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poetry

Tonight was my first night back from New York. I haven't really been home since fall of 2007. I forgot how cacophonous the streets of New York are, and how ambient my backyard is.

"Silence"

The drum of the ear, unoccupied.

Flowers in bloom, the grass...'go' green,

nature screams, but it's nothing audible,

like a dog whistle, 

frequencies beyond the auditory understanding.

I can hear myself breathe. 

My heartbeat.

...I can hear myself breathe.

It's a gentle reminder.

I'm here, 

now.

The present is a present.

'mamet'ian dialogue

I just recently saw "Speed The Plow" with my friend Julie. She's a huge Raul Esparza fanatic. I'm quite fond of him also. Originally, Jeremy Piven was co-starring in the show, but due to his recent "mercury poisoning" incident related to indulging in too much sushi, William H. Macy was the replacement. Now, I'm extremely fond of William H. Macy. Ever since I saw him in Fargo, I've been looking for him in films, shows, and what not. He's a phenomenal actor, and he is a person who indeed "lives truthfully under imaginary circumstances."

People hate David Mamet. 

Apparently he:

-writes degrading roles for females

-creates interruptive, terse dialogue which doesn't resemble real-life conversation

-is rarely wrong, thus leaving him almost always correct

-only casts his friends, so only his friends understand his dramatic structure

The first play I ever read by David Mamet was "Oleanna." It was assigned in my Script Analysis class, and it was a very difficult read. The main complaint I extracted from our class discussion was, "The dialogue was interruptive! Everyone was fighting."

"Oleanna" is a fight, a constant fight. It grows as the subtleties fade however. The entire show is a "power-play" between the professor/author and the pupil/reader. It's meant to sound argumentative and tense.

Recently, I worked on a scene from "November" for a directing class. This was recently running in New York with Nathan Lane and Dylan Baker. It's a side-splitting, witty, political farce. It's not as difficult a read as is say, "Oleanna" or "Glengarry Glen Ross," but it's certainly still got this interruptive quality to the dialogue. I tried to understand the need to write such quick, overlapping scenes.

After seeing, "Speed The Plow," I had a vague understanding of the need for this non-flowing form of dialogue. In every play, a character wants something from someone.

The three main bullet points Mamet usually hits upon are:

-Who wants what from who?

-Why now?

-What happens if they don't get it?

If a scene had two characters,

MARY-  pregnant, in love with Ted.

TED- just drafted, not in love with Mary.

the scene may possibly read something like:

MARY: No Ted. They said the 8th.

TED: I know. I know. I heard it. I'm just in denial.

MARY: We could go to Canada and get married!

TED: I have to call my mother...

MARY: What if we start packing now?

TED: "Hello, Momma?"

MARY: Ted. 

TED: "Oh, you were watching the tube too?"

MARY: Ted! We need to figure out what we're gunna do!

TED: "Let me call you back, Mom."

MARY: Ted, you obviously can't go.

TED: I have to! It's my civic duty.

[the constant formation of non-linear conversation eventually dissipates as the two characters meet at a mutual topic that they both give two shits about, but for the majority of mamet's scenes, the character is "waiting for his/her turn to talk."]

Wow, now isn't that just like life...? Quite "real-life" indeed."

Wow.

I haven't blogged in a long time.

It's been about a year now since I've really been faithful to my blog. I'm ashamed, but not surprised...

To fill you in:

My sophomore year of college is completed

i'm currently living on a couch for a few days

obama is president

i'm living on roosevelt island next year

i'm writing a lot

i've gained no weight/lost no weight

the daily show is on.

i'm happy.

RIP RIP

this summer i saw an ad that said

[smoking cures cancer]

i stopped blogging...i'm ashamed.

i'm going to start using punctuation. i was boycotting before. (bad childhood experience with a semicolon in a grammar-bee)

I'm going to also start using capital letters at the beginning of sentence from now on.

maybe.

I was again trying to make a statement. (something about capitalism or something)

...shutup

when people make weird noises in class that resemble flatulence, how come they do it like 9 more times? what exactly is going on in that person's head?

"this sound i just made with the rubber sole of my shoe sounded like me farting."

here are my options:

a. announce, "i didn't just fart!" (no one will believe you)

b. repeat it forever until everyone looks down at your foot and they realize, "oh phew. i thought mike farted. i almost thought he was insane and let bodily noises come from his body! ...what a creep"

c. be silent.

if you picked b, you're a normal human being!

(SEGUE)

Today, i attempted to put a disposable paper seat down on a public toilet. It was being unruly and independent (being the inanimate object will free will that it is), so I just decided against using the bathroom.

...my theatre history class was very uncomfortable.

(SEGUE)

I need to get my hairs cut soon...all of them. Haircuts are wounds for me.

The following list is a list of things I'd rather do than be slaughtered by a barber:

1. drink a bottle of lysol

2. run dental floss through my color

3. quadruple bag my tea, then attempt to explain my foreign policy plan

4. play the guitar with my penis

5. play the guitar without my penis.

6. have sex with the television on, and no one complains, because both of us are kind of watching it and it's the season premiere, so who's complaining you know? (but that's just an obvious one :)

7. homework

8. a small, diseases reptile

9. rosie o'donnell

10. segue into pro-mccain rants from random conversations

11. vote for mccain

12. get a genital piercing

13. drink an o'doul's non-alcoholic beer (like...what?!?)

maybe i'll just grow my hair,

because apparently if i don't I'll wind up a conservative trisexual corpse. there aren't many left on the planet actually.

if you vote for mccain, you're voting for palin, because mccain won't last another month. (not a threat, CNN!)

inebriated rant

drunken blog entry!

so when i was a kid, i thought Ringo was really singing about his buddies from grade school ("his friends")

i thought he was referring to Tommy, Jack, and Tanya from the playground...not LSD (Laura Sarah Daniels), PCP (Pamela Carmen Parsons), and MaryJane from the streets.