I just had the strangest dream(s).

I’m not sure if it was two dreams or one dream in two parts, not that it matters.  The first dream or part of the dream was kind of standardly dreamlike and unreal.  Some friends and I got together in a weird place to have some weird fun.  It was a real groovy party. Fun dream!

In the second dream or part of the dream, my life was threatened to be torn apart by the consequences of the first part of the dream. All of my shortcomings, including stuff from way back when I was a child, were in danger of being exposed to the whole world. It was terribly stressful and awful.

I’ve been reading this book recently that’s largely about the exactly that: the consequences, both gross and subtle, of our thoughts and actions. I guess I’m taking it to heart, because I’ve never had such a direct correlation between my daytime thinking and my nighttime dreaming. It was so real that waking up this morning felt like a continuation of the dream.

Time to make some important decisions; past time, really.

I’m still here, yes.

I have not abandoned this blog. I have plans for a couple of entries, but I’m too wiped all the time to put myself in front of the computer with any coherent thoughts, really.

More soon.

Danfree

The problem—one of the problems, anyway—with rehearsing a semi-rambling 25-page monologue created by a crazy guy who also happens to write really catchy pop songs is that even on your day off, after two days straight of drilling lines, repeating little tiny sections over and over and over again until every, “you know what I mean?”, “it absolutely freaked me out!”, and “it’s absolutely beautiful,” is in place is that even when you get a day off after this and you promise yourself you’re going to have a “Dan-free day” you still walk around singing, “I am a baby in my universe, I’ll live forever,” in your head because the songs are just so fucking sticky.

I can try to turn that tape off…but I won’t. I won’t.  He’ll go right on singing. He is like a nasty habit. I, it’s just, there is no end.*

* That is a paraphrased excerpt from the play.

Life is happy and sad and utterly exhausting.

Today, Jason (the artistic director of Catastrophic) and I are driving to Austin, as is everyone else in Houston, it would seem.

As I may or may not have explained here, the play I’m doing is based on a tape letter that Daniel Johnston made for David Thornberry, his best friend back in 1985 or so.  The first act of the show is me performing that hour-long tape almost verbatim.  Well, tonight we’re going to meet up with David and his wife Kathy McCarty, who was also a close friend of Daniel’s and was in Glass Eye (Daniel’s favorite band back then) and eventually put out an album of covers of Dan’s songs that played a pretty big role in bringing more attention to his songwriting brilliance.

So that’s pretty huge, huh? It feels huge. To be getting the inside perspective on what the guy I’m playing was actually going through at the time he made this tape.

All of that said, I’d almost rather skip it. Not really, I know it’s going to be great. But doing this shit is kind of killing me, too. Work has been almost unmanageable, a non-stop, frustrating barrage of intensity from beginning to end, all day, every day for weeks now. Going straight from that to a few hours of talking, singing, yelling, freaking out and generally getting very excitable a few nights a week is taking an emotional toll. Not in a huge way (yet), but still. It is a lot.

Well, whatever. I’m mostly enjoying everything about doing the play. I have to remind myself occasionally that the end result is going to be a great piece of art that will be performed live in front of people, because right now it’s mostly a lot of work. Fun work.

Imaginary City takes the experimentation one step further with music based partially on invented instruments, blurring the lines between sound and vision to create an artistic metropolis.

Yay, So Percussion is going to be at Diverseworks this February. I have their first album and while it’s not something I listen to frequently, it’s super good if you’re into that kind of thing.

I didn’t know until I started looking around the web for more info on them that they’ve collaborated with badasses like Steve Reich, Matmos and Dan Deacon. Now there’s cred for ya.

Speaking of Diverseworks, I have to go to there now.

"I don't deny that there is a self-y feeling. I certainly feel like someone, but there is no such thing."

I came across that fascinating (really, please listen to it) interview at Metafilter and promptly picked up the book from the library.  I know I’ll buy it eventually; while the language is everyday, the ideas are not, and it’s tough to really comprehend.  It will take a few readings, I’m sure.

Of course, I always enjoy it when science and Western philosophy intersect with Buddhism.  We had a great Dharma Punx meeting this Sunday. I haven’t gotten to meditate for weeks and weeks.  You know that feeling when you’re hungover as shit and can barely get off the couch all day, but then you eventually take a shower and presto-changeo, you feel miraculously human and alive?  That’s what it was like to get to watch my breath for 15 minutes.

This book (and Buddhism) talks a lot about how our perception of reality is just that: a simple perception, and that we can never really be in touch with real reality.  And I had the thought after DP that Buddhism is really sort of the ultimate agnosticism.  I was an atheist for many, many years.  Now?  I just don’t know.  I am tremendously unqualified to answer the question of whether or not there is a God because I am tremendously unqualified to answer the question of whether or not there is a me.  Or what the nature of reality is outside of my little pinprick perception of it.

I find dwelling in this place of not-knowing immensely comforting.  It’s great to be relieved of the responsibility of acting as though I have a clue about anything.

I probably have more to say on the subject, but I’m going to catch up on Mad Men with my wife now.

Stuff about the play.

I am playing Daniel Johnston in a play called Life is Happy and Sad, based on a single tape-letter he made for his best friend while he was living alone in Austin. I have never acted before, never even considered it.

I have no choice but to start in the middle, because the middle is where I’m at.

Wednesday night I was photographed for a local magazine article.  I can only hope that they don’t go with any of the photos in which I look like a gay hustler standing in a doorway, waiting for a car to slow down.  I believe I’m also going to do a brief interview on Saturday.

We got some work in on the second act, which is pretty much all music, after that.  I was completely exhausted, though, and Jason (the director/writer) was good enough to let me cut out early.  Got home in a walking coma and fell asleep watching Glee.  That show could be so much better than it is.  Still, though.

Yesterday: much better! Felt like two hundred and fifty bucks.  My shift at work slid by so easily that I didn’t even realize it was time to clock out when it was.

I had listened to the tape on which the play is based on my bus ride to work. It was helpful to get back to Dan’s version of the thing after having internalized and performed it from “my” perspective for so long. And I think that’s what led to last night’s “breakthrough” (Nodler’s word, not mine).

The way the play is structured now, Act 1 is pretty much an uninterrupted monologue with a song or three here and there.  Act 2, as mentioned, is pretty much all music with a couple of scenes of talk.  Jason had been kicking around the idea of restructuring: plopping the Act 2 songs into the Act 1 talking in places where they’d make sense. Of course, I was open to it if it was effective, so we gave it a shot.

By the time we got to the second spot where I was to stop talking and start playing, Jason nixed the whole idea. Just like that. The monologue was going so smoothly and so effectively that interrupting it to play songs felt unnatural. Jason was genuinely thrilled by my work and came as close to gushing as I suspect I’ll ever see him. It was really nice. And performing the monologue felt better and more fun than it ever has.

A good night’s sleep played no small part in all of this.

Later, we pushed through the songs in Act 2. Also felt great/free/natural. These songs are so great and so much fun to play, and I am of course getting more comfortable with them with every rehearsal. This brings us to the second minorly major moment of the evening:

the last full song before the curtain call is a desparately sad and beautiful tune called “Going Down”. It comes after a bit of a peak and just crashes crushingly. I nailed it last night, and when I looked up…

…our stage mager was on the verge of tears. Literal tears. There were three of us in this big empty black theater, and I had made a virtual stranger cry by singing. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

Here’s the song in question.

The 1st Time I Heard, pt. 1 - Undone (The Sweater Song) by Weezer.

I’ve been wanting to do this somewhere online for a while now, and now that I have this schmancy new blog, I’ma do it here.

So there are a handful of songs about which I remember EXACTLY where I was the first time I heard them.  And that’s unusual for me because my memory is generally shit.  This isn’t to say that these are the most amazing songs in the world, but something about the way I heard them that first time has embedded them in my memory.

I was driving my first car, an awful Dodge something that had belonged to my dad before he upgraded to something only slightly less awful, home from my job at C&S Music in Ft. Worth.  C&S was a typical suburban instrument and sheet music store that made most of its money renting band instruments to high school marching band members. I was eventually fired for spending, like, all shift every shift dicking around on the electric keyboards and being a goof.

Anyway, I don’t think that The Edge, D/FW’s alternative rock station, had been around very long at this point. It might have even been pretty good at this point.  I was driving down S. Hulen when Undone came on. Man, I freaked out. One, these dudes were singing about sweaters over pounding guitars, which is somewhat weird. And the party dialogue that precedes the verses? Also unlike anything else on the radio at that time. Plus, dude seriously knows his way around a melody, right?

But probably it mostly got to me because it’s so simutlaneously angsty, funny and nerdy, while still fucking rocking the fuck out. I was so freaked out that I immediately turned the car around, drove back to the Sound Warehouse near my work and purchased, yes, that’s right, the cassingle. I’d never done that before: heard something for the first time that I had to immediately gain posession of it. I don’t think I’ve done it since. I probably listened to it a few more times on the drive home, but I can’t guarantee it.  Also, the second side was Holiday, which I didn’t think was anything great.

The video remains one of my favorites of all time, too.  I can’t possibly explain it, but I still get goosebumps watching it.

Two questions: how have I not heard of this guy before, and how many hours am I going to spend going down this rabbithole?

Recap/re-up.

• We c-c-c-closed on a house Wednesday. Today we paint all/most of it, having had roughly 4 hours discussion about what colors we want.  I think we’re mostly in agreement, though.  I wonder what color our house will be?

• A guy by the name of Tenshin Nakano spoke at the Zen Center on Thursday.  He’s the head of a small Soto Zen monastery in Japan and this was the first time someone associated with “headquarters” in Japan has been to the Houston center. A few of us punks made it out for an awesome free dinner and dharma talk. It was extremely pleasant.

But I’ve been too busy to sit for the past couple of weeks.  If I don’t get some in today I’m going to give up and become Methodist or something.

• I am finally actually reading the book our group is named for. I super enjoy it. It’s a breeze to read but hella inspiring.  I emailed Noah this week to touch base and see if we can get him out to the group sometime this year. I feel fortunate to be in a position to communicate with someone I admire so much.

• After taking most of the week off, I go back into rehearsal this weekend. AND! Come Monday, we’ll be rehearsing at Diverseworks where the play is actually taking place. That is thrilling. I can’t wait to see how the stage and sound and lights are going to work out.

Now I do dishes.