Cue music:
"Working for the Man" PJ Harvey
"Army of Me" Bjork
"Hooker with a Penis" Tool

I'm sitting at work on a disorgized Thursday morning right before Christmas. I know I've got a lot to say, but I've forgotten the words. So I suppose I should just tell a story. Stories explain things better than essays so here's my best shot for a day like today.

The servers aren't exactly down, but it is taking appoximately five minutes to do *anything* on the application I use at work. So I'm pretty effectively out of commission. The sky outside the distant windows looks grey and sickly. It's supposed to rain some later today, but I wish it would just get to it. I love rain, but I hate clouds, if that makes any sense.

So I sit back and wonder what happened to me, how exactly I got here. I mean, I remember the details. I needed a job pretty bad and a friend I met at the School of Theatre recommended this place and a little over 14 months ago I was hired. And the fact is that after working retail for three years and spending a year bouncing around from temp assignment to temp assignment I really, REALLY wanted a boring desk job with hours as close to nine to five Monday through Friday as possible. I didn't really care what made-up institution is supported, I needed to be able to support myself.

It's been an interesting ride. Dealing with such young company means there are people in very important and powerful positions who literally don't know what they are doing or what they are supposed to be doing. Fortunately there are also a lot of smart people who've either figured it out or have hired smart people to figure it out. But since this Journal is about me, and not my company, we'll talk about me now }:>

I have a Bachelor's degree in Theatre. It's in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California (fight on!) I truly miss working in theatre, it's my favorite artistic medium and while I can admire the work that others do in other fields I don't really see myself working in any other media.

I understand that theatre is not as popular as it once was but I never intended to into anything that would really be thought of as popular. Even in Los Angeles there are 99-seaters and waive theatres that focus on presenting unpopular ideas in a light that makes the audience look and consider these ideas. Sometimes (like now) I can't help but notice how bad the world needs a resurgence in classic Greek plays. Doesn't anyone else feel like they're running their life from a mound of dirt that is working its way up from the waist to the neck? Don't quotes from Waiting for Godot come flooding back to your mind when you listen to hardline Republicans speaking of their undying support for the Dubya? Or is that just me?

And then to top it off I've got way too many people around me who can't tell the difference between being on stage and being in front of a camera and why anyone one would chose one over the other. I have to tell you there is a lot of money in film, everyone in Los Angeles knows that all too well. But there are no new stories really. People haven't changed since Aristotle told Plato how to write a good drama - "It's like sex son, you tease, you smile, you kiss, you lick, you find the sweet spot and plunge away until the both of you are spent. Then you clean up and go home."

So the stories are the same. The settings and names change, and the way the the stories develop change and get better (and worse, and different) all the time. But the reason that film might be better as an aritistic medium is that it get distributed without being changed. Copies of the final art piece can be made and cannot easily be distinguished from the original. So presumably everyone has the exact same experience.

But that is also its detriment. A film once made cannot adjust to an audience's reaction within its own showing. So I come back to living art that moves with time to tell a story, or highlight an idea, or to explain something stylistically. To be the most effective you must know your audience be agile enough to adapt to them and any circumstance your environment throws at you.

Theatre has all the limitations that humans do, but that is exactly what makes it so good to work in - its humanity. People have been investigating the human condition for as long as humans have been sentient. For that reason we've had a long need to look at ourselves closely, to measure ourselves against each other and see what makes us tick.

How can you truly do that in a movie? You could sit in the very front you and look up the noses of the people on the screen, but you'll never catch their eye, you'll never have the electric feeling of knowing what a particular character is going through and knowing that they know you know. You can't have the same back door entrance into the world on the screen because the actors can't acknowledge you and let you in. On a stage it's like a secret. The chracters on the stage know you are there and invite you in discreetly, as if you are their private friend, and don't let anyone else find out or they'll throw you out.

If I'm getting too confusing for you, go back and read The Real Inspector Hound, or really anything by Tom Stoppard.

Or go to a play in a really tiny theatre somewhere where the actors aren't afriad of the audience and won't put a great gulf of time, space and celluloid between them.

oh great. Now I'm depressed.

Finish with: "Somewhere over the Rainbow"