Obscure Thoughts, Partly Clear Ideas
New Flash-Essays including, Wait in the Car (Sorry Mom), You Do Funny Things for Art, Sonder, Ponder
Seeing this newsletter is all about trying things, anything, anything at all; I have been considering how to bring some structure to this overall thing. Specifically, what type of essays I want to work on and then publish every week. As I've shared before, I write a lot for work, but it's mostly about finance, economics, and corporate news that, at times, I get to put some curve on but, overall, doesn't quite sing like I would like it to. Safe to say…I can't put as much of "myself" as possible with personal essays or the umbrella term "literary personal essays." What type of essays exactly? I suppose I'm learning as I go, but seeing this newsletter needs to be shorter than long, Flash Essays are probably the best fit and are similar to prose poetry, which I am also a big fan of, as you can see on my IG.
What then to put into said flash essay is the question, as it could range from anything from a "horseshoe crab essay" (an essay pretending to be something that it's not) to purely personal essays, which could be about an interaction at the Bi-Rite down the street or falling in love for the first time. There are, of course, styles I've already shared with you all: personal reported essays and personal op-ed essays (pieces arguing for or against an idea, though I tend to lean more on ideas, reflections, or observations without constructing a formal argument.)
Brevity will also be key ('I'm trying to keep this bit down to 250 words), so thanks for reading and sticking with me as I write on.
In this newsletter you’ll find:
Wait in the Car (Sorry Mom)
You Do Funny Things for Art
Sonder, a Discovery
Wait in the Car (Sorry Mom)
You first carried me as a thoughtful, speculative dream, or maybe first I was a nightmare trapped in your young mind, yet still allowing me to mix with your day-to-day, your aspirations and aspirin hangovers but, even then, I asked you to wait in the car. You carried me around in your belly for nine months, making sure not to bump your bump into any countertops, always eating right, and making sure to listen to the best music, but still, I asked you to wait in the car. And when I arrived, ginger-haired and squealing, my legs never tiring as I ran around the apple tree in our backyard and refused to miss a single tail playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey even still, I asked you to wait in the car. Growing up, growing older, with now split birthday parties (the new norm), what I was becoming was still your little boy but, the world now wanted its due, which you gracefully allowed yet still, I asked you to wait in the car. As boys are prone to do, I made friends, some good, some bad, some now forgotten but, friends nonetheless, thus allowing something to do together that you, dear Mom, couldn’t quite be a part of and still, I asked you to wait in the car. To do these things, be it baseball or video games or skateboarding, I needed money and, seeing as I had no money of my own yet, no way to keep me alive yet, not unlike when I first arrived and needed all of you to keep me from dying, even then, unashamedly, I asked you to wait in the car. And, of course, you gave me the money, as you gave me your guidance, your hours, energy, and life, but still, after all that, I asked you to wait in the car. Money in hand, my want and need at the wheel only you could drive, you took me to the skateboard shop all my friends would also inflict their parent's money on to buy the next new board and fresh pair of skate shoes and wheels that spun forever and grip tape so brutal it would make my fingertips bleed at first touch but still, after all that, I asked you to wait in the car. And because you raised me right, you taught me that sometimes, when trading a life for a life, you can only say thank you, so I said just that before I opened the door to walk through the parking lot to go inside and pick out whatever I wanted because you needed nothing but for me to be happy, for me to feel included, for me to know every inch of love the world had to offer, its dawns, its dusks, its horizons and yet still, in the end, I asked you to wait in the car.
You Do Funny Things for Art
You do some funny, sometimes silly things over the years and years of exploring one's art, especially when you're halfway across the country in Chicago from California, where I was born and raised. After an audition while in high school down in LA and getting accepted, with no real prospects on the horizon for myself other than finishing a travel writing project of some friends and my venture in Europe, acting, which I'd dabbled in my senior year, seemed like the most logical thing. It probably wasn't, but, as I stated above, you do some funny, sometimes silly things for art. And even more so when you're young like I was: twenty-ish years old, on the very tail end of my undergraduate degree in the surefire financial and grounded career path of acting, probably $50 in my bank account - though I was perhaps overdrawn at that point - and no clear idea about what an actor's life after the structure of conservatory was supposed to be or even look like. I had heard stories, seen interviews, and even seen movies like Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, and, naturally, Withnail and I, starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann.
And, of course, I took theoretical instructive classes on "what it took to be an actor out in the world real world," but that was all staged still within the confines and comforts of DePaul's Theatre School, where I attended from 2006 to 2010. There is no replacing the real thing. You must live it to see if you have the grit, the stomach, and, most importantly, if you want to do it.
Which I did, at least for a year or so, when the bottom inevitably fell out in 2010. After a few quiet months and somehow landing an agent at Grossman & Jack Talent Agency1, I got an audition at Steppenwolf Theatre. There is no way I can remember what the play was now, but I remember realizing when I got the news, where the hell am I going to rehearse this? Luckily, the DePaul campus still allowed me to lurk in their library, so I found a study room to work with my script and costume and established four years of acting training. Starting with my vocal training, a series of noisy, exhausting exhales and inhales, lip flutters, and general swinging around one's body, I got a vicious knock on the door. Peering through the tiny window, I could see a young, angry, furrowed person, though likely a freshman, by the innocence in their eyes. Up to their lips was their pointer finger, the universal sign for, shut the fuck up.
For my part, I continued, moving on to rehearsing the lines, my blocking, which consisted of me throwing myself over a chair and all-around madness. Another knock, but this time, the young, angry, furrowed person possessed an older, annoyed librarian, someone I recognized from probably a normie class but couldn't put my finger on.
"You're being very loud and..." the librarian said, stopped seeing the space splattered with turned over chairs, crinkled, ripped pages of the script, and an emptied bottle of stolen water from the cafeteria. "Actually, you have to go, like right now."
Which I did and, after a botched audition at Steppenwolf and a few minor, weird "performances" in second-city, I did completely.
Sonder, Ponder
Sonder, by Dictionary.coms definition, goes, "The feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one's own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles: In a state of sonder, each of us is at once a hero, a supporting cast member, and an extra in overlapping stories." This feeling has weirdly crystallized and been branded in my memory only a few times and, as far as I can comprehend, spurred by nothing extraordinary though I guess, seeing I remember it, I guess, by definition, it is.
For the sake of length I will recall one time. It was in Chicago at DePaul during undergrad (see above). We were in the conservatory courtyard, a bare, concrete space where other actors and I would take a break between classes to get air, smoke a cigarette, gossip - that kind of place. I was standing next to my friend Sarah Jackson, a black, wild-haired Kentucky young gun with spring-sky-blue eyes and a smile that would have made Arthur Miller think twice, when another actor (we’ll call them John) came up to Sarah and said, "Do you want me to show you how to crow?” We were doing a vocal exercise involving Peter Pan and finding the register (acting school remember), which is, right now, besides the point because Sarah, offended by the idea that she would need John's help doing anything, let alone how to crow, literally and immediately laughed in his face.
"Why the fuck would I want you to show me that?" Sarah replied.
John, shocked, dismayed, and embarrassed, slinked off without an answer, and in was in this scene, I fell into a state of sonder. On one end, I saw Sarah protect herself the "hero" in her story, insulted by the thought that John was trying to make her into a supporting role in her own life. On the other end was John, a generally aloof guy, who was trying to impose his "hero role" on Sarah which was was swiftly and appropriately denied.
Word History and Origins
”Coined in 2012 by U.S. writer John Koenig in his blog The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows; perhaps partly based on French sonder “to probe, plumb,” of unclear origin, apparently either akin to sound 3( def ), sound 4( def ) or from Vulgar Latin subundāre (unrecorded) “to dive, plunge” (ultimately from sub sub- ( def ) + unda “wave”); perhaps partly based on German sonder- “separate, special” ( sundry ( def ) )
I auditioned for Mickey Grossman who sadly died May 30 2011 at 58 of pancreatic cancer less than a year after getting signed. Everyone at the agency promptly had no idea who I was after that which always felt a little weird bringing up whenever I called for potential gigs. So it goes.