"I am going to fuck you in the heart" Travis Preston (one of my college teachers) the first thing he said to us the first day of class

My mother has this theory that its a good thing when she doesn't hear from me. Her theory is that I only call when something is wrong, when I am not to be heard from it is actually a good thing.

So good ole' blogger kay here might be included in an actual documentary, and here is the amusing part, on heroism. (Up Up and Away!) Yes, I was talking to someone who has requested not to be mentioned, so let's just call him-in tribute to the comic Doonesbury- "-" about heroes and what makes something heroic and he was sufficiently impressed by my ideas to ask me to be interviewed. The interview is set for wednesday so if anything happens with that I will keep you posted.

I have to say considering my involvement with the arts and so forth that I am incredibly skeptical about these kinds of projects, first about them actually being completed and second about anyone ever seeing them once they are. This skepticism might account for why I can not actually finish a story to save my ass.

So I went on a second date last night with "-" and um I was a very very bad bunni. The type of bad bunni who wakes up the next day and immediately thinks "I REALLY should not have done that" and has an anxiety attack on the spot. I actually even called "-" later in the day and we are supposed to get together wednesday, which I suppose should make me feel better, and make me think he doesn't hold my badness against me. (What exactly did I do? I would rather not say, let's just say that alcohol and moderate nudity was involved.) But still regardless of his reaction, I should not have done it and I can only hope the universe will see fit not to punish me for my transgression.

On another note, I don't have too much to say these days because as the boys at work will tell you, I hve actually been pretty happy lately, and as much as I hate to admit being happy is just not conducive to writing. I need that cynical edge that unsatisfied longing in order to write. Happiness is just so damn boring.

And since I have very little to write about privately I would like to take this time and talk about the character of Olivier on Six Feet Under. I had an epiphany this week when I realized that why I respond to Olivier is that I had a had a teacher just like him in college,Travis Preston. He was our directing teacher. The quote at the beginning of this entry is from him. He was the kind of guy who would resort to using very personal information and making students cry in order to get a specific performance. I truly hated him, but he did teach me some of the most important lessons about making art. He told us never to worry about making safe art, he said the safe art will take care of itself. He said you have to dare to suck, dare to fail, because that is the only time you might say something truly interesing. He always said he would rather watch an interesting failure than a safe sucess. it wasn't until two years later that I realized how important his class was in teaching me certain ideas that are absolutely necessary for me to remember when I write.

So Olivier is then a kind of paradigm the teacher who has to torture in order to instruct. I, on the other hand, had another teacher, Davd Bucknam, who was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for his original musical The Waves in 1990. I have checked and there are no website or webpages for David and I am going to recitfy that because David was one of the best teachers I ever had. He often was the thing that kept us alive, the only thing that kept us through the day. We lived and died for David and what he thought of our work. Doing well in his class was often the only thing that made me happy ( particularly that last year when so little made me happy at all). Anyway, David taught me a lot of important lessons as well, but the most important thing he taught me was what kind of teacher I want to be. I saw Travis and I saw David, both taught me important lessons, but there is only one whom I still love. Unfortunately David is no longer alive, and so I never could share how much he meant to me. How much he meant to all of us. But when he died a lot of people drove all night, some washed their hair in McDonald's bathrooms and slept in gas station parking lots to make it there. It was worth it to be there to show him, even too late, how much he meant to us. And so I prefer to model myself after David.