Confessions of a Churl

The title for this post would be a reasonable title for the whole blog, truth be told. But then there'd be pressure to be a churl all the time, and deep down, I like being a nice guy.

Don't laugh. I'm serious.

Mind you, I'm aware I fail at being a nice guy more frequently than I care to admit. In person, I frequently monopolize conversations, nattering on about music or cinema or, worse, bloviating endlessly on matters of my personal philosophy or artistic ambitions. Worse yet, I can also fall into long, silent funks (sort of like the last, oh, six or seven months, for those of you who only ever see me or speak with me here), that should be a relief from my exhausting loquaciousness, only it too often leads to an uncomfortable air of stewing, of self absorption, or, worse yet, a sort of mute, animal stupidity brought on by too much weed, too much booze, or lingering brain damage wrought by the many, many tantrums over the years in which I beat myself on the face until my vision went fuzzy and my cheeks swelled like I was storing nuts in 'em. I am, frequently enough, sullen, cantankerous, and elitist.

The frustrating thing about falling short of what you desire to be--not what you desire to have (though I've fallen significantly short on that measure) or what you wish to (or think you should) do (another mark I'm not reaching), but what/who it is you would like to look back and say you have been, or look forward and say you will be, or settle into and say, "I AM . . . "--is that it seems like something that should be entirely within your control. Something that extends naturally from your value system, your worldview, your perception and understanding of reality and your place in it. Not being an asshole should be as simple as deciding that you're not going to be an asshole and sticking with it.

I'm not blind to the fact that this dilemma could emerge from my apparently contradictory interests: my disdain for populism in tandem with my radical egalitarianism; my talky and pedantic anti-intellectualism; my burning desire for authenticity coupled with my desperate need to be loved by everyone I happen to encounter (or at least everyone I encounter who, for whatever reason, inspires some loyalty, admiration, or other connection in me).

Thing is, none of this explains how I manage to take an argument from a place like this to a place like this, or how I manage to mangle friendships with fumbled words and misread intentions, or how I become a nearly impossible spouse every time we hid the financial skids (which happens so often that I should start thinking of it as the status quo, and the rare peeks above the surface as the anomalous events). It doesn't really explain why I am, or when I became, the sort of person who becomes so agitated when listening to phone messages that I snap my fingers and pound on my desk when listening to them, hoping against hope that they will speak faster and let me get on with my very, very important task of appearing to be busy while fostering my ever more tenuous social connections on the web, frantically trying to convince myself that I am loved, that I even can be loved, enough to fill this hungry nothing at the heart of my being.

Sometimes I think it's just my Gemini, Jekyll-Hyde thing that makes mere being so bloody complicated. Jekyll is accountable, but congenitally unhappy; Hyde is quite a bit more fun, but those around him must work harder to avoid getting bitten in the ass (sometimes quite literally). Trouble is, as I mature, Jekyll gets stronger, which makes Hyde angrier, which seems only to increase the level of conflict . . . except during those (rare) periods of time during which I am wholly one or wholly the other. Which is not how I wish to live; the uncollapsed paradox, composed of both entities, comprises the central tenet of my being, my raison d'etre.

I have no satisfying conclusion to which to bring this. This post is bourne less of a literary impulse, and more of a desire to post after such a long absence, and to make heard my cry in the dark without the obligation to give it form or beauty. I've been mired in all manner of generative projects for the last year or two, and frankly, I'm tired of form and beauty. Or tired of serving form and beauty; I imagine I'd still be more than happy to let them serve me . . . which makes me wonder if Hyde isn't rising, after all.

The Changeling

I'm not here. There is no I. I am not the 'hound; I am of the 'hound. I am Jack's surrogate baying.

This is not a post.

This is the placeholder telling you that the 'hound will post, that he can post, that he's still capable of posting. This is the scarecrow; it holds the murder of crows at bay until the 'hound can again prowl the fields.

Or it's not. I wouldn't know, because I'm not so much here.

I am Jack's bleating ennui. I am Jack's overstuffed schedule. I am Jack's seething anomie.

Jack is tired and incoherent. He'll be back if he ever again decides that he has something worth sharing.

/wail.

A Moment of Silence . . .

. . . for the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Readers will quibble over whether he was a great writer or a merely good one (I'm sure some cad will insist he sucked, which is fine; I've never liked Hemingway, so I have to assume that there are no universally applicable, fully objective standards). Others will debate their favorite works (I'm partial to Slaughterhouse 5, which, IMO, beats the pants of of Heller's Catch-22 for surreal war satires; but in the end, my REAL favorite is God Bless You Mr. Rosewater [although Venus On the Half Shell, a book supposedly written by Vonnegut character Kilgore Trout, which I've never been able to verify as being written by ANYONE, but which sits on my bookshelf and has a vaguely Vonnegut flavor about it, is an apocryphal contender]).

Anyway, R.I.P., you cranky old bastard. 84 ain't a bad time for an artist to go, especially one who saw some of the shit you did.

ADDENDUM: Turns out that Venus on the Half Shell was written by Philip Jose Farmer with Vonnegut's permission; Vonnegut was apparently unamused. Nonetheless, it's a funny bit of satire, and I've interests in adapting it--in whole or in part--for . . . well, whatever medium seems to absorb it.

I still maintain that it has a Vonnegut flavor about it, and I think it's interesting that it actually predates The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which it does very much resemble (though it's infinitely more American).

Be, and I'll Just Watch You

(Props to the criminally under-recognized Julian Cope for the lyric referenced in this post's title, from the song "Soul Desert," on the album Jehovahkill; the lyric quoted is followed, rather devastatingly, with the addendum, " . . . 'cause being is just too hard for me.")

I'm sorry I haven't called. Really. I didn't mean to leave you hanging. I've been busy, but that's not much of an excuse; I found time to play with my other friends over on the Fray, and I don't even like them all that much (I've actually got a lot more over there--click on the "More By This User" key to see what I've been up to--but this review is the only thing that got any honorable mention, so I chose to emphasize it). Well, maybe a few of them. Mostly I go over there to get into debates; it's like a bar I'd never take my wife to because I only go to start brawls.

I had a performance with UMO Ensemble on Sunday, for the Moisture Festival, a great idea (a week+ festival for burlesque, cabaret, clowning, magic, vaudeville, and other arguably archaic forms that, at one point, formed the basis for modern musicals and the Theatre of the Absurd, and a good basic ground for re-enervating, and hopefully innovating, the form) with a terribly and wholly inexplicable name. We were performing as buffoons (I don't actually appear in the picture, but I wore the costume/makeup for the tall one with the horns, and more or less looked exactly like that; the costume defines the buffoon at least as much as the wearer), a staple of the UMO roster with which I, being something of a newbie (I've been a member since 2003, but we've been on hiatus most of that time), had not yet engaged.

A buffoon is the ultimate outsider: deformed (indeed, in the case of Aztooth, not human at all), rejected, interdependent on other buffoons, living in holes in the earth near the landfills and sewers outside medieval towns . . . and liberated to tell nothing but the truth, to exist free of all social grace or obligation, oblivious to stigma, allowed to live in a state of perpetual toddlerdom.

Anyway, we were emceeing the event in question, so it involved a lot of flying by the seat of the pants. I'm a little creaky when it comes to verbal improv--words are a very carefully considered thing to me, though I can react quickly and organically enough on a physical basis--but, luckily, Aztooth is the least verbal of the crew, so I just had to live in the skin. Much hilarity seemed to ensue.

Of course, how could it not? One has a clearer--and giddier--view of truth and being when we use artifice to strip away pretense, costumed that we may run, socially naked and brutally honest, through the world without accountability. Clowns and fools always have a certain advantage when it comes to telling the truth, and fiends & monstrosities have a certain advantage when it comes to seeing it. The rest of us are so tied to the roles we feel obligated to play that we often don't see when the role is doing the talking for us. The role of buffoon speaks for its wearer, of course, but the role itself is obliged only to exist outside obligation; there is no fear of repercussion, no mercy, no sense of consequence, no concern for the consequence when it arrives. The buffoon laughs at being beaten, its anger just a more violent facet of its perpetual amusement.

This article in last week's Seattle Weekly, written by Mike Seely, got me thinking about roles & obligations, about labels and context (which continually both illuminate and obscure truth). The passage that really took me for a ride was this one, in which the narrator--a prank-playing indie rocker--is confronted by someone who chastises him with a label I have often used derisively:

'John, you're such a...a...frat boy!'

"The insult was the equivalent of slapping my face with a white calfskin glove," Roderick goes on. "The term 'frat boy,' as he intended it, had all the connotations of beer-swilling, date-raping, jock, macho crap. I laughed, because to me, a fraternity boy was someone who sneered insults at people with sarcastic WASPy smugness. His knotted-sweater, white-collar disapproval was everything I associated with the Greeks.

"So here we stood, two indie rockers, faced off across a gaping cavern of American culture as defined by the term 'frat boy.' He dismissed my car-wreckin', prank-pullin', fire-startin', gun-shootin', whoop-it-up, call-the-cops American party-makin' with one word: frat. And I saw his sniffing, eye-rolling, weak-assed, big-vocabulary-but-not-quite-used-correctly tsk-tsking as more or less the same thing: fraternity boy. But in fact, we were both limp-wristed, lit-major indie rockers."

The operative words in Roderick's diatribe: "gaping cavern." The stigma associated with frat boys is not a one-size-fits-all-proposition, but has rather been expanded over time to signify anything that anyone might find remotely annoying about white heterosexual males.

Seely goes on to note that no one should get too worked up about the "poor white boy" thing, and I won't get into it here (much; it's probably unavoidable). But it's interesting for me to see not only how two-sided the label can be (or many-sided, if we buy the author's assertion that ANY annoying traits of the white, heterosexual male can be targeted), but on how many sides I've actually been when using the word (only once, that I know of, did anyone ever use the word to describe me; as I was in a bedroom with two naked women when it came out, I decided offense would've been a little out of line). Really, I've been both the merry prankster dismissing the uptight preppy and the trimmed metrosexual chastising the feral party animal; I've been the fashionista and the regular Joe straining at the boundaries of couture. Interestingly enough, while I champion independent music, I've often been dismissive of (some) indie rock (some of my favorite and least favorite bands are tagged with the label), as such, precisely because they seem like a fraternity, a collective with rigid standards of fashion and conduct wherein learning to sing or play instruments is dismissed as selling out (probably because some of them, if they shed the affectation of sloppiness, would be mere rock bands, about as indie as Bob Seger), with an off-putting sexlessness that seems counter to all that I consider revolutionary in art. But I do also see that as a reaction to what I've always perceived as the adolescent sexual culture of the more jockish franternities, where I always imagined that men got laid, but women never had orgasms. Of course, that view may be my envy and not getting laid nearly as much as I hoped I would in college, knowing full well that I could provide the orgasms I was sure the women weren't getting . . .

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah . . .

So anyway, that little exchange noted in the article--in which we see that both sides of the "gaping chasm" see frat boys on the other side--reminded me of this post from back in August. See, I realized as I read the article on the indie rocker/frat boy divide that the term "frat boy," while once indicative of membership in an organization, has become a term rather like "bourgeois," a way of commenting on class, aesthetics, and value systems. And like "bourgeois," it's a term generally only applied by those to whom it might BE applied. Whatever you mean by "frat boy," chances are, if you use it as an insult, that you're white, male, reasonably privileged, somewhat educated, pop-culture savvy (even if you pretend not to be), and either a self-styled bohemian or a meticulously constructed "average Joe." And if you're not at least, say, three of those things, you're not more than a degree separated from someone who's all of the above. I'd also bet money that if you're a male applying that term, you (like me) choke just a little on the envy in the term, probably still a little steamed at the girl who left you alone that night for her frat god, certain to spend her orgasm-less night (unless, you know, she came by such things--pun intended--easily) in the arms of cretin. If you're a female applying the term, I suspect that you either spent too much time around people like me, or you're one of those unfortunate girls who could've been having orgasms with the 'hound, but instead were duped, to your eternal regret, into sleeping with the devil in the alligator shirt.

Shit, what was I on about? Oh, okay . . . See, I don't really think we can possibly underestimate the role that envy plays in this whole tendency to disparage the frat boy; I can only take TREMENDOUS comfort in the fact that my wonderful wife, 'Stine (y'all know her, right?), chose me over a creature that, truth be told, is probably more like me than I care to admit. It seems to me that stratifying the people you see and know over such mundane details as whether you were into Joy Division or Def Leppard as adolescents, the Decemberists or Jack Johnson now; whether you're into arts or into sports; whether sex came easily to you or only infrequently and with tremendous personal, emotional investment . . . Well, it's all very bourgeois, isn't it? It's like the whole geeks/jocks/art fags thing really just followed us into adulthood. Everybody's adolescent angst has become the meat of our arts journalism, apparently.

But this problem isn't just about frat boys and indie bands. No, this is something else. Look at this article about how New Age culture cheapens yoga. I happen to agree with some of what the article is getting at. New Age-ism claims to have roots in Hermetism, Gnosticism, and Rosicrucianism, but it seems to get the doctrines wrong, and the hippie-turned-yuppie concerns of baby boomer self-actualization have done much to confuse my own understanding of spirituality and self-care. As a Western practicing Buddhist, I struggle not only with those who will criticize, en masse, all Westerners who practice Buddhism, but with the fact that they at least partially have a point: There ARE those who use Eastern thought as a way of avoiding the rigors of Christianity, who adapt it to their least noble instincts and create a consumer culture of fabricated needs disingenuously called "tools." The comfort I take--aside from the physical benefits of doing yoga and martial arts, of chanting, of studying the Lotus Sutra and the Nag Hammadi Library--is in knowing that this disdain is itself a function of the same occidental privilege. Atheists who chastise Western Buddhists as insincere are ultimately betraying their oneness of mind with American Christians, assuming that honest Westerners must surely be either Christians or Atheists, that all religions should be approached only in their orthodox forms.

But then, the Vedic cultures from which yoga arose were often anti-materialistic only in rhetoric; some yogis have been ascetics, but certainly not all. Similarly, the debate as to whether the tenets of Buddhism demand austerity was raging in the East long before it was cool in the West to meditate, chant, or read the Sutras. Western boxing neglects the feet, knees, and elbows as weapons, and anything outside the torso as target; indeed, ALL Western exercise before pilates fails to address the body from a holistic perspective. Moreover, if we LIVE in a material culture, in practicing arts or spiritual disciplines from elsewhere, we need to either adapt those arts to what we NEED TO DO to survive here, or we need to leave.

And I suppose you could make similar arguments for fraternities. People who belong to them develop social connections that help them in the free market; artists may even be able to network in ways that can help future career prospects, or to create a new audience. Hell, a fraternity produced one of my plays back in college, with no help from the theatre department itself, because one of them happened to like what he saw at one of my other pieces. Did I sell out? Did I accept help from a lesser being? Does the fact that I wanted to be Kafka suffer because he may possibly have been listening to Stone Temple Pilots back at the frat-house?

These prejudices, and the misunderstandings that surround them, are almost necessary for the color in our language and culture; abandoning "frat boy" as an insult isn't likely to happen soon, and I wouldn't want it to. Insults are prejudicial by nature, and a culture without insult is a culture without flavor. Disdain, discord, and elitism are the satirist's bread and butter; subcultures exist to oppose each other, and the greater good of the culture relies on the proliferation of subcultures, where innovation takes place to enrich the whole. I don't object, either, to our turning either our parts in these conflicts or the "objective" analysis of the conflicts themselves into fodder for critique. But I think we need to recognize, also, that there's something inherently frivolous, and a little hypocritical, about taking these things too seriously. We could be talking about the health benefits of yoga and the dangers/benefits of materialism. We could be talking about the effects of white privilege, about the harmful wages of social competition through sex, about different levels of entitlement, about aesthetic theories and the role of theory vs. technical proficiency in the creation of art. If we spend all our time talking about whether it's acceptable to meditate or chant for more money, trying to decide who is and who isn't more of a stereotypical frat boy, or scolding people for driving several hundred dollars worth of yoga equipment to a class in an SUV, it seems to me that we're missing the point.

Slapdash & Slipshod

They have said--and they will continue to say--that accomplishment is a function of preparation. And they have been--and they will continue to be--wrong. Preparation is what we do to keep our own sanity. Accomplishment is the accident for which you must prepare, not the fruit of that preparation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Someone who, unbeknownst to me, keeps up with my goings and doings almost exclusively through my blog pointed out today that it had been a while since I'd posted. I have to admit that I didn't realize just how long it had, in fact, been. So I'll try to catch y'all up a little, and I'll do so as quickly as possible.

I'm about 2 1/2 weeks into my teaching project . . . and loving it. I don't know if I'm any good at it, but I'm . . . well, I'm tremendously proud of my kids. To be fair, it's only been KIDS for one class; it was KID for most of our time.

Our class is growing slowly. But then, what I'm teaching, while hardly new or radical, is a little esoteric. Offering to isolate the philosophical and responsive principles of martial arts for the sake of creating physical, improvisational, generative theatre exercises is confusing enough for the average layperson, or even for theatre practitioners unaccustomed to generative work, let alone to young people of limited-to-nonexistent theatrical experience who have strugged within the public school system.

But for all of that, the kids who HAVE come to study have been enthusiastic, receptive, occasionally enraptured. The girl we've been teaching at the beginning has not only been studying at home, but has been teaching her roommate the exercises, and finally dragged the roommate to the class on Sunday (she'll now be joining us every Sunday, being unavailable for our Tuesday and Thursday classes). Even the parts of the training that may seem more hokey to some--like the recitation of the Dojo Kun (an absolute article of faith for me)--are going over like gangbusters.

Now, I don't have any illusions that my teaching is what's making this click; I'm just happy that it's clicking for my first formal teaching project. I wonder whether there isn't an unsavory, paternalistic character to the satisfaction I derive from this project, but I can only hope that my doubt and fear that this might be the case means I'm checking in on my intentions adequately, and making offerings in good faith.

Anyway, if all goes well, I should be able to head up a second, more advanced class in this sometime in the next year, and then maybe a version for paying adults sometime in the next 3-5 years. Or not. Right now, I'm just focused on teaching the class as is.

In other news, the magazine for which I did some writing in September and October has been contacting me about creating a subheader, a blurb for the cover, and a synopsis for the table of contents, as well as a photograph and a bio for the "Contributors' Page". So it looks like the article is getting published. No word on the reviews, but they're better than the articles, if only because I have more experience writing reviews, so it all bodes well. I intend to throw myself a little party when the issue comes out.

I had an audition today, and I have another one on Sunday. Today's didn't go all that well, I think, but I've had worse. The people for whom I was auditioning were roundly pleasant, though, so it's not a total loss.

Okay, that's it. Sorry I couldn't come up with something more well-written, but I'm afraid this entry is what I could squeeze out between my many other obligations.

Heh, Heh . . . Amusing

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

Lotta good it does me, huh?

More On Yesterday's Post . . .

If you haven't read this, you might want to before reading this extra bit of navel-gazing.

See . . . There's more to this desire for "greatness", this need to prove my capacity for transcendence, than a mere ego-boost. And while I already made it pretty clear (I think) that the issue extends well beyond the martial-arts, theatre, and education projects facing me this fall, there's actually a piece that I've been hesitant to address given the number of parents in our little flock. Because part of what I feel incapable of is parenthood.

Now I've always been ambivalent about parenthood. Not in the sloppy, American sense of the word, which tends to treat it as synonymous with apathy (oh, the crimes of Americans against the English language). No, I mean REAL ambivalence, wherein multiple strong emotions create a noisy stasis. Some of it's the usual stuff: Can we afford it? Am I ready for the impact on my career (such as it is)? Is this world a fit place for a new life? Am I unlikely to raise a serial killer? On the other hand, I'm stuck with other, less obvious questions: How can I provide economic stability while making it clear to my child that I'm suspicious of my culture's economic values? Can I impart an operative definition of integrity? Can I instill a love and valuation of aesthetics? How can I ensure that I bring a life into the world that improves it, when so much of what calls itself life seems to debase and degrade the world in which we live?

This isn't my sole preoccupation--everything I've said about wanting to make "important" art, teaching warrior ethic, altering the culture, what-have-you is still true, still a prominent desire in my life. Sometimes I think that, insofar as I want to have children at all, that need extends from the other, that I sometimes think the family is the most effective vessel for passing on revolutionary concepts and ethics.

Since 'Stine and I can't have children naturally, I'm faced with the prospect of needing to appear, while we're still young enough to have children out of the house before retirement, to be a reasonable candidate for adoption. Parents who can be parents naturally don't have to prove themselves "worthy", but prospective adoptive parents do. So one of areas where I feel the sting failure is in looking at myself as a candidate for parenthood financially. I see an actor/writer/musician/martial artist who offers his talents for free, who does desk-monkey work for a pittance that is less than the combined total of the monthly household credit card bills, and who doesn't seem to be headed for any kind of career. This approach might suffice if there's never anyone but us for whom to care; indeed, it might even suffice for a child, were it possible for us to have one without anyone evaluating our worth for such. But when held under a magnifying glass . . .

'Stine's got a lot going on. She's found something morally and spiritually satisfying in which to specialize, at which she excels, and for which she is paid. She's not the obstacle. There are many reasons why I would like to become less shiftless and vague in my approach to life, even before introducing the idea of children; but making that transition with an eye towards both my values and my aptitudes could take more time than it seems like we have.

Where do greatness and transcendence fit into this? Well . . . again, it's largely a matter of being able to hold my head up even without the trappings of financial success or professional appreciation. Maybe successfully teaching at-risk youth about theatre, or passing a level-test, or writing potent works of performance text for myself have nothing to do with being a good parent (indeed, I'm fairly CERTAIN they bear no relation), but they DO speak to my ability to put my values and abilities into action. I'm never going to be the guy with the corner office, and I wouldn't want to be. I've no gift for sales, little respect for current educational hierarchies, and no idea what, besides sales or teaching, someone of my particular skills could do within the market. Working with my body, with ideas, with patterns and cycles in art and media, is what I'm built for, whether I'm doing it for free or for pay, whether I'm doing it well or poorly. And for all that, if asked to account for my lack of success, I'd want to be able to say, "Yes, I'm broke; but I'm broke because I've stayed true to my values, an approach to life I'd hope to pass on to any progeny. I work hard and I get by. I sacrificed a lucrative career to study those disciplines I found compelling and important; I sacrificed a career in those disciplines to maintain what I see as the integrity of the forms."

As it is, despite the work I've done and continued to do, despite my efforts at self-improvement through art, religion, philosophy, and combat sport, I'm still all but overcome with shame when I look at myself. I still worry that it's laziness or--worse yet--utter lack of talent that's kept me where I am, not some vague notion of integrity. I fear asking someone to let me raise a child because I fear, on some level, that I really don't deserve one, that I'm really not qualified. As worried as I am that I will be rejected by any adoption agency for being too poor, too old, too colorful, I'm scared of something even worse: that the reason for which I am these things isn't because I was too dedicated to my vision quest, but because I'm too potently self-absorbed to be any other way, and that to give children to so hopeless a scoundrel would be a cruel condemnation.

Anyway . . . sorry that the above is both technically sloppy, writing-wise, and wildly self-indulgent. I guess that true, bone-deep self-doubt is usually both.

Some Prosaic Greatness

Apologizing for navel-gazing on a blog is like apologizing for farting at a chili cookoff: it's probably the right thing to do, etiquette-wise, but the guests knew what they were in for when they showed up. But since we're all into worrying about how we come off, I'm going to apologize for the navel-gazing. The fact is, for all my attempts at altruism and self-improvement; for all exercise of my listening skills, kinesthetic response, and empathy; for all attempts at a truer, more generous state of being, I remain among the more singularly self-absorbed people I know. There are pluses and minuses to such a character, and I'll probably be forever working on that balance. But for now, I'm somewhat entrenched in a period of self-regard and self-analysis. So here we are.

I have two major events coming up in the next month (or so) that have me absolutely petrified. The first is a "phase test" in my martial arts class. See, at our school, since we're studying multiple disciplines (Kali, JKD/Jun Fan, Panantukan, CSW, BJJ, Savate, and Muay Thai), there aren't "belts" in the traditional sense; rather, they've devised a system of phases. There are three phases with three levels each, and students test once every 2-4 months. This would be my first test, and, if I pass, I'd move to phase 1, level 2. Which would just mean that I'd have a couple more options as to which classes I'm allowed to take, and would hopefully mean I'd get to play with weapons (!!!) a little more.

Thing is, I haven't been quite as consistent in my attendance as I'd like. I've been shooting for going to class 3-4 times a week, but it's really been more like 2-3, and some weeks have been a little less. Not exactly a shameful track record, but enough that, given how new all of these arts are to me (and how little they resemble the Goju-Ryu Karate, Aikido and Capoeira Angola I've already studied) and the length of time it's been since I last studied martial arts, I definitely feel . . . not so much unprepared as unready.

The second petrifying event is the beginning of my education project in mid-October. For those who missed the last few descriptions of this project, a close friend of mine and I will be co-teaching a series of classes on physical theatre, improvisation, and acro-balance. The emphasis will be on how one may apply martial-arts principles thereto, with a secondary emphasis on how one may use the performing arts as a platform for understanding the warrior ethic, insofar as one takes that to mean the ethic by which the "warrior" takes responsibility for her community, and to offer humility and healing by way of her art.

In this case, my fear stems from some of the same concerns, specifically the concern that I'm simply not a good enough martial artist to teach these principles (though the literal martial character of the art is essentially stripped away--we're only dealing with technique in the abstract). I'm worried that, never having taught before, my attempts will be awkward, amateurish. More prominently, though, I fear that these kids will see through my cirriculum and ideas to the lily-white face of my privelige, my paternalistic liberal desire to "give to the community". I find myself second-guessing my own motivations, wondering if my very intent with this project is so stone self-serving that my credibility will be shot before I open my mouth to say my first words.

As I approach these challenges, I hear the steady drone of the same old insecurities: that I'm a mediocre talent, that I haven't managed to do much of anything with myself, that I've a lazy intellect, that it's too late to establish any meaningful direction in my life. Basically, that I've squandered my modest gifts and given the shaft to any chance I might have had at greatness.

Greatness, you say? Yeah, that most prosaic of all goals, greatness, the longing for which is almost ironclad proof of mediocrity, even when the quest for it leads to a quiet (or not so quiet) contempt for all that is perceived as mediocre.

Greatness is a difficult thing to quantify for a dedicated abstractionist like myself. Though I've always hoped for comfort, I never sought wealth; though I crave recognition, I've never chased fame. Of course, I'm pretty sure I always secretly craved both wealth and fame, and had, at one time, that secret, youthful, vaguely megalomaniacal self-regard that whispered in my all-too-eager ear that I was gifted, dammit, that I was special, and that riches both literal and figurative would emerge as my birthright if I pursued truth, love, vision, and autonomy at the expense of all else (that those four directives might prove incompatible never occurred to me). But I've failed to create any legacy as an actor, a writer, a cultural critic, a martial artist, a musician, or a philosopher; attempts at fusing these disciplines into a single line of pursuit has been futile. I keep hearing the snide voice of this guy I heard, once, on NPR, talking about how, with few exceptions, people don't achieve greatness at pursuits picked up later in life, and I worry that the years wherein I could have made this work are past me, that sinking in anonymous routine is the only option left.

Obviously, studying new martial arts in my thirties and teaching eight weeks of an after-school theatre program to at-risk youth could hardly be called bids for greatness. I certainly don't seek fame or fortune in teaching or combat sport. But as these projects certainly pertain to my quest for truth, so, too, do they relate to my longtime musing on the abstract matter of greatness. My insecurities on all matters seem to rise from the same place, that dark little center where I wonder, at every moment, whether I'm an irretrievable failure. Of course I'm chanting on matters micro (the test, the classes) and macro (the quest for truth, the yearning to succeed at something), and it's kept me from getting stuck in too ugly a spiral. But this week in particular, I feel mired in doubt. And while my more immediate doubt is that I'm not enough of a martial artist to pass this relatively simple test, my greater doubt is that I'm not enough of anything to offer these kids any guidance, that I've already squandered my future, that all I have to share is a mish-mash of half-formed ideas that have already demonstrated their own poverty.

I suppose, all said, that all I can do is persevere, envision myself succeeding at these challenges while preparing NOT to chastise myself if I should fail, and hope that either truth or success peaks over some horizon.

I, Bourgeois

So the other night, I was unable to bring myself to attend my martial arts class. I do so try to be a dedicated student, but I was tired, grouchy, overwhelmed; I felt overscheduled, underslept, potently dissatisfied with self, life, work, and recreation.

My solution? Retail therapy.

Now, I rarely engage in retail therapy, mostly because our economic circumstances are such that even acquiring what we need is sometimes a bit of an ordeal. But I was feeling a particular dissatisfaction with my khakis: they're the sort of light tan, generic-looking Old Navy khakis that are the uniform of fashion-indifferent, business-casual office drones everywhere. So I find myself a lovely pair of herringbone-style khakis, made of cotton, but with the weave and texture of herringbone tweed. They're brownish, but neutral enough that they could as easily be worn with cool colors as warm, with a shirt and tie, a jersey, a T-shirt and sport jacket, you name it.

Where did I find these wonder trousers? Well . . . Old Navy. Exactly where I got the bland khakis for which I'd come to feel such contempt, which, in turn, I'd bought because khakis just make it easier not to think about what I'm wearing. And I bought BOTH pairs of pants on my Old Navy card, increasing our debt while maintaining the illusion that I still have that money in my real account. Between the use of credit (hell, the possession of credit) at Old Navy, the matter of sweatshops and regressive labor laws, matters of conformity and mass-production, and the decidedly male, in the ugliest traditional sense, approach to wardrobe, I'm at risk of revocation of license for my three most prized practices: bohemiamism, liberalism, metrosexuality. My God, I'm just a GUY. I had to go by a used corduroy shirt jacket at Value Village for $6.99 just to clean that feeling off (and can I say, my corduroy jacket looks great with the new herringbone khakis, and pretty good with my mechanic-fit jeans . . . also from Old Navy).

Yes, folks, the rejectionist himself is really just an average Joe with a tattoo (hey, I'll get another one soon) and some long-neglected piercings.

Like many artistic sorts, I've long sneered at any values I called "bourgeois", having a certain disdain for the notion that respectability or property were of any real use. I've rejected, on well-documented and fiercely argued grounds, the notion that music should please the ear, that cinema should make us laugh or feel good about ourselves, that law exists to protect people instead of wealth, etc. But it's all something of a sham: I DO want to be respected, and even my most dissonant, dystopian and dysphoric aesthetic indulgences are enjoyed because, for whatever reason, they DO please my ear, make me laugh, and, in some roundabout way, make me feel good about myself. I'd like for my aptitudes and talents to earn me admiration, and I'd like to weave a career therefrom, thus securing my access to what I see as my necessary--or at least highly desirable--material comforts. I want my clothing to be inexpensive and reasonably interchangeable, in the sense of everything sort of matching with everything else, without having to always go the all-black, all-the-time route OR stay aware of which color is "in" this season.

Fact is, most people who use the word "bourgeois" are, in fact, precisely that; the rich have no disdain for materialism, the poor don't spend a lot of time weighing social paradigms and value systems. Inasmuch as "bourgeois" means "middle-class", it's we who are moderately educated, working for just-enough-yet-strangely-too-little, who both know what it means and feel guilty enough about it to criticize it. Sure, there are those among us like myself, who have used our modest means to explore outsider aesthetics and maverick philosophies, sought divergence from mainstream religion and are suspicious of mainstream media. But scratch the surface of these "rebellions", and you'll find that most of their theorists, critics and practitioners are of that same bent. They're what Herman Hesse dubbed "steppenwolves", lone lupine luminaries frustrated with, but inescapably held by, a world where order and civility are the norm. Look at any of history's great rogue philophers--de Sade, Lautreaumont, Sartre--and you'll see a gallery of malcontents fiercely (and knowingly) biting the hand that fed them all, carving out a comfortable niche from which to rail against comfortable niches.

I could equivocate on the matter for days (and you can stop giggling there in the back row). Gustave Flaubert once said that an artist should try to live the quiet, ordered life of the bourgeois individual, that he may be violent and original in his art; I'd proudly bear the banner of that idea were I actually creating any art at the moment. And really, I'm only looking for bargains so I can reinvest my income into my other pursuits; but if I'm being honest, the big problem with my pursuits is that I'm at loathe to sell out on the one hand, while finding it too tiring to study, take classes, work full-time and make art, particularly since I find it wholly necessary for my marriage (that most bourgeois of institutions, in which I've been happily and successfully engaged for a decade now) to spend some portion of every week cuddling on the couch to a DVD (whether it's one of my violent independent horror flicks, an obscure proto-surrealist European oddity from the '20s, or the first season of Scrubs).

In The Steppenwolf, after noting that the disaffected bohemian is, generally, a middle-class phenomenon itself, Hesse goes on to suggest that the bourgeoisie survives solely because of the steppenwolves, that the innovations of the middle-class's most disaffected members allow the system against which they ostensibly rebel to thrive. It does seem to me that a system allergic to the uncivilized appetite for deviance and chaos would need an occasional injection of both to avoid death-by-stasis, that the old mammalian impulses to destroy and dominate help give civilization a needed kick in the ass now and again. But I also think it works both ways: without some definition of civility, we'd never need to invent a clever subversion of such base impulses into aesthetics, theory, kink and/or technology. Without the education our (modest) affluence has bought us, we'd never have become too smart for our own good (or anyone else's), never have so exhausted the mainstream canon as to become disenchanted with it, never have experienced privelige to enough of a degree to become mistrustful of it.

That doesn't mean there aren't still conflicts to deal with. While I think that the far left has been facile in its understanding of sweatshop economics--these jobs are often the only alternative some third world workers have to trying to grow crops in fucking sand--I'd certainly love to know that the dapper herringbone khakis I'm wearing were made by people with health insurance, and that my punk-meets-preppy-with-a-dash-of-hippie aesthetic relied more on creative use of homemade and second-hand items than on any prefab, mass-produced fashion mandate. I'll always want more, and always wish I could do with less. I wish civilization hadn't made cars, phones, and computers necessities instead of luxuries. I'm always shaken by the paradox that I could probably simplify my life if I only had more money right now to pay of my debts, invest in a home infrastructure that allowed me to do more with less--by a sewing machine, a giant spice-rack, a handful of strong, well-made, universally applicable clothing items to replace my vast patchwork of half-formed, invariably "settled-for" approximations of what I need, a vehicle or two. I'm always amused that the people exhorting us to shop with the worker in mind, abandoning price as our primary consideration, are usually a little higher on the economic food chain than the rest of us, and that "voluntary simplicity" so often seems to be by-product of affluence. And I may never fully reconcile myself with the frustrations of the art world, the ways that the mainstream seems to stifle innovation, the way that the underground allows deceptive bursts of success that all other underground artists will attempt in vain to replicate.

But in the end, while I'm not likely to stop using "bourgeois" as a shorthand for everything prosaic and yawnworthy, I should remember that I'm also implicating myself with that word . . . and that maybe that's not such a bad thing.