I'm Batman.
I'll go back.
You know how, when people used to listen to music on cassette tapes, you could press "fast-forward" and "play" at the same time? And if the singer was singing:
Suddenly it sounded more like:
Whenyouknowwhatyouwant!!!
Thewind'satyourback,yeh,andtime'syourfriend!!!
It'llpushyououtlikethetide,dragyouin!!!
Andkissyouattheend!!!
Well, that's kind of how my life's been feeling at the moment. Although it's all definitely familiar, there's quite a bit of vertiginous momentum and everything's all electric! And chirpy! And weird!
It's very exciting, if occasionally disconcerting. For instance, I'm falling in with the strangest people.
Like that guy, Gregory, holding my son (and his namesake), Rafa Gregory. He turned forty and his betrothed threw him a momentous party. And Brandon and I got to go. I write "got to go" not because we were in any danger of not being invited -- we named a kid after him and all -- but because we HIRED A BABYSITTER so that we could attend the birthday bash, at a bar, and cavort the way grown-ups do.
I should mention this was Advanced Cavorting, because Greg is a musician. Who shows up for a musician's birthday party? Many, many other musicians (of the rock variety). I think there were more guitars and other plug-in-able amplifying devices there than people -- which is saying something, since the joint was packed.
It was like a foreign country. There was set after set of music. Loud music. (Louder than you're imagining right now.) So loud that there was nothing to do but submit and let somebody hand me a drink.
It was fantastic.
And then there's this:
I've begun my work with the Freehold Theatre Lab's Ensemble Training Intensive (ETI) We had our first round of auditions for the ten-month training program a few days ago*. It was another step-through-the-mirror experience, which is to say another country visited -- this one much more familiar. A black-box theater, a small team of us behind a table. A group of applicants waiting in the hallway. Another pretty exhilarating instance of being in a room among people who know, intimately, what they are doing.
By the way: Theatre artists are easily as profane as rock musicians.
*If you are interested in applying, or know someone who might be, PLEASE contact me because there will be another round of auditions later this summer and we want to see you (or your friend) there. It's not too late!
Then it was back to rock. The same babysitter TWICE IN ONE WEEK IT IS INSANE, I TELL YOU.
Brandon and Greg's band, Hearts Are Thugs, played in a benefit show at the Sunset along with Tim Rogers. Greg, in fact, played bass for Tim Rogers' set. I can't properly explain the significance of this event because Americans are weirdly under-exposed to the band You Am I, but believe me when I say that the Australians get it.
In other words, hello Wonderland again, particularly since through some kind of crazy intersection of events, we ended up driving Tim Rogers to the Sunset in our car. Yep, we took the carseats out of the Kia so that Tim Rogers could climb into the middle back seat and be conveyed safely to his rock show.
I told you I was Batman. Wonderland, Batman, foreign travel: I know I'm mixing my metaphors but I'm fast-forwarding here! What do you expect?
It's been kind of a wild couple of weeks. I keep going from this:
To this:
From this:
(Hey, that's Brandon!)
To this:
From this:
To this:
Note Rafa's bloody nose -- the result of our newly-toddling dear one's daily face-plant.
Hard living, kid. I know how it is.
