The Great Mein Kampfromiser

The title of this entry doesn’t really mean anything. At least not yet. It’s just a title that’s been playing around in my head for a bit and I wanted to get it out and about. Set it on the ground and see if it’d sprout legs or some such.

I think it could be the name of a theater piece or maybe an essay, but what would it be about?

One theme that I get from the phrase is a focus on a person or people who stand by and watch something they know is wrong or they don’t agree with and just let it happen because they feel unable to stop it or they are unwilling to acknowledge what’s going on right in front of them. But, that feels pretty heavy handed as a main focus. Also, way too literal a connection to Nazi Germany. The title should come off as silly rather than pretentious.

So, perhaps the The Great Mein Kampfromiser is a character who is gifted in his ability to get people to come to an agreement, but the things they agree on or agree to do are horrible and/or ridiculous. He uses his oratory power and strong grasp on the power of propaganda to get two groups of people who are at odds to join forces and ruin something wonderful.

He could be an anti-super hero.

Two people are arguing over the best way to get from Minneapolis to St. Paul. Wait, swap that, no one wants to go from Minneapolis to St. Paul. Two people are arguing over the best route from St. Paul to Minneapolis. One thinks I94 is the obvious answer the other says take Marshal to the Lake street bridge. Seemingly out of nowhere appears The Great Mein Kampfromiser. Clearly, I94 is the popular choice, which means it will be busy. Maybe too busy. And Marshal may work but is Lake street still under heavy construction? What you need to do is head south to 494, go all the way to 100 and then head back north until you reach 394, take that into Minneapolis.

Neither person get’s what they want and thus a compromise is reached. And, just before departing the Great Mein Kampfromiser reminds them to avoid St. Louis Park because, “well, you know,” he says with a sly wink.

i think I may have to turn this into a Fringe show for next year, yes?

LW

Is there great risk in allowing yourself to be open to every feeling at all times?

The simplified answer for me is yes. Emotions are unpredictable, sometimes coming as reactions to external stimuli, often the result of internal activities. There’s no real sure way to know how you will react to something or how you will feel at any one moment. I suppose it’s a matter of vulnerability.

To feel, to allow yourself to feel, is to be vulnerable to feeling something unpleasant or unwanted. Or even something desired by inopportune. But, to have any human interaction is to be vulnerable. Just plain living and breathing carries with it a certain degree of vulnerability and to shut yourself off to the emotion contained within that is probably not terribly healthy. If it’s even possible.

Life with restricted emotions is not a strategy for protection from pain. Well, perhaps it’s a strategy but, much like my strategy for showing people I care for them by finding things they are sensitive about and making mean jokes, it’s not a terribly successful strategy. I think that maybe keeping the bulk of one’s emotions distant from the moment, the reality where they present themselves is probably a way of living life with a reduced level of lifeness.

Now, I realize that I just used several versions of the word life and I even made up a word that isn’t terribly helpful or interesting and isn’t likely to catch on in the American lexicon and for that I’m sorry. The point I’m trying to make as I get less eloquent is that it would be madness to try and establish certain portions of life where emotions are to be avoided. But that’s what I do.

And I’m sure I’m not alone. I may be crazy but I’m part of a group. We don’t have a club with meetings or anything. And I don’t know anyone else in the group (or do I?). I’m just confident that I’m not the only person who’s slowly moved from just feeling emotions as they come and reacting to first logically processing internal and external input and then deciding whether or not to accept the emotions created. That’s normal, right?

So I don’t cry if something horrible happens but instead think to myself “that’s horrible, I really want to cry. Is now an appropriate time to cry? What will other people think? I guess I should maybe not cry. Or does that make me seem insensitive?” and by this point the opportunity to just feel has passed. And sure, then maybe at a different time I’ll cry about something that doesn’t really warrant it as compensation for the previous missed opportunity.

Forgive me, that example sounds sad. It works with all emotions, though. Joy, anger, passion. I didn’t think this was a problem. Some people deal with overwhelming emotions with drugs (both prescribed and not), others use food, and I suppose there’s the occassional person who works through them by talking with loved ones. And some people just ignore that shit, shut it down as much as possible, and feel less concerned about becoming overwhelmed by a moment.

I don’t know that I would say that’s been working for me, but it’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. And now I’m trying to do some tiny little play that only a small cluster of people will see and then it will be done with forever and my character has numerous emotional spikes where he loses himself to the moment and is just emotion and I can’t find any footing because I can’t stop logically working out what he’s dealing with and going through. My mind is the therapist asking “how do you feel about that?” when I need my mind to just shut up so I can just feel.

And now I don’t know if I’ve built up this distance from my emotional self for too long to get back to it. Or if I want to get back to it. It’s just a play. It’s just acting. That’s no reason to reevaluate my emotional engagement with the world. Except, I want to do well and I maybe want to feel without thinking. Maybe life is a good reason to reevaluate and this tiny, insignificant play is just the thing that’s making me look at something.

But, will I become a wreck? Develop an emotional hair trigger? Yelling at people, hugging vague friends or friends? Or maybe I’m just being dramatic.

LW

Oh, Boy

Well, Crap. Something came over me and I decided to be in a play. It’s a real play with multiple actors and a director and a script and everything. But, it’s in the Fringe Festival so feeling unprepared is normal, common. Which is only a touch comforting as I struggle to force the ream of lines my character has into my head while trying to figure out how to make words mean something and also listen to the people I’m supposed to be interacting with.

For the past few years I’ve mostly just stood alone on stage and told a funny story or two for 10 or 15 minutes whenever I had the urge or the time to share something of myself with people who don’t live in my house. This seemed to be the transition the actor part of me made when I became a parent. I’ve got a dependant so I’m less able to allow others to depend on me.

I still want to stand up in front of people and say things and have them laugh or listen or pretend to do one those. But if I just do things I write and do them alone I don’t have to figure out how to rehearse or how to create a relationship with another person on stage or what exactly a director means when he says my character may not have a clear reason for reciting a snippet of poetry. I didn’t think I was necessarily taking the easy route when I started focusing more on going solo.

The reality is that I haven’t been focusing at all.  My stage life, my creative life overall really, has been relegated to an occassional squeezed in thing. I decided to get a degree, I decided to make a little person, I decided to get job job with a salary and insurance and accountability. There’s probably some way to have all those normal life responsabilities and also maintain a healthy creative life, but I haven’t figured it out. I might never figure it out.

It’s easy to look back and glamourize how things once were. I used to be on stage as much as seven nights a week. I’d be rehearsing a show, writing sketches, watching cool theater, hanging out after shows and having deep, meaningful conversations with wonderful people.

But, I also used to work as a temp in shitty offices with mind-numbing tasks and mind-numbing people that made me want to stab someone in the eye (often my own eye was preferred). I used to live in an apartment with two alcoholic brothers who would come home at 3 in the morning beyond high and wrestle with each other in the living room wearing nothing more than briefs. I used to have to choose between health insurance and food.

I can’t do my best work as an actor or an artist of any kind if I’m scrambling for food or unable to get a possibly broken ankle looked at. I also can’t be the artist I want if I’m only able to be creative in the hours between 10pm and 6am. Should these by my choices? Are these my choices? The truth is I don’t really know. I’m usually not trying all that hard to have everything I want. Instead I spend a lot of energy feeling miserable that I don’t.

I’d love to triumphantly announce that all that is going to change. Present this typing as a turning point in my creative life. Proudly proclaim that I’m redoubling my efforts towards being a writer and performer while still providing for my family and actually seeing my family and being a pleasant person while doing all of this. But that’s not going to happen.

Things don’t change over night. A significant thing like reshaping one’s creative life/work life dynamic is a slow moving animal for most people. Sometimes so slow that you don’t realize a shift is happening and suddenly you notice you’re not where you used to be. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ll take.

So, I’m doing this play in the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I feel out of sorts because I haven’t been directed in a few years. I feel snowed under because it’s literally the most lines I’ve ever had to learn for a show. I feel disoriented because I know funny and I’m usually a pretty quick study but there is shit going on within my character and around my character that I’m not getting. And I feel awesome because I’m engaged, and I’m focused, and I’m challenged. I feel good because I’m doing something that I know I can do but I also know I can fail at. And that’s how that slow change comes.

 

LW