Audition for a North Carolina-based production of Hair in about 2 1/2 hours. There are 23 of us that submitted headshots/resumes and got appointments today -- all of us are going in for Claude, essentially the main character. Fun!

I chose a monologue (they wanted a monologue!!) from my favorite play, Burn This by Lanford Wilson. And I'm going to ATTEMPT to sing the end of "How Glory Goes" from Floyd Collins. However, knowing that Adam Guettel music is infamously difficult to play, I have a backup: a cheesy pop ballad. But I really wanna sing "How Glory Goes." I mean, it's basically Floyd singing as he dies -- one of the few musical theatre songs that manages to do this without being hokey in the slightest -- and it's a song I know I can act the hell out of. Stylistically it may be inappropriate, but thematically it's perfect. In my humble opinion. The backup song is only slightly more stylistically appropriate, but thematically completely wrong.

No coffee today. Learned my lesson from the Rent audition. Ok, ok, so I got some iced tea instead. But I've eaten a nice meal to go along with it, so hopefully the caffeine doesn't destroy my composure again.

Need to finish marking up music for maximum chance of success...

**UPDATE**

After marking "How Glory Goes" and being appalled by the festival of highlights when I was done, I think it's safe to say I'll now be singing "Coming Home," the cheesy pop ballad. The title of the song is not meant to be ironic. I promise.

I think that I may finally be figuring out at least a "working draft" of sorts in reference to the way that I handle New York City.

It's somewhat peculiar -- I haven't been overwhelmed by the intensity of emotion and creativity that characterized my trip here in March of 2008, the trip that basically informed me that yes, New York was where I wanted to live. Instead of being handed emotive epiphanies, I've been wrangling some control from fate and placing it -- at least a tiny bit -- in my own uncertain grasp.

At first, my approach to the city was entirely social. Catch up with old friends, make new friends, go out, have lunch, meet up, hang out. Attached to this was this new confidence in my ability to attract guys: this was a new but exciting ability I never expected to possess. All of this was fun, thrilling, and entertaining. It was also empty and expensive.

In the last few days, as I suspected would happen, I began to get "bored." I'm still terrified to go to my first audition on Wednesday, but nonetheless I need to just go and jumpstart my motivation. So I buckled down today as I described earlier and tried to get myself in a better prepared place. I called my father and asked him to send me my music.

Somewhere between this idea of working and auditioning and this somewhat insane social life I've been pursuing is my way of approaching the city. Once I find that perfect spot between the two endpoints of "work" and "play," I can work on growing upward from that, hopefully introducing self-creativity.

It's the subtle suggestion of pattern, again: I sense it at times, usually while I'm in transit, whether I'm walking or on the subway. I notice its flicker here and there, and I snap to attention -- but the feeling always fades quickly, and doubts often take its place.

In the meantime, I feel that perhaps I need to sleep.

Finally getting down to the grind, something I should've done a week ago.

I have purchased a subscription to Backstage, have been scouring the online listings and marking each one that might be at least partially relevant to me, and entering each into iCal, happily aware they will sync to my phone so I can keep those audition times with me at all times.

Yesterday, went to Zak's to steal some music as well as get some second opinions on my updated resume. Today will be all about Kinkos. I will become Kinkos' best friend. I will be spending a lot of money on copies in the near future, at least until I can get my book.

kubulai, this is entry partially for you -- I promised you I'd leave little blogettes informing the world what I was auditioning for. I just haven't organized myself enough for that just yet. :-)

I can finally feel the caffeine of this evening's coffee shop exploits wearing off. I'm relieved, because I was too restless for words. I just wanted to talk to somebody, anybody really, but that's the caffeine talking. Too much. Too much. Words, notes, ideas flitting through my exhausted brain at three hundred miles per hour, or more like 300mph, because that's all the words, notes, ideas were, abbreviated symbols for something more complete and comprehensible. Welcome to the Age of the Acronym; too much information, too much exformation, in and out, breathing and heartbeat faster, synapses racing to keep up with frantic electric impulses, eyes flitting back and forth across pages, across pixels, across parcels of data, neatly wrapped, sparsely trimmed. Couldn't calm down, couldn't relax, couldn't force myself to breathe deeply and just... let... go.

( *pop* )



Time for a bath, some happy thoughts, and bed.

These days I can't help but feel I'm on the brink of something massive.

"Well duh, Joel," you might say, "You're moving to New York. You're essentially starting real life (for real, this time). Of course you're on the brink of something big."

That may be part of it, but that's not entirely what I mean. It's like... I'll be boiling eggs to eat for breakfast, and as I'm sitting there watching the water, random thoughts flit through my head that somehow seem more significant than normal. I'm watching bubbles churn the surface of the water, and I'm having a near-emotional response to whatever happens to cross my mind.

And it always slips away before I can grab it by the neck and say "What ARE you?" If I even try to reach out and discern what's at the core of all that diversity of feeling, it vanishes, with only the smokey remnants of sense memory left behind to leave me wondering.


I experienced one extremely powerful moment when I was on the ship. I had done one show of The Golden Mickeys, had eaten in the mess, and was walking down the I-95 back to the theatre, when all of a sudden, like an electric current passing through my body, I knew with absolute certainty that something important, something very deeply important, was happening. I came back to the dressing room hyper-alert, watching everything for even the slightest hint of that tremendousness I knew was occurring. I saw little, and let my mind wander from that strange, still-electric feeling to the mundane yet intensive activity of the show.

That night was the night that AJ disappeared. I'm curious as to whether or not it was that exact moment that his new connection was forged. Either way, I'm unsure as to why I received such a strong warning for what turned out to be such a paltry event. My only guesses are that perhaps there was a stronger bond there than either of us realized, that it was just a fluke, or that the true meaning of that strange moment has yet to manifest itself. I doubt the first guess, I half disbelieve the second, and I half believe the last. I just don't want to think that such strong, vivid experiences are merely an accident of hormonal timing. Call me crazy, but I used to be able to vaguely predict things when I was younger. I trust my intuition.


So I guess what I'm sitting here doing is precisely what makes it impossible to achieve. Like finding the exact position of an electron... the closer you get, the more likely it is to disappear. As I sit here and try to pinpoint what I'm truly experiencing, it evaporates in a quantum blur of uncertainty.

One sensation is pushing through the murk with clarity, though, and that is exhaustion. I'm going to attempt only eight hours of sleep tonight. Here's hoping.

Denny Martin Flinn is a name I came to know during my Musical Theatre History course, a required class for the completion of my degree. He wrote the required textbook for the course: Musical!: A Grand Tour.

I hated this book.

For one thing, its tagline was "The Rise, Glory, and Fall of an American Institution"... an attitude he adhered to throughout the text. According to Denny Martin Flinn, the peak of the American Musical as an art form was none other than West Side Story, and that everything after it was just not quite as good. He cites Annie in particular as the "beginning of the end."

Obviously as a singing actor I have a problem with someone who suggests that musical theatre is dead.


ANYWAYS, I discovered two things about Denny Martin Flinn this morning, one that makes sense and one that completely threw me off.

1.) Denny Martin Flinn (I refuse to call him by anything other than all three names) started as a dancer. Considering his less-than-thrilled opinion of any show that wasn't a dance festival, this is unsurprising.

2.) Denny Martin Flinn coauthored the screenplay for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

...

WHAT???

Oh, I give up. This world just doesn't make any sense.

Debate has occurred in anthropological circles concerning whether Homo sapiens, early in its development, destroyed/out-resourced Homo neanderthalensis, or whether they actually interbred, unifying into the modern human we see today. Though Neanderthals certainly exhibit features distinct from modern humans, it's theorized by a minority of archaeologists that they weren't so radically different as to prevent cross-breeding.

Cut to me, reading Wikipedia for fun, and stumbling upon an article about the Sons of God as mentioned in Genesis. Often interpreted as Angels, these beings took wives from the "daughters of men" and had children with them. So beings distinguishable from "people" are capable of interbreeding with them. Theoretically, the offspring of these unions were giants ("And there were giants in those days," etc etc). Of course, God's not cool with this (among other things) and the Flood results.

So. People that aren't people. Giants that come from the union of "not-people" and "people." Isn't this hybrid vigor, folks? Is, encoded within Genesis, some kind of racial memory of the two almost separate species coming together? Or do I just have way too much time on my hands?

You decide.

So I did the interview meme -- basically I asked kathymac to interview me after she was interviewed by someone else.

So if you're interested, leave a comment saying "Interview me!" and I'll ask you five questions to post and answer on your LJ.


1. You've been living on a boat for months. Is it as awesome now as you anticipated it being when you started? Why/why not?

Yes and no. First off, I was excited about the job but there was a tone I picked up from past Disney employees that lent me some caution -- I knew it wouldn't all be rainbows and kittens and happy. I don't have to remind you of all the emotional difficulties I've endured whilst I've been on this ship. I have felt ruined, and I have felt like I've ruined others. I've felt absolutely certain of myself and absolutely unlike myself. People trade cliques on here faster than they did in high school, and it can be excruciatingly lonely to someone like me who enjoys the reliability of a stable, solid friendship.

That aside, the work is difficult. I have come close, several times, to feeling like I was going to pass out inside my costume in Toy Story. At times (particularly around the holidays) the audiences were unforgiving and unresponsive. Guests can be nasty when you tell them that Mickey has to go, and even though you get that only a few times a week, if that, it can begin to wear on your sense of self-worth. There is an unfortunate attitude on cruise ships, mostly harboured by American tourists, that because they've paid thousands of dollars to be on a cruise, they get to treat the employees as somehow less than human.

All this having been said, there is so much awesomeness to offset these negatives. Firstly, in regard to the personal/emotional problems: I have learned so much about myself and about relationships that I find it hard to envision learning much more. Of course, I will always surprise myself, but I have at the very least discovered the key to being in a relationship (we'll come back to that in #4). I think I can detect, nowadays, when I have strayed beyond the behavior that falls in line with "being myself." That's important. Incredibly. Secondly, in regard to the work itself -- yes, the guest can be trying but they can also be incredible. A little Asian boy sat in the front row the other night when we did Toy Story -- dressed to the T like Woody. Hat, jeans, belt buckle, cowprint vest -- you name it, he had it. And I got to see his face (out of the corner of my eye) throughout the entire show. His eyes were just lit up the entire time, and he jumped out of his seat (clutching his Buzz Lightyear action figure) at the end of the show to applaud us. And, as far as greeting for characters goes, a woman was on last cruise who gave valentines to all the characters with notes on them saying: "Thank you for all you do, you don't know what it means to people." You can't help falling in love with the work when things like that happen.

2. What's the best thing about not being in college anymore? What's the worst?

The best thing, easily, is having the time to be fully employed, and therefore, having a relatively stable means of paying the bills. I can't count the number of times I had to overdraw my bank account just to pay rent. It's not fun, and that I don't worry about money (at the moment) is so incredible that I don't know how to express it.

The worst is having just left a place that finally -- just finally -- became a kind of home. I knew people and places to go to that made me happy. I knew I could just sorta wander around campus aimlessly and that would make me feel...well, slightly more at peace. There is something so peculiarly reassuring about a college campus that you begin to miss when you're away from it -- perhaps it's the sense of order, structure, layout; it implies there's a meaning to everything you're doing. Perhaps that's what I miss the most: feeling like there's a meaning to everything. Granted, that was a feeling that was even stronger in high school for me and it did fade a bit in college, but it was still there.

3. If you were his chief advisor, what would you encourage Obama to put at the top of his priorities?

Pretty much what he has put at the top of his priorities: curbing the effects of this economic downturn. I think it's insane that my mother, a woman ridiculously overqualified for the position she currently inhabits, just narrowly missed a massive layoff at her company, and, just in case, is preparing for NOT missing the layoffs when they come again in six months. Furthermore, I don't want the industry that I'm working in to be in the shape it's in now when I finish working for Disney, whenever that may be. Tied to this is the availability of a college education to Americans. The fact that middle-class Americans can get little to no assistance in going to college is appalling. Not every middle-class American father or mother was able to save a college fund. My parents were doing quite well when I applied for college and as a result I got only the option for unsubsidized federal loans. No grants. No subsidizing. The only scholarship I received was a $1000 achievement scholarship from Georgia Thespians and my yearly scholarship from the Musical Theatre Department. But my parents were not always so financially capable -- in fact, it was about the time of my birth that they finally stopped being in abject poverty. There were four siblings ahead of me. They had neither the time nor the money to finance my college education. The point of all this blabbering is that without a college education, or without an adjustment in attitude as to what "real work" is, Americans will be underqualified to work, will not innovate, and will therefore be stuck in an economic rut that will adversely affect the rest of the world. Silly. ALSO tied into this is foreign relations. So on and so on.

4. Have you made any exciting new discoveries lately? They can be superficial (new music/books/etc) or not-so-superficial.

I referenced a discovery in #1 that I believe I've mentioned to you previously. That discovery is that, above everything, I believe in honesty. This has been a hard lesson to learn. But essentially, it is key to all relationships, romantic or otherwise, and withholding honesty will do nothing but diminish or destroy such relationships. As I am a person that likes interacting with people, I have a feeling that this discovery is going to hold a great deal of weight in my future. Particularly in the romantic world, where, already, the effects of having applied this discovery are wonderful and reassuring.

On a less profound level, I'm in love with Kate Nash. I don't know if she's on iTunes or not, but she rocks.

5. If you were suddenly given unlimited funds, what would be the first thing you spent it on? What thing in the future would you save for?

First of all, I'd eradicate my student debt. Secondly, I'd purchase an apartment for myself in New York. Nothing fancy, but just something I (or potentially I and someone else) could live in. Third, I'd buy a really freakin nice meal for everyone who's ever spotted me when in financial trouble. Fourth, I'd set up a scholarship fund for students wanting to pursue musical theatre. It'd be talent-based, with a potential essay component. And it would be university-independent, but heavily promoted at high school functions like International Thespian Festival.

The thing in the future I'd save it for...hmm. I don't know. A college fund for my children, I suppose. LOL...sense a recurring theme here?

That's about it, I think!

The world is literal, the literal world, a literal word to describe a literal world -- and yet the word is abstract and as it describes the world, the world itself becomes abstract. The world becomes the word and the word changes the world. And suddenly I remember that I once described only sensations in my journal, or at least mostly sensations. The events themselves occurred, but it was not they that were critical. It was the core reaction, the gut sensation, the thoughts and perceptions that I needed to express. And yet I have changed, describing events to mind-numbing detail -- a kind of justification for the feelings I have, perhaps because I have subconsciously decided those feelings need justification. And yet they don't. I feel what I feel because I am human. I react how I react because I am living, experiencing the Great Human Experience. My past informs my present and future. Those feelings are real, and valid. And they must be described. I must leave an account. I must destroy my mortality, somehow, because I do not fear death, and it may claim me sooner than it might claim others. And so what will be my legacy?

A fan is on. Rotating blades force air forward. It collides with a hanging shirt, which collides with my face. Over, and over, and over, cool air and cotton brush against my forehead, my hair. I feel it and attempt to decipher it. Perhaps it is meaningless, but there is meaning even in that interpretation. I do know how it makes me feel: like I am careless for standing in the way of its limited and oscillatory path. Back and forth the fan pivots. Up and down the shirt responds. But I -- I just sit there. I do not respond. I feel only the light, irritating brush of fabric against skin and cannot find it in my willpower to move.

And yet, finally, I do move. I reach over and flip the switch. Off the fan goes. The motion stills itself. Blades slow. Air falters. Shirt hangs. And there I sit. Motionless, again. In my own world. The noise is gone, at last, and I can hear the music without increased volume. Suddenly I remember this place. I cannot recall exactly what brought me here before, but I know that I have, prior to this arrival, spent time here. What is this place?

I remember...

The space behind my palms...

A swirling violet vortex...

The Pleiades star cluster...

The River Liffey...

An empty car with a gift of IBC Cream Soda that was never given...

A submerged ruin haunted by the ghost of love and a sad, simple melody.

Yes, that one. And all of the others, too. It's the same place. A place that's sad, and distant, and ever-present. It's the underwater ruin of a temple or great laboratory where, for whatever reason, I have come to reside. Not the whole of me; not my life's experiences, not my spinning thoughts nor my cold logic, not the body that feels and eats and sees. No, this is the center of me, the quiet spark of blue-white light that can escape neither water nor ruin, and so instead it does all it can to illuminate both. This is the place where I pour out all the light I, that hidden blue-white spark, can muster.

I will light the way.

I will show anyone else that cares to wander this deep the place that I inhabit.

So if you see a distant flash of blue-white, take a look. It is, in the end, for you.





I miss writing things, incomprehensible as they may be.

My life is turning into one fucking cruel joke.

I have mentioned to a few of my fellow cast members that if anyone were to discover my brown journal, they would think I was absolutely insane, and that my life closely resembles a bad soap opera. Perhaps. But I've thought of my life as a soap opera once before, and that was during high school, where, despite the low lows, I was, I think, very very happy. I suspect I'll look back on my time at DCL similarly.

The truth is, a boy broke my heart because he fell in love with a character I played rather than me. I suspect that even now, after his betrayal, he watches me while I go out onstage and create that character over and over again, and I suspect that something in him sighs and longs for that all over again. But I know better than return that desire, and in fact, I have a better desire anyway.

You see, one night while my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces, I walked over to a railing overlooking a sea reflecting a million Caribbean stars, and a very gifted someone followed the trail of shattered heart fragments, picked up each one he could find carefully, found me at the end of the trail, and handed back to me what he'd discovered. Somehow I knew he would, and yet somehow I was shocked when he did. And since that night, though I still shed a broken piece of heartache here and there, I can't help but think again and again of the man who gave me back my heart, without pretense, without self consciousness, without any real notion that I might want to hand over that broken mess right back to him. Yet somehow I do. Somehow I'm prepared to do that already.

It's funny; I suppose once you know your heart is really worth giving away, it's much easier to do so, even when you don't yet have any reason to trust who you're giving it to. Except... I do have reason to trust who I'm giving it to. I still can't believe that someone as kind, and as gracious, and as genuine, and as attractive as AJ wants me, of all people.

But you want to know something amazing? For the first time, he makes me feel as though I deserve someone as incredible as he is. While I've always felt stupid or insane or apologetic when I develop feelings for other people, he has turned this around and makes me feel intelligent, sane, and deserving of my affection for him. That it really is a good thing...imagine that!

While there is something lofty and surreal about these as-of-yet-largely-unexplored feelings, there is also something so grounded and real about them, despite he and I having so little face-to-face contact. And all that I really have left to say is that he's amazing, and I can't wait until... well, until I talk to him again. Until I see him again. Until I hug him again. And until I kiss him...for the first time.

:)

Compilation of short clips from my trip to Niagara, on the (admittedly cooler) Canadian side. It's just not worth trying to capture unless you get the water in motion -- simultaneously swift and slow-motion...

:)

It could be that this is just a freakishly mild summer, or it could be the novelty of being in a large city, or it could just be that this place is beautiful. Yes, a city, but somehow not. The air is clean, or seems clean. The sky is oddly hazeless. Every evening I'm treated to the most spectacular displays of color and contrast, set against the curiously unmemorable buildings of the Toronto skyline. I sit here in my apartment right now, looking at a verdant cluster of trees behind some buildings off of Yonge Street, tracking seagulls as they fly against the green. Things seem soft, peaceful. Well, outside the rehearsal studio, anyway.

I'm going to miss fall. I won't have one this year. But you know, things are a little different already.

I once mentioned to Jordan, my ex-roomie, that it kind of felt as though during the warmer part of the year I was distinctly more male. My thoughts, my feelings, even the way I sensed and perceived the world seemed a bit more in tune with my Y chromosome. But when that first gust of wind blew in, carrying with it the dry, smoke-tinged, and earthy scent of autumn, the other half awakened. This is not to say I became female in an emotional sense, but rather both. The sort of androgynous IS/IS NOT whole, the weird union of polar and opposing forces. It kind of explained, in a way, why I felt I "woke up" every autumn -- suddenly I had twice the number of thought patterns, twice the number of mental approaches to every situation. One side is hard-coded into my genes, the other brought on, perhaps, by whatever prenatal conditions also made me attracted to men rather than women.

So why autumn? Is there something about the shortening photoperiod that triggers the "other half"? Or is fall something I just associated with certain events in my past? I'm not sure. All I know is that normally, sometime in September, it feels like I... reawaken.

Well, it's not September. And yet here we are. Here I am. It's dusk in Toronto, and the sky is soft, and I am awake. The windows are open. Air comes in, out. Light follows suit. I have had a cup of coffee following a large dinner, and I feel drowsier than ever.

I don't have to be at work until 1:30 tomorrow, and I may go to the CN Tower after I'm done at 2:00, and it's this I'm looking forward to more than anything. I feel strange and ill at ease and very glad to be this way. I don't know. I thought...I don't know what I thought. Things are different. Startlingly, beautifully different. It's like I want to cry, or sleep, or both, or neither.



underwater for millenia, its mysteries lay heartbreakingly exposed and unreachable. who would traverse the depths? who would lay hands on unhidden, inaccessible marvels?

I wish I had more to say, but I'm afraid I don't. Without access to a computer or much time to write in my journal, I find that I've been thinking less and less in terms of strings of phrases and more in flashes of images and bits of sound. What I'm doing right now seems to keep me so busy that I feel as though I'm living an entirely visceral existence, where day to day life seems ruled by only what I feel and what others tell me to do. I'm willing to submit to what others ask of me because that's my job -- it's just that I suppose this is the first time in my life I've had to do so for up to and sometimes more than 8 hours a day. What I feel, who I am, what I do is dictated by other people for most of my day -- the life of an actor -- and I guess I've never been thrown into it like this before. And I don't mind -- I love my job -- but it's interesting to see how it sort of prevents me from building the phrases in my mind that are required for the kind of blogging/writing I like to do. Who knows? Maybe I'll adapt soon enough and be able to access it again after the dust settles.

I am having an incredible time though. I like Toronto a lot -- I don't feel the pull to live here like I do NYC, but it's exactly the kind of city I longed for when in Oklahoma. And, I'm happy to say, the sky here can be equally dramatic. Not as many thunderstorms, though, which is sad. Ah well.

I feel like there is so much to say, but no reasonable way to say it...I tell you what. I'll eat the pork roast that's been cooking in the oven then head over to Starbucks and attempt writing there, latte in hand. We'll see what happens then. I have, after all, so much to say, and a few important things to which I need to respond.

Just a little tour of the apartment. More later.