Reflection

Jeremy
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Moratorium: Invoking Reagan

Easily one of my least favorite subplot of the upcoming election is how frequently the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin especially, are referencing Reagan, as if he were some sort of political savior. Palin seems to think that the American people believe that had we all put our trust in Reagan, the country would be soaring on golden wings towards a prosperous future. A future that doesn’t recognize gays or minorities as having a place in our society. A future where misguided trickle-down economics, huge tax cuts for the rich, and deregulation create an economic system that does nothing for anyone who isn’t already part of America’s most wealthy.

I’m not a Reagan fan. I find the clinging by conservatives to his white-washed patrician values extremely upsetting. It speaks of self-interest, and of reactionary behavior that’s been far too prevalent in this decade. Attaching his name to your campaign could not say more about your complete disinterest in the middle class; for despite his winning rhetoric with Middle America, the middle classes bore far more of the burden during his presidency. I don’t understand why people feel the need to lionize him so, but let’s just add that to the list of things I don’t understand about politics.

But please, Republicans: A moratorium on invoking Reagan in speeches, debates, et al. You’re not winning any new fans, and even Reagan’s die-hard fans among the very wealthy are having trouble swallowing the comparison given the economic woes of late. We’re not impressed, and what’s more, your opponent’s been mentioned in the same breath with someone a little bit more impressive.

Jeremy
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More Quotations

I can’t stop quoting Joseph Campbell, but apparently he can’t stop being incredibly insightful.

Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate.

Jeremy
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Three Years

That’s how long I’ve been in New York. I rolled in here on a Dominican shuttle bus three years ago today and had to take a cab 70 blocks to my friend Bob’s apartment because they didn’t go below 125th St. Blame my dad. The more I think about my move to New York, the more I realize how terribly, terribly unprepared I was. I am shocked my mother didn’t run after that ramshackle passenger van, yelling, “Come back! Come back! You don’t even have a job! Or any prospects! Or a direction in life! Let me bake for you!”

The last couple years I’ve been posting little life reviews at the anniversary mark that look at how far I’ve come since moving here. Considering I started with next to nothing (handful of cash and about three friends in the area), I think I’ve made significant progress. I don’t think I need to review whether the move was a success or not any more. Still, what strikes me now, as my life is going about as well I would expect at year 25, I’m not sure why I wanted to come to New York so badly. I’m glad I did, and I think it’s done a lot for me in almost every aspect of my life, but I’m still curious as to why I was dead set on NYC, considering I had only been here twice before, for only hours at a time.

Being from a small town in a pretty marginal state gave me a desire to be where things are happening. Although that’s true of me, and not so much true for almost everyone I went to school with in Rhode Island. I was perenially bored in Coventry (which was obviously not all RI’s fault), but now I’m perenially busy with things I really enjoy in NYC. I suppose most of the things I do now I could’ve done in Rhode Island, but there’s something about being in New York that engenders a can-be-done, let’s-try-this sort of mentality. You see people making cool things and doing great stuff all the time; it’s natural you want to join in.

So no more reviews. My goal in this next year is to try and quantify why it is that I like New York City so much. I figure that will probably take me a while.

Jeremy
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More Excerpts

From Hero With A Thousand Faces:

Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended upon the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.

To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.

Bam. J. Campbell just served you, fundamentalists. If you have any interest in the spiritual traditions of the entire planet, you are doing yourself a disservice by not reading this book.

Jeremy
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Late to the Party

I saw a couple of minutes of Dr. Horrible a few months ago, but I finally got around to watching the whole thing on Monday. Surprise! It’s great (as everyone besides me has known for months). It’s great in its execution, polish, and general sense of fun. I watched it on Hulu, which should be the model for displaying long form content online. No signup necessary, a few blissfully short but reasonable ads, and an option for HD and full screen. Nice.

What I’m most curious about though, is what this says about distribution. Joss has said the cost of this little feature is somewhere in the low six figures. Since it’s been the Top 10 of iTunes TV Season download chart for weeks now, I’m assuming he’s made at least some of it back, even at the nominal price point of $5. He’s also just released the soundtrack on iTunes as well (an obvious move, considering how catchy the score is). Now, considering how tight-lipped Apple is about sales figures, I don’t know where the numbers actually fall in terms of revenue for the project. But, I’m imagining he’s pulled in at least $100k on this at this point. That may mean he’s very far away from even breaking even on it, but this wasn’t done to make money.

The genesis of this was, I assume, “fun project to do during the writer’s strike.” And it is fun. Really fun. But you’re telling me this isn’t going to inspire some film kids to do the same thing and see if they can make it work for less money? Because I guarantee there’s at least four groups trying to do the same thing right now. They might totally suck. But they might be pretty fun. And nobody can tell them what to do or not do with their video, because they’re not beholden to anyone.

Now, obviously Joss Whedon has a long history of working in TV and film and is going to know how to make a good video without spending too much or wasting money. Also he has the capital to finance a little project like this. But the fact that he just went for it, and showed that people will always respond to quality work, is a good thing. I’d buy a DVD of Dr. Horrible for the right price. So what’s the next mini-project people would buy? Could come from anywhere.

Jeremy
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Shakes-prov

Chris Scott saw the Improvised Shakespeare Co. on Monday at the Del Close Marathon. He urged me to see it on Tuesday after they had done an amazing show off of his suggestion of The Three Laws of Asimov. By Wednesday, during the Walsh workshop, I resolved to wait in the stand-by line for their next sold-out show. And on Thursday, I saw them perform, and got to give a review of my own: utter genius. Friday saw us both signing up for the workshop taught by the originator of the form, and Saturday brought possibly the finest three hour span of instruction I’ve had. Then came Sunday, with the realization, “I really, really want to try to do this.”

Jeremy
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Workin’ With Walsh

I took a four-hour improv workshop with UCB founder Matt Walsh last night. I didn’t really know what to expect, because you hear a lot of stories about the old-schoolers and what they’re like, but who knows whether the stories are true, or whether they’re still true about them now. I’m happy to say I enjoyed it, and felt like I definitely took some nice lessons out of it. He was clear and direct and seemed like he was pleased with the general level of skill that’s coming up through the theater. I don’t know that you can ask for much more from a single day workshop, so I’m pleased. My two big realizations I hope to assimilate into my playing are:

The first insight was that you can have game going in a completely simple, unforced way inside of 30 seconds if you’re playing well. I’m defining playing well here as listening to your partner, being clear, and assuming a point of view that you stick to. It doesn’t have to be complex, it doesn’t have to blow anybody’s mind, but if you find that game early, you can start to build your relationship and the rest of the scene much faster. There’s something to be said for a slow-burn kind of scene, but there’s also a lot to be said for not wasting your time. Get out there, get that game, and start building the world through the game.

The second insight was elegantly phrased as “Create less, explore more.” I know I’m guilty of pulling out a ton of references or new additions to no avail if a scene isn’t going much of anywhere. Walsh urged us to treat each new “creation” in a scene as something significant that should be explored and examined before we move on to create something new. It’s easier and more satisfying for the improvisers, and it’s clearer and almost certainly funnier for the audience. That makes for better scenes.

There were some other minor tips I picked up as well, but those were my two big takeaways from the workshop. Both are things I would say I’d heard before, but they were illustrated well or spoken to in a very direct way. DCM has been extremely satisfying for me so far, and we’re not even into the Marathon proper yet. I’m really looking forward to it now; my shows, others’ shows, and the workshop I have on Saturday. Renewed vigor!

Jeremy
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The Myths Just Keep On Coming

More great stuff from The Power of Myth:

Campbell: There are some teachers who decide they won’t teach at all because of what society will do with what they’ve found.

Moyers: What if the hero returns from his ordeal, and the world doesn’t want what he brings back?

Campbell: That, of course, is a normal experience.

Endlessly fascinating, this book. I think Campbell’s first sentence perfectly mirrors what Einstein says about wishing he had become a watchmaker, and the second puts me in mind of Galileo. Except this was a discussion about myths that were thousands of years old. Another gem, especially from an improv perspective:

Campbell: There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the “love of your fate,” which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.

Gives a lot more weight to denials, right? You have to accept your life holistically or you have not accepted it all.

Jeremy
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Power of Myth

I’m reading Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, and it is blowing my mind. So much basic, simple stuff that feels so relevant. All these primitive cultures sharing the same stories despite being geographically isolated from each other because they’re trying to describe the same realities in their day to day existence.

– Man is forced to kill to survive, be it plant or animal. What happens to the living thing that we kill to eat? How do we honor the sacrifice of that being? An eternal dilemma for early societies.

– Duality is a by-product of being bound to the physical world. Man, woman; good, evil; past, present. When you transcend these things and commune with God, you see that all are the same and there is only the One.

– In times of danger, man forgets his separation between himself and others. A police officer in Hawaii rushed to save a man about to commit suicide by leaping from a cliff, only to find himself being dragged down as well until both are saved by another police officer. Why did the first officer rush to save the man? Because his instinct tells him that he and this man are the same and to let him die is to die himself.

I am totally buying the bejeezus out of The Hero with 1,000 Faces after this.

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