A Single Man (and no this is not my bio!)

I know this movie came out in theaters a while ago, but I recently had to write a review as a writing sample for a job I applied for (and got!) so I thought I would post it so that all you people who haven't heard (god forbid!) or seen it could have a chance to find out what it's all about :-) Enjoy!

A SINGLE MAN

My favorite movies are those that leave you with just enough, but always wanting more. Movies full of mystery and atmosphere that can leave you haunted for days, pondering over so many great moments and questions left unanswered. This is exactly what I felt as the end credits began to roll in fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford's directorial debut, 'A Single Man'. Ford's film is an invasion on all the senses, marrying a brilliant score by Abel Korzeniowski with a world of vibrant color and light to create an emotional and moody character piece that truly was one of the most beautiful films i've seen in a long time.

Based on the novel of the same name, 'A Single Man' is about a day in the life of George Falconer; a gay University professor living in Los Angeles just a month after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and eight months after the tragic death of his longtime boyfriend, Jim. As the details of George's life start to unfold, we soon discover that this isn't just any day for our heart broken, and might I add, ridiculously sexy college professor, but it happens to be the day that George has decided to take his own life. I know, I know, if you're anything like my dad and don't see the point of sitting through something dark and depressing when you could just reflect on your own heart aches or read your local newspaper, then this movie most definitely isn't for you. But if you happen to be like me, much to the dismay of my father I might add, and you relish in experiencing the immense suffering that goes on in the world from the comfort of your own living room, then by all means, go and see this movie. And maybe even give me a call and we can go rent some sad flicks and cry on each other's shoulders before falling asleep cradling each other. Anyway.

I have to say that when I found out Tom Ford was entering the film business, I knew that we could expect something deliciously stylized that would be a feast for the eyes. What I didn't know, was that we could expect it to be so meaningful and well executed. George's journey through his day becomes a beautiful meditation on life and death, and through Ford's lens, we get the chance to come so close to the tragic character that we can almost smell the world in which he lives and breathes. Using the same production designers as the equally sleek 1960's era hit TV show Mad Men, Ford give us small glimpses into the lives of George's friends, students and coworkers, painting a beautiful and sad picture of an era on the brink of destruction and revolution, drowning in it's own repression and fear.

What really works in Fords film though, is that unlike other highly stylized films in the same category, his audacious camerawork and edgy style never seems to distract or overshadow the very thing that makes the movie work so well; it's performances. Now my sister has always been a huge fan of Colin Firth and found him to be heart-stoppingly sexy, but i've never really seen it until this movie. It's not that i've ever not liked him, but i've always found him to play the same character in all his films, (I'm sorry, dear sister!) but after seeing this I'm going to seriously rethink my position on the matter. Maybe now I'll even actually enjoy Mama Mia... yeah right. Colin brings a subtlety and realism to his character that only the best actors working today can pull off.

And speaking of subtlety, Julianne Moore and her massive head of hair fill the screen with their usual larger than life bravado that I can never and I mean NEVER get enough of as George's equally tragic best friend, Charlie. I feel like Julianne is at her best when she's playing freaky cracked out characters, and let me tell you, this is one crazy bitch and Julianne, as always, steps right up the plate. Unfortunately I find that a lot of times I enjoy Julianne more than I enjoy watching her movies. Ahem... Blindness. Ahem... The Forgotten. But luckily this is not one of those movies. Luckily this time around, having Julianne along for the ride is just a cherry on top of an already exquisite cake. I will say however, that her performance did mess with me though as I kept going between wanting to be her and feeling like she strangely resembled my Mother. Hmmmm. I think maybe that's a whole other can of worms and an entirely different article so we'll just leave it at that.

Of all the things I loved about this movie what I liked the most was the fact that because Tom Ford was a first time director, he had to finance the entire movie himself. Now I would hope that for one of the most influential fashion designers of the 90's, fronting 7 million dollars for your passion project wouldn't be too much of a dent at the bank. But I do seriously appreciate when someone cares about something so much that they're willing to put something on the line for it. And I especially like when said project ends up paying off. Well done, Tom Ford! Congratulations on a beautiful poem of a movie. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next; be it in a beautiful new suit that I wish I could afford or another wonderful experience at the theatre.

View the trailer here... http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/asingleman/

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Have you started meditating yet??

Experiment shows brief meditative exercise helps cognition

Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well.

While past research using neuroimaging technology has shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration, it has always been assumed that extensive training was required to achieve this effect. Though many people would like to boost their cognitive abilities, the monk-like discipline required seems like a daunting time commitment and financial cost for this benefit.

Surprisingly, the benefits may be achievable even without all the work. Though it sounds almost like an advertisement for a “miracle” weight-loss product, new research now suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed. Psychologists studying the effects of a meditation technique known as “mindfulness ” found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.

“In the behavioral test results, what we are seeing is something that is somewhat comparable to results that have been documented after far more extensive training,” said Fadel Zeidan, a post-doctoral researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and a former doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where the research was conducted.

“Simply stated, the profound improvements that we found after just 4 days of meditation training– are really surprising,” Zeidan noted. “It goes to show that the mind is, in fact, easily changeable and highly influenced, especially by meditation.”

The study appears in the April 2 issue of Consciousness and Cognition. Zeidan’s co-authors are Susan K. Johnson, Zhanna David and Paula Goolkasian from the Department of Psychology at UNC Charlotte, and Bruce J. Diamond from William Patterson University. The research was also part of Zeidan’s doctoral dissertation. The research will also be presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in Montreal, April 17-20.

The experiment involved 63 student volunteers, 49 of whom completed the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned in approximately equivalent numbers to one of two groups, one of which received the meditation training while the other group listened for equivalent periods of time to a book (J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit) being read aloud.

Prior to and following the meditation and reading sessions, the participants were subjected to a broad battery of behavioral tests assessing mood, memory, visual attention, attention processing, and vigilance.

Both groups performed equally on all measures at the beginning of the experiment. Both groups also improved following the meditation and reading experiences in measures of mood, but only the group that received the meditation training improved significantly in the cognitive measures. The meditation group scored consistently higher averages than the reading/listening group on all the cognitive tests and as much as ten times better on one challenging test that involved sustaining the ability to focus, while holding other information in mind.

“The meditation group did especially better on all the cognitive tests that were timed,” Zeidan noted. “In tasks where participants had to process information under time constraints causing stress, the group briefly trained in mindfulness performed significantly better.”

Particularly of note were the differing results on a “computer adaptive n-back task,” where participants would have to correctly remember if a stimulus had been shown two steps earlier in a sequence. If the participant got the answer right, the computer would react by increasing the speed of the subsequent stimulus, further increasing the difficulty of the task. The meditation-trained group averaged aproximately10 consecutive correct answers, while the listening group averaged approximately one.

“Findings like these suggest that meditation’s benefits may not require extensive training to be realized, and that meditation’s first benefits may be associated with increasing the ability to sustain attention,” Zeidan said.

“Further study is warranted,” he stressed, noting that brain imaging studies would be helpful in confirming the brain changes that the behavioral tests seem to indicate, “but this seems to be strong evidence for the idea that we may be able to modify our own minds to improve our cognitive processing – most importantly in the ability to sustain attention and vigilance – within a week’s time.”

The meditation training involved in the study was an abbreviated “mindfulness” training regime modeled on basic “Shamatha skills” from a Buddhist meditation tradition, conducted by a trained facilitator. As described in the paper, “participants were instructed to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose. If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let ‘it’ go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath.” Subsequent training built on this basic model, teaching physical awareness, focus, and mindfulness with regard to distraction.

Zeidan likens the brief training the participants received to a kind of mental calisthenics that prepared their minds for cognitive activity.

“The simple process of focusing on the breath in a relaxed manner, in a way that teaches you to regulate your emotions by raising one’s awareness of mental processes as they’re happening is like working out a bicep, but you are doing it to your brain. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to release sensory events that would easily distract, whether it is your own thoughts or an external noise, in an emotion-regulating fashion. This can lead to better, more efficient performance on the intended task.”

“This kind of training seems to prepare the mind for activity, but it’s not necessarily permanent,” Zeidan cautions. “This doesn’t mean that you meditate for four days and you’re done – you need to keep practicing.”

The paper, “Mindfulness Meditation Improves Cognition: Evidence of Brief Mental Training” is available on Pubmed at:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650.

Unlocking the inner artist...

I woke up this morning and started out my day with half an hour of meditation. Clear my head and make way for fresh ideas and new thoughts. I came out, made myself a cup of tea and some breakfast and sat down to my computer to do some writing. Like I said before, in order for me to be able to write anything new, I need to read everything that came before in order to put me in a place where I feel comfortable continuing. This usually consists of me reading half aloud and half in my head whilst contorting my face into weird facial expressions as I try to put myself into the scene and the character's heads as much as possible. (as i've learned from past experiences and several friends this is something best practiced while in the comfort of my OWN company) My eyes dart around the room as new ideas come in and I start to feel the rush of inspiration coming through me, ready to pour out of me and onto the page. I finish reading and I start to write and write and write until suddenly, almost always, something happens. That whiny, judgemental prissy little good for nothing voice pops in and starts spouting off about everything that is wrong with my writing. "What is the point of this?" "Why would ANYONE want to see this, let alone PAY to see this?" "Do you really think you're going to be able to bring this thing to a full circle and leave your audience satisfied with the fact that you've made them endure the last 60-90 minutes of this?" I start using my backspace button. I start rewriting. The flow gets interrupted and suddenly I find myself at a loss for words, questioning everything that I'm doing and more so my motives for doing it. Looks like this isn't going to be as easy as I thought. So what is this voice and where does it come from? Does it serve us in any way or is it merely stopping us from being able to enjoy our own creative nature? If you are like me, and because of the fact that for the most part you are all human so I'm sure that you probably are, then you too suffer from a ridiculous set of standards that you set for yourself and your imagination. Isn't creativity supposed to be a fun and exciting exploration of our own minds? Yet no matter what, it seems like most of us are never happy with our own creative endeavors. How many times have you complimented a friends work to have them completely down play it and almost get embarrassed by it? How sad that we don't nurture our creativity but instead hide it away and act like it's something to be ashamed of. There is an in incredible book called 'The Artist's Way', by Julia Cameron and if you are like me and everybody that I know and have a hard time opening up the space required in order to let your creativity flow naturally at all times, then I highly suggest you read it. The book is a 12 week program that is all about unlocking our inner artists that yes, believe it or not, we all have living inside of us. There's a ton of amazing reading and some really interesting assignments to do but one of the most beneficial parts of it is something called, 'Morning Pages'. Julia talks all about our inner critic and is set on finding away to get us away from it as much as possible and one of the ways she does this is by asking you to spend half an hour each morning writing three full length, loose leaf pages of complete verbal diarrhea. Don't question what to write, just write. Even if all you can think of is to write over and over that you can't think of anything to write, you're still going to notice the benefits because it is taking you out of the part of your brain that tries to question what you're writing and just gets you writing. I'll be honest here and say that I've attempted to get through the full 12 week program a few times now and have never made it past week five simply due to my own stupid laziness but even when I wasn't following the program completely, i've gone for months at a time writing my morning pages and it's one of the greatest exercises I've done for myself. So maybe it's time for me to start it over again. Maybe it's time for me to remember why we are creative in the first place and stop being SO critical of everything I do. Maybe it's time to... oh my god dare I say it... have a little bit of fun? And maybe if I can do it, then so can you. Next time you decide to pick up a paint brush or a pen and you start to hear that voice come into your head (and I can only hope for your sake that it sounds NOTHING like the voice in mine!) that you can finally start to recognize it for what it is and know that it isn't really you talking, but is really just a set of limiting beliefs that are cutting you off from enjoying your creativity. Go out and buy Julia Cameron's book. Meditate. Write. Sing. Find a way to disentangle yourself from the voice in your head and go out and have fun with your creativity, because in the end, isn't that what it's all about?

Meditation and Creativity

"Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful. Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness - your awareness - is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch'. - David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish.

The Dalai Llama says that if we taught one generation of children to meditate, it would end all war and there would be world peace. How crazy a statement is that? Yet regardless of how much evidence arises, both scientifically and metaphysically, to prove the vast and unbelievable benefits that meditation creates, so few people actually take the small amount of time every day to do it. Why is that? I think it's in large part due to all the misconceptions that surround it that make people feel like they just aren't someone who can do it or that they're doing something wrong when they try.

For example, I became very fascinated and excited about meditation and all the implied possibilities it contained for a long time before I even took the time to experience it for my self. It's intimidating, it seems boring, and just so out of the ordinary from how we're used to doing everything. You want me to what?! Sit STILL? And I can't even play with myself? Oh no, I definitely can't do that. Finally I had to pay an Indian man $30 (which is a LOT when you're in India!) to sit with me in a very hot room and watch me sit still for three hours a day for three days. I thought he was finally going to unlock the key to meditating for me and all he said was to watch my breath, silently say Aum at the end of each exhale and come back to it every time I get distracted. That's it? That's all I get for god knows how many Rupees and not to mention all the hope and faith I had that finally I was going to learn this beautiful and ancient art? I guess not. But then I had no choice. So I sat. And I suffered. And I SUFFERED. And when I came out of it and discussed my experiences with the wise yogi he didn't seem surprised. He didn't seem concerned that there was no silence to speak of, that I kept falling asleep, or that the voice in my head started to sound more and more like a whiny, spoiled, teenage girl the longer I went without obeying it. And when I came back the next day it was the same thing. And it was the same the day after that.

Meditation is really just focussing your attention on something other than your thoughts so that you come to realize that you are the attention and not the thoughts. And when you realize that you are the attention and you start to spend more time with it, it will slowly and steadily start to grow and grow and grow until you finally have full control over your thoughts and emotions. Thoughts will never stop going through your head and trying to hook your attention and take you away on a tangent about Ryan Kwanten's RIDICULOUS body, or how much you HATE Miley Cyrus, but the more you break away from your steady stream of thinking and come back to focussing on something else, allowing the thoughts to just float on by, the more space will open up, and the more self aware and in control you will become.

I have been meditating for the last three years on a surprisingly steady basis and I can tell you that for the most part the experience hasn't changed a ton. While the spaces between are definitely longer, I still get a constant stream of thoughts through my head and I still get restless. But that's okay. The most important thing I know is that meditation isn't about stopping my thoughts! It's being able to seperate my self from those thoughts that really counts. Some days are better than others and I feel myself settling into some vast and peaceful place that I recognize as the real me and when that happens I enjoy the experience and let it float by like everything else. But regardless of what the practice looks like, I can tell you that the benefits i've felt make all the frustration and confusion totally worth it.

I think the best way to learn is to start reading about all different forms of meditation. There are literally thousands of ways to meditate and any and all will completely transform your life. Watch 'What the Bleep do we Know" and read "The Power of Now". Learn more about the scientific side and then learn more about the spiritual side. The more information you get about it, the more your consciousness can start to make small shifts in awareness about it and the more comfortable you will become with actually doing it. Go to a class, or buy a cd, but whatever you do, find a way to bring meditation into your life. Without it we have no control over our thoughts and are left to the mercy of our minds which are are simply "drunken, drugged, and devil-possessed monkeys" in the words of many yogis. Just look at the world created by unconscious thought? Even sitting for 10 minutes a day with your eyes closed and focussing on different parts of your body and filling them with love will COMPLETELY transform you. And will probably make the people around you happier too! Trust me.

Before I write I sit in stillness for a few minutes to connect with my true self. Or if this works better for you, I come back to seeing my self as the attention and not the thoughts. This brings me back to the place where all thoughts come from. Where creation comes from. This is where my art comes from. This is where I come from. Meditate. Find stillness and let the universe fill you. Explore yourself and all you have to offer.

Namaste :-)

The power of change...

So it's time to power through. Time to change my ways. It seems that while people do honor the fact that there are an infinite number of writing processes, it can't be denied that getting out a first draft without thinking and over thinking it too much can be of great value when trying to successfully complete a project. If you read the comment from my friend Cam at the end of my last entry, you'll see the wonderful quote/cliche that he posted. "Writing is rewriting". Simple as that. So I'm ready for it. I'm going to step up to the plate and get out a first draft if it kills me. And not in my typical, rewrite as I go fashion either. From here on in I'm going to leave everything as it is and just get to the end before I make any drastic decisions about anything. Like changing one of my main characters from a woman to a man. Or suddenly deciding that it would be nice to change my setting from a present day apartment building full of crazy, unstable characters to a stable full of hot ranch hands somewhere in Montana. These are things that I can revise once I have a better idea of the bigger picture. For now... let it be.

This may sound like it's going to be a relatively easy thing to do, but trust me it's not. It's not only the fact that i've tried to do this before and suddenly found myself poring over old scenes and changing intricate details that alter the entire show, but i've been writing the way that I write now for a very long time and to suddenly be able to abandon my habits and trust that an entirely new and somewhat uncomfortable process will work out in the end is going to be difficult. But isn't that the most interesting part of it all? My entire play is about a group of characters so attached to the way their lives are that they can't see that it's really the inevitability of change and growth and evolution that keeps us happy and fresh and new. Once we let go and allow the tides of change to work through us, we almost always find that we're in a better place than we were before. It's resisting change that is really the source of all our suffering. So if this is the lesson that I want my characters to learn... maybe it would help for me to learn it first? Maybe I should embrace what's happening, stop resisting, and try out an entirely new process. Who knows... maybe I'll actually end up with a finished play in the end and everyone can stop listening to all my bitching and whining and can instead watch me torture myself as I try to actually make it all come together on a stage!

So let me ask you... is there anything in your life that you're resisting simply because it makes you a bit uncomfortable? Or because you're just a little bit too comfortable with the way things are now? I urge you to join me and embrace the discomfort of trying something new. Embrace change and know that in the end, it can only lead you to more growth and experience... even if it's hurt like hell first.
For those of you who will join me in my pursuit for growth, renewal, and evolution I salute you and wish you luck. God knows we're going to need it!

Here goes nothing...

Learning to trust...

I get really frustrated with my writing process. It makes me wonder if I'm the only person who writes like this or if it's a common thing among writers. And if it's not common it makes me wonder if there is any one process that most successful writer's share or if it's all just up in the air for the taking. I find myself trying to imagine if some of my favorites spend their time torturing themselves over a single draft in the same way I do, or if I somehow have it all completely wrong and am spending countless unnecessary hours doing something that should be saved for a time when I have some 'bigger picture' perspective on the whole thing. You hear all this talk of your first draft not having to be anything special, that it only needs to be the skeleton of what will eventually become a beautiful, fully fleshed out creature with wings wide enough to soar into the night sky and take you right along with it. Well what if you spend all your time fleshing out the feet before you even know if the creature will be male of female? You see, every time I go to continue work on my latest venture, in order to bring myself to a place of comfort and confidence that the next thing I write will go along in tone and style with everything that I've written before it, I must first read everything that came before in order to be able to continue. And herein lies the problem, you see, because every time I read what I've already written, I end up changing a lot of what's there. I'm constantly making revisions to a single draft while slowly and painfully pushing further along with the speed of... well of me trying to construct the perfect sentence for example. (Cut to me staring blankly at the computer screen for several minutes before suddenly bursting into uncontrollable sobs... you get the picture.) Even now as I'm writing this blog entry, the very same process is taking place. I finish a sentence, decide I need to read the whole piece for the 1000th time before continuing any further, and end up changing what's already there before adding on a couple more sentences and repeating the process all over again. Sound frustrating? Maddening even? People keep telling me to leave it alone, to only focus on what comes next, and to save my editing for a second draft, but no matter how hard I try, this just isn't the way that I write. So is there something wrong with this? Am I setting myself up for doom every time I start to write and rewrite? I can't fully tell you that this hasn't worked to my advantage a lot of the time either which makes it even more frustrating and confusing. Often some of my greatest thoughts and ideas come through this process and I don't think my writing would be the same without it... but it does make me wonder at the fact that since I haven't been completely satisfied with any BIG writing ventures I've pursued for quite a long time now, is there something I'm doing wrong? Is there even such a thing as a right way and a wrong way to create something worthy of creation? Or is it completely silly of me to assume that all the brilliant artists out there somehow share the same or at least a similar creative process?
I wish so badly that I could sit behind Wally Lamb, Elizabeth Gilbert, or Anne Rice as they stare at their computer screens and work away. That I could see them scream and yell at their work before writing and rewriting a paragraph over and over again until it becomes the brilliance that we know and love so much. If only for a second to see that they don't just sit and let the creativity flow through them gracefully with wide, knowing smiles on their faces and glowing auras around their bodies until they reach the end. Maybe if I could catch just a glimpse of this, I could let my process continue to work through me instead of trying to figure out how to work it so much. But still I can't help wondering, do these authors know everything about their characters before they write them? Or do the character's voices shift and change as they write? Do they start as blocks of stone that slowly get chiseled away into fully formed people that have to be constantly adjusted and readjusted as they go along? Or do they already exist inside their brilliant minds with fully formed personalities and flaws and vices and character arcs that guide them along to their beautiful and perfect endings before they even sit down and pick up a pen? How much do writers know of what will happen in their stories before they actually start writing? Who taught these people how to sit down and create such complex art without killing themselves in the process? Am I thinking about this too much? Should I just trust my process instead of questioning whether what I'm doing is right or wrong so much? The only reason I have a hard time doing this I guess is because I spent a lot of time over the last year of my life working on a play that I was hoping to produce this summer, only to take a few weeks away from it to discover that I'm not really all that in love with it anymore. Something about my original vision seemed to go astray somewhere. Something just doesn't feel right anymore and so now I'm left with months of work that I have no idea what to do with, and I want to do everything I can to avoid having this happen again.
It boggles my mind that any artist can ever really look at their work and see it as something complete and whole and not just a giant mess of endless self indulgent imperfection. But that's why I'm using this blog right? To work through my insecurities and finally find a way to use the voice I hear inside me to create something coherent, meaningful, and beautiful. Even if in the end it is only any of those things to me. I have to believe that when Stephen King first started writing Carrie, that it was actually called Carl, and that The Grapes of Wrath was originally written about apples. I have to believe that the writing process is an evolving one and that everything that ends as brilliance begins as a pile of shit with only a glimpse of what it will become glowing from within it. (I hope you have a mental image of that one :-) I have to believe that every failure I have is only leading me one step closer to my success. And I have to believe that all writers, even Shakespeare, existed in a world full of doubt, insecurity and constant creative madness. And because I don't have anyone to tell me any different... I have to trust my process to guide me to where it wants to go. I have to trust that this time around, i'll finish writing, sigh peacefully and give myself a pat on the back for the beautiful work I've just created and am so, so proud of. Can you imagine?

NO DAY BUT TODAY

So I'm in the middle of writing a play and like most writing ventures that I pursue, I've reached a place of severe frustration and doubt and have thus decided to start blogging about the process in hopes that it will assist me in working through my problems and help me to achieve my dreams of becoming a successful novelist/playwright/screenwriter or any/all of the above. At around midnight last night I sat on my couch with my laptop open staring at the ten odd pages of my most current attempt at brilliance when I suddenly found myself spouting off and whining in a typical Matthew Tuer fashion about how it's never going to happen, that I'm totally useless and why god why do I even bother continuing to torture myself again and again when suddenly I looked down at my arm and saw my beautiful tattoo that I got at the beginning of last summer.
NO DAY BUT TODAY
It's a line from the musical, 'Rent', in case you're one of the unfortunate people who hasn't had the chance to see it... or obsess over it (Okay, okay I know there are a lot of people who don't like it but I just don't think they really Understand it... it revolutionized Broadway for god sakes, and if you reallly just didn't like it, I'll try my best not to judge you... yeah right.) With a combination of fate and sheer effort, i've been fortunate enough to see the brilliant show 5 times. When I found out it was going to be shutting down off Broadway two summers ago I very quickly made the decision to make two of my dreams come true; one being to go to New York, and the other to see see Rent on Broadway. (I know, I know... and I didn't want this to be a gay blog! Ha!) So this tattoo has a lot of significance to me. Not only is it an amazing reminder every time I look at my arm to live for the moment, something we should all strive for every day of our lives, but it means so much more. Jonathan Larson, who was the incredibly talented creator/author of RENT, both music and lyrics, died tragically of a brain aneurism... get this... the night before RENT opened in New York!!! Jonathan never got to see the phenomenon that his musical became, running on Broadway for a whole 10 years! Something about this has always haunted me. More than that, it's shaken my very core. Why did this beautiful person die the NIGHT before his greatest acheivement? And I know a lot of weird and bad shit happens all the time, but this just seems like too much of a coincidance to not have some sort of universal, cosmic significance, don't you agree?! Like, Why the face? So what is it then? I don't think anyone could ever really know that except for maybe Jonathan Larson himself, wherever he may be. But what we can know is the significance his death had on the message of his brilliant show. No Day But Today. How F*#($*G crazy is that? Am I alone in this? Imagine those actors going on stage the day after Jonathan died and belting out through their tears, "No Day But Today". Wow. What a crazy world. But then it also made me wonder something from an artist's standpoint, which is really what I'm trying to get at here since this is supposed to somehow relate back to my journey towards becoming a writer. If Jonathan Larson had known that he would die before anyone had a chance to tell him what they thought of his show, would he still have wanted to devote how ever many years of his life to creating it? I don't think there's anyone reading this right now who would say that he wouldn't have. That he wouldn't still have taken all the pain and anger and frustration and beauty that goes into writing and spent every moment of his life devoted to making Rent possible. Even if he never knew it didn't completely bomb. And so isn't that the greatest lesson of all? The very thing I need to remind myself of every time I look down at my arm. It doesn't matter where any of my writing ends up, and who thinks what of it when it gets there. It only matters that it fullfills me in every moment of my life. That whatever stupid words spill out of my mouth and onto the page makes me giddy with joy every time I write a sentence. Who fucking cares if I win an Oscar or a Tony or a Razzie award. If I think too much about that, I'm going to miss the point. After all, I could drop dead the night before the Academy Awards. So maybe this shouldn't be my journey towards becoming a writer after all. Maybe it should be... "The journey of a writer". I like that much better, don't you? So I dunno.. maybe this inspired you a bit or maybe you didn't even make it this far.. but if you did, then I think you know what to do. Go out and pick up a pen, grab a baseball bat or a baton or a bag of heroin. Whatever you love to do and whatever fulfills you, do it everyday without ever thinking about where it will take you. (except maybe the heroin) R.I.P Jonathan Larson. One of the greatest artistic influences in my life. I will try to think of you the next time I find myself crying alone in my home through wine stained teeth... why god why isn't this easier? And let's all hope and pray that by the end of this venture i'll have an amazing play to produce and direct and that you can all come and see just how talented I really am! Wait a minute... did I just miss the point again? DAMNIT! :-)