Things Ended, Things Begun

Sometime around 4:15 on Sunday, April 5, I looked down from the top of the castle stairs onstage and cried out in a big, booming voice, "Lay on, Macduff,/And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"  I exited upstage left, fighting.  And that was it.  My part in Riverwalk Theatre's production of "Macbeth" was over.  After helping strike the set, I took my sore muscles, bruised bones, and exhausted brain home.  I had just ended something huge and challenging, and I felt complete.  The next day I got my hair cut and most of the dye pulled out of it, and picked up my "normal" life again.

As a special treat to myself for finishing the play, and to Cary for finishing a 10 week winter quarter teaching German to undergrads at a college 90 miles from home, we went to Las Vegas a couple of days later.  It felt good to see the sun, have a few good meals, hang out by the pool, and walk the strip.  But on that Friday morning I got a call from my sister, a call that I had been expecting (and not wanting) for a long time.  Her ex-husband, Tom, father of my striking 18 and 20-year old nieces, had died earlier that morning from the cancer that he had lived with and battled for about seven years.  He died on my youngest niece's 18th birthday, as if it had been his intention to bring her safely to that place in her life where one phase would be ending and another beginning.

And so I got thinking about all kinds of endings and all kinds of beginnings.  Right now I see so many of them weaving through the lives of those that I love.  One daughter about to move from the west coast to the east coast where her husband will be stationed as a doctor in the Navy.  The other applying to grad school at the University of Michigan even as she negotiates the terrain of a new love.  My sister closing the chapter of her life revolving around her ex-husband and her daughters and both figuratively and literally writing the chapter that will follow.  My wife coming to grips with the likely possibility that the universe has plans for her that don't involve teaching German at a college or University, and struggling to hear her next calling amid the noisy chatter of every day life. My nieces saying goodbye to the man who loved them so fiercely and quite literally lived his life for them over the last several years - all this at a time when they need to deal with school, and romance, and career paths, and all the other new beginnings that 18 and 20-year olds everywhere deal with.  Many endings, and many beginnings.

And what about the old Brad-meister?  Amid all the major life changes my loved ones are facing it seems trivial to admit that I am struggling with the end of my play.  But I am.  Or more accurately, I am struggling with picking up my "normal" life after the play.  Why?  I guess because for a couple of months or so I was engaged in a pursuit that so clearly furthered my personal mission, one that helped the dream of the universe come true, one that created something of value and made connections in a world where all too often there is destruction and disconnection.  Don't get me wrong - I am a good lawyer.  I take my work seriously and exert all the creativity and good spirits I can to get financing transactions done for my clients (mostly schools, and cities and universities - important and meaningful stuff).  But yesterday I spent a disproportionate part of my day agonizing over the logistics of turning a big document around and sending it out over cyberspace to about 20 people who are, for the most part, unlikely even to look at it.  Part of the agonizing - testimony to my own debilitating compulsions for making my work internally consistent, I am sure - came as I tried to help my secretary figure out how to make all the quote marks in the document straight (some of them were curly).

The world, with all its current needs and troubles, needs me to focus my talents on some task other than conforming quote marks.  But what is it?  There's the rub.  I'm in the middle place where one phase of my life is ending, or needs to end, and another is beginning, or needs to begin.  It is uncomfortable to be in this place because, when I try to see what is next for me, I am pretty much in the dark.  But maybe that's as it should be.  Michael Meade, storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, writes this in his book, The World Behind the World: Living at the Ends of Time:

Each initiatory passage requires that we become lost to all that we know.  The keys that unlock the doors of wisdom have to be found in the darkness or else fashioned from some loss.  If the keys were in the light everyone would already have found them.

It helps me to know that its more than just all right to be in the dark and to feel loss, it is necessary for growth.  In my heart I hope such a notion could help those whom I love, too, as they navigate the rough waters of their new beginnings.  But I'm guessing it will take a while, and a few more beginnings and endings, before it does.  And so it goes. 

Why Real is Better Than Perfect

Last Thursday, March 26, was the 17th anniversary of my Mom's death. It was also the opening of "Macbeth" at Riverwalk Theatre featuring yours truly as the "fiend of Scotland" himself. All day long, and during the performance itself, the events felt related. So much of what I am, as a man, as a compassionate person, as an enthusiastic performer, and more, I can source to the influence of my parents. But when it comes to my need and desire to be perfect, the influence is mostly my Mom's. Dad was accepting of the middle way, the great compromise, in himself and in others. No such middle way for Mom. In fact, she used to call my Dad a "middle of the road bastard." Most of the time she even said it lovingly.

And so I grew up with the belief that the pursuit of excellence was a moral matter. If one had "God-given" talent or ability, one had a moral duty to live up to the potential of it. To leave something on the table, to fall short of perfection, was wrong. Not murder and mayhem kind of wrong, but wrong just the same. And this was the case even if what was accomplished was pretty darned good in its own right. So Mom viewed an A- in math with a raised eyebrow when she knew I was capable of getting an A. Being elected Vice President of the class wasn't much of an accomplishment, because she "knew" in her heart of hearts that I had more to offer my class than did the boy elected President (even though she was wrong in this assessment).

My Mom loved my sister and me fiercely. Her desire to have us excel stemmed from her belief that if we excelled we would succeed, and that if we succeeded we would insulate ourselves from the many hardships she endured in her life. It reminds me of a mother bird stuffing her hatchlings so that they will be strong enough to leave the nest. But I'm guessing a mother bird has the innate sense to not over-stuff her babies, realizing that to do so would make it impossible for them to fly and cause them, rather, to fall to the ground.

I act because I love to do it. I love the challenge of wrangling words and emotion into a real-time experience for myself and the audience. When I am doing it well I can feel an actual exchange of energy between myself and the audience, each of us enlivening the other. I act on stage in large part to forge that connection - the feeling I get from doing so is pure bliss, better than any drug. And so the other night, on the anniversary of Mom's death, I invoked her spirit to be with me, to give me strength and courage to pull these beautiful words of Shakespeare into something that would touch others. And she was with me.

In my heart I believe that my Mom, or her essence, now knows, as I know, that in using my talent and ability there is a moral imperative, but that imperative is not to be perfect. It is to be real. To be present. To connect. And so while one small part of me was shaking its head at itself the last couple of nights for switching a few words around or failing to pluck exactly the right phrase out of the memory bank at exactly the right time, the bigger part of me was enjoying the moment and the connection. For real. It turns out my Mom got what she wanted after all. At least for the time I am on stage, the hardships of the world cannot touch me.

Something Wicked

I was raised to be a good boy.  From my earliest days I was taught by my parents to tell the truth, be kind to others, "keep my nose clean," "keep my gun in my pocket," and more.  For the most part, it worked.  (Okay, by the time I was 13 my gun came out of my pocket a lot, but at least I had the good-boy decency to feel bad about it when, starting at 17, I started aiming it at others.)  In fact, it worked so well that I have struggled as an adult to do some of the things that any psychologically healthy adult should do: establish boundaries, act without undue regard for the approval or acceptance of others, disappoint others (with integrity) in order to be true to oneself, be assertive (not rude) with others so as not to be run over by them.  Time and again I have struggled with these healthy behaviors because the "good boy" in me is afraid I'm doing something wrong.  Over time, the "good man" in me has come to see that they are not only useful, but essential if I am to live authentically.

One problem with trying to be good all the time is that our "bad" stuff  must find expression one way or another.  In my case, the short-haired teenager who got straight A's and was an alter boy secretly smoked.  This was one way I could be "bad" without being too bad - my parents did it after all, so how bad could it be?  As an adult I carried this habit forward for many years and added over indulgence of spirits to the mix.  Through the years my good friends, Beer and Wine, and occasionally their nasty uncle, Scotch,  came to my aid in two ways: they helped me slow down my hyper-active mind and, more to the point, they loosened me up so my "devilish" side could come out to play.  I was not generally mean, but bolder, more flirtatious, raunchier, and so on.  Another way the "bad" stuff came out in me was through sulking around, fighting with, and criticizing those I loved the most (while generally being funny, bright and supportive to the greater world).

Robert Johnson, in his wonderful little book, "Owning Your Own Shadow," explains all this in terms of the Jungian concept of "shadow":

 The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into the consciousness.  It is the despised quarter of our being.  It often has an energy potential nearly as great as that of our ego.  If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us; or we have a depression or an accident that seems to have its own purpose.  The shadow gone autonomous is a terrible monster in our psychic house.

 Johnson asserts that there can be no light within our psyches without dark to balance it.  So if we try to be good in our lives, live in accordance with our highest selves, is it necessary that we must act out the dark stuff in a harmful way just to maintain this balance?  No, says Johnson, for the following reason:

It is possible to live one's ideals, do one's best, be courteous, do well at work, and live a decent civilized life if we ritually acknowledge this other dimension of reality.  The unconscious cannot tell the difference between a "real" act and a symbolic one.  This means that we can aspire to beauty and goodness - and pay out that darkness in a symbolic way.

I am well into rehearsals for Macbeth - in fact we open four weeks from today.  I have to say that I am greatly enjoying playing the "hellhound" Macbeth.  That dark side of me that needs a way out finds full symbolic expression when I stare at my sword onstage and growl, "The castle of Macduff I will surprise;/ Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword/ His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line."  Oh, yeah.  It feels good to act bad.  But does it make me a better person the rest of the time?  I don't know for sure.  But it feels good enough that I might just have to find some other bloody, symbolic, act to embrace once the play is over and I am once again just a mild mannered attorney.  "Something wicked this way comes..." - at least in my ritual life.  And the good man smiles.

Las Vegas Illusions

There is a great line in Alanis Morissette's song, "21 things i want in a lover": "do you see everything as an illusion but enjoy it even though you are not of it?"  (As an aside, by actual count I have 18.5 of the 21 things she wants in a lover.  I'm still waiting for her call.  Sorry, Cary, I love you but, well, you know.  On the other hand I'll understand if you answer Prince's call when it comes.)

Many spiritual traditions hold that much, if not all, of the world is an illusion, an illusion that deceives us through our desires and our fears, keeps us trapped in the past and worried about the future, and prevents us from awakening to the eternal truth of the moment and being one with the universe.  If this point of view is correct, we might actually view Las Vegas as a kind of spiritual boot camp.

I first had this thought five or six years ago when I went on a solo trip to the strip.  At the time I was romantically unattached, struggling with a job I really disliked, feeling alienated from my young-adult daughters (whom I loved more than anything), rehashing the past, trying to figure out how to redeem what was left of my future, and not seeing, let alone, enjoying the sweetness of life.  So what did I do?  Well in addition to playing some blackjack, taking a flight over the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon, going to see Cirque du Soleil's, "Mystere," and drinking lots of wine, I walked the strip.  And what did I see?  Over there fake New York City.  Over there, fake Paris.  Over there, fake Venice.  How about a fake Arthurian castle?  A fake Great Pyramid?  Fake Roman Forum?  There they are!  Fake pirates and a fake volcano - wow!  Real white tigers posed with a couple of scary German types with fake faces and hair.  Small Mexican-Americans snapping and handing out cards with air-brushed women with fake boobs.  And running through it all - like condensed, dark-side blood - greed, desire, fear, lust, laughter, tears, longing, and more.  I walked and walked, listening to my iPod, and soaked it all in.  It's easy to see how life is an illusion when you're in a place that is specifically designed to sell the illusion to you.  It's easy if you take the time to look.

Last weekend I was in Las Vegas with some friends of mine to see the sun for a few days, enjoy some male bonding, and to lose some money on football's "big game."  I knew it was an illusion, but I enjoyed it.  I had my friend, Dave, take a picture of me near the fake canals of the Venetian hotel.

Back in April of 2007 I was in the "real" Venice with my daughter, Taylor, to celebrate her college graduation.  She snapped a picture of me by the "real" canals of Venice.

When I think about my two experiences there is, in one sense, no comparison.  I mean, come on!  Venice?  The food, the wine, the architecture, the gondolas, the unique (not always pleasant) smells, the shops.  But, wait a minute - there were loud tourists, tacky souvenirs, chain stores, small hotel rooms and, yes, even Italian bedbugs.  It wasn't always a perfect experience but, at its best, and when my daughter and I were most enjoying ourselves over good food and wine, or seeing some particularly beautiful site, it was a very real experience in a very real moment.  And so was Las Vegas, in its own way and for its own reasons.  My connection with Dave, Tony and Rick, the good humor, the good food, the good entertainment, none of that was less real - or less significant - just because we were in a place so obviously "fake."  The moment - moment by moment - was exactly what it was supposed to be.  All that was required by me was to be there (really be there) to witness.

Alanis, honey, do you agree?

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

A week ago this evening my wife and I braved the cold to drive to Riverwalk Theatre in Lansing.  I tried out for the part of Macbeth - one of the great roles in classical theater.  I had studied the script, let my pretty much all-gray hair grow out, pumped up a bit to add some musculature to my lanky frame, and practiced standing and moving without my patented slouch.  I read well and did my best to generate at least a little spark of sexual tension with the sometimes much younger women reading for Lady Macbeth.  (My favorite tryout moment came when a stone-gorgeous young woman in her mid-20's approached me before we read and asked, sotto voce, "Is it all right if I touch you?"  I mumbled out some mature response, but inside I was thinking, "Is this a trick question?")  I found out later in the week that I got the part.  Yippee!

Holy crap!

All I need to do between now and March 26 is learn a butt-load of lines, attend rehearsals five nights a week, learn the choreography for then practice five stage fights (at least I get to kill four others before the worrrrthy Macduff takes my head for a trophy), continue to pump up, and, maybe, get the old dye job on the noggin.  I also have to overcome my fear of "going up" (forgetting lines) on stage, something I never used to worry about when I was younger and the lines stuck easier.

So why do I do it?  Because I love it.  There are certainly times in my life when I question whether what I'm doing is in integrity with my personal mission, whether I am putting positive energy into the universe or just getting by, whether I am living life with bliss or waiting to do so at a later, more convenient or less scary,  time.  But when I am preparing for and acting in a production, especially one like "Macbeth" in which I will get to push myself to the limits of my talent in order to forge a visceral connection with the audience, I don't question any of this.  I know this undertaking is right and I am delighted to do it.

Back in 1992, when I was 38 years old, I returned to acting after several years away from it.  With the then recent death of my mother, the break up of my first marriage, financial and career reversals, and back-to-back physical relocations sending me reeling, it was a delicious treat to rediscover this pastime that had been lost.  It was a great balm to sooth all the loss I had experienced.  At the time I thought it provided me with something else as well - a chance to let my young daughters see me doing something that made me happy, and by seeing that know that it was okay for them to do the same.  In some respects I'm sure it did.  But looking back at it now I understand that the chance to see me happy and present with myself didn't mean as much to them as I thought it would.  They would rather I had spent more time with, and been happier and more present with, them.  I understand this now, even if I misjudged their needs then.

But regardless of the uneven steps that brought me here to this "bank and shoal of time," I now get to immerse myself in a crazy, passionate, challenging undertaking "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" until April 5.  It will be an experience, as Mr. Shakespeare says, "full of sound and fury," but not, as he also says, one "signifying nothing."  At least not for me.

Masks and Creativity

In the last few years of his life my dad wrote what he called his "non-poems."  He called them that because he was not a poet, he was a structural steel draftsman.  It wasn't his place to write poetry, so he wrote "non-poetry."  From time to time he would recite one or a few lines from one to me.  It was only after his death in late 2006 that I found his whole "non-poetry" oeuvre.  Some of them were sprinkled with his unique brand of humor, "Grandpa Humor" my daughters called it.  Consider this short one: "Some people say I'm indecisive, but I don't know if I am or not."  But others showed a sadness behind the humor, as did "The Mask" which I reproduce below in his own hand:

Although my dad had friends and family, he spent much of his time in solitude.  In many ways he enjoyed this solitude, but "The Mask" showed that he was fiercely lonely, too, and in many ways afraid to show what he felt to those of us who loved him so much.  If you were to have asked me about him I would have told you my dad was introspective, aloof in many ways, and an only child who turned into an old fart who liked his privacy and space.  Shows you what I knew.  

My dad's "non-poems" also showed that behind another mask he wore - that of skilled, old-school draftsman (no CAD for him) - there lived a strong urge to be creative.  Not just to experience creativity of others, but to create something of his own.  In his wonderful book, "Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet,"  theologian and spiritual rabble-rouser Matthew Fox writes: "To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy.  It is also to speak of our connection to the Divine in us and of bringing the Divine back to community."

In one respect I guess that my own creativity is more apparent than my dad's.  I speak and write and act on stage and share all of this with my family, friends, and community, if not the world at large.  Tonight, for instance, I will try out for the role of Macbeth in the upcoming production of Shakespeare's classic at Riverwalk Theatre in Lansing, Michigan.  If I get the part, the product of my creativity will be evident for many to see and not tucked away in a notebook (like my dad's "non-poems").  But here's the thing.  The act of creation is a very private and as Fox says, "intimate" thing.  From a cosmic perspective, my dad's using the energy of the universe to create his "non-poems" is no different from my using that energy to create a character on stage.  In each case, the act of creation is, it seems to me, a form of prayer, an act of great reverence for the eternal and the transcendent, a small nod of thanks to the entity, the force, the ever present energy (it's okay, you can call it God) that has for whatever purpose, grand or random, loaned this spark of energy to us.  Now, I also think it's true that by sharing our creativity with others we have a great opportunity to spread and magnify the energy inherent in our creation.  But that is a subject for another day and another post.  No need to get too bogged down in philosophical reflections when I need to be preparing for auditions.  As my dad said in another of his "non-poems":

"Life isn't all that complicated, as long as you don't let something jump up and bite you in the ass."

Well, there you go.

Hold on Loose

Back 34 years or so ago, my college economics professor hypnotized my soon-to-be wife.  Professor Kenneth Asquith, blessed with a calm, even voice, was a skilled amateur hypnotist.  He was interested in hypnotism primarily as a means of determining whether or not each of us has lived multiple past lives.  So after Kim looked at the candle, listened to the Professor's cooing voice, and nodded out, Professor Asquith took her back through time.  He had her remember winning the Miss Rockford pageant and participating in the Miss Illinois pageant that followed.  He took her back to the age of three - "How old are you now?" he asked.  "Free," she responded, mispronouncing the word as she had in 1956.  He tried to take her back to her mother's womb and beyond, but stopped when she became uncomfortable in her memories.

Through it all I sat mesmerized.  "Take me, take me," I thought, "I'll do it!  I'll go all the way back!"  But when it was my time to go under, I couldn't.  I wanted so badly to be hypnotized that I was unable to drop into a hypnotic state.  Kim, on the other hand, who had been more or less indifferent to the whole process, had dropped right off.  (Admittedly, she was otherwise one of those people who could sleep soundly whatever was going on in her life, and I was not.)

I've thought of that incident often through the years.  It has served as "Exhibit A" in the past experiences I turn to when I get frustrated that something I love so much is lost or that something I want so much seems out of my reach.  Through the years I have clung to people only to lose (or damage) our relationships.  I have clung to "stuff" only to have it break or get lost or lose its allure.  I have clung to the idea of elusive ways of life (working in "the right job," living in "the right climate and culture," finding "the right path to enlightenment," and so on), blindly plodding through life with these ideals dangling in front of my nose like a carrot in front of a plow horse.

There are many things I want to do with the time I have left in my life.  In order to do them, I need goals, objectives, action plans, and so on.  I need to take action and measure results.  I need to expend effort.  A play doesn't write itself.  A speech doesn't magically appear in my computer's documents folder.  I don't go on stage to perform a great role without spending hours learning lines and rehearsing (although trying to do so is just what happens in one of my recurring nightmares).  I don't make the world a better place by just wishing it were so, even if "positive thinking" helps.

Ten years ago I attended a retreat called "Warrior Monk."  The retreat was designed, in part, to help participants be clear about their missions in life, to learn how to create goals and objectives in support of theirs missions, and (the hard part for me) to learn how to lessen their attachment to certain processes and results.  I thought, "What?  I'm supposed to spend all this time coming up with a mission, goals, and objectives, and not get attached to how I pursue them or what happens?"  The paradox was almost too much for me.  But then I got it.  I have always had a tendency to "hold on tight" in order to get what I want or to not lose what I have.  A better way might be to "hold on loose."  Do the planning, do the work, then let it go.  Repeat as necessary.

In his wonderful translation of the "Tao te Ching," Stephen Mitchell says it well in this excerpt from Chapter 10:

Giving birth and nourishing,

having without possessing,

acting with no expectations,

leading and not trying to control:

this is the supreme virtue.