luctor et emergo

Sitting in a motel room in Leominster, MA with the window open and the sound of highway traffic rushing by. It’s calming in a very surreal way. White noise.

The reason why I’m in Central Massachusetts at a Motel 8, is across the street at the Four Points Sheraton. The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (Region 1), is going on and has been going on for about two days so far. We normally camp out at the Sheraton but the conference has expanded and our school was late on all the registrations. So we’re at the Motel 8.

A while back I mentioned this conference, specifically the Irene Ryan acting competition. Well things have since gone south. Kate bailed at last minute because her grandmother is very ill. So I went down with the intention of getting into a ten-minute play. Well I showed up an hour after auditions opened up and they had already been filled up. So I’ve been attending a few workshops and watching plays (the best so far being Nine Faces of Desire). It’s really compounded the sense of ennui I’m feeling with acting. I feel so very removed, perhaps it’s just me but I feel so hung up all the sudden.

I’m taking a lot of writing focused workshops. I have to write a scene for a workshop tomorrow. I plan on taking a nap and then pursuing that goal. Remembering what a passion writing is for me and how I’ve neglected it somewhat. We’ll see what comes of that.

One of the strangest things is being in a conference room full of seventy people learning how to fake-strangle each other. The noise, all the jerking, the white ropes. I enjoy all of it.

Debauchery tonight, as with most nights here. Spectacle in the day, party at night.

Writing more. Though a lot of it can be trimmed down. I’m still trying to chisel out the main dramatic movement and break into the marrow of what I want to say and how I want to frame it. Right now the narrative is in the past. Which I like. It has a little echo of Equus. But I struggle to focus the story on one person. Is it about Mark, the student who goes over to the war-torn country, or Alexi, the revolutionary poet and brother to the president of the now corrupt governing party? I don’t know yet and my story will not be clear until then. As for now, I write dialouge.

Here’s the opening monologue:

MARK:

So many people have told me that I shouldn’t say this. That I don’t have a right too. That it’s not justified. My name is Mark Albee. I grew up in a single parent family in a house outside of Cleveland. My mother loved me. My grandparents were English and I was twenty-four before they died. My life contained no instance of tragedy or loss. So why try to write this story like I have some understanding? I don’t. And at every corner it torments me.
Was it bred into me, this kind of guilt? While I was with Alexi what constantly struck me was how outside of this whole issue I had been. I had no stock in what was going on, I was there for Alexi and his poems.
A French soldier in the UN convoy that escorted me to the airport two days after the second civil war broke out, asked me what I was doing there. I told him about the poems, my doctorate studies, how I had wanted to stay in the capital and learn more. He laughed and told me to go home. “________” he said, “You are out of your depth.”
The rebels had fired a few rounds from a tank and set a hotel on fire as they entered the city, completely arbitrary—the self-styled liberators of a country. That’s the image I am left with. I regret leaving. I want to go back.

Here’s Alexi’s monolouge, which in one draft of the play (there are three going right now) may be the end. I’m not sure if this is the correct way to end it. I don’t think I should worry about that until the end, though. Once everything is written.

(MARK stands downstage holding a recorder. ALEXI emerges from the shadows, holding a few sheets of paper and a microphone. MARK slowly presses play and listens as ALEXI sets down the microphone on the desk and acts out the recording. By the end of the recording MARK is sobbing, quietly.)

ALEXI:

Hello. I am Alexi Dumarovich. My good friend Mark, has suggested that I begin recording a number of my poems on this recorder to be archived in the United States. He has suggested that I start with this poem that I have written about the war. English is not my first language, I may have trouble. I wish to apologize ahead of time…

(clears his throat, continues without difficulty)

Ljiljani

There’s the crack, where we saw the mortar fall.
My brother and I. It split the boards, lit
The church ablaze. We held our heads and cried
For the war. The stupid war.

The whole world was fighting,
Each new idea rose from the darkness with teeth.
Now in the church, little purple flowers spill forth.
The mortar, buried deep, takes seed.

Life comes again. Death machines are put away.
In the moonlight the empty church is quiet.
Gone are my saints, my stations of the cross.
Here there is nothing but the ancient sky.

O vastness of space. O great and shining ideal.
What thoughts of nation did each angel hold,
When Lucifer climbed that Arcadian mount
And blew his clarion to the wind?

(Pause.)

That’s it. That’s the end of the poem. How do I turn this off?

BLACKOUT.

END OF PLAY.

I continue writing. I hope this gets somewhere.

It’s been a good weekend, so far. Saw a Phantom Buffalo show at the Empire with Jess and a large number of people who live upstairs from the House at 59 Oakdale. Walking to the Trewlany to pick Jess up I saw Travis, walking home, full walking gear with two boxes of pie in his hands. We talked briefly, he had just stopped in to Blue for a pint and to eavesdrop on a small ceilidh that was going on there. We were both filled with excitement and there was a bit of grandiose wonder in the air.

At about 1 pm today, I walked into CBD. Norster was there, serving coffee, we’ve got a writers workshop off the ground hopefully. Stepped out onto the street, slapped my headphones on and before I hit the pavement on Congress, I had The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust in my ears. Strolled home through Deering Oaks, singing. The air was cool and brisk. The sun warmed me.

Got back tonight from filming a music video for Grimshaw, one of our Robber & Thief tracks with Sam Molleur. Lot of standing out in the cold, pretending to play my laptop, even though it got too cold for the screen to work and I had to power it down for fear of ruining the computer by mashing buttons. Lot of singing and drinking to stave off the chill in our bones. I don’t know what it will look like, but I feel good about it. Sam’s a competent person.

Ate steak and tomatoes in the Second Floor at the Corner of Fessenden, with Moody, Andrew, Derek and Meghan. Watched television. When I got up to leave it was snowing. Almost cinematically so, big white flakes descending without noise. The kind of night where silence is a cold, palpable presence all around you. In the distance, I heard the train whistle low, running it’s midnight schedule.

I don’t know where the train goes.

Tonight, sleep. Tomorrow I hope to be writing again. Go to the library, write a few pages. ACTF is on Tuesday, I’m excited though I don’t know why. Kate’s no longer my partner, she’s got other things to take care of more important than this. I’ve got the entire time for myself. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve been focusing so much on writing lately, and as I told Jess, I’ve got this acting ennui that’s making me worried. I feel transitional. This is nothing new, but I have the distinct feeling of having lost momentum about halfway through each creative endeavor. Am I an actor, a playwright, a musician? I am not any of those I feel sometimes. However, I think this will be remedied by sleep.

I sleep, and I will ease my weary mind.