Cheese up in Inwood, the top tip of Manhattan. Invite below. If you are in NYC, come along. These women are rocking my world.

There may be a space or two opening up in the workshops, so get in touch if you are interested (email on flyer below).

31 years of not killing myself one day at a time....

I have not been blogging much because I've been working on some new writing, something that may in fact never see the light of day but seems to be important for my psychic survival.

Somehow this relates to being 31 years sober as of yesterday. Because while I do talk about this process periodically, it's mostly something I do in private.

I can say this about that however: it requires a continual excavation of the self and a commitment to helping others do the same, to find a way to walk through each day without a drink or a drug to dull the pain. Or whatever else one might want dulled.

I am exhausted and not sure why I am writing this now, but today was a gift, was able to share some of what I have learned with a dear friend, go to yoga and feel my heart and how tight it is right now, how my shoulders are protecting it, how they probably always have been, how painful that is and how compassionate I need to be with myself even so. There is good reason for that protection. It is tempting to be disappointed in myself that I still hide out, still fear people, still fear a lot of things. But that is as ridiculous as being disappointed in anyone else for being afraid, which I rarely am, not if they are aware of the fear anyway.

Sobriety is a paradox of both having to become aware of my darkest and most vulnerable parts, but also somehow give them space, not reject them, because that causes denial or dissociation. It seems to be for me these days about holding space for infinite complexity including massive contradictions and conflicts within myself. I am committed to not exiling parts of myself because they are not convenient or are embarrassing or whatever. This can be challenging and sometimes a pain in the ass to be honest.

However, as I walk through this journey day by day, both internally and in some cases within my writing, I feel I land more firmly on the earth, touch down even to the ocean floor of my own psyche, that vast silence filled with strange creatures and detritus thrown from the surface that just kind of landed there.

I have some deep frustrations with some external situations over which I have limited control, some shame over certain career achievements not having been reached. So much shame I don't really want to say that out loud, fearing judgment. But since this is all about being transparent with myself, it seems absurd not to say it.

But the larger fact is for all this, I don't want to drink or take any substances today, and I'm not acting out in other ways to ease the pain or confusion. Sometimes that seems like a ridiculous thing to say out loud after 31 years, but since I am aware of people who have gone out drinking after 10-20-30 years sober, and some who have died as a consequence, it's not a small thing.

Long term sobriety is not glamorous, it's life experienced - everything all the time - with the volume turned to 11. As I have said before - life without shock absorbers...and no windshield.

However, there are moments like today when I can talk to a dear friend such that my experience of this walking can give relief, maybe shed light, or other times I can talk to someone who is new to this life and help them stay sober another day. Then all the muddling through and the seemingly at times absurd lengths I go to be honest with myself and others that frankly at times seems to verge on self-destructive, has meaning.

I wish I could say which way to go forward with my life was crystal clear. It's not. I have lived one day at a time for so long now I don't think I know any other way. Each day is about being more or less in tune with a sort of internal divining rod that I let guide me.

I do meditate every day. I try to do some yoga and walk. I write most every day. I try to be a decent human being. This year I'm also doing a fair bit of political work for obvious reasons, like - you know - survival, but am grateful for having found a way to do that that is both relatively simple and incredibly effective.

I hold space for others who are going through tricky changes and who are discovering their voices - in life and art. I spend a lot of time - that I love - working with other writers - as a teacher, coach, editor and friend.

I wonder what has happened to my theater work as a director, I seem to only be writing now for the most part. I kind of miss the rehearsal room but my internal divining rod has led me away from that for the lasy while. Will it lead me back? I don't know.

So much I don't know.

But I am sober. I have walked through a lot of life this way, more years than I was alive when I hit my bottom at 23 - a horrifying sense of not even existing in some way - not to mention not being able to even get drunk anymore. I wish I could tell you it's all been a glittering triumph or that I was a paragon of mental health, but that would be a lie. It's been a journey, one that still continues. A bumpy ride at times, other times exhilarating and seemingly effortless, some years full of grief and low level depression, and some moments even now, 31 years later, when it feels like there is a trap door that has opened up beneath me that I tumble down wondering when I will hit a bottom, seemingly lost and thinking: wait, what? I'm 54, shouldn't I be you know More Together Than This?

I try not to take these moments of confusion, which at times are painful, out on anyone, but sometimes I do, mostly the people closest to me of course. One of the things I am examining so closely now is how I navigate such things and why. Imprints from a chaotic childhood as an only child amongst multiple caretakers most of whom had wildly different value systems from one another and most of whom were not really meant to have kids but there I was - the proverbial inconvenient truth. Sometimes consequently, I feel safest when alone, because only then do I have to account to no one. That is an illusion of course, because it's not like all those people and experiences just vanish when I'm by myself.

Alcoholism amongst other things is a disease of isolation, it wants you alone in a room and dead. So, this is one of my primary conflicts, both desiring being alone and knowing at times I need to resist that urge. To allow others to see me in more vulnerable states, which I find so shameful, especially fear.

I was told when I began recovery: you need never be alone again. I did not understand it then. But I do now. I might feel lonely. I meet be alone, but I am not alone. I am connected to so many people and to whatever powers this internal divining rod and a sense - astonishingly enough and more and more - of a place amidst the cosmos. Hard to explain that and won't even try at close to 4am, but it's a great piece of knowledge - not as in facts but as in something far deeper.

Finally, also, a sense of happiness seeing people younger than me agitating for a new and better world. I remember so vividly being that age and agitating my heart out, but it was the Reagan era and no one listened. What a joy it is to see these young people be heard. It gives me great joy. My friend Spencer once said he felt that those of us who don't have our own children have a certain love to offer the world and young people specifically that those with children have to reserve for their own kids, and I feel that now more than ever. I feel an optimism for the future that I have never felt before. I don't know if I'll be alive to see it in full flower, because when I mean future - I mean Future as in 30-50 years from now, but there is hope.

I mean to do my best to help keep the world alive for this new generation to take over. I used to joke with my theater work I felt like those medieval monks who hand copied the Greek and Latin texts in monasteries to keep them alive until those ideas finally fueled the Renaissance. And I see now it's not just the theater, it's my whole life that is this, living and creating, in hope for this new world that now seems possible - a tiny glimmer on a horizon - one that I will make whatever is left of my life's work to not see extinguished.

What does this have to do with sobriety? A lot actually, because in staying sober and helping others do the same, it's the same kind of thing. Passing on what I have been given, keeping alive something that is only kept alive by free action of people who are never paid, except in the gift of our own sobriety, our own lives.

But now I have rambled enough for the time being. Thank you for reading, for bearing witness, for holding space.

Now what?

I was writing the below as a FB post, then realized it was a blog post, so here it is:
In case anyone is wondering why I was not surprised when DT won, indeed predicted it, and why not so sure about Dems getting Congress in 2018, it's in part due to having lived with my grandparents during Watergate, and hearing my grandmother say over and over again "everyone does it, he just got caught" and blaming everything wrong with the world from oil prices to speeding cars on the Kennedys. (We lived btw next to Hyannisport, so most traffic violations were their (the Kennedys) fault, just so you know...) Plus she was irritated that her soaps had been preempted by hearings.
The 1970s included this, too. Archie Bunker was not just a sitcom character, and his sons and daughters are alive and well in 2017. Do not overestimate public opinion based on your friends, who probably mostly agree with you. Because like they're your friends.
And honestly, I am thinking a lot about this, in part because I wrote a book about both my grandmothers (the other one, Jani, would be at Women's Marches et al) and so am considering this all deeply, not flippantly. How do we reach across our borders. Seriously. It's easy to dismiss people and wish them ill. But we have a real problem here. I am looking for any serious proposals about this.
Even in All in the Family there were both viewpoints, even if in joke format. Where does that happen now? I don't mean accepting DT by the way - don't get me wrong. I really think he's a monster, or at least clinically a sociopath. I mean accepting how we got here and what to do Now. Berating people who voted for him is not going to get us out of here. And we really Have to get out of here.

I spent years trying to get into my grandmother, Dick's head and write from her POV. It was really fucking hard, sometimes I thought I was losing my mind, but I'm glad I did that. There is pain, there is a lot, there is fear. We all share that, but where and who we blame for this fear and pain and hardship ends up defining our politics. But my suspicion is the only way through this is to get under that to the fear and the pain. To meet somewhere we can meet. I am not sure how to do this. I am as sure as I can be about anything that we must.
And no, I am not asking anyone who feels directly attacked by anyone because of racism or any other hatred to do this. I think I am speaking here mostly to my fellow white people. Because folks, we gotta do something. We can't just be chatting amongst ourselves. That is getting us precisely nowhere.

Reflecting on Universal Robots

Many reviews have already been written about Mac Rogers' Universal Robots, which was originally produced to great acclaim in 2009. Consider this post then more of a reflection, because I spend more time discussing the ideas implied by the play rather than the production itself. I have tried hard to avoid spoilers, which means my argument at time may seem oblique, and in the end to understand this reflection, you ought to go and see the show for yourself.

Universal Robots, running now through June 26 at The Sheen Center, produced by Gideon Productions, and directed beautifully by Jordana Williams, has a lot to commend it. Inspired by Czech playwright, Karel Capek's R.U.R., and using bits of Capek's life within its structure, the play is a parable about humans trying to make automata, later called robots, that are almost human, but not quite, and the attendant issue of humans acting like monsters, thereby making the robots seem more human. A theme we have oddly enough become accustomed to since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Indeed, Rogers manages to create his own monster that appears to draw (aside from the major chord of R.U.R. and Russian Futurism) equally from Blade Runner, Frankenstein, and the gloriously cheesy television series V - creating a delightful mash-up up of high and low-brow references.

The actors all did a splendid job, keeping the presentational style alive without turning their roles into one note. The barkeep/robot (Radosh/Radius), Jason Howard, is the obvious standout, because he moves through so many phases of human-robot-human(ish), which he does with astonishing precision. Williams has staged the play with real dexterity. The only issue I had was not being able to hear lines when large scene changes were happening, but that can be fixed easily enough. What she and the designers have created on stage with a limited budget is all in all quite wonderful.

There are many ideas explored in the play, both directly political in the first part and implicitly political with the growth and evolution of the robots in the second, when they inevitably overtake their 'masters.' Putting this event in the context of political revolution (which is debated in the first part under the guise of Karel, the playwright, discussing his politics and art with his friends at a cafe, where they are served by a humble bar-keep, who turns out to be a pivotal robot prototype) is a canny context, even if I disagree with the implications of this context as the plot of the play unfolds.

Lovers of science fiction will be particularly happy seeing this play, because Rogers is very good at playing with this genre in an intelligent way. I was somewhat discomfited by the seemingly facile glazing over of genocide at the end, though I imagine that was intended to be ironic.  The issue I have with the speculative genre - and this is admittedly a taste thing - is that - not dissimilarly to the robots - we are in a world that is created entirely by the author. Of course arguably that is true of all plays, but within science fiction the author creates all the rules by which his or her world runs. Therefore, if you begin to question those rules, you feel a bit silly because you have no 'real world' to which to point without seeming hopelessly humorless or dull-witted.

I think this issue became bigger for me because Rogers chose to contextualize this parable within a semi-biographical-historical context rather than a purely fantastical one. Therefore, I could not help but wonder what his fictional robots implied regarding real life political change and revolution. The implication seemed to be that any revolutionary ideas are suspect and lead to violence. That then is an argument implicitly for a kind of pleasant, humanistic status quo, which is embodied here by clever, good humored artists who are supported by inherited wealth sitting around talking served by a bar keep who is happy to say over and over again how much smarter they are than him and so refills their drinks all night long without complaint. Perhaps even more now in 2016 than when the show was first mounted in 2009, these questions are quite alive in the US with such a contentious election season, and it is hard not to see them in this context.

While the revolution being referred to is Czech after WWI in relation to the Bolshevik revolution and leading into WWII in relation to Hitler's fascism, the talk about who is allowed to make art, how people who labor and are not considered 'elite' should be treated, and the ways in which we dehumanize one another - embodied in this case in the first half by the treatment of and acquiescence to the role of second class citizen played by the bar-keep. The fact he becomes the prototype of the robots is doubly eerie because of this. The fact he is 'sacrificed' twice in the play - once as human and once as robot - I found somewhat discomfiting. I fear sometimes that these tropes become dehumanizing in and of themselves, because throughout this robot/drudge is considered less than human. Even if there is a nominal mourning of that fact, the reality of it is somehow not undermined.

There is also the meta-frame of the theater, aided by Capek, as playwright, being a a key player in this drama. The main idea proposed is that telling this story in a theater is somehow redemptive of even a mass genocide. The audience for the show the night I attended felt that way, that was clear. Many people gave the show a standing ovation and were clearly moved. I did not feel so moved, most likely because of the concerns raised earlier, but I am fairly certain I was an outlier on Friday night.

This also leads me back to my original concern with the science fiction genre, because as I write this reflection, I feel silly taking such a premise so seriously in the first place, but so be it. Rogers has the guts to ask very important questions - which is the most important thing a playwright can do - but I then do feel compelled to take those questions seriously enough to respond to at least some of his (implied) answers. I should perhaps also say that - as a matter of taste - I seek to swim in more vulnerable waters than this speculative form allows, but within this frame much has been accomplished. I am grateful to Rogers and the whole cast and crew for creating a piece of work that made me think so long and hard about it, in relation to current politics and the role of theater in general.