Full of scorpions is my mind ...

Last night I participated in a rendering of Sticky at the Bowery Poetry Club which is run by the presently so pregnant Libby Emmons and her husband David Marcus, great people, and a great recurring event. It was a pleasure to be involved, and I'm so surprised that I've never done this before, in all of its ten years of existence. My piece, "Police Tape", was written by Colette Mazunik, an old grad school chum, co-staring grad school chum Jake Lipman, and directed by Ryan Gielen, who directed grad school chum Kari Morris' wonderful little movie "Two." The whole thing was very grad school chum, as grad school chum Holly Ellis was one of the curator of the evening, grad school chum Brian Seibert was a director of another piece, and grad school chum Naveen Choudhury came to watch. Well, enough with the name dropping and forward with my tale.

One of the other pieces was called "For the Greater Good." Damn it, I oughta remember who wrote it. Never mind. It was about two former CIA, or some other similar secret self-devouring government organization, who meet in a bar. Being former ops, they have new present lives, and identifications. One of the them is a judge. The other is some sort of office hot shot, and his new name is Carver, and he called the meeting. The judge was he commander back in the good old cloak and dagger days. Carver is plagued by visions of a young girls eyes whose family he and his colleague had assassinated. More particularly he is convinced that the new office assistant at his job is that same girl grown up. He is seeking for the judge's permission to be replaced into commission that he might have the opportunity to take her out of commission so to speak. He says, more or less, "If she is not around, the assassination never happened. If nobody is alive to know about it, it never happened."

The poor motherfucker, the frightened murderer seeks peace, and sleep. His need for sleep becomes so crucial, that though you hate him as you watch him you are moved by the struggle for this basic, simple, innocent and essential instrument of our lives. Its self-deluding in so far as sleep will not absolve him of his crime.

I did not feel particularly fantastic about my performance this evening. Honestly, I've been spreading myself far too thin lately, and I will shortly be inclined to start saying no to projects so that I can actually commit my faculties to a task of greater importance. Thats neither here nor there. My point is that after the performance I was all eyes and ears of self-conscious apprehensions. I was clamoring for approvals and looking into others eyes with the guilt and heavy character of a guilty spirit. I had done something wrong, have a poor performance, and I wanted to see whether or not people knew it. I think I'm being over dramatic, but something of this is surely useful. Certainly the looks into other people's eyes are not innocent, full of doubts and fears.

After the show, I walked home, learning lines. This is what I mean I am spreading myself too thin, I have lines for like five projects I'm juggling in my mind. Its insane, and though I am draconian, I don't complain, I can't help from being sort of suckier in form or another. I'm always flying by the seat of my pants it feels, which is not necessarily ill. Not good either. Anyway, the scorpions line really struck me, very strongly. Very much the apex of the scene, and perhaps even of the whole bloody play. Not too put too too much emphasis on it, for fear of then balking it, or making my intentions too clear in performance, but, no the pangs of his mind, the visions that he sees must be strong, hard, constant, terrifying and so seemingly interminable that he can not proceed with out some further courses of action.