Notes From A Burning House

"I will not watch your little play,"

said odious King Claudius that fateful day. 

"I will cover up my unseeing eyes,

"Drown you out with petulant sighs,

"And no matter what you have to say

"I will not watch your tawdry play.

"I would not watch it in a boat!

"I would not watch it with a goat!

"I do not like to watch the soaps!

"I will not watch it, damn it, Hamlet!"

*     *     *

Thus to Hamlet it was most obvious

His father’s killer was none but Claudius,

For the play he concocted - that Claudius boycotted -

Was the story of a familiar recent homicide.

The king had been stabbed in the side -

Clearly an act of homicide!

He was killed so that a new king would preside -

Making it an act of parricide!

Killed he was by a near-brother, woe betide,

For that makes it also a fratricide!

And when the killer made the widow his own bride,

Hamlet would avenge his dad with an act of step-patricide.

Strange situation, one must confide.

*     *     *

"Never mind," said Hamlet, playing the dutiful son,

"What’s passed is past, what’s done is done.

"Let resentment be fin. Let bygones begin.

"Have breakfast, dear king, prepared by your kin.

"A special repast that will truly do you in!"

(He said with a wink and a tuck of his chin.)

The king did not take well to this meal, instead he hurled it and yelled with a squeal:

"I do not like green eggs or Hamlet!!  I do not like them, good god damn!!"

And as he contemptuously swore

He drew his contentious sword

And though he was a pretentious bore

Who made Gertrude his licentious whore

It was not Act Four anymore

And we need deaths by the score well before

The audience is shown to the door.

*     *     *

Clickety-clack and clackety-click!

Katclicky-wack and kitclacky-wick!

Swords and daggers, murderous fraggers,

Stabbing courtiers through hanging arasses,

And the two duelled their final duel.

Prince and king killed king and prince

Poison tips made both of them wince

And down they went like Korean missiles

Both of these tragical, dramatical imbeciles.

But these two alone bore not the brunt,

Indeed there was no one left to exeunt.

Then the curtain fell and all was well

But for the reviews - which, let me tell you, were hell.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day co-leading a workshop at UCLA with my dharma sibling, partner in dharma, and fellow Friendster, Ji Hyang Sunim.  I was wondering if and how I was going to blog about the class (it was fascinating), when I discovered that Sunim beat me to it.  She’s a fine writer and certain did as well or better than I could have.  Please read all about it.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief and of incredulity…

Like it?  It’s the opening of my new novel.  I know, you think it sounds familiar - maybe a little bit too familiar.  Well get over yourself, you stinking liberal.  A senior editor at Random House has my back. That opening passage is 33 words in length, and at that length, according to Ann Coulter’s publisher, I don’t need to cite the author who actually composed those words.  I can use them and pretend they are mine.

Yes, it’s true.  Ann Coulter’s publisher has his own definition of plagiarism.  That will come in handy as he defends Ann Coulters new book, Godless, from charges of plagiarism. 

Meanwhile, the United Press Syndicate is reviewing a report citing passages from her columns that also appear to have been lifted without attribution.  In Coulter’s book, it is alleged that three passages were lifted from other sources without attribution: a 24-word passage, a 25-word passage, and a 33-word passage.

In a terse rebuttal quoted in today’s New York Post, Crown Publishing Group’s senior vice-president, Steve Ross, called these allegations "as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible."  There are 19 pages of endnotes, he says, even though that does not account for the three instances of plagiarism that are alleged.  (Nor does he say the allegations are false.  He does not explain why the charges are irresponsible, and if the allegations are not false, what makes them irresponsible?) 

Then Ross clarifies his point, and herein lies my salvation! "The number of words used by our author in these snippets is so minimal that there is no requirement for attribution."

So I am going ahead with my book, and since Crown Publishing is a division of Random House, I figure I’ll go there to market my novel.  My question for Mr. Ross at this point would be, how many 33-word passages can I use?  Can I string them together?  Is there any limit?  Gee, writing this novel is going to be easier than I dared to imagine!

I had better follow Ross’s guidelines very carefully, however.  He’s had some previous experience with best-selling books that contained plagiarised material.

A pile of papers appeared on my desk without a note.  I made a puzzled Scooby-doo sound, along the lines of, "Arooo?"

The Associate Director then put her head around the corner, Cheshire Cat-like, and said, "I have no use for these papers.  Deal with them however you wish."

How wonderful to be given such license.  I did exactly what I wished with them.  I picked up my blue bin for recyclable paper and dropped the packet in with a flourish. 

It felt so good, I fetched the papers out and dropped them in again.  I did this several times.

I cannot stop.

*Thunk.*  *Thunk.*  *Thunk.*

"Al?"

*Thunk.* *Thunk.* *Thunk.*

"Al, can you fax this press release?"

*THUNK.*

"Hey!  That’s a press release!  What are you doing?  Hey, give that back - that’s my expense request!"

*KA-THUNK!*

"Whoa!  Hey, put me down!  This is assault and inappropriate touching!"

*THUNK-A-BOOM!*

"Mmmmf!  Mmmmmmmmf!" 

*SCREEEEEEEEEEE.  SCREEEEEEEEEEE.  SCREEEEEEEEEE.*

"Hey, Al, what’s going on over there?"

Just running some stuff through the shredder.

"Oh, cool. By the way, is it cold in here?  I’m freezing."

 

Let me warm your heart with a little song.  I brought my ukulele with me today. 

"Um.  Thanks, Al.  That’s, um, just what I needed."

*plunka plunka dunka plunk*

Here’s a little something based on a poem by Whitman, but we’ll sing it to the tune of a very well-known song from when we were kids.  Remember the "Itsy Bitsy Spider?"  Of course you do.  Likka hear it here it goes…

The noiseless patient spider

Launch’d forth some filament.

Thus stood my Soul

Musing in the midst of space,

Thus came the bridge

Connecting all the spheres

As the noiseless patient spider

Does with its sticky threads!

*ka-PLUNK!*

How about that?  Wasn’t that fun? 

"I didn’t know Slim Whitman wrote poems." 

Uh huh.  Well.  I have more work to do.

*Thunk.*  *Thunk.*  *Thunk.*

*Thunk.*  *Thunk.*  *Thunk.*

"Al.  Have you seen our boss anywhere?"

Yes.  She’s, uh, absorbed in paperwork at the moment. 

*SCREEEEEEEE.*  *SCREEEEEEEE.* 

*Thunk.* *Thunk.* *Thunk.*

1. Kenny Boy Beat The Rap After All.

An attorney with whom I am acquainted commented that if you die after your trial, yet before you have exhausted all of your appeals, you are not convicted and you carry the presumption of innocence with you to the grave.

Which means Lay got away with it.

2. Who Needs Superman?

I don’t, and I don’t feel a need to bail anyone out on their $250,000,000 investment.

Lately I have been working with the question, "Do I still think of myself as an actor?"  It is no small question.  At age seven, my little mind was already set on it, and I dedicated my life to the work and have sacrificed everything (financial stability, travel, leisure time, love) in my quixotic vision of being an actor dedicated to the stage. And I do mean quixotic. 

Friar Al, the Zen Friar who lives and practices in the desert and emerges for a beer at a saloon at Furnace Creek, gets under my skin the way only a fictitious alter ego can.  Of course, I asked him about this without meaning to, and he has his take.  He gave me a very Aristotelian answer along the lines of us being what we do - not what we think - and then he told me I should do what I love and the money would follow and basically poked at the hole in my heart with that mysterious grin playing at his lips all the while.  He might be right but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it.

I trained for a lot of years and had the good sense to find good teachers.  I’ve worked backstage, onstage, wrote some plays that got produced and directed a few myself.  From time to time, someone has trusted me to teach those younger than myself something about acting, and that is always a moving experience for me.  For a time, I was even making a humble living from this work and belonged to a union and felt very patriotic and professional about the whole arrangement. 

Last year I had a very busy year: belonged to a theatre company and gave, I think, competent performances in several plays around Los Angeles.  It cost me money and an amount of suffering and remorse that might surprise you for reasons I won’t get into.  It was, shall we say, an enormously costly year.

Since last year, I’ve sat a 3-month retreat and been writing and reading and plunking on this ukulele and wondering what on earth I could set myself to other than the theatre.  When people get together in a single room and fold up their coats and put them under the seat and we turn the lights out and a story is enacted in front of everybody, when we are entertained and horrified and dazzled and utterly confused and pissed off and turned on together, storyteller and audience alike, this to me is one of the oldest and most wonderful things about being human. The spirit infected me when an actor named Richard Kavanaugh gave me a tour of Trinity Rep and then I went to see him perform in a Harold Pinter play called The Hothouse and it has continued to burn like a blue flame inside me.

So it feels like playing hookey, and not in a good way, to be ignoring auditions and not reading plays or even going to see them.  Like Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus, I see my own limitations and foibles as an artist and in spite of my own mediocrity I cannot turn away from the light cast by that blue flame. 

I spit and kick and hiss from the rage and frustration, to be caught by something that has not taken good care of me or those I have loved.  "I can’t quit you," says the Brokeback Actor.  I’ve tried gnawing my paw off the get out of this trap, yet the work compels. 

Typing amusing things into these blogs has stimulated a lot of writing lately, one more thing I had sacrificed for years while aspiring to be the sober version of John Barrymore.  I have also found the blogs of other actors, including newer arrivals to Los Angeles who tell their stories of auditions and indecent proposals and disappointments, and I feel like an elder peer and sibling to them. 

It is a ministry.  It is a life.  Whether you think of us as storytellers or entertainers or media whores, the work is a daemon that nourishes but it also drives us hard and makes no promises.  And every time I am introduced to people, and I am asked the natural question about ‘what I do,’ and the phrase ‘used to be an actor’ passes my lips, there is the most awful dissonance.  It appears to be the truth - I truly am out of business for the time being.  Yet, like a divorce from a spouse you truly loved, even if it has to be it feels like the whole universe has gone off the rails.

At these lamentations, Friar Al shakes his head at me and the desert sun glints off his sunglasses bright enough to pinch my eyes.  "If it truly cost you everything," he says,  "You can’t do something else."

"I’m good, but I’m not good enough."

"That doesn’t make you special, Mu Mun."  (Friar Al calls me by my dharma name.  He can never remember "Algernon" anyway and calls me things like "Algerind" or "Alcatraz.")  "You’re very dedicated to zazen, too, but you will never experience yourself as a buddha."

"Maybe I’m not that, either."

"What else could you be, dodo?" 

Friar Al pisses me off.  I drive back across the desert cursing him, cursing me, cursing Richard Kavanaugh and Mrs. Windham, the schoolteacher who introduced me to him, and the car rocks me as if trying to comfort me as the stars make their appearances in the sky.