Elipsis

A friend once told me that I would change the way I brushed my teeth, depending on who else was in the room. I can't deny it. For as long as I can remember, the stage has felt like home for me. Recently, I began considering the implications of my lifelong performer's mentality. This is the problem: as a performer, I'm used to relying entirely on others to point me in the right direction. Artists and audiences build the boxes in which I work, in which I question, in which I work out my meaning. Without these architects, I stand here paralyzed by the sheer scale of what is possible. My analytical brain is so completely overwhelmed by all of the information, by all the options, by all that is possible, that it simply overloads. I need to find some way to close the aperture; some way to process the feedback I'm receiving from this world into some kind of a clear picture.

Last week, I met my family in Jacksonville, Florida. After one of the longer road trips I've had in recent memory, we arrived in Key West: the southernmost point in the United States. Now, aside from the beaches and the general two-pieced scenery I was looking forward to investigating, there was one stop I knew I must make: the Hemingway house. I've always been captivated by Hemingway, not simply by his words, but by the richness and tragedy of the life they reflected. His work is ominous, dark and clear, painting an unforgiving world of basically flawed people, doomed to succumb to the lower angels of their nature. The most tragic ingredient of his work for me, however, is the overwhelming sense I get that there was a time in his life when he believed in the redemption and hope he would so curtly dismiss with his writing. Undoubtedly, his experiences as an ambulance driver in World War I fed this perspective. His string of failed marriages, as well. Still, I came to his old home to seek something unlikely: inspiration.

The tour guide was amusing, offering interesting stories to better illuminate the man's humanity. He showed us the 17th century birthing stool Hemingway used to watch bullfights, purely for the shock-value. He offered an explanation for the 44 six-toed cats who still wandered the premises. He even told stories about his own exploits as a tour guide, in the Hemingway tradition (one particularly hilarious prank involved an Asian tour group and a sleeping cat on Hemingway's bed). Still, most meaningful for me weren't the stories of Hemingway's exploits, but the simple way in which he lived out his tenure on that island. Everyday, he would follow the same routine: up at 6, write until 750 words or lunch--whichever came first, go fishing until happy hour at Sloppy Joe's bar, stumble home to greet whichever celebrity guest his wife was hosting at the time, go to bed and start all over. While at happy hour, Hemingway would draw out the stories of the locals at Sloppy Joe's, remember them, and record them the following morning. These stories would provide him all the fuel he needed to keep producing unforgettable literature. Over half of his life's work was composed during his 8 years in Key West, where his primary sources of inspiration were fish and barroom conversations. I felt so inadequate.

I thanked the tour guide for his stories and for keeping the spirit alive. It's hard to know what to make of my own search for direction in the shadow of such a giant. There was nothing about his life in that Floridian paradice that seemed up to the task of inspiring that great art. He simply worked, fished, and listened everyday, and wrote down what he heard. This was his lens: his aperture. I've decided to try this as well. To take the life that I am living as a community organizing opera singing, theological junkee, and write about what I see, the people I meet, and the stories they tell me. Hopefully, through this offering, I not only draw into clearer focus my own questions, but speak to some of yours as well. I look forward to hearing your stories, and seeing just where this will go...

for You

I've been thinking about you less, lately. It used to be I couldn't get away from you. Everywhere we had been, the things we'd talked about, all of these became apparitions of you. Not the you I could call and speak with today, of course, but the you burned into my memory; the you that might have never existed outside my imagination.

Today, it is easier. I sit on my roof without thinking of the first night we spent here. Without being bombarded by sensation-- scent, touch, taste--that my memory now links to you. I go to that same cafe, even have the same tired conversations with our same old friends (the ones I have now inherited).

I'm moving away, now. While packing up my things, I came across the sweater I had given you that night. Our time together has become so much simpler, so much tidier with the passage of time. You become less you, and more a foil to my own character with each day that passes. You have surrendered your limitless complexity so that you might fit more neatly into my life story. This is called perspective.

I wonder if I have become the same for you. We were only together for a short time, and yet the words we shared were true. So, what have I become to mean for you?

dark cafes

dark cafes in summertime
dark cafes, where people hide
hide from city lights and drink wine
wine to calm busy minds

I live in these dark cafes
where for the price of a tea
they will let me stay;
let me believe I'm free

You found me in such a place
said You'd seen me here before
said that you wrote songs in case
you forgot what it was all for

I write words with melodies in mind
words I plan to sing someday
silly words about the meaning I find
in my little world inside this cafe

maybe I'll sing them for You
show You how beautiful I can be
and You can sing for me, too
show me all the things You see

dark cafes in summertime
where we wait for life to begin
where I sit and write these silly lines
hoping You'll drop in and listen