I want to wear the pants in the family. And the stilettos.

While wandering my apartment trying to get into a rather dry history book outlining women in Asia in just a few hundred pages (for the world's largest continent with incredibly diverse languages, cultures, religions and so on mind you) I tended to get, well distracted.  I need to go in depth, to analyze or synthesize theory based on primary and secondary sources, to see the art.  A very factual primer is not useful to me, although when I finally hit on some topics I was a little more familiar with, as well as interested in (in this case various myths about women, including the story of Sita from the Ramayana) my synapses started firing.

This is difficult.  For me, intellectual excitement is somewhat akin to firing a shotgun.  It's an enormous explosion of force that tends to move outward rapidly and in a number of different directions simultaneously.  I was wondering if I could connect a recent, animated film retelling of the Ramayana, the fabulous and incomparable "Sita Sings the Blues," to various ancient iterations of the story.  I was wondering how I could expand or contract my thesis, depending on the amount of primary sources and scholarly research available, to compare the telling and retelling religious and/or secular stories with women as central characters and how they changed over time both with and against society's shifting interpretation of women's roles; additionally it might be possible parallel this with the worship of various incarnations of Maha Davi (the feminine Divine) in Hindu culture.  I suppose comparative analysis across other religions on the Indian subcontinent could be done, although frankly Buddhism, Islam and Jainism neither speak to me or interest me in quiet the same way as Hindu (with the exception of art and architecture in the Islam Mogul dynasty) and I only have 10-12 pages, not a damn book, so I should keep this narrow and deep rather than broad and cursory.

Anyway, it was around the time that I was walking in circles, reading further in my text and reading it with an East Tennessee accent, by the way, to continually hone that for my acting class, that I came up with another idea (hence the shotgun theory of my neural pathways).  Just to paint the picture, I'd just finished a litre of black tea (hellloooooo over caffeinated), was boiling water for another litre of green, was wearing my rugby jersey, track pants and some secondhand high heel shoes from Philly AIDS Thrift and eating a banana.  Then it came in a flash: between Tony award winning shows and time I spent with my family, I'd be writing an analysis on queering family in the 21st century.  It will be entitled "I want to wear the pants in this family.  And the stilettos.  Queering community, child rearing and gender roles in an non-traditionally constructed modern family."

Tah-dah, that's my brain on caffeine.  That's a peek into my thesis for this semester, and if you have resources, by all means, please direct me to them.  And that's a peek at my life, I think/hope, in 2025.

Love ya, mean it!
xoxo Pistol

Where I Am

This is my life right now: as most of you I was (joyfully) fired from my job at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in November.  I had applied to return to The College of New Jersey, which I had originally attended from 2002-2006 without attaining a degree, less than a week before I was fired.  There is something to be said about a responsive Universe that meets us where we are when we act with intention because within a matter of weeks I had the best of all possible scenarios - I had been readmitted to TCNJ and have been able to collect unemployment so, at least thus far, my only loans have been for class and not for living expenses.

Maybe because I loved the gender studies classes I took there more than almost any other, maybe because it's a degree that I can complete in two semesters, and maybe because I'm just trying to induce my parents to transient ischemic attacks, I am a women's and gender studies major.  Compound that with the rest of my activities right now - a third course in Meisner Technique for acting and a two-day-a-week internship at First Person Arts, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to memoir and documentary, and they don't see me doing anything that is potentially fiscally sound.  Mind you, they just cosigned my college loan application, but this is a conversation we've been having for far longer than that (and won't be addressed here at this time).

Without considering any additional reading I'll have to do for multiple research papers, my semester started with the purchase of 19 books and the download of over 50 additional resources, mostly scholarly articles.  I have been reading at nights, on Thursdays before class (my only week day off of other activities before 5 PM), after class (and soon to be rehearsal as well) on Saturdays, and all day Sundays.  I read walking the threeish miles from the train station to campus, because I take peak hour trains and can't bring my bike.  In fact, I read out loud in an East Tennessee accent becuase that it one of the things I'm currently working on in my Meisner training.

In short, I have never taken on this much at once in my entire life; nor have I ever had higher expectations of myself to accomplish all that I set out to do at the highest echelons of achievement.  For once, this isn't just a new kick like most people's New Year's resolutions that are unreasonable and are thus doomed to speedy failure.  Instead, as a result of over a year of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual preparation, sometimes slow and sometimes lurching forward in spurts, and always unbelievably supported by friends, my flatmate, my fellow actors & instructor, a - I dunno what to call him, let's say loyal companion - all of whom, often without knowing it, have been teaching me to be an emotionally mature and present adult who refuses to settle for less than what he is capable of achieving or receiving.

I've learned how to prioritize, breaking readings assigned over several weeks into reasonable chunks with deadlines.  I've learned how to let a man cook me a meal and then serve it to me, by candlelight, with flowers in the room, without thinking that it's corny or insincere.  I've learned how to listen, take things personally and respond truthfully - it might have been training for the stage and screen, but it's made an immeasurable difference in my life.

Have I mentioned that this is the longest in my adult life that I have been without a major depressive episode, or even a hint at moving in the direction of one?  I have never been so happy in my life, and still this is just the beginning.  This year will see opportunities to get my work published, act in as groundbreaking stage productions with actors and a director who I admire immensely, and obtain my college degree.  I should also mention that I've probably never been this stressed, and yet the unbelievably hectic schedule has forced me into such consideration for my time that I've never used it better or felt so productive.  It is the positive kind of stress that makes one stronger and more resilient.

Inspiration via Koreanish

Alexander Chee is a novelist that I follow on Twitter, and who I recently got to meet when he was in Philly for  work.  When I made my Christmas wish list of books by queer authors for my Mom to buy me from Giovanni's Room, his debut novel Edinburgh was on the list, and is next on my "to read" list. (It was really exciting to support queer artists who I knew or that were recommended by PhinLi Bookings, who I love.)  I also follow Alex's blog Koreanish and really enjoyed  today's post.

What struck me was his discussion on the research that one must undertake to create authentic art, in his case a historical novel, a largely autobiographical novel, and a potential screen play.  Even the autobiographical novel required research because, as he writes, "You may think you know your home town, Annie Dillard used to say in class. But chances are you don’t. What is the main industry? When was it founded? The population? What are the plants, throughout the seasons? She was speaking of the importance of researching even memoir."  I felt like I was getting an artist to artist lesson here, and a reminder that our mentors need not be in the same room or even state as us, be speaking to us directly, or even know us.


This was particularly resonant with me because of the acting training which I just resumed with the start of a new class at the Ward Stduio.  The level of excellence and dedication expected of us is incomparable to anything I have experienced in life, and I am extremely grateful for it.  In our current class, Meisner Technique III, we are learning physical adjustments along with other text work.  These include everything from dialects, speech impediments and physical disability to realistically acting pain, drunkenness, or anything else that would require adjustment to our physicality in order to be truthfully expressed on film or on stage.  The expectation of our accent/dialect work is that we will unfailingly use primary source materials (or I'm sure immersion would be ideal if it were possible) in order to study and take on the accent, and that we will then use it 24/7 until we have mastered it.  At the bank, at work, talking to Grandmom on the phone, giving driving directions to strangers and while fucking.  All of the time. You do your research and you do your footwork and then (and only then) will you be the best artist you can be, writer, actor or otherwise.  I appreciate Alex's blog as one more reminder of the hard work constantly required to master one's craft.

How to divorce a concept

1) The beginning is to ask why. This often may not occur to you to do in the face of conventional wisdom, a boss, a parent, etc. For example, you suggest a new idea like going back to school, changing careers, adopting a dog, adopting a child, adopting a new political party, spiritual belief or religion. This is then countered with "but you have to," or "but you can't..." And then fill in the blank. You have to: have insurance, give two weeks notice , get married, see the dentist every six months, eat your vegetables. You can't: just up and change like that, upset your father, be a starving artist, live on rice and beans.

Now here's the hard part: ask why It usually doesn't even occur to us to question thing so ingrained as the need to steadfastly pursue a steady income and health insurance, at least if you come from white, middle class parents like mine who believe it is your first and foremost concern to have a job with a steady income and insurance. I'm lucky to be queer, to have friends that up and change their sex and/or their gender, lucky to know a whole bunch or radicals and hippies and freaks who meditate, sculpt, pray to God, pray to Kali, pray to the moon, or maybe don't pray at all. For me, I'm surrounded by questioners and asking why has become as strong a reflex in me as offering the ingrained rules is for the people who do it all the time.

Advanced technique: ask why without having an answer yourself. For example, I've already figured out how to counter why I should need insurance and can quickly rattle off "why should I worry? I'm healthy, vegan, I exercise, and haven't needed medicine in years. If I get cancer I'll go bankrupt curing it and then start over or I'll die. Who gives a shit?" The harder and scarier thing is just to ask "why" even if you don't even if you don't have any answers yet. If you're really and truly lucky, you might get possible answers to this questions, arguments for both or many sides, and a chance to explore the possibilities. More likely you'll get some more conventional wisdom, platitudes, cliches, and some shit your great grandmother thought made sense in 1911. Remember, the person doing the offering isn't malicious. Then again, even if well intentioned they may well be shit and an obstacle in your path who needs to get out of the way or learn to support you, even if they don't understand you.

2) If you ask why and don't get a good answer, divorce yourself from the idea.

Advanced technique: get a divorce yourself from the entire system on which that idea is based. For example, some transgendered people change their sex from male to female or vice versa and end there. Other trans folks, regardless of how they do or do not transition their sex, come to the realization that, regardless, sex and gender as binaries are false and do not exist as described in biology, psychology, or society at large. The second group are using the advanced technique, and teaching the rest of us something truly fabulous and wondrous and amazing.

Likewise, I've recently divorced myself from a steady pay check, but I'm ready to divorce myself from the entire concept of validation of achievement through discrete digital values including, but not limited to, the numbers on my pay check, grade point averages, scores on individual tests or other assignments, batting averages, job reviews expressed as a number, the number of pages I write per day, the number hours it takes me to memorize a scene by rote, or the number of blogs I post in a week.

One of the great hallmarks of the modern world is to quantify things. This is by no means a terrible thing all of the time. The percentage of my laptop battery that is charged is a valuable number that can help me plan my actions to best benefit my productivity. Believing I have achieved some adult rite of passage by earning a paycheck isn't valuable, at least to me. It is certainly not valuable to ask how many pages I wrote this week.

Do you know what I did do this week? I looked at an affirmation in the Artist's Way that seemed really silly, like a straight ream of New Age horseshit, and I wrote it down and I responded to it with every cynical and mean and unsupportive thing I had to say. Afterwards, I responded to my own cynicism with kindness and support that I didn't know I had in me to give to myself. And I just sobbed and let it out, and then went upstairs and painted a whole new affirmation on the wall so I would remember what was really important. So, does it matter if I wrote a paragraph or a page or an epic novel? No. It matters that I forget that men aren't supposed to cry and that I "should" be earning a living, or that I should be doing anything at all other than exactly what I was doing which in fact was amazing and transformation and healing. I stopped trying to do anything at all other than create and nurture the best possible me I could be and I had a real, honest human experience. You cannot quantify spiritual and emotional growth. The weather yes, the human experience, no. That's how I'm working the advanced technique (this week).

3) Be willing to be validated, rewarded, fulfilled, clothed, fed and brilliantly happy. On the surface this looks like a no-brainer, but it's not. Some people find it emotionally, spiritually and/or physically easier to stay where they are than to go someplace new, especially if it involves risk getting there. And let's face it, it takes risk to get anywhere interesting or rewarding. So yes, this seemingly obvious thing is actually an important step.

4) Be willing to be scared, look like shit, have no money, and fail. Let's get personal here. I asked why I should have to give two weeks notice to an emotionally abusive boss, so the last time she pulled her intimidating, immature, publicly humiliating bullshit I decided it was, in fact, the last time. I walked out, found another computer and worked from there, emailed her saying that abuse wasn't an option, and I wasn't coming back to the office until there was a solution. The next working day I called HR but they were already in the office and I got fired. I am willing to be scared, look like shit, have no money and fail. I'm not willing to be abused while I sit in a cubicle I hate, not making the art I would love to make, just so I can have insurance.

If your job is the only ill effect on your mental and/or physical health, then ditch the job and BAM, insurance problem solved. I know that's not an option for everyone, and sometimes you ask why you must keep a miserable job to have insurance and you get a very good answer like you have a congenital condition and will die without your prescription coverage. Asking why doesn't mean you'll always get an answer that changes everything, but if nothing changes then at least you have a reasonable explanation as to why, at least for now and maybe for always, things are the way the are, and not just "because I said so."

Now I have to be willing to be scared and possibly broke if my former employer contests my unemployment benefits. I have to look like shit. (I'm out of exfoliant and it doesn't seem like a reasonable purchase just at the moment.) I have to be willing to fail at an unemployed actor who is waiting to hear about his application to return to college. I have to be willing to fail to get in. I have to be willing to fail at getting a job serving, or even bussing tables. I have to be willing to fail at paying my rent and having to move to my parent's house, be homeless, squat an abandoned house or rely on the charity of friends or family. I have to be in an emotionally and possibly physically and financially precarious or even dangerous place. But this is divorce. It might end quietly and fairly in mediation; this might be the knock-down drag-out fight of my life. I have to be willing to get hurt and, if you're divorcing a concept, so do you.

5) Lather. Rinse. Repeat. What, you thought you were going to divorce yourself from one concept and establish a new one in its place and life would be honky dorey from then until you shuffled of this mortal coil? No, not likely. There's always something else to learn, some other bullshit to unlearn, and a whole lot of work to be done.

I Find Family Everywhere - Thank you Dr. Lee

To me, family is just about anybody who supports me to be the happiest, most productive and creative version of myself that I can be. Today I found that support from the attending neurosurgeon for with whom I have worked directly for the past two years. In fact, our anniverary, as it were, is this Saturday. Since that time I haven't received any raises or promotions at work, though I've received considerably more responsibilities and seen a steady decline in my morale.

Today was the first day I was excited at work in a really long time. I attended a meeting of surgical coordinators and was able to give input on how to make both my job and my patients' experiences more efficient and pleasant. I was working on a particularly dynamic plan that would coordinate the care of multiple departments to expedite the patient's visit and require them to make fewer stops in their pre-surgical consultation and testing day. Considering that 40% of my patients have metastatic cancer to the brain with a few years or even months to live, I'm thinking that reducing the amount of time that they spend in doctor's offices, particularly performing redundant registration procedures for multiple departments who after ten years can't agree to unify their fucking computer systems, would be a good thing. Aside from this I think that creative problem solving is a very creative (as the name would imply) practice and while I'd rather be screenwriting, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than editing and printing medical dictations in an inefficient system which, by the by, could use a hell of a creative overhaul of its own.

Not only was my idea pretty get groovy but, miracle of miracles, multiple administrators in the nation's oldest hospital (officially), located in the country's angriest and most stagnant city (unofficially), were absolutely all about my idea and how to make it work. I take it back to my office manager and she immediately shoots it down. She talks red tape. She talks extending myself beyond what is "my job." Apparently, dynamic creative problem solving to increase the patient experience is not part of my job in healthcare. She pointed out that I'm already stretched to thin. I pointed out that this was because she gave me someone else's job to do one day every week and gave that employee no other responsibility. We were getting nowhere fast and my first enjoyable day at work in almost a year was sinking fast.

As soon as Dr. Lee wrapped up a meeting I popped into his office to lay it all on the line - I recently reapplied for school and would be happy to continue working for him part time if he would get behind me having a more interesting task of changing the way things are run rather than putting together charts because the girl at the front desk is too lazy to and doesn't really care when dying patient's lose their medical records. I went on to point out my intelligence, my creativity, and the ways both were being wasted.

He took it right from the little question of could he and I band together to reverse the inertia and lack of care in a broken health system to provide a better patient experience to what did I really want. We talked about going back to school just for the sake of learning, which I've missed terribly, and the fact that I am taking acting classes and building a film resume. He mentioned an interview with an actor that he'd seen where the actor said that said aspiring actors should study no other skills because then they'd fall back on those and not pursue their dreams. Mind you, I've been trying to have just such a conversation with my parents for well over a decade, not because I need their approval per se, but because we love one another and they don't need to understand me or how my value system differs from theirs to unconditionally support me and believe that I was going to be OK, which they don't do or believe.

Dr. Lee then moved on to some of his own feelings of frustration and anger and raising his voice and arguing with other people and how it stemmed from a feeling of a lack of control and how my anger was basically coming from the same place. I agreed and was talking about how it's frustrating because I don't want control in a maniacal or power hungry way, but in the sense that my intelligence and creativity are recognized and I am therefore given the freedom to exercise them to the best of my ability and to the highest benefit of my patients. And then the really cool thing happened. He was talking about how when he was in the OR and far from office politics and phone calls that everything just melted away and he was in his element, removing brain tumors or evacuating subdural hematomas. I concurred and shared that I felt the same way acting a scene. The greater beauty of the moment was in recognizing that there are so many ways of finding our Zen space or Tao space or happy, centered, joyfully fulfilling our potential space. The world needs neurosurgeons and the world needs actors and those people need surgery or acting or any other imaginable profession, hobby or spiritual practice to carve out the moments in the day when it feels like every molecule in your body leaps from jumbled dissonance into a sudden an utter exaltation which, if heard, would be like the most glorious and resounding symphony in the history of people having the ears to hear such things.

I feel so liberated. If he wanted to help me stay and work part time and do only the parts of my job that I enjoy then I'd have an excuse to stay in a toxic work environment and try to sidestep the horseshit while I'm going to school full time and taking acting classes and rehearsing and taking all of my vacation time for film work. Instead, he asked me what I want. Then he listened. Then, he told me I should pursue that and be non-negotiable in achieving it. That may not seem like a big deal but when you're 25 and a college drop out, it's a rare experience. On one hand it might seem unlikely that my big supporter for going into the arts would be an Ivy League educated neurosurgeon. Then again, maybe the audacity to root around in someone's brain and the audacity to say you're in acting for real (and for nothing less than an Oscar) aren't so terribly different. Now I know that when my acceptance letter comes and my loans line up that I'll be writing a two line resignation to management and a very heartfelt thank you to Dr. Lee