Me and My Kirk
Captain Kirk had a transporter accident one day, if you recall, and rematerialized as two James T. Kirk's--as if the universe was big enough for more than one. One Kirk seemed good. The other Kirk seemed evil. But it got more poetic than that, mostly because the writers of the original Star Trek were not science fiction writers. The good Kirk had no ambition, no backbone, no strength of character. He was indecisive and weak. The evil Kirk was wickedly ambitious, totally confident, a very effective strategist and leader. He was dangerously effective at everything he tackled. The writers were trying to say that there is some relationship between that part of us that strives to succeed and the part of us that wants to bury the competition.

I was at a They Might Be Giants concert with my friend Rachel (England-Rachel, who incidentally is now New Hampsire-Rachel). There was an intermission before they started, after a bunch of other acts had performed. It seemed the entire theater got up to use the bathrooms leaving Rachel and I among the last people to arrive outside the restrooms. And we both had to go.

As I've mentioned before, I hate traffic. I hate waiting in line. And there I was at the end of a huge line for the mens room and it wasn't moving quickly.

One thing I've noticed that I now consider a rule: do not trust lines. Lines in this country form automatically and people will wait in them when they don't have to wait. You can look to your left and see a very short line and then make the mistake of thinking "oh, that register must be closing since no one's in that line." Probably not true. Go to the line on the left. It truly is that easy.

Anyway, I couldn't stand there, and I thought to myself, "okay, where's the second choice? Where's that line on the left that everyone ignored for the greater wait because everyone else was waiting in the longer line?" I saw some stairs. I left the line and ran up the stairs, figuring that the climb would prove too complicated an option for the crowds, making the upstairs restroom lines much shorter. No such luck. There's a balcony at that theater, and the entire balcony was in line for the loo.

I walked downstairs. The line down there had gotten longer and I still was resolved not to wait in it.

A moment later I was outside the theater. It was cold out. I bumped into Greg Allen there, who was with a cigarette-smoking date. We exchanged a few silly words and then I ran off behind the theater.

I'm no fool. I took statistics in college. I know that while individual human behavior is infinitely complex, its group behavior can be laughably predictable. If I had thought to go outside, others must have had the same thought. But I rounded the corner and saw no one.

What I did see was another challenge. There was no alley back there. There was a wide open, brightly lit parking lot. To its left, a street with houses lining both sides; to its right, a church. Perhaps my journey was over. Perhaps this explained why no one else was out there. Maybe they saw the problem I saw and returned.

But I would not be daunted. It's a simple thing, urinating in private. One only needs to find privacy for a minute. I was determined to go where no man had gone before. The Church had many nooks and passages. Just beyond the light of a streetlamp I saw a sunken, walled section about six feet by six feet, which led to a basement level door in the foundation of the church. The section, strangely, had no stairs in or out and was surrounded by a railing--most likely to keep people like me out.

I stepped over the railing and then hoppped down into the sunken area. This way I could face the open lot and see if anyone was coming, while anyone coming would only see a bearded chin and a pair of glasses peeking up from beneath a railing. And then I peed. No one came during that minute. And when I was done, I used the rail to pull myself up to street level, then hopped the railing, and came back into the theater. Some of the same people who had been waiting in line when I left, had still not gotten inside the mens room door. I contemplated buying myself a beer to celebrate, but the lines were too long.

Rachel, who waited in line for the ladies room, missed the first song. And It was James K. Polk.

I have a very ambitious side, a side that is unwilling to accept that I cannot have what I want when I want it. This side of me has taken a long time to evolve into an acceptable--even purely helpful--personality trait. In my past, this side has led me down some obsessive paths and even destroyed some good friendships.

Yes, a part of me just wanted to pee and didn't want to wait and was willing to struggle to find the best, fastest (if not illegal and somewhat gauche) way to pee. But another part of me--and this is hard to admit--looked at that group of men in line and thought "I don't belong here. They can wait, but I shouldn't have to wait." So I bolted.

A part of my ambition comes from a sense of entitelment that I can't entirely shake. If I were separated into to two Andy's in a transporter accident, my ambitious side would have a wholely entitled personality.

My fiance and I get into a lot of discussions about this sort of thing. We have somewhat opposing world-views in that she sees these darker sides of ourselves as somehow being more honest than our lighter sides. It's a very western viewpoint, one could say very Freudian. As she sees it, these are the unconcious or subconcious motivators that need to be plummed and fully explored (as with a biopsy) so they can be excised (as we romove lumps of cancer.)

My opinion is almost opposite. I believe that the person who we want to be and strive to become, no matter how successful or unsuccessful we are at being that person, is more important than the shadow sides to our personalities that may contradict the image of that person. In other words, I believe that the darker sides of ourselves are more worthy of acknowledging and then ignoring, than exhaulting and then attacking--partly because I think they are cancers that cannot be removed. And I believe in seeing people as mostly good, trying hard to fight urges to be selfish, rather than selfish people pretending to be good. I believe that intentions are everything, that the darker feelings are instincts that run contrary to the work of our neo-cortexes and frontal lobes--that our values, reason and love define who we are as people, and that our selfishness, insecurity and desires tend to make up a part of us that can seem huge from time to time, but ultimately has no substance. They are, as the Buddhists like to say, tiny specks on our soul that cast huge shadows in our lives. A shadow can be vast, but a shadow is just a shadow. It has no substance and the light can penatrate it, while a shadow can never penatrate light. And a speck is only a speck.

Bottom line: Do I think that I'm better than anyone, that I'm more entitled? Absolutely not. Did the whole Kirk really want to take over his ship, beat up his friends and kill his good side? No way. If you asked me why I peed on a church, I would tell you the truth: I had to pee and I didn't want to wait in line. If you have the idea that somehow it is more true that I also felt a sense that I was entitled to skip the restroom line, then I would argue that such a fact gives you less truth. It is a psychic red herring.

I don't think we should ever pretend that our dark sides aren't there. But I also think we should be careful with the story that they tell. One can easily make oneself out to be a monster, or perhaps worse, a saint in a world of monsters.

You are the storyteller. This is your story. Don't split your hero in two.

History's Horizon
I could have been a history professor--engaged and enthusiastic, at least for a few years. I would have told history like a story, used the present tense, injected my classes with humor, tried like hell to get my students to understand how close humanity is to its history, how everything we do and everything that happens is not only history in the making, but also ripples from history gone by, another link in a chain of events that started before all things.

I could have made a fortune in advertising. I could have ridden the most recent wave of funny commercials to a successful career selling whatever I was told to sell.

I could have been a minister. I could have gotten ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and moved back to New England for long, intellectual conversations about Not-God. I could have preeched around Not-God for my congregation every week, and counselled them one-on-one every other day about all things Not-God.

I could have been a filmmaker. I don't know if I would have made a penny. But I could have used my credit cards and my connections to spend favor time making movies. I could have written and taped my material with actors and actresses eating bagels for lunch because that would be their pay for the day, and the rain would pound against the windows of my friend's apartment creating a sound problem, and my arm aching from lugging equipment would be around my sound man in the corner as we quietly asked each other "what should we do?" And my mind would not be on my day job, where I would be due early the next morning.

Instead I became a Neo-Futurist, which is a kind of playwright, a kind of performer, a kind of director, a kind of community member, a leader, a follower. Our aesthetic defies easy explanation. And we gather on weekends for long meetings and get frustrated by our slow progress and meet over beers sharing anger and hurt over projects failed, over balls dropped by staff members paid by tickets sold to people who come to see us, not them we say, us. And we're told we should be lucky. And we're paid more than most. And we're approached by people in bars who point to our shirts and say I've heard of you guys. You're supposed to be awesome. And we're tired. And we all work other jobs, most of us wondering how we got here, some of us wondering why we don't leave. And we travel to Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, or even Europe and we're treated sometimes like rock stars, or treated sometimes like another dying theater company who can setup in the corner. You can setup in the corner. No one's on the books for tonight. Do you need anything?

And the crowds scream laughter, or stare intently--I've got them--and applaud longer than you thought they would. They loved us. And every weekend they keep coming, lining up around the block, new faces and old faces.

And we are an ornery group of opinion-makers. We are jealous of where we could go and angry that we are not there. We are close. We are distant. We sleep with each other. We dream about sleeping with each other and wake up confounded. We hate each other. We love each other. We are family more than friends--somehow less than friends, somehow more than friends. We are always proposing and remembering failed proposals and fearing conspiracies or resenting misunderstandings. We can know each other's dark secrets without knowing each other intimately.

We are the neighbors who hear everything.

This is the life I have lived for almost five years. I am setting about changing this life partly because I want more money. I think I deserve to be paid more for the crazy amount of work that I do. And I want kids. And they'll want to eat, I'm sure. I am also changing it partly because I want to do more, because I am a man who can put up with so much after so long. I am a change man, changeable and a force of change.

I could have been anything, and I may be anything yet.

Diana was making fun of me the other day. She said "you've been quitting since you joined." She was exaggerating but essentially she's right. I've been in the company for five years, but on my wait out for three. Every time I get close to leaving, someone pays me a compliment, tells me that they love my work and my voice and would hate to lose me. It's always a new person whom we've just cast and they haven't yet gotten to the point where they stop complimenting others because they're so worried about their own work and whether it's good enough.

And I hear this compliment and suddenly I feel like I have a place again. I wonder to myself if I could put in another year. Maybe the pain would be worth it.

And the thing is, it is always worth it. I have lived an exciting life in this company that I'll always remember fondly and miss. I will likely not leave burned and bitter.

Some people try like hell to make it in a business like theater, only to give it up for a day job along the way and they remember their time in all those auditions and productions with more pain than pleasure, more regrets and insecurity than celebration and pride.

But I have lived a life here, complicated and beautiful. And our children will say tell me again about that theater group you guys were in? And Genevra and I will look at each other, smiling, and ask without asking do you want to start or should I?

Sometimes we need to stop making decisions based on what's easiest and simply ask ourselves what kind of person do I want to be and what kind of career do I want to have? How do I want to shape my life? We ask and then we answer. We answer and then we act. We act and then we move on.

We act and then we move on.

Many Paths, One Forest
I'm a playwright so you won't find me freely admitting that critics have a valid place in society. In fact, appreciating critics is one of those lessons that I think I have to learn.

This weekend, the first review for my fiance's show came out and it was bad. It was really bad. But (and this is not the first time this has happened by any means) it's a great show and the audience response was excellent.

My last show got a good review, a mediocre review and an awful review. So which one was right? Again, the audience response was really great. The show before that got mostly really good reviews, with one or two really bad ones. Again, the audience response was great.

I have a hard time with critics. Yes, they love theater. Yes, they do their jobs because at least someone has decided that they know something about what they're reviewing. But you can't stop there. You can't just say that they're only doing a service. It's a little like saying that the hunter hunts because he enjoys using his tracking ability; he enjoys exhibiting his understanding of the movements and behavior of his prey; and he enjoys cooking and serving his game.

This may all be true, but you can't overlook the killing.

I think that you are not a successful critic if you have to close your eyes when you squeeze the trigger. I think that you'll never last if you don't actually like the kickback, the spray of blood, and Bambie's last shudder over a pile of pee-soaked leaves.

Most theater is bad. Most of it is boring, draining even. If you last as a critic, you have to last because you like to kill it. And for that reason mostly, I have largely unenlightened feelings toward critics.

Who are these people, I wonder? We encounter critics all the time, don't we? I can recall meeting a few people at the beginning of my writing career who made comments that nearly derailed my ambitions.

What about the every day people who offer unsolicited criticism over breakfast or out their car windows? What about us? When do we cross the line and share an opinion that badly hurts or is way off the mark?

The urge to kill Bambie is in all of us--but none of us is evil. I don't believe in evil. We look at a deer and we see Bambie. I have no idea what that hunter sees, but I can guarantee you it's not the same thing that we see.

How many of us have shouted at someone out our car window, only to be yelled at by someone just like us a week later for doing the same thing? You're the Bambie. They're the hunter. Right?

This is a highly subjective place, this universe. I learn that more and more these days. And it's the universe's subjectivity that keeps me from actively forming and maintaining new friendships. I've had too many friends disappoint me. I've had too many run-ins with egos that track other egos, rifles in hand, desperate to find a weakness.

But this is my loss. I think the mistake I make is to think that if one person has one version of the truth and another person has another, then the truth declares a mistrial. It's time to pack it up and go home.

Not so. No one owns the truth, but that doesn't mean that there is no truth. It simply means that no one owns it. It means that truth defies our limited reasoning. It means that I have no place demanding that all the critics in the world resign, and that the critics of the world deserve no conduit to the hearts and minds of the criticized.

In other words, critics can talk all they want but opinions are just opinions. And I can complain all I want about critics, but I'm doing little more than criticizing.