 I thought I just would start out also just by saying I spent from 18 to 22 in this area, in this city, and so being back here feels, it just extremely loaded and moving because it's where I first fell in love and where I first went to my first gay bath house. Because the video is short, you know, but you know, not that I sort of say it jokingly, but seriously, I mean just experiences of youth, of, you know, hi there, you're welcome. So it feels incredibly stirring because it's where I first really, it's where I came out and being in this room feels incredibly, you know, I just forget when you look up and see Isherwood and Sappho. I remember how terrified I was. I lived on Market in Sanchez and across the street was a rowdy gay bar and there was guys hanging out. I don't know what it was called, but they were on the pet, and I was so afraid of them and my parents came to visit and I saw them look across the street. And I look back, that's only, you know, that's 30 some years ago, and all that sense of being trapped and hidden and to be back now as a 56-year-old doing these plays, talking, just trying to seek some kind of truth and some kind of transparency about what it is to be human and what it is to try to grow toward some kind of authenticity as a human. I guess I'm expressing this incredible gratitude and sense of how moving it is to be in San Francisco of all places. And this is also where I began my serious, was where I came out and where I also said I'm going to make the decision to really dedicate myself to acting. And I wanted to read, just because I thought it would be fun, from the former book that All the Rage came out recently, but the tricky part came out about 10 years ago almost, but I write a little bit about that process of discovering when I was a young person the first sort of sense of being in love with, possibly in love with this bizarre thing called the theater. And now since I'm performing across the street. And I do want to say too, you guys, this is such a bizarre, isn't it, endeavor, this self-chronicling, like this memoir, what, you know, the whole notion of memoir that stories come from a river of experience rather than completely the land of fiction. And there's such a paradox in that, I don't know if you've ever heard that wonderful Buddhist saying that to study the way is to study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to allow the 10,000 things to flow. So that bizarre paradox by focusing on our own stories, cracking through to what is truly human and universal, for lack of a better word. And I still have a lot of shame, a lot of times, about the fact that that seems to be the essential thrust of my writing is this naval gazing. Like I hear the voice of the priest saying, there you go again, calling attention to yourself, talking about yourself. But it seems that the paradox is in talking about myself, my hope and my prayer is that I am forgetting about myself, that it's really just talking about us. But hey, for fun, a short passage about tripping upon, I don't know if I know some of you might have, you know, may have read this book, a couple of you have, but maybe I'll give voice to this little moment of being about 16 years old, 17 years old and tripping upon the theater for the first time. Let's see if we can get that. So this is a time in my life when I was, had gone through being a sort of sexual initiation, very inappropriate as a kid, an older man at a Catholic camp. And I was really, really struggling with suicidal feelings and shame and isolation. And by some stroke of fate, this event occurred. I was walking through the lobby at school when I noticed a bright orange poster. On it was drawn a large cartoon figure of a hefty man kicking up his heels. He was wearing a toga or something Roman-like and was running, apparently being chased by a scantily clad, large-breasted blonde. His sandals were skimming along large red letters that said, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Below in the right-hand corner was printed the following information. Since October 14th, auditorium sign up, room 228. Without much thought, I moved through the crush of students up the stairs and across the hall to the drama room. My head had the slightest conversation with my feet, what are you doing? My body's reply, this is the way it is. I signed my name on the clipboard hanging near the door. The following week I sat clutching sheet music for Camelot against my knees, my legs jerking up and down. This whole thing's absurd, I kept thinking. I'll never go through with it. There was a row of folding chairs lined up in the hall just outside the entrance to the auditorium. They were all occupied with students like me, holding music, humming softly, appendages jerking. This is crazy, I kept thinking, how could anyone do this? Next! He was pointing at me, this guy with copper-colored hair. Is that dyed? I wondered. He was telling me I was next. I stood and avoiding the eyes of the others folded in their folding chairs. I walked past the boy with flaming hair through the door and onto the stage of the enormous auditorium. Music please. It was a deep, disembodied voice bubbling up from somewhere. Down here it said, I walked forward and saw a guy seated in the orchestra pit behind an upright piano. A white guy with the biggest afro I'd ever seen. A globe of curly black hair topped with a tiny purple yamaka, held in place, I noticed, with a bobby pin. Sick, he asked again. I bent down to hand him my song. He stood to take it. His yellow t-shirt cried, Godspell, Tempo, fast, I whispered. Okay, he gestured for me to move back toward center stage. I shuffled back and forth, stuck my hands in my pockets, took them out. I bent my knees to keep them from shaking. Dive in, baby lamb, came a female voice from amid the dark sea of seats. I squinted and saw, several rows back, the outline of a hairdo, the glimmer of glasses. I stared. Darling, did you hear me? Yes. What are you singing? Camelot. Lovely. Go ahead, Alan. She yelled. The music began, and miraculously, so did I. A law was made a distant moon ago here, July and August cannot be too hot, I got three lines in, blanked and stopped singing. Oh, well, that's the end of that, I thought. Oh, you're a tenor, she cried. I saw the head of hair stand. She moved briskly down the aisle toward the stage. She seemed excited. She was small, well-dressed. She had a lovely scarf and a huge grin. Did you bring any other music? No. Well, that's okay. Have you got nice legs? What? John, the boy with the fiery hair, was at my side. This is John, my assistant. He nodded at me. Fabulous voice, he whispered. Mrs. Priest likes you. Darling, would you mind throwing on a pair of gym shorts and let me have a gander at your legs? I shrugged and mumbled something, assenting, but embarrassed. She said, it's part of the story, honey. One of the characters has lovely gams. Where's a toga? I'm sure yours are great. I just need to have a quick look. John handed me a pair of gym shorts and pointed. Last door upright. What? Where? Wing three, off upright, he pointed again. I followed the general direction of his finger. I found the door to a small room and returned with bare legs and stocking feet. Turn around once, darling. Will you, please? I spun. They gazed. It was oddly intoxicating. Attention, eyes coming at you, lingering on you. The ham in me was definitely pleased. The drama lady, that's how I thought of her now, came to the edge of the stage. Sing something else for me, darling. Anything you know without music? Yeah. Acapella. I saw the boy at the piano stand and lean in. I really don't know much except church stuff or, oh, something, honey. You must know something. Whatever comes into your mind, okay. The floor of the stage was slatted, varnished and beautiful. I stared down at the swirling grains of wood, clutched the hems of the gym shorts that I was wearing and sang. The first song, my mom's favorite, that she played over and over again. The first song that came into my head. Will I ever find the boy in my mind, the one who is my ideal? Maybe he's a dream, and yet. What show is that from? The piano player asked when I'd finished. That's not from a show, John said. That's from life. When I first stepped on stage before an audience, a bundle of nerves wrapped in a toga. I could scarcely believe it was my own body. Right on cue, a voice resounded, whose throat is that? And the limbs attached to the trunk, I called Martin, instantly inhabited a character named Hiro, and his bumbling love for the girl next door. I felt myself rise up and lean into the presence, the touch of all those human eyes and ears. It was a lightness of being, a momentary pardon for all the secrets and sins. They were smiling out there. They weren't seeing a bad or damaged kid, so it seemed. They saw, I think, a kid with rouge all over his cheeks, red dots in the corners of his eyes, and a mouth open wide, belting high notes as if his life depended on it. And what I saw written across the field of faces was rapture, I think, a collective delight. How astonishing it was to stumble upon such genuine life while at the business of pretending. And there was something familiar about it all, something church. The huge auditorium, though it didn't have the flying buttresses and jutting steeples of a basilica, had the grandeur of a space built for mortal communion and prayer. Though I was dressed for a silly musical, I couldn't help feeling a bit the altar boy in front of the congregation. A different costume, different stage, but a ritual nonetheless. In the coming years, I would come to think of theater, when it's good, as a place of epiphany. Not the transformation of the body of Christ, but of everybody present. Humans fused by a jolt of laughter, by the thread of a story. And from this very first experience of forum, I felt even in all the irreverence, in all the courtesans chasing Pseudalus, in all the fancy jokes, that there was something sacred. A celebration of what's human and what's here. I stood there and essentially ex-Catholic, uncovering a new faith. And when the curtain call arrived, I bent my head, my body into the praise, and felt no quarrel with living. And the voice in my head said, this is joy. Remember this. This exists. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks for looking at it. It's just a little snapshot of, I just felt, as I say, I felt like reading that. I haven't read it, or looked at it in a long, long time, just because of being here, where I began to study, and fall in love, and more and deeply and more seriously with the theater. And it's strange to be just continuing to do it right across the street. The Strand. Have you guys seen that? Have you all seen The Strand? The new Strand Theater? It's just gorgeous. Have you had a chance to be in there? It's new. Yeah, you live in L.A., you say. Have you seen it? Richard? I remember the old Strand. Yeah. It was... It was a movie theater. Right. I heard about it. It's infamous. People said it was very, like, sticky floor. Yeah. I watched a movie over there. Yeah. Through the disguise of art films. And I was kind of surprised to see that it was quite the place. Yeah. It's amazing. It's an amazing building structure. But they fixed it up so beautifully. And it's got quite a history, I guess, both, as you say, as a movie house, playing classic films, and porn. Yeah. It had a ballet studio on top. Oh, really? It's a market. You could look up there and you saw these longenus. They were practicing their moves. It was quite interesting. It was a beautiful blockade of market street at that point from Civic Center. Oh, my God. Yeah, I guess... Because, you know, up there now on the top couple floors there's a beautiful black box theater. So they have the windows blocked off, I think, because of the theater being up there. They call it the roof theater, I think, something. And the students use it a lot. It's a beautiful space. But they've done just a beautiful job with it. I think it's just catching on. They're still having trouble getting audiences and so on. The Strand, yeah. Really? Well, there's, I think, ACT, their subscribers and so on. Their base is generally, I think, a little more conservative, classic crowd. So they were telling me that many of them are reluctant to come down to this part of town. But it's an amazing building. It's such a great space. Yeah, it's so beautiful. Well, I want to jump... I'll read a little bit from the second book. I was trying to think what to... I think I want to read maybe just a little passage about my brother, David. The book is dedicated to my brother, David. And the first book is dedicated to my parents and my husband, Henry. And this one, my little brother... I lost my little brother in... We lost him in 2009. And he was an amazing kid, that young man who struggled a lot with anger, which is, I think, why I chose to write about him through the book. But many parts of him were revealed to me, even after his death, in writings that he had given, but that he had written in journals and so on. But this is a little story about one of the times that I visited him while he was still alive. And so just a taste of David Francis Moran, whose spirit infuses part of the book. And I should say, by the way, that all the rage... Some people have often asked about it. In some ways, it is a kind of response to the tricky part. A lot of people, I talk about this in the play across the street, a lot of people asked, after the tricky part, which has a sort of Zen meditative forgiveness quality about it, why aren't you more angry, or where is the anger? And all the rage began to be sort of this imperative to responding to that question, because it obsessed me. It began to obsess me of thinking particularly that maybe I skipped the anger part and jumped too quickly to forgiveness. So the book is a kind of... It is a prism of these many different angles of what is the function of anger in human life and the dance between us knowing in any given moment that we are all in this together and yet the sense of anger and separation, this fracturing and this coming together, this fracturing and this coming together. And my brother is one window into that. But this is just one little story about one of the last times I visited him and he lived up in the mountains in the Colorado Rockies, a beautiful spot. His name was David, as I say. Dave and I were walking on a road near his cabin in Frazier, Colorado. This was the third, maybe the fourth time I traveled there. We just had dinner and were in good spirits. There were often long silences between us, months, sometimes without a word or a call. But when we'd find each other again after a year or two, sometimes three, there was usually a burst of joy. And my sweet brother, who could be so somber and angry and silent, would open like a book full of secret tales. So yeah, he said, I was on my way to the doctors. I had an appointment down in Denver. I made good time on the trip down to the city, so I decided to stop at REI. You know that big sports store? A bright moon lit the dirt road where we walked. It was early spring. Patches of snow were still scattered about and gleaming at the bases of pine trees. There was a wild racket of what I thought were crickets emanating from the woods. Dave walked slowly, cigarette in hand, occasionally scratching his thick beard between puffs. So, Mart, you remember how big that store is? Well, they've got great sales and they've got great cheap stuff and all this equipment. I wanted to look at maybe buying a new sleeping bag. Anyway, I parked in the lot, got out of the truck, and I started to walk toward the store when suddenly I knew something was wrong, really wrong. I felt a pain, a kind of rough thud in my chest. And a weird feeling in my arm and I got right away what was up. I turned around to get back in the truck to drive myself to the emergency room. I wasn't that far from Denver General. Well, damn it if I hadn't left my keys in the ignition. And of course it was locked. Too little blood going to the brain, I guess. So I had to crawl through the back of the truck and then through the rear window of the cab. I squeezed in, I'd done this before, you know, and started the damn thing and drove to the hospital. There were parking places on the street. I probably should have pulled over right there, but I knew if I didn't die, I'd be there for a while and so I'd better get the long-term parking garage. You're kidding me, I said. He said, nope, I can't believe you're presence of mind. He said presence of poverty, man. I hated the thought that if I came out alive my truck would be towed and I'd have a whopping ticket, too much to bear, man. Why didn't you call someone? He took a drag from his marvel, gave me a quick grin, bright and sharp in the lunar light. So he continued, I parked and walked into the emergency room and I said to the nurse, hi, I'm having a heart attack. How did she know to take you seriously? Oh, she knew. She knew that I knew. I must have looked like hell. I flashed my medic alert bracelet and, you know, I know hospitals. I gave her my basic info and in like seconds they had me on the table in some side room and I remembered the fluorescent lights and commotion. But next thing I knew I woke up with this stint in my heart. Stint, I guess, stint. After a short stint in Denver General. It sounds harrowing, Dave. I don't know. Par for the course, me being diabetic in all these years, you know, he said and shrugged. Do you ever call anyone? Not till after it all happened. Jesus, Dave. I sipped the last of my Sierra Nevada pale ale as we trudged along. Dave always made sure to have some in his fridge when I came to visit. He knew it was my favorite. He was an unfailingly sweet host. We walked north on Crooked Creek Road. The insistent singing, rising from the woods and ponds around us. All was quiet, but for the crunch of our steps. I was trying to imagine life in his shoes. Trying to envisage driving myself to the emergency room while knowing I was having a heart attack. Parking the truck, talking to the nurse. What was it like, little brother, to be negotiating all of this alone? Alone. So he began again. Those fucking nurses and doctors were fast once I got there, man. They saved me. Saved me for now anyway. But what? I asked. He shrugged and took another deep suck off his marble. I winced. Like match to gasoline, my dear friend Ken. The doctor had said to me when I asked him about Dave's lifelong diabetes and cigarettes. But what? I asked again. Well, the writing's on the wall, man. He looked to the sky, the milky sky and blew a stream of smoke. We walked on the far side of the wide meadow before us across the train tracks where Union Pacific cars clattered and whistled their way through the valley several times a day. The craggy wall of the continental divide rose up. Granite backbone of the country, Steinbeck called it. It was etched against the star-filled sky. The big dipper and Polaris hung right there before us, clear as bells. At one point Dave swept his cigarette from one end of the valley to the other and said, you see this place, bro? This place is just one big hug from God. The crickets are singing like mad, I said. Oh, that's the hum of love you're hearing, brother. Not crickets, but little frogs. Wood frogs. Peepers. Peepers? Yep, it's spring. They know slightest rise in temp and they rise from the dead, literally. They're basically frozen all winter. They can stop their heartbeat for like weeks at a time. Bizarre, huh? They have some kind of internal antifreeze and hang out there more dead than alive just below the surface. When it comes spring, it takes them like a day to defrost and guess what's on their mind? Well, yep, hooking up. That's what the racket is. They wake up looking for love, he said. Sounding like the sweet philosopher he often was. I guess we all have that in common, he said. You got anyone right now, Dave? We walked and walked. He shrugged. Well, there was a girl from Granby, but nah, she was crazy. Not anyone, not now. Hey, look, he said. What? Just this, dude. He pointed to his foot as he stepped forward. His white sneaker glowed. Look, he said, as he took another step. That's all we can do. His legs moved with a kind of measured pace now, as if willing time to slacken. And this, he said again, as his foot crunched on the gravel and lifted. That's all there is. He took another step and another. All we can do is like, be here, man. He moved forward again. And here, he repeated. And here. And here. His voice trailed off as we walked northward, side by side in the glow of night, encircled by the insistent song of want. Thanks. Thank you, guys. Yeah, just a little taste of Brother Dave. Hey, I wonder if we could pause for a sec. I was thinking there might be one other passage I might read. But I wonder, I want to check in with you guys and see if you have any thoughts or questions. I know some of you have seen the play versions of these. Hi, welcome. Hi, Marty. Hey there. Can you move on and see what's going on with the movie? Yeah, no. You've got to just welcome for stopping by or leaving or whatever you so please. But yeah, Karen. I have a question. You read that passage at the very beginning from Dogen. Yes, yes, from Dogen. To study the ways to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to allow the 10,000 things to flow. Are you a Buddhist or have you studied? Yeah. And how obviously it's influenced your work and how you approach acting. Well, it's definitely, you know, I think all the years of Catholic upbringing has made me leery of ritual and any organizational religion though I still feel a kind of affection in some times, in some ways for the Catholic Church and so on. But I do go regularly to Isendo in New York and I just love to sit silently mostly. And I've found more and more, I'm leery again of the organization but I have found great comfort in the Buddhist outlook of sort of just the letting go of the self. The self of no self. The sense of one large mind. And the practice essentially that just the basic practice of quieting the mind down and attempting anyway to be present with this breath, this room, this gathering, this moment. And that has become much more my practice for me and it's interesting how it feels tied in in some ways to the rituals I experienced as a kid. The prayer and the sense of prayerfulness and meditation that I sort of was imbued with growing up as a Catholic, I think. But Buddhist thought and going to Isendo and the Buddhist community has certainly had a huge influence on me and particularly in the second book, All the Rage, it comes up quite a bit. There are passages that weave in these notions of the mystery and just living, you know, being okay about living in the unknown, you know, that we just, you know, we don't know. And the impermanence of all. You know, like my brother Dave just poof, you know, all of us, we die. So are you a Buddhist? Yes. Dogus is one of my history, one of my most important teachers but I'm just curious one other thing. Which Zen do you go to? It's called the Zen Center for Contemplative Care on 23rd Street. And in fitting with this room, the LGBTQ, the two monks are Chodo and Koshin and they are a gay couple. Oh, that's fine. And they are, you know, married and they run the Zen Do. Hey, Jim. And their engagement in the community is hospice work, is their main work that they do. But then they run the center which is dedicated mainly to meditation and so on. Well, one thing I just want to mention, every Wednesday for the past over four years we had a meditation group in this room. Really? Which I started and, you know, the attendance was really high. Often there are 30 people, you know, weekly sitting in here just for a short 12 to 12 30 but the room is very peaceful and so... Is that still happening? Yes. What days of the week? It's every Wednesday at noon. It's just from 12 to 12 30 so people can squeeze it into their busy lives. Yeah. You know, it's a lunch break kind of thing but it's got instructions. Yeah. You know, periods of quiet, periods of just a few words. Yeah. But anyway. It is a beautiful room to do it in and I have found meditation more and more in the last few years to be basically life-saving. The days after this recent election I didn't know what else to do but try to meditate. What did you say? Oh, well one of the monks. The zendo meets regularly on Wednesdays at six and everyone, you know, came in for the weekly meditation on Wednesday, that Wednesday after the Tuesday and you know, I'm going to say, and he took one look at me, one of the monks, Jodo, and he said, well who knew he would have such an amazing opportunity for practice? Yeah. And I thought, well there's one way to look at it. You know, just to have to be, you know, to be forced to practice really. I mean, you know, we're all feeling insane really or just, and it's very, very challenging not to get gripped by worry. It's the mind going. And so to just practice and we're going to a place of, you know, still taking action and showing up and doing what we can but to have a place of essential, essential trust in the ultimate consciousness of our, of our, of the sapien creatures, of sentient creatures that we're still moving somewhere. The long arc of things is, it's very hard, isn't it? It's very, I mean, it's been hard to read the news. It's been hard to, so meditation is, I found even more in the last month it's just been vital an opportunity for practice to say, you know, I'm just going to, you know, because the mind is just going, right? Like, ah, but, you know, so, you know, sure, what a beautiful room. I don't remember that old saying. It's better to be saved in the same world in the same, same world. Yeah. I mean, there is that feeling that the, at moments that the only act really, the best thing to do is just try to stay calm and be present. Pull the door for someone, just be sane, be sane and around the, because it's the deepest gift, perhaps, that we can give is just our presence, our whole presence. Breathing and being where our feet are and, you know, it's a challenge. I mean, I'm really, I'm falling off all that. I lost my iPhone yesterday and it's like so insane. It's been such an profound lesson all day. I've been thinking, what is this panic? I'm disconnected. Well, what is the panic? You know, I was just trying to, I mean, it's deep. It's like, well, what if I heard these feelings about not texting them back and what if I miss a message and blah, blah, blah, and it's like, here we are. We're present. I have food. We're warm. We're in this beautiful room. I mean, it's insane. Talk about it and say, I'm insane. I lost my freaking iPhone. So I'm just, you know, it's really something. Well, it does feel like that and then that's an interesting thing to observe. Like, literally I recognize a profoundly addictive feeling. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's interesting to speak about because it's very present moment. I'm in panic about this device and I'm traveling and what if and breathing. We're breathing. But it's really interesting. I spent an hour and a half of the iPhone store at the Apple store and the whole time I kept breathing thinking just observe this. Well, what if we do the verification code and what if we find the, you know, anyway and I thought, wow, this is an union square and devices and Apple and capitalism and I just kept kind of seeing through it to the sunlight and the noises and thinking maybe I just won't get another phone for a while. It would be amazing. It is intriguing because it has migrated into and it's part of our being present also in our work and so on and so on. Yeah, imagine. Yeah, imagine. Looking down. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Can I wait if you're done with it and ask you a little bit about your writing? Sure, absolutely. I have had the good fortune of reading the tricky part and I don't know if this is the answer to this question I think. And it really stayed with me in an incredibly powerful way. I think your writing is beautiful. Thank you. The thing that's interesting to me is it was much more than autobiography your ability to observe and detail things around you. I remember tiny details of you know, of the color of someone's hair or their skin and what was going on in the moment that made me feel that you have this great power as a novelist beyond memoir, beyond you know, autobiography. And you also have a way of having moments that in and of themselves may be random to give them a really nice character art as you have in the readings that you have given us today where there is a beginning from a very specific which is very satisfying I think as a reader. So one part of my guess is have you ever played with the idea or you at all interested in writing something that is you know maybe quite autobiographical but also fictionalizing it because you really transcend again in my mind just based on what the writes in memoirs it's much, much more than that. Thank you for that. That observation I appreciate it and I actually for the first time I am now in the midst of writing fictional play but not a solo play like the plays across the street but a seven character play about an Irish Catholic family I recognize how many quote you know autobiographical things are bubbling up in certain ways are fueling the the world of the play it's an Irish Catholic family and that was and I kept thinking God why is this coming up but what I am finding is that there is a great liberation and moments of joy in just having permission to make up stuff a lot just make it up, make it up, make it up and yet understanding and feeling how it's grounded in experience, the river of experience in the same way memoir is but it's like wanting to arrive at the same kernels of truth but with far more fabrication you know fictional fabric so I am in the midst of that and I'm finding it really hard I find it really tricky to plot to make it up and then believe in it say oh this happened and this happened and then to just hold a belief in the making up of what happened you know it's interesting I know we have a documentary filmmaker here and there is a sense of both artifice not fiction but artifice meeting reality where how you place things together or what you take out in and of itself has elements of fiction you know because of the way you create a story recreate the emotional truth yeah yeah yeah it's your yeah from your spirit your point of view but it's you know it's all this endeavor to want to offer a creation whether from memoir or fiction but I am finding that I'm wondering if I'm through with memoir but I don't know I don't know you know I just again I just think you're so you know you think deeply you're smart but you write beautifully you're very observational and all those things together I'm quite intrigued in the fact that you are writing a play now although I love the tricky part so it's not that I don't love it I guess one other tiny part of it was you you've erased Pavley and you talk about that in so many ways in you know your one-man shows and in the memoir and there is a part of that that's about guilt and you know it's interesting to me and yet you're a very honest person about these experiences and about your own failings and your own vulnerability and I just again I don't know how this is posed as a question but I just wonder how you have moved through things that have happened that you may be inappropriately took responsibility for or you fell guilty and how have you found a way as a writer to be so incredibly honest do you have any little censoring thing on your shoulder that you have to slap off occasionally or is it something that you just in some way found a way to just go to truth whether you look heroic or you don't look heroic again well I think yeah it does I mean I think the critic the slapping you know the is just pervasive is always there and the it's odd I don't not in any ungrandizing way but you know that feeling in your gut that grips you like an imperative that the desire to connect with others with a kernel of some glimpse of the mystery and energy of existence of being here that the the desire to honor that calling as the nuns might say or to in some way has won out I mean but it's like it's a daily moment by moment calling to have the courage is the word or the and to endure the shame to endure the failings to endure to endure even I wish the book were better I wish the play were better or I wish I really knew what the truth of that was but underneath it is this feeling which I am going to dare to call love that the desire to love to be part of a reminder that we are in this together all seven billion of us and all sentient beings and somehow the writing is the form that's taken so the critic is there and the ego is there but I've been grateful I've had spiritual teachers and therapists who really helped me to understand ultimately that it's not me at all that the real job is not I have something to say the real job is please let me be available for what is knocking to come through and then too it may fail and it may but it's just trying not to own it so much you know you show up and you let it come but always there's that weird paradox is it's you you you but it's not at all you it's like a book about party but it's just energy it's just words that have an architecture that create energy and maybe someone reads it and it unlocks something and maybe that's all that I mysteriously could channel into the world in some way and shift some energy for three people or one person or myself and so the ongoing dance with the ego and then and letting go of the ego and not owning any of it including this body which is going to die soon well not who knows I think people have said about the plays I've had a lot of clergy come to the plays and they'd say that's a very priestly work and all that's interesting I mean you know all those years of Jesuit school I don't know you know there was a way and you know you read or you read Saint Augustine or you read you know these guys and you just think they were really you know they were basically mystics and they happen to be Catholic but they're not all and then other many other mystics and other disciplines but it just happened that I was born into that deep pool where you know having being diddled as a kid to put it you know wasn't just I was diddled as a kid and you know that happens sometimes in this culture it was oh my god I have met the devil and I have chosen the devil and I am the devil and that weird collision as a kid is in fact the exercise of my life has become the exercise of my life of understanding no what is devil and what is good and evil it's life it's energy it's please let yourself off the hook get to love get you know like all this bashing of the self I mean god the voices were so difficult on ourselves aren't we Catholicism kind of made sex so special I think you're in life because you're going against all the things that were bad it kind of it made it kind of interesting I kind of value my whole sexuality to my Catholic upbringing I don't think I would have been as sexual for my you know for that Catholicism that's interesting wouldn't have felt as sort of this as much sort of importance around that energy because the Catholicism provided a kind of holiness about it or sacredness or well it was so spurned it was so wrong and you felt such guilt and it was nice undoing that guilt and accepting later part of your life and accepting it as a part of life being okay with it but having to break down all those barriers and all that the evil connotations that I remember when I was a child masturbating as a kid and then promising God that I would never do it again and just forgive me this one time and then four hours later I could but I would be so it's loaded I know it's so loaded I'm trying to think of that for you being raised a Jew and me raised whatever you know I feel like Jewish people I have no idea but my sense is that the corporal the corporal is yeah it's just like I have a body I'm a hunk of meat with spirit you know yeah yeah I relate very much to what Richard said I mean I think it's there's a way in which it's heightened and I would say that it's only the latter part of my life that I've begun to unlock it's the joy and pleasure of saying oh my God I'm in a body and it's fabulous it's not something to be you know the body is less than it's that odd split I don't know where it goes back to they call it the Manichean split some big theological split years ago of the body and the spirit and that the spirit is elevated and the body is somehow the thing against which we fight the savage, a fear of death some people have said a fear of the feminine I mean that in the earliest days the feminine was God because how else are you like women we come from women and why are we so afraid of the feminine we're working out a lot of stuff we sapiens you know which comes first well it's been a combo the tricky part I was far along with the book and then the play the visual element emerged and of course the play is 28 pages and the book is 300 pages so they're the same territory but this is definitely structured to create an event like a communal event these are much more you think about somebody sitting in a chair having an intimate yes the telling omission as they say a lot in a play but all the rage definitely more the play preceded the book tricky part the book more preceded the play though the plays both opened off-broadway prior to the books coming out they both took me longer the books to write but it's been interesting to write in both forms in the spoken and then the literary form you know but yeah I definitely learn a lot from speaking them out loud and talking to them but yeah how are we doing on time I think we might wind down a bit were there any other pressing questions hi Jim well it sort of follows what we were talking about because in both the theatrical presentation you come it's very you engage with the audience immediately in the quotidian and then segue into the play and after I left last night I thought what's the difference between storytelling and acting in this so in the writing of the books you're telling your accounting episodes and then as you perform it what is your relationship to the material well you're talking about as a performer as an actor so to speak that it there's definitely a very different relationship to the material in the book because there is much more devotion in both all works there's a devotion to sentences and word I love language and I want but the language in both plays is crafted to be much more I have a sense of it's just being made up on the spot it's off the cuff and that is a form of storytelling I'd say that has to do with somebody showing up and saying hey we're like around the campfire and I'm just spinning this tail and I want to tell you this thing that I saw over the mountain or something let me tell you about this so my relationship to that the material is very much about the work or the job I would say of being as present as I can be as a human being in the room with the other people and receiving as I am now I hope and we are with each other receiving the souls in the room in the moment this moment lived together through the questions of off the cuff language it's a kind of storytelling this is much more there's you know the storytellers there and my voice is in the books certainly but there my relationship is it does feel very different in that they you know it just really is meant to be tossed away in red off there some without the presence of the actor there in bodying the events yeah so yes yeah tricky part quite a bit all over the world all the range not yet yet I mean it may I get reports a lot it's kind of fun and sweet that both from both plays particularly many many you know there's all these monologue kids have to try out for things in high schools and colleges and they're both I've been told by many teachers are extremely popular with young people young men particularly to do sections of them for auditions and for contests and stuff but the tricky part I get a statement from drama display services like every six months or so and you know and it's I said oh they did it in Australia and oh Iowa four nights in Iowa that's interesting I have I went to South Africa and there was a young actor there he was wonderful and he did the play it's it's tricky it's hard to see the people do it well I'll say you know this is interesting I didn't realize why it was so hard until I really I was talking to my husband Henry about it a little bit but I have this amazing director Seth bearish who's helped me with his plays tremendously and he is so good about constantly reminding me that the the story itself is enough and that the and so just we're just there and that the presence the lightness of touch is so important because otherwise it's like bum bum bum bum so the problem I found with all due respect because I happen to see another fella who did it out west and it's this that from the moment it starts it's so serious and yes I was abused and you know and I get it I mean it's was a hard it is a hard story but the the only thing that the thing that makes the plays live is that at their core when I walk on stage and Seth and I talk about this all the time what I'm walking on stage like when you tell a joke at the dinner table you're aiming for that wonderful punchline and the wonderful punchline of the tricky part is do you know I was sitting in the car and I have this amazing realization of grace grace and that's where it's headed it's not like come live relive this terrible tale with me it's oh my god this is so paradoxical and confusing but let me share this let me try to share this mystery this grace all the rage the same thing you know like oh my god I have this dream but before I tell you let me tell you all these pieces but I got to get to the dream oh but you know this happened first and this happened first but then the dream look at this so it's like one long journey to a punchline so that Seth's image all the time is point point but he's and then he has a language for it when I start to freight when I start this is important this is important and what happens after 80 minutes we're all completely exhausted because I've made everything important I've made everything heavy and it's really interesting over the course of performing them through the years that it's taken me a long time to understand what he means and I feel like at the right age of 56 I'm I finally you know sort of get it I feel my hope the joy of storytelling and that there's this gem you want to offer and it isn't bum bum bum bum it's wow mystery and so then this happened you know so did I answer your question yeah so and then some okay well I think you guys that we can anything else yes Richard I I haven't read the books but I was at both performances yesterday and you read that the thing that you know triggers a bit of me is when you were describing your stepmom smoking and your brother smoking and it reminded me of authorities like the white Hollywood films and the romanticizing and if your brother and like you know my sister and my father died of lung cancer so thank god I just I did for a wee bit of time I did and I I went through a period where I I smoked marijuana you know like in college life you know in once in a while it'll still passes by being from Colorado and being in California but I'm not a smoker no generally I worry too much about my singing my my voice which is mostly how I make my living as a musical theater guy oh that's interesting yeah I hadn't thought about that yeah but I did have a lot of smokers in my life there's a scene with my father but you know we're driving in a rent a car and I'm visiting him in Las Vegas and he lights up and I'm like dad it's a rent a car you can he says you know I mean it's whether they have cameras you know come on I was like dad please it gives me a headache oh you'll be fine you know so it shows up a lot I didn't even realize that you know but in this book you'll see it comes up a lot my father was yeah there's so many things that are I actually yeah it's fun well I understand what you mean but it's interesting what Richard's saying I'm just gonna this one thing that um that little just this little bit we're riding in the car and I dad's like Christ this traffic and the um when he says um dad please the rent a car company has asked it gives me a headache actually can you just wait till we get there I can't be smoking right before my oil change he said referring to his thrice weekly trip to the clinic his date with dialysis he gave me a wink and the I glint of him sailed across the car amazing how it still showed up this undying Irish charisma flashing through a body gone so heavy with defeat they'll give me hell if they see it or smell it dad they're gonna smell it just a few few puffs tiger I'll blow it out the window he cracked it open I cranked the AC smoke filled the car I didn't actually hate it the scent had been an element of his presence since I was a kid a kind of home base standing outside after church or on the back patio after mowing the lawn the whiff of fresh grass and Philip Morris defined a Saturday afternoon