Michael

My previous blog entry was a crass attempt to avoid what has been occupying my thoughts for the past week and a half.

On the morning of Tuesday, November 15th, my stepfather took a handgun into his backyard and killed himself with it. Now, ten days later, I still have not processed this information completely.

At about 11:30 that day I received two phone calls on my cell phone. One was from a number I did not know, but I recognized the area code as being from Indianapolis, where my mom and stepdad live. The second was from my mom. I was at work and did not answer in time. She didn't leave a message, so I called back. She was able to say, "Something terrible has happened," but was too hysterical to get out more, so she handed the phone off to a woman who identified herself as police officer. May I just pay my compliments to the Indianapolis Police Department's sensitivity training: Never has a bandage been so gently ripped off. She told me what happened, and asked how quickly I could get there. I explained that I was in Chicago and it would be several hours. She gave the phone back to my mom, and I told her I was on my way. I don't know if she heard me. She asked me to call my brothers and sisters and I said of course. I called my wife and went home, then spent about fifteen minutes building up the courage to do the single most difficult thing I have ever done in my life: I called my stepbrother to tell him his father had died.

My wife came home and went into stage-manager mode. She arranged for the car rental and hotel, and off we went. (Side note: Through an odd quirk we ended up with a BMW for the week. It had built in GPS, which proved to be invaluable as we coordinated various airport and hotel pickups and dropoffs for our family. We named the GPS "Lucy.")

The rest of the week is something of a blur. My family has always dealt with difficulty through humor, so there was a lot of laughing. That helped. I met my newest nephew, 3-month-old William. I met my sister-in-law for the first time, which was awesome. She has her hands full with my stepbrother, who understandably is taking it hard. I think if anyone is up to the task, though, it is this fantastic addition to the family.

I also met another family member, and this just adds to dream-like quality of the past week. My mother revealed to me many years ago that when she was in high school she gave birth to a baby girl, whom she gave up for adoption. About a year and a half ago, they met for the first time. This woman, my older half-sister, came in for the funeral. There are many things about the past ten days about which I have yet to sort out my feelings. This is perhaps the strangest.

I have never been in a position to make funeral arrangements before. Our needs were basic. There would be - could be - no viewing. There would be no religious ceremony. He would be cremated. The ashes will added to his garden, so there was no need for an expensive urn. There was just a two-hour visitation, and I was happy to see how many people came. The funeral director was fantastic, and took care of everything. Even getting the obituary in the paper. All part of the package.

Considering how minimal our requirements were, I am astounded by how much it cost. If Mandy or I were to die suddenly, the surviving partner would be completely screwed.

My mom is handling things as well as can be expected - better, actually. Right now she is in Seattle, spending Thanksgiving with one of my sisters. She'll be in Phoenix with another sister for Christmas. She has already started talking about changes she wants to make to the house. My siblings an I are planning a reunion trip to Indianapolis next summer, to help fix up the place.

I don't really have much else to say about it right now. I have no appropriate eulogy for my stepfather. I knew him for almost a quarter of a century, but apparently I didn't know him that well.

Party Pooper

I have a confession to make: I hate the holidays.

I like to convince myself that I object to the holidays as a matter of principle. Thanksgiving may have become a time for family, and for reflecting on the good things in your life, and whatever. But really it's a celebration of the time when a bunch of weirdos who couldn't hack it in their home country packed up and took a boat to the New World, where the natives threw them a pity party. Which was later repaid with smallpox. And Christmas? Please. The commercial co-opting of a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of the world's most famous fictional character. A holiday which is itself a co-opted Roman holiday, which has its roots in even early Pagan traditions.

I can be kind of a dick when I want to. Because the truth is that this time of year just stresses me right out. It's expensive. I have family members from every corner of the country wanting to know why I'm not spending it with them. I put on a ton of weight every year at this time. And it's expensive. Did I mention that already?

I need to quit being a whiner and just try to enjoy myself.

But it's also cold out there.

New Skills - Part II

And here it is: My brand-new, freshly squeezed website. I find that I cannot stop tinkering with it.

The HTML/CSS class was interesting and informative, and if this online thing ever offers a more advanced one I shall definitely check it out. I'm now deep into their introductory Javascript course, which is about a hundred times more complicated. It involves the use of words that are not currently part of my vocabulary. Words like, "concatenation." It requires the understanding of "variables" and "functions," both of which sound suspiciously math-like to my artist's brain. Fortunately, these are video lectures, so when anything doesn't sink in the first time I can just watch it again. Once I've got the hang of it I'm moving on to PHP/MySQL. I think it will help me at my current day job. Or perhaps it will help at some future day job. We shall see.

In other news, The Count of Monte Cristo has been extended for two weeks, so it now closes November 13th - just in time for me to begin work on Hunger, also for Lifeline Theatre. We're doing a special workshop/staged reading downtown this month, which will be a change from Lifeline's usual process. I'm curious to see what we'll be able to take from this once we enter the regular rehearsal process after Thanksgiving.

New Skills

I'm taking online classes in HTML/CSS and Javascript. I'll probably be redesigning my website soon. You are forewarned.

Chicago Theatre Off Book

Katy Walsh (of The Fourth Walsh) and Joshua Volkers interviewed me for their new radio show, Chicago Theatre Off Book, on CHIRP (The Chicago Independent Radio Project). You can listen to it online by clicking here.

The interview starts just after the 10 minute mark, although before that I got to participate in one of their 60-second radio plays. (Full disclosure: I had no idea I was going to do that before I showed up for the interview. I want you to keep that in mind before you judge my performance.)

An Idea

I've got an idea for this thing. I call it the Secular Artists Alliance. I've gone so far as to register the domain name. Beyond that, however, it's just an idea. As I wrote on the placeholder page, "My hope is to turn this into a forum for artists of all disciplines who have, or have been inspired by, or are maybe just curious about, a secular worldview. I'd like this to be a place where artists can come for support, networking, feedback, and inspiration."

Now how do I do that?

The Plan

The time has come -- is, in fact, long overdue -- for me to find an agent. There, I said it. I have put feelers out, and several friends have given me recommendations on where to submit, and even been kind enough to offer themselves as references. Time now to put together some resumes and headshots, write me up some cover letters, maybe tack on some quotes from reviews, and see what happens.

I have, on occasion, sent my stuff in to agents before. I have encountered no success. I also sent my stuff in unsolicited. The agents had not seen me, I had no recommendations, and few reviews to speak of. I think I've got a better handle on what I'm doing this time.

I'm fast approaching a "now or never" point in my life. Without going into detail, let me say that certain aspects of my working life in which I had been comfortable have recently become distinctly un-comfortable. I was complacent; now things are shaking up and it is time for me to get my shit together.

The funny thing is, when it comes to theater, I have never been busier. The show I wrote opens in two weeks. I've been cast in a show at my home theater that workshops this fall, and performs next winter. I've just joined a company that performs Shakespeare for high school students. And I have an audition coming up about which I am very excited. If I get that, that's five plays I'll be acting in this season. That's crazy. And awesome. But also crazy.

But as busy as I am, I have bills to pay, and my old comfortable plan doesn't seem like it's going to pan out the way I'd hoped. So now it's time to step up my game. Part of me wishes that such a move could have been played out more on my own terms, but at the same time I know myself well enough to know that if circumstances hadn't dictated it, I might have been content to let things ride as they were indefinitely.

I hate to be so vague. Nobody should be worrying about my health or anything like that. It's just time for a change. And it's stressful as all hell, but in the end I think it will turn out to be a good thing.