REASONS FOR LIVING: April 4th 2010

LAKEBOAT - Written by David Mamet, Directed by Joe Mantegna

A hilarious, beautiful movie about a vanishing way of life (or maybe one that's already disappeared), Mamet based the play (and subsequent film) on experiences he had on a boat as a youth one Summer on Lake Michigan. The excellent cast includes Peter Falk, Denis Leary, George Wendt, Andy Garcia, the great Charles Durning, Mamet's brother Tony, and Chicago theatre legends (and guys who should be famous) J.J. Johnston and Jack Wallace. Robert Forster gives a tender, gorgeous performance as Joe Litko, a brooding lifer not quite sure how the hell he became himself. Mantegna gives the subject a wonderful dignity, capturing the crisp, autumnal nature of working on a freighter. He elicits stellar performances all around, but screws up by inserting flashback footage over some of the monologues, which are delivered with such mastery that they don't require the over the top reenactments. I love this movie so goddamn much.

GLENGARRY GLENROSS - Written by David Mamet, Directed by James Foley

Watching this movie has become a nightly, post-bar ritual (well, we don't go to the bar every night, but when we do, the movie invariably follows). A once-in-a-lifetime cast, the movie gets better with every viewing. The script, I think, is much better than the play. We get more Moss, get to see Levine in action on a sit, AND we get Alec Baldwin as the yuppie from Hell. A modern classic.

A WHORE'S PROFESSION - Essays by David Mamet

A compilation of Mamet's essay collections "The Cabin," "Writing in Restaurants," "Some Freaks," and "On Directing Film," I picked this up a few years ago at Half Price Books and it is one of the five books or so I hope is always with me. Mamet's essays are endlessly readable. His life has been extraordinary, his opinions are always welcome, and I've learned more about theatre from him than anyone. I would advise, however, taking everything in "On Directing Film" with a grain of salt, as I think he is a much better writer than a director. I don't agree with much of anything he says about filmmaking, and, although many great films have been made from his scripts, I think his material is usually handled better by others. Also recommended is "Make-Belive Town," a later collection of essays. I was a drama major in College, but I found myself consistently at odds with what they were teaching me, with what everyone else was doing, what they expected me to do, and Mamet seemed like the only one on my side. His books have been my real education.

RHAPSODY - Frank O'Hara

(The final stanza)

I have always wanted to be near it
though the day is long (and I don't mean Madison Avenue)
lying in a hammock on St. Mark's Place sorting my poems
in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island
they are coming and we holy ones must go
is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically
belong to the enormous bliss of American death

Bound in a Nutshell

I was at my Dad's house today for Easter and I found a bag of my old notebooks, one of which featured this comic I drew two years ago. It's about a film version of Hamlet made a few years ago in which I played Guildenstern...

A poem from Sam Shepard

Stay
and watch the next set of possibilities
arise
and fall away
What have you got to lose
but everything
piece by piece
everything
day by day

-Sam Shepard

The Work

It is the work
of all her days
the lily’s construction
of the tower
of herself.

Birthed from burial
into the sun’s
life-giving gaze,
the air and water and earth
gather into her veins.
Not knowing what she's
surviving into,
she hopes towards
her apex,
and arrives at days
of glory and love.

She beds raindrops
on her petals,
and takes dances
with bees.
Face fully blush, shadowless,
she strives to a sun
she will never reach,
but on highest, longest days
blesses her with his gaze,

before abandoning
his fragile guests
to a merciless gray.
They hold so
desperately to a life
they never asked for,
a life of never going anywhere
or doing anything but
gathering and growing,
of knowing no direction
but up and down,
as they shrivel and fall
in the great choreography
of the season
of death.

The wind goes looting,
ripping the candy and color
from the flesh of the once
brilliant things,
burying it under one great
tarp of white.
The Lily, rather than watch
her own leaves drip black,
throws her petals and pollen dust
to the earth
for next year’s orphans,
and bows back
to the dirt,
with grace,
terrible
grace.
Her work accomplished.

Numbers

Every number has a face, a personality, a body, a soul. Some are more famous than others.

1. 1 is beautiful, solitary, pure. Not nothing. We can all understand 1. Upright. Nearly invisible. Powerful. Unified. Phallic. Adam.

2 is balance, harmony, love. Twins. Parallels. II. Eerie. Peaceful. Eve has joined.

3 is where things get complicated, where choices have to be made, where someone's feelings are going to get hurt. A direction is chosen. I> Cain and Abel. Love triangles.

4 is the beginning of war, democracy, servitude. Greater possibilities arise.

These numbers all have consequences, ancient powers they carry around with them. This 7 is a descendant of all the 7s that have ever existed. It pumps the same blood. 49 is 7s ancestor. 14, 21, these are 7s grandchildren. They are haunted by the ghost of 7, have traces of the same features. Everyone possesses their own 7. 7 is made of my history of it and the shared history of all of our 7s.

8 is a sculpture, a piece of art, an individual. We can visualize it. :::: We can conceptualize all of them till 10. Then they group too large. So do their shapes. A 9-sided shape is almost too much. A neuftet makes too much sound. They have to group into orchestras after a certain mass. They have to cooperate. The individuals get lost in the shuffle.

The greater the number, the more diluted. Is 639 familiar to you? Is it an old friend? A celebrity? It's too complicated to identify. It is a stranger. A vague, complex face in the crowd. I feel sorry for the higher numbers. They are lost in the flood, nearly meaningless. Only meaningful in specific instances, often rounded, forsaken. Discovered accidentally, not anyone's destination. 27,888 probably means something to somebody. A lottery winner. A salary. Too abstract to visualize. Too scattered.

As the years have stacked, so have our possible sums. Billions, trillions have moved within our grasp. Soon we'll have to invent new numbers. Split up the ones we already have before they're split for us. Go beyond the horizon. We'll reach google. We already have.

Decimals are crumbs falling past our concern for them. We need special calculations, tools, to tweeze them out.

0 is the most profound idea. The origin, like God, like that of all life, born out of nothing, from a concept we can't explain, define, we know not where from. Divide any number in half as many times as you'd like, you will never discover 0. A place only comprehended against something, by not knowing. You just have to trust it exists. We've all felt it, but we can't show it to anybody else. You can't see 0, but all numbers end up there. It's a circle around emptiness, lassoing the invisible. 0 is where we came from and where we will end up. It is a hole in the body, in the ground. It is a cup, or maybe a funnel, a sieve. 0. Starts with one of the unlikeliest letters. "Z". 0 is too big to hug, to hold in your hand, and yet you always do. 0 resets the groups, stacks them. 10, 100, 1000, those 0s in their bodies are like water and air, nothing, life giving.

Infinity. Infinity is just the end of 0s stride. Will we ever touch the end of the spectrum? Will we ever live till the end of time? We spend our lives divying up the infinite, making boundaries. What else is there to do?

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Some people have Saturday night
and some people have Sunday Morning

The Little Blue Globe (a song)

Up in my parent’s attic
Sifting through the remnants of the things that I did
I found the little blue globe
That used to glow in my room as a kid

Dusted it off
Plugged it back in
Wouldn’t you know?
It started to glow again

There’s a little viewfinder
if you look into it you can see the world.
Over time the pictures have been
burnt out and blurred

There’s a red cape flaunted by a Man in gold
There’s an Eskimo fishing out in the cold
There's beautiful women with jewels in their faces
Lands so far they’re only fantasy places

The years have passed,
and I’ve gotten older
Circumstance
hasn’t brought them closer.
But the globe still glows
And the globe still spins
Still carries the dreams
Of all of it’s men.
Still carries the burden
Of all of their sins.
I’m so glad it’s
On my shelf again.