"Necessity is not your concern"
Once again I'm ignoring my to-do list in order to tell you about my weekend. Because I love you t h i s m u c h. And I hate doing the laundry.
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Last week was tech, opening AND closing of a funky one-of-a-kind cabaret that only kismet could have allowed. Through friends I got hooked up with RP who's been creating theatre in and around LA for over 20 years. And he decided to piece together a cabaret about losing one's way in the heart of Hollywood - the physical and spiritual place of dreams and disaster.
There's a kind of thing about Hollywood; so few people really know what it's like, whether "it" be the geography or the culture, and yet all the world over you'll hardly find a soul without an opinion or idea of what Hwood must be like. I know its geography very well and I don't kid myself about the culture: what I know is from hearsay in which I'll place some stock but also assume it falls into place better when lubricated by no fewer than three martinis.
The thing is, I've felt assaulted by the negative opinions of Hollywood (I mean specifically of trying to make a living there, not the industry & its products) for most of my adult life. Most big cities are brutal and most fancy, pricey industries are competitive and cruel. It always sounded like sour grapes, the griping about the self-interest and the tossed-off commentary about "everyone is shallow." That last one really gets to me, particularly when the speaker is conflating Hollywood with Los Angeles. People try to get by there as much as they do absolutely anywhere else on the planet, perhaps with the advantages of a first world city as well as the disadvantages of same, but it's still about getting by, putting down some roots, claiming one's own space.
The horrible over-generalization just always drove me nuts and led me to some extraordinary comments more than once in defense of what I feel deep down is my hometown. By which I mean Los Angeles. I don't have that much to say about Hollywood, really. When it comes to the culture/society/psychology there you'll mostly get a shrug out of me. It's the industry that employs the most people in LA, that's true, and therefore plenty of my friends currently or have worked in some part of Hollywood's machine. But unlike most industries - say mining or aerospace - Hollywood isn't so cohesive. You know when you're working in a literal mine. What do you call it when your friend pays you $20 to schlep his camera equipment in your truck so he can film his straight-to-YouTube indie film?
But what I've caught sight of, in the periphery of my vision I've often marveled at. Because it is like no other industry. Because there's no way to explain how it's all labor and art and spiritual and a compulsion and the people who do it should be paid a living wage, gosh darnit. Because it's bewildering and stupid and insulting and sucks away our souls merely by existing. It's this horrible, dark, beautiful, sparkling thing and crazy inverted nonsense like that has always caught my attention.
RP is a bit older than me and has been around it all his life. The people he pulled aboard his cabaret raft ranged from aged has-beens to young hopefuls, who all one way or another had a way of inhaling smog and exhaling glitter. It's just a...thing. You have to let it be. If you make a fuss and try to run after glitter falling through Klieg light you won't get any, but if you hold still and present your hands, some will fall right in.
So I held still and listened as we worked. RP wrote the script and the others brought the pieces they had created, songs and acts and madness. Some times the through-line could get a little difficult to see (and isn't that apropos?) but it kept coming back to living for the certainty that hard work and a bit of dazzle should have paid off - and yet it hadn't.
The title of this entry is my favorite line that RP wrote. It's what makes the whole idea fall into place for me. Even though there is a whole other speech relating the difficulties of staying in balance, keeping to any kind of straight and narrow, or just plain old trying not to suck, that line necessity is not your concern is crystalline perfection when it comes to trying to describe what Hollywood can "do to a person." If New York is supposed to make your hard (pfft yeah right, says I) and San Francisco is supposed to make you soft (hahahahahah!), Hollywood is supposed to make you...distracted. I guess?
While I don't think Hollywood is alone in doing this sort of thing, it's very easy to see how it can lead earnest, well-meaning people into spirals of acquisitive pursuits, spates of self and career-improvement that are illogical, identity crises, abusive and addictive episodes and generally engage in quite a lot of sound and fury that, at least on a foundational level measured in satisfied needs, signify nothing.
The play wasn't really curious about why anyone would put up with the abuse of Hollywood. Instead it let the performers push their way out of the grind of invasive questioning through song and the defiance of a soul that won't be cowed. It was surreal and, well between the makeup and glitter it was hard not to get a bit squishy, but it managed to be dark and touching at the same time. It tangoed with overly-sentimental but seemed to skirt being to saccharine. What I loved hearing from the audience as they left was that overall it could be a bit depressing, but throughout the show they just couldn't help but laugh and nod in time to the music. Perfect for a cabaret, wouldn't you say?
There was one number, great cabaret rock, called "Deepest Fear" during which the performers who weren't singing pranced and menaced about on stage holding aloft white foamcore cut and painted to remind people of things that Angelenos are regularly told to be scared of - a giant bomb crashing into the Hollywood sign and turning into a mushroom cloud, a black helicopter, a lightning bolt, a ginormous tsunami and finally a very movable and very scary devil. It didn't quite work out, but RP had been playing with the idea of including a huge "past due" bill. The song ends with
Even the devil has his demons
Even the bumpa crop a' doubters had better believin
You're gonna whimper
like a baby when it gets here
The tune is very catchy and the cutouts were cartoony...but... with current events being what they are it's hard not to get a little a'feared of things we can't control. RP and I were talking for a little bit about trying to make art and strive for what we know we've got inside despite all the odds and everyone and his brother telling us how hard it will be and how we push on even though at any moment it could all come crashing down...he pointed out the cutouts and said that they do show up. And then he noted, "but then it turns out that they're made of paper." And that is probably the only time I can think I've ever felt like saying "whatever doesn't kill you...." Because I think the line that follows is poppycock. Things regularly don't kill me and likewise don't leave me feeling stronger. And often when going through some heavy shit and finding I haven't yet died all I want is for some part of the heavy shit to just please come and kill me already. But the point of this is, the things that you do fear either will kill you or they won't really be all the worth fearing. And you just aren't going to know which is which until then. (It's the one that you don't know that you should fear - that's the one that's going to fuck you up.)
So anyway. What a weekend. Definitely spent it in la-la land and I loved it. Put aside any fear of judgement and sense of awkwardness and dove right into the glitter and schmaltz and love and dreams and every night left my senses tingling. Brilliant.
And I don't care about what people have to say. Or, well I do. Because it's not shallowness and it's frustrating to be misjudged like that. But I'll proceed secure in the knowledge that it's ok to see the world in a different way. That we get to see glitter on the horizon, even if it's "just" sunlight glinting off the smog. 'Cause, hey, around here our smog looks like that.
-------
Last week was tech, opening AND closing of a funky one-of-a-kind cabaret that only kismet could have allowed. Through friends I got hooked up with RP who's been creating theatre in and around LA for over 20 years. And he decided to piece together a cabaret about losing one's way in the heart of Hollywood - the physical and spiritual place of dreams and disaster.
There's a kind of thing about Hollywood; so few people really know what it's like, whether "it" be the geography or the culture, and yet all the world over you'll hardly find a soul without an opinion or idea of what Hwood must be like. I know its geography very well and I don't kid myself about the culture: what I know is from hearsay in which I'll place some stock but also assume it falls into place better when lubricated by no fewer than three martinis.
The thing is, I've felt assaulted by the negative opinions of Hollywood (I mean specifically of trying to make a living there, not the industry & its products) for most of my adult life. Most big cities are brutal and most fancy, pricey industries are competitive and cruel. It always sounded like sour grapes, the griping about the self-interest and the tossed-off commentary about "everyone is shallow." That last one really gets to me, particularly when the speaker is conflating Hollywood with Los Angeles. People try to get by there as much as they do absolutely anywhere else on the planet, perhaps with the advantages of a first world city as well as the disadvantages of same, but it's still about getting by, putting down some roots, claiming one's own space.
The horrible over-generalization just always drove me nuts and led me to some extraordinary comments more than once in defense of what I feel deep down is my hometown. By which I mean Los Angeles. I don't have that much to say about Hollywood, really. When it comes to the culture/society/psychology there you'll mostly get a shrug out of me. It's the industry that employs the most people in LA, that's true, and therefore plenty of my friends currently or have worked in some part of Hollywood's machine. But unlike most industries - say mining or aerospace - Hollywood isn't so cohesive. You know when you're working in a literal mine. What do you call it when your friend pays you $20 to schlep his camera equipment in your truck so he can film his straight-to-YouTube indie film?
But what I've caught sight of, in the periphery of my vision I've often marveled at. Because it is like no other industry. Because there's no way to explain how it's all labor and art and spiritual and a compulsion and the people who do it should be paid a living wage, gosh darnit. Because it's bewildering and stupid and insulting and sucks away our souls merely by existing. It's this horrible, dark, beautiful, sparkling thing and crazy inverted nonsense like that has always caught my attention.
RP is a bit older than me and has been around it all his life. The people he pulled aboard his cabaret raft ranged from aged has-beens to young hopefuls, who all one way or another had a way of inhaling smog and exhaling glitter. It's just a...thing. You have to let it be. If you make a fuss and try to run after glitter falling through Klieg light you won't get any, but if you hold still and present your hands, some will fall right in.
So I held still and listened as we worked. RP wrote the script and the others brought the pieces they had created, songs and acts and madness. Some times the through-line could get a little difficult to see (and isn't that apropos?) but it kept coming back to living for the certainty that hard work and a bit of dazzle should have paid off - and yet it hadn't.
The title of this entry is my favorite line that RP wrote. It's what makes the whole idea fall into place for me. Even though there is a whole other speech relating the difficulties of staying in balance, keeping to any kind of straight and narrow, or just plain old trying not to suck, that line necessity is not your concern is crystalline perfection when it comes to trying to describe what Hollywood can "do to a person." If New York is supposed to make your hard (pfft yeah right, says I) and San Francisco is supposed to make you soft (hahahahahah!), Hollywood is supposed to make you...distracted. I guess?
While I don't think Hollywood is alone in doing this sort of thing, it's very easy to see how it can lead earnest, well-meaning people into spirals of acquisitive pursuits, spates of self and career-improvement that are illogical, identity crises, abusive and addictive episodes and generally engage in quite a lot of sound and fury that, at least on a foundational level measured in satisfied needs, signify nothing.
The play wasn't really curious about why anyone would put up with the abuse of Hollywood. Instead it let the performers push their way out of the grind of invasive questioning through song and the defiance of a soul that won't be cowed. It was surreal and, well between the makeup and glitter it was hard not to get a bit squishy, but it managed to be dark and touching at the same time. It tangoed with overly-sentimental but seemed to skirt being to saccharine. What I loved hearing from the audience as they left was that overall it could be a bit depressing, but throughout the show they just couldn't help but laugh and nod in time to the music. Perfect for a cabaret, wouldn't you say?
There was one number, great cabaret rock, called "Deepest Fear" during which the performers who weren't singing pranced and menaced about on stage holding aloft white foamcore cut and painted to remind people of things that Angelenos are regularly told to be scared of - a giant bomb crashing into the Hollywood sign and turning into a mushroom cloud, a black helicopter, a lightning bolt, a ginormous tsunami and finally a very movable and very scary devil. It didn't quite work out, but RP had been playing with the idea of including a huge "past due" bill. The song ends with
Even the devil has his demons
Even the bumpa crop a' doubters had better believin
You're gonna whimper
like a baby when it gets here
The tune is very catchy and the cutouts were cartoony...but... with current events being what they are it's hard not to get a little a'feared of things we can't control. RP and I were talking for a little bit about trying to make art and strive for what we know we've got inside despite all the odds and everyone and his brother telling us how hard it will be and how we push on even though at any moment it could all come crashing down...he pointed out the cutouts and said that they do show up. And then he noted, "but then it turns out that they're made of paper." And that is probably the only time I can think I've ever felt like saying "whatever doesn't kill you...." Because I think the line that follows is poppycock. Things regularly don't kill me and likewise don't leave me feeling stronger. And often when going through some heavy shit and finding I haven't yet died all I want is for some part of the heavy shit to just please come and kill me already. But the point of this is, the things that you do fear either will kill you or they won't really be all the worth fearing. And you just aren't going to know which is which until then. (It's the one that you don't know that you should fear - that's the one that's going to fuck you up.)
So anyway. What a weekend. Definitely spent it in la-la land and I loved it. Put aside any fear of judgement and sense of awkwardness and dove right into the glitter and schmaltz and love and dreams and every night left my senses tingling. Brilliant.
And I don't care about what people have to say. Or, well I do. Because it's not shallowness and it's frustrating to be misjudged like that. But I'll proceed secure in the knowledge that it's ok to see the world in a different way. That we get to see glitter on the horizon, even if it's "just" sunlight glinting off the smog. 'Cause, hey, around here our smog looks like that.