Shoes and Pie

Posted October 5th, 2010 by Sean Williams

There was this letter-to-an-advice-columnist that was being passed around where a married woman with no kids admitted that she assumed her friends with kids weren’t all that busy, that kids can’t possibly take as much of her time as she claimed, and that the mom was just a shitty friend. Obviously, everyone jumped on her, blah blah blah, but it really is impossible to describe what part of your life gets shitcanned when you’re dealing with insane three foot tall people.

Uncle Ian brought home tiny pumpkins, and Barnaby has been in love with them. He makes houses out of them, makes his animals talk to them, etc. Finally, he decided that the big pumpkin should be turned into pie and bread. Always up for a teachable moment, and to make a schmuck out of myself, I agreed. I figured a pumpkin is just another squash, so I cut up the big one (a small one by jack-o-lantern measure), got out the seeds and “yuck” and steamed them on the stove for about 45 minutes. I scraped out the meat and threw it in the quisinart. Barnaby helped with all of this, including scraping out the seeds with a spoon.

I’ve made enough pie in my life to be able to throw together a crust pretty quickly, but it needed to sit in the fridge, and then it took me a while to suss out the filling, which I also sorta threw together. Three eggs, some milk, some organic, off-the-tree maple syrup, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, couple tablespoons of flour and two cups of punkin… plus spices. I started digging through my cabinet, and I found some cinnamon sticks, some whole cloves, some whole nutmeg and some ground ginger, so I dumped a bunch of it into my spice grinder and then threw it in the filling.

By now, Barnaby had to go to bed, so I blind baked the crust and then we were up forever waiting for the actual pie to cook. But he really, really wanted it for breakfast, and I’m a sucker for “really, really”.

Anyway, Marlena discovered her hands yesterday, and Barnaby, this morning, was teaching her how to play in her bouncy seat. He was so excited by it that he couldn’t stop running in circles around her seat and bringing her more toys and screaming, it was just lovely. I moved her bouncy seat on to the dining room table so Barnaby could eat his pie.

He took one bite and said it tasted “good”. I cut him off another bite, and he said no, and tried to wipe the pie off the fork. While he was drinking, he was staring at the pie, and kept spilling his drink on his lap, and he asked several times if he could take Marlena in the other room, because he’s obsessed with her playing. I was like, “Kiddo! You can play with her here while you eat the pie we made together! I’ll run up and get you a new shirt and pants”

He followed me in the living room and Jordana said, “do you want to babysit Marlena for a minute?” and he said, “YEAH!” and ran back in the dining room. A few seconds later, he walked back in the living room with a terrible look on his face… and puked. In the end, it was simply the very sight of the pumpkin pie that turned his stomach so much that he couldn’t be in the same room with it, even though his new toy, Marlena, was sitting in there.

This is what people without kids don’t understand. It isn’t *only* that they will take off the right shoe you just put on while you’re trying to get on the left, it’s that some little kids have feelings that go utterly beyond the scope of what is reasonable. Some kids will play on the playground with twenty other kids, bumping into each other and being crazy, and then one little thing will switch and they’ll start crying because, the forty fifth time it happened, being bumped into is suddenly no fun.

When people are like, “just put it in front of him, he’ll eat it eventually, you can’t give in so fast”, I just feel crazy. It isn’t that he won’t try it, we can get him to *try* it. But if the texture is weird, HE. WILL. VOMIT. I made him some toast, and I was explaining to him that I made a mistake, the pie wasn’t very sweet and was VERY spicy, and he said, “That isn’t it, daddy. I like the way it tastes.” When pressed, he finally said, “It was too crusty, and too smushy in my mouth” and then he dry-heaved.

So, anyway. This is why I’m sometimes late to shit. It’s because my kid just barfed, and he won’t put on his shoes.

The Two Of Them

Posted September 7th, 2010 by Sean Williams

Because I’ve never had a very clear personality (or, as some of my friends would put it, because I’m totally full of shit)(and yeah, those are my friends), I have batches of people in my life who can’t believe that I’m friends with other batches of people. This means that for some people, when I say I went to seminary, they assume I am lying, and for others, when I tell them I had a mohawk, they just assume I’ve misunderstood the word. This means that I sit here, at forty with two kids, not quite fitting in to the first group, who are living in Brooklyn and creating art, or the last group, who have kids going off to college. The former think I’m utterly suburban, and the latter don’t think two kids even counts as a family.

This isn’t to say that I’m particularly strange. Most of the people I know through Barnaby are in the identical situation I’m in. Two kids, making it professionally and living in a major city on the East Coast. But I have been stymied when it comes to this blog, for a thousand reasons, and I really wanted to just write something about what it is to be forty and have two children in 2010, so I know what it was in the future.

It is interesting that I begin with a stammering apology. I see both groups glaring at me as if I were the guy standing in the middle of the buffet line, unsure of what I want and slowing everything down. I find my own introspection to be nausea inducing, but what else can I do? By the time you’re forty, you pretty much know how you’re gonna be, and your life becomes less like the bumper cars and more like the roller coaster. I might hate the sudden drops, but I honestly don’t feel like I’m steering any more, so I’m just gonna go with it.

I am in the surprising position of being deeply in love with both of my kids. I say this because it took me a long time to discover that I was in love with Barnaby, but almost the second Marlena showed up, I feel completely under her spell. A big part of the reason is because Barnaby made me a father, and so I now know what’s happening, I understand the speed at which each phase evaporates and how quickly they become real people. Already, I’m seeing her take developmental leaps that took forever with Barnaby – while the truth is they took the exact same amount of time, I’m just enjoying it so much more.

Marlena loves me like an old man at a museum loves a painting. She sits there, looking off, taking in the room with this peaceful stoic stare, and then when she sees me, she breaks into a big smile. When she’s crying, she stops simply when I pick her up, but I don’t even have to. We had a million ways of calming down Barnaby, but I get Marlena to stop crying by looking at her and saying her name. She will look at me and, no bullshit here, will go directly from crying to smiling.

She doesn’t really cry that much. She hates being in the carseat in the car, weirdly, but other than that, she only cries when she’s hungry or tired. And if she’s hungry and we feed her, she stops. When she’s tired, particularly if she’s tired of being entertained, it’s a little bit of a thing – what she really needs is a sensory deprivation chamber, and that is easily attained with a hulking dad holding her against his soft flabby warm belly.

Barnaby loves me like a fat kid loves pie. He will often stop in the middle of a conversation with someone else and say, “I need to tell my daddy something”, and he’ll walk in to wherever I am and say something like, “what would happen if lava was covered in milk?” When it’s just the two of us, he wants me underneath him or on top of him, he wants to be covered in me, even if he has to claw his way to the center of me, like a tauntaun.

He likes to open his mouth wide and move in on my mouth, while he’s propping my mouth open as well. He says, “We’re gonna eat our ‘chothers!” (somehow, “each other” has become “our chothers”, and it’s so frickin’ dear, I’m kinda praying he never stops.) If I ask him two questions, he’ll ask me twenty five. We have had long rhapsodies, where we sit and stare out the window while he demands I explain the most insane shit he can invent.

Marlena is a mystery, while Barnaby is a taskmaster. I know his every opinion about everything, not a single experience passes through his mind without commentary. Marlena seems to take everything in stride. I will think that she holds a special place in her heart for me, but then I’ll see her smile at the number of lights on the ceiling. She adores me, but she seems to have plenty of love to go around, and I still don’t know who she is.

Mostly, it isn’t that I have a daughter named Marlena and a son named Barnaby, I have a developmental three month old girl, and a developmental three and a half year old boy. But that mysterious person, who smiles at me but might just as soon be by herself… that’s Jordana. And the oral compulsive, who complains about everything, who has no unexpressed thoughts, who will make everyone laugh until they’re sore and then keep going because he doesn’t know when to stop… That’s me.

It’s a dangerous and actually BAD thing to identify with your kid. It’s important to *empathize*, sure, but you can’t think “that’s me”. You can’t. It’s really bad for the kid, it’s really bad for you. And it is bad for me. I’ve felt powerless since Barnaby was born, I’ve felt crippled by the constant sense that I was a three year old, that all of his fears are my fears. I am awake right now, at 12:45 at night, because I made the mistake of thinking about Barnaby’s last trip to the hospital.

But that’s my problem. Those are ghosts I’m fighting. The real kids are miracles that I feel like I don’t even deserve. If I could make either of them different, I wouldn’t change a thing, not a single thing. I am in the surprising position of being in love with them both, and I think once I get past my own damage, it’s gonna be so lovely to get to be their dad.

The Kids

Posted July 22nd, 2010 by Sean Williams

I have obviously been remiss, but for obvious reasons. It’s been a tough haul, trying to get enough calories and sleep and sanity for everyone involved, but overall, if I had to end the blog here, I’d say that the whole experience is hovering right around an A, with occasional pushes into A+ territory.

Oh, I am so tempted to let that be the last thing said about any of this, but I always get so frustrated when I go back through my blog to try to figure out how we were doing and what we were up to, and find a giant black hole where I decided to be cryptic and short instead of wallowing, so I’m gonna just push myself and try to let you, the reader (otherwise known as “future me”) know better what’s actually going on.

Marlena is a month old. In fact, she’s five weeks old today. Her existence is really much less of an individual one and much more of a bit of stimulus for us to respond to. Which is probably how it should be with a one month old, they don’t really do much. The difference, I think, is that for Barnaby’s first six months, I kept expecting him to be more than a fleshy, short-circuiting eat-poop-pee machine, but that’s all we really are, as humans, for that first half-year.

But if I go ahead and anthropomorphize her, then I should admit that she translates as being very sweet and really lovely. Her blue eyes have stayed blue, and turned even bluer, and she has a habit of laying on my stomach, facing out, and arching her head back so she can stare at my face. Whereas Barnaby always liked to be swaddled and in motion, Marlena sleeps with her arms over her head, and would rather be still than be swung. When she loses her shit, she likes to go straight to Defcon Disaster, but it happens very rarely, and never for all that long.

She hasn’t really screamed or cried for longer than about ten minutes, if we’re honest with ourselves. It always feels much longer, and we did a cross country car trip where her goat screams almost made me drive off the road, but that was the longest she has ever maintained that miserable noise. Usually it lasts for no more than five minutes, really. To balance that out, she likes to make little cooing noises while she sleeps, and she loves to stare, intently, at your eyes when you’re holding her. If you can put a pinkie in her mouth, she is perfectly happy, although she, like Barnaby, won’t really tolerate a pacifier.

Barnaby has been dealing with her better than we could have hoped. He’s either ambivalent or fond of her, depending on his mood, but he talks about her when she’s not there as if she’s a lovely little surprise he can share with people. He has said a number of times “I like Marlena!” He hasn’t held her or anything, and he’s mostly had fun playing with her feet, but we’ve had none of the “when is she going back” kind of conversations that I hear so much about.

Barnaby is a boy. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CLICHE BOY. He will choose the longest possible path between two points if it includes running in circles and crashing into things. He barely notices that any of his peers exist, but when they enter his frame of reference, they are immediately set to work in one of his schemes. He is just crashing through his life, really, with no concern about his wake or his noise level. It’s really wonderful to watch.

He’s also a complete boy when it comes to his feelings. Deep and utterly clear and simple, he feels things so much and just explodes with love and pain and anguish and joy. He has no ambivalence, he has no duality. When he’s hurt, he bursts into tears, holding on while the pain continues, and as soon as the pain is gone, it’s left him as if nothing ever happened. When he sees someone he loves, he screams, runs in circles, jumps up and down and hugs and then, a minute or so later, acts as if they have always been there.

He loves music in a way that I have never loved anything. He knows all the instruments of the orchestra, not just by sight but by listening to them on a recording. The radio was playing the other day and Barnaby said he heard an accordion, and I realized that it was a pop song with a hammond organ in the background, which sounds exactly the same. He is fascinated by instrumentalists, and loves to stop and listen to buskers in the park or in the subway. Of course, he likes talking to musicians in the middle of a performance as well, because he’s basically all Id at this point.

His asthma is under control, but still gives him a pretty persistent cough. We need to cover him in moisturizer at night or by mid-day he’s covered in little red bumps. He eats like crap, refuses to eat almost everything and judges new food with a default refusal to even try it. He won’t eat ice cream, candy bars, meat or chicken, any vegetables and most fruit. He’ll eat dried fruit and I can sneak veggies into his food either in pancakes or by juicing carrots and stuff. He takes in about a thousand calories on a good day, but half of that is bread. It is deeply frustrating.

But he loves being in the kitchen with me. He loves a project, no matter what it is. His teacher told me today that he would stay in the musical instruments all day if they let him, but if they ask him to do an art project, he’ll happily jump in and commit. If I pull out paints, he will paint. If I pull out a board game, he’ll play it with me. He likes having designed games and constructive goals.

That being said, it’s hard to modify his behavior with bribes. We can’t promise him stickers or lollipops or stuff because, even though he likes those things, he just has his own crazy shit to work through and he doesn’t want to be slowed down. It’s ridiculous how long it takes for us to do anything, every single step of doing something takes forever. Putting on shoes and socks can take ten minutes. Every moment of his life consists of a) the thing he’s doing, b) the thing he’s thinking about doing, c) questions about both the thing he’s doing and the thing he wants to do, d) negotiations about what other things could possibly be happening right now and e) running circles around the room.

I just got the high sign from Jordana that I’ve probably spent enough time writing. I’ll try to be better about updating, and maybe even try to be less humorless about it, but this is the stretch that we just have to survive, and I feel like we’re doing really, really well on that front. It’s just awfully difficult to find free time.

Scene Two

Posted June 19th, 2010 by Sean Williams

Barnaby usually goes to sleep around 7:45. When I was growing up, our bed time was a rough estimate, and the time we went to sleep was basically unrelated to a bedtime, we spent (sometimes) HOURS staring at the ceiling and talking and telling jokes, much to my father’s endless fury. So, if we were meant to be in bed by 8, we would probably get into bed before 8:20, and might not go to sleep until 10.

This has led to a lifetime of ridiculous insomnia. There’s no point in going to bed if you’re not tired, you’ll just learn to resent the pressure of the bed, snarling at you, daring you to try to rest when you’ve spent countless cycles of thought and daydream memorizing the ceiling or, in my case, the underside of your brother’s top-bunk-mattress, as if you were *training* yourself to resist one of our most natural and joyful daytime rituals. I wasn’t gonna do this to Barnaby.

So, we developed a ritual, and we are simply never off by more than about fifteen minutes if we can help it. Sometimes he falls asleep at 7:30, sometimes it’s closer to 8, but it is almost ALWAYS within fifteen minutes of his aimed-for 7:45.

On the few rare occasions, we’ve had to stray from this formula, and it has almost always sucked. My mom is a wizard with Barnaby, so if we can’t be here to put him down at the right time, she will often sub in for us and he still gets the exact thing he was expecting. The thing is, yesterday was not like a normal day, and it would require some flexibility from all of us. And, it’s possible that, in trying to make sure everyone felt accommodated, we ended up not quite “doing right”.

I left the hospital and came home for a few hours with Barnaby, but I wanted to get BACK to the hospital as quickly as possible. Scene one, from yesterday’s blog, happened while I was home with the boy, and I was so grateful to be able to be here for that. It was a hell of a thing, and I felt like I had done right by him, that I had talked him down, and that maybe, just maybe, I had stopped his natural impulse to be an axe murderer.

But I wanted to get back, so we started our night-time routine early, and my mom took over for me, with him already in bed at 7:15. Why did we do this a half hour early? Because I’m an idiot. Because I thought if I left a half hour early to go back to the hospital, it would somehow work out that I had helped Marlena, Jordana and Barnaby, all at the same time. Even though I would have to leave the hospital around 10. The whole thing was just epically stupid.

My mom sang to him for a bit, and then he said he would go to bed. She went upstairs to her apartment (my mom has the upstairs apartment and we have the bottom two floors and, seriously, God BLESS both my wife and my mom for navigating what has historically been the most awful relationship in most families with extraordinary grace. It could be that in most families, the mother-in-law and the wife feel proprietary over the husband, and in my case, they both see me as an amusing annoyance…) and turned on the monitor. She heard nothing on the monitor for about ten minutes, but then heard a smiling voice saying “Grandma Linda? Grandma LINDA?”

It was Barnaby, standing at my mom’s door upstairs.

So, she collected him and told him that he didn’t need to come up and get her, that she would come down if there was a problem. He seemed to agree with that. She said she could hear him when he was in his room, and that also made sense. She asked him what the problem was, and he said he just wanted to know where she was, so he was checking. That made sense to Grandma Linda, but also broke her heart a bit.

She sang a couple of songs to him, and he said he was gonna sleep. She went back upstairs and switched on the monitor. This time, after fifteen minutes, she just felt like something wasn’t quite right. It was getting really late for Barnaby, at this point, but she thought she should check. So she opened the door to her apartment and looked downstairs.

Barnaby was sitting on the bottom step, naked from the waist down.

She came down and asked him what was wrong. He said, “I had to poop and pee, so I went in the bathroom and used the toilet.” She asked him why he was at the bottom of the stairs and he said, “I was too sleepy to climb all the way upstairs.” She asked him if he wanted to go back to bed and he said, “OH! I forgot to flush!”

She got his pajamas back on and sat in my desk chair in our studio, next to Steinway and all the recording equipment. By the blue light of the back up hard drives, she curled him up on her lap and let him talk.

Now, he’s three, and he doesn’t speak all that clearly, but he began a rhapsody that lasted a half hour. He spoke about the baby. He spoke about cars. He spoke about trombones and drums and school and more about the baby, and Uncle Steve and Hildy Dog, and about boots and hats and shoes, and my mom rocked him in my office chair and nodded and said “mmm-hmm” for the majority of stuff she couldn’t understand.

He talked, because he learned that he needs to talk when he feels something. And a big part of that is because he was taught to do that in school. I mean, look, the blog is called “Seanrants” because that was what my family mockingly called my tirades as a kid, so, of COURSE my kid likes to talk, but at his school, the teachers spend a lot of time talking about how to express yourself, and Barnaby’s good at it.

And my sweet mom, who started her journey as a mother when she got pregnant in NINE TEEN FIFTY SIX, she sat with him and listened and made him understand that he was safe. And that’s all a child ever needs to know – that’s all any of us ever *really* need to know, that we’re safe. How this old Welsh Rose can reach down from some point in the middle of the depression, when she remembered what it was like to be three and need a grandmother to talk to, and she put her arms around him and made him understand that all he needed to do was close his eyes, and first thing in the morning, his mom and dad would be back.

And when she finally said to him, “we can go lie down in your bed and still talk to me…” and he said, “OH! We can? Let’s go lie down!” About two minutes later, lying in bed, Gramma said, “Do you think it’s time to go to bed?” and Barnaby said, “Well… I *am* yawning a lot…”

It’s a hell of a time for him, but I can’t believe how lucky we are to have all the help we do. It’s really, really beyond description, and to say I’m grateful is just a pathetic understatement. I wouldn’t have the life I have if I didn’t have the help, and the shoulders of the giants I am standing on, no matter how elderly or weary, are making my life possible.

Scene One

Posted June 18th, 2010 by Sean Williams

Scene One

Barnaby’s Bedroom, Day. Barnaby and Barnaby’s Dad are playing with a giant pile of stuffed animals next to a child’s drumset. Barnaby’s babys sister is not in the scene, but was born the day before, and the two who are in the scene are keenly aware that she is coming home tomorrow with her mother. Who is also Barnaby’s Mother.

Barnaby: I need to get ALL of the toys into the river!

BD.: And the couch is the boat, right?

Barnaby: I need everything out of the boat and in the river! I need to swim in the water with you and everyone else.

BD: You want me to come in the water too?

Barnaby: GET IN THE RIVER, DADDY!

BD: Ah, Barno. I’m… C’mon, kid, I’ve barely slept.

Barnaby: Can I get in the boat with you?

BD: Yeah! Come get in the boat. We can float and snuggle.

Barnaby: Will you eat me?

BD: It’s possible. There’s a distinct possibility.

Barnaby: Don’t eat me.

BD: I’m not gonna eat you, get in the boat.

Barnaby: (whispering) will you come in the water with me?

BD: (laughing) Yeah, but why is it a secret?

Barnaby: Because I need to float in the water so I won’t be nervous.

BD: (not laughing) Okay, honey. Okay.

Barnaby: And you can eat me.

BD: Honey, I’m not gonna eat you.

Barnaby: Then how can I get in your belly and get in the water?

Barnaby’s dad can’t speak for a minute.

Barnaby: Can you wrap me up in my blanket?

BD: Yeah, of course. You wanna roll up like a burrito?

Barnaby: Roll me up like a burrito!

BD: Good Lord, kid. Freud really knew what he was talking about with three year olds.

Barnaby: Can you roll me up?

Barnaby’s Dad rolls up Barnaby in his turtle blanket. Barnaby howls with laughter as he tries to break free. It’s an identical scene from three and a half years earlier, although the blanket was a swaddle, and Barnaby was howling with frustration before passing out.

Barnaby breaks from the blanket and runs over to his drums. He commences a manic five minute drum solo, during which he breaks long enough to bring BD a woodblock and gestures that it should be played. BD leans back on the couch and absent-mindedly keep beat on a woodblock until he feels the sharp scrape of severely beaten drum sticks run along his neck.

BD: Kid! What are you doing?

Barnaby: No, I’m just pretending!

BD: Cut it out, Barnaby, your scraping up my neck with those sticks.

Barnaby: They aren’t sticks, they’re scissors.

BD: Jesus, Barnaby. What are you talking about?

Barnaby: I want to cut you with these scissors!

Barnaby’s Dad gets very serious for a second. He looks at Barnaby for a moment and searches for telltale signs that the parents and neighbors of murderers always claim to have missed. Once he’s assured that, if they are apparent in his kid, he’s missing them too, he picks up Barnaby and puts him on the couch.

BD: Why do you want to cut me with scissors?

Barnaby: I want to cut off part of your face with scissors.

BD: Barno, this is really serious. Why on earth would you want to do that.

Barnaby: I’m trying to tell you.

BD: Okay.

Barnaby: I would cut off a piece of your face and feed it to Gramma Linda. Because she’s your mommy.

BD: Barnaby, that’s just terrible.

Barnaby: That’s terrible?

BD: What do you think would happen to me if you did that? Would I be happy or sad?

Barnaby: You would be sad.

BD: Do you want me to be happy or sad?

Barnaby: I want you to be happy AND sad.

BD: Why?

Barnaby: Because that’s how I feel ALL THE TIME and you’re my daddy.

BD: Is that how you feel now?

Barnaby. No. I’m just a little nervous.

BD: I know honey. I know. But why would you want to cut me with scissors?

Barnaby: I want to cut a hole in you!

BD: Do you know that hole would be there forever? In my face? It would never get better.

Barnaby: But I would fill the hole!

BD: You can’t fill the hole, Barno. It’s in my face, if you cut my face, then part of my face would be missing for the rest of my life.

Barnaby: What would be in the hole?

BD: Blood. Muscle. Tendons. Human-stuff. Just stuff. Like meat.

Barnaby: But I want to see it. I want to be there in the hole!

BD: What?

Barnaby: I want to cut a hole so I can be there in the hole. I want to be inside the hole!

BD: Why, Barnaby?

Barnaby: (suddenly holding his father’s face in his hands, gripping his beard with both fists) BECAUSE YOU’RE MY BEAUTIFUL DADDY! BECAUSE YOU’RE MY BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL DADDY! BECAUSE I’M NERVOUS and You’re my beautiful (whispering) beautiful (silently mouthing) … daddy.

What’s Next.

Posted June 11th, 2010 by Sean Williams

I’m not an intensely intelligent man, and I’m certainly not even the tiniest bit superstitious, but I am proud of my ability to make wishes. I know you’re supposed to be careful what you wish for, but unless you’ve played the countless hours of Dungeons and Dragons that I have, you haven’t had enough real world *practice* when it comes to wishes. The Dungeon Master is just ACHING to screw with you if you don’t word your wish in the right way, if you try to sneak in a conjunction or a disconnected qualifier. I know, I was more often the DM, and I loved waiting for the stray “AND”, which would signal the end of the wish.

Everyone knows, you can’t wish for one thing AND something else. That’s two wishes.

Ever since Jordana and I began dating, (and honestly, it’s absurd that we dated for years before getting married, I was hook-line-n-sinker from about the sixth month on), I would use the first star of the evening, the abandoned eye-lash and even the occasional birthday candle to make the same wish, year in and year out.

I wish that we were in a position where we could comfortably have kids.

See what I did there? You can’t ask for kids straight up, there are sweet teenage kids who said, “I wish I could have kids someday” and the DM was all, “Okay. HOW ABOUT NOW!!!” and they’re all “Shit, I guess Junior Prom is out…” And you can’t ask for money, straight up, or you’ll totally get Monkey-Paw’ed. End up getting an insurance settlement or something, or suddenly finding yourself on the nice end of a good drug-dealing business. “What?” says the Dungeon Master, “You asked for a hundred thousand dollars, how else was an idiot like you gonna make that kind of money?”

So, I used my wishes to create a catch-all, that we would be in a situation where having kids is something we could handle comfortably. The DM was backed into a corner, and we got our wish. We have a lot of help, we’ve been incredibly lucky with jobs and work and our home, and our wish was granted. Eyelashes and First Stars are pretty powerful, but I think it was the four or five Birthday Candles that put us over the edge.

It wasn’t until Barnaby actually showed up that I realized – I got Monkey-Paw’ed after all. I was terrified. I didn’t have the first idea of what I was doing, and I didn’t feel anything for this baby. Nothing. He didn’t look like me, he had blue eyes, he was long and skinny and didn’t seem to recognize me. And he mal-functioned all the time, screaming and passing out and puking. I had always seen myself as a point in the universe, there was a place where I was, clearly defined, a spot on the map, and that was completely blotted out now. I was right on the edge of panic every second of every day, and the only respite were the few times that I dropped right into panic and curled up in a corner somewhere and cried.

I mourned. I sweated. I stank, I smelled, every day, I smelled like that horrible flop-sweat smell, that ‘going up on your lines’ sweat, where a two second delay feels like a minute, a three second chunk of time feels like an hour, a five second pause feels like a day. I counted my life like I was on the treadmill, saying to myself  “I can do this for thirty more seconds, and then I’ll jump off” and after thirty seconds passed, I would say, again, “I can do this for thirty more seconds, and then…”

I hated it. It taught me a new appreciation for what hating something is. I hadn’t really understood what hate was until I had a child. I thought that I hated bullies at school, that I hated bad theater, or that I hated my sister’s ex-boyfriends, but being a father taught me some perspective. All of those things are finite, all of those things can be walked away from, and all of those hatreds are clean, unpolluted with expectations or my own failures. Having a baby taught me a new kind of hate, because I didn’t hate him, I hated myself for KNOWING I could never be the father he needed, that I couldn’t do for him any better than I was done for. It was a hatred I couldn’t escape.

So, it was ME that was the problem. This boy, this broken, puking fleshbot, needed a father and I couldn’t do the job. So, I had to start small and pretend.

My God, it’s incredible to look back on. When you wake up after three hours of sleep, and you see that the day stretched out in front of you has no room for more sleep in it, no room for exercise or TV or writing music or following your own dreams, when you see there’s nothing in it but screams and vomit and a baby who can’t see, can’t crawl, can’t hold his head up… there is sorrow there, there is darkness there, but when the night comes, and there’s no sleep again, and there’s a quick nap, and the next day rolls on to you, and the night comes, and the days disappear, and the baby still can’t speak, can’t lift his head, can’t do anything but scream and puke and pass out… the sorrow turns to darkness.

And I despaired, I did. I’m not proud of it, but I did.

So, I began to work without sleep. And I began to relax when he did, to sleep when he was unconscious, instead of standing over him in horror, wondering when he would wake up. I began to enjoy the moments when one of our parents had him, to walk away. The spot that I had once been began to have a defining space around it again.

And it all started changing. So fast. The days, the minutes, felt epic and harrowing, but the months began to spin by. My worry had gone from SIDS to… baby gates? He’s walking? He’s pulling things down, putting things in his mouth. And my concern started to go from baby gates to… friends? He’s getting along with people? Is he fighting for what he wants, but still respecting his buddies?

And, I look at myself and I realize… I get up every morning. I finish my jobs on time, I show up for my friends. I can be turned to, relied upon. This baby needed a father, and I knew I couldn’t do it because I was a child myself, and now, three years later, I can say with total sincerity… I’m his father. I’m a grown man, and when he needs me, he knows he can count on me. I am here.

I can’t remember now why I wanted children so badly. My understanding of what children were, before I had them, is so utterly foreign to my perspective now that I can’t even conjure it. Maybe I thought I would be rolling around with a three year old, laughing and playing. And I do that now, I do it all the time. But that wasn’t what I wanted then. And the rolling around now means something, because the years spent trying to make sure he didn’t DIE taught me to be a man who understands what that rolling around means. It means I’m his father.

Now, I am that point in space that I once was, but there is an invisible tether that connects me to two other points on the map. One tether goes to my son, the other to his mother. And the further apart we are, the three of us, the tighter that tether pulls, so that the only time we can really relax is when we are, the three of us, all in the same room. That’s when the tether disappears, and we become one larger point on the map.

Quite simply, I didn’t know that would happen. I knew there was the possibility that I would change, but I didn’t know in what way. And I had no idea that being a father would make me into a father. I didn’t understand that we are not static, that we aren’t merely the sum total of what we have done, but that we also can become anything we need to simply by *doing the new thing for long enough*.

A week from today, we should have a new baby. A girl. We’re inducing next Thursday, so, hopefully, we will be able to spend next weekend as a new, larger, spot on the map, with four points instead of three. This time, I won’t hate it. I know that the malfunctioning fleshbot is only here for a few months and, before I know it, she’ll be banging into baby gates, and then worrying about friends, and then I’m gonna be begging her not to go to college in Europe.

But I also know this – I have no idea who she’s gonna turn me into. The one thing I’m sure of is how hopelessly unsure I am of who I will be three years from now. I sincerely hope I’m able to swim deep. The wishes have already been granted, I don’t dare make any more. From this point on, I’m just gonna have to make myself into what I wish to be.

Why I’m Staying

Posted June 2nd, 2010 by Sean Williams

My friend Martin Denton is deactivating his facebook profile and leaving that particular corner of the virtual world. Please read his blog post about it, because it feels like a rational and well-thought-out response to the recent revelations about Facebook’s cavalier attitude toward privacy and the degradation of the writer, and I hope that his deactivation will help inspire whatever changes he hopes to make.

As the title of this blog would indicate, I’m not leaving Facebook, but it is something we should all spend a minute or two *considering*. It is really important that we look at the time we have and figure out if we are spending it well, and Facebook has some real problems built in to it that go beyond the problems with privacy. But since that’s the issue of the moment let me just take a moment to explain why their privacy policies don’t bother me in the least.

Facebook wants us to let them know who we are and what we like to do, and they want us to give as much of that information over as possible so they can steer advertisers towards us. Our lives, the information that we share, is the raw materials that Facebook turns into profit. As creepy as that sounds, it’s totally fine with me. I do, in fact, have interests and some money, and if I can depart with a little bit of my money in order to have a more interesting life, then that feels very American to me, and because my interests feel a bit under-monopolized in our culture, I’m more than happy to let Facebook know what they are, and steer stuff my way.

Also, Facebook is free for me because they are selling time and space to people who produce stuff that I might be interested in. So, I get to re-connect with old friends and keep up with new friends, all the while some industrialist is pumping out Items of Interest, and I find out about them because THEY pay Facebook to let me know. I don’t feel like I’m *LOSING* anything in this.

But the dirty little secret about Facebook is that it is becoming a virtual representation of… nothing. We have to be really careful not to let Facebook become a replacement for real-life socializing, and the real-world creation of experience. I will check out the profiles of friends and acquaintances, and they often have thoughts about the links they are posting that are really interesting. Someone will post a Huffington Post article, and express outrage, and their friends will comment, either for or against, but that is all happening in a vacuum.  The Facebooker isn’t creating the article, and they’re doing nothing to respond to the information in the article, they are posting it, creating a three sentence response, and then shit-talking with some people they know.

Even worse is our line of work, where people use the facebook invite to hassle people about upcoming performances. They feel like, if they’ve made a Facebook invite, then they’ve done some marketing. Martin actually talks about this really well, because the truth is, if you’ve got five or six hundred friends on Facebook, then there’s a large percentage of them, say 40%, who are your primary friends, and they already know what you’ve got going on, and then there’s a smaller percentage, say 25%, that are old friends and family from other parts of the country and world who aren’t gonna see your play, and then the rest are available to be marketed to. So, that’s about 150 people you’re reaching with your facebook invite, and if you get an OUTRAGEOUS return on that invite, and 30 more people come… then you can see, this really shouldn’t be the beginning and end of your marketing.

Because, the thing is, that invite is reaching the same people that your newsfeed is. So, inviting people, and THEN doing twelve updates a day in your newsfeed isn’t reaching anyone new. It’s the same 30 people that are either gonna come or not.

I’m not saying it’s a waste of time, but I think there’s an argument to be made that you can’t decide that new media marketing is some kind of goldmine. Seanrants pal Jimmy Comtois said something to the effect of “we know that 75% of our marketing isn’t working, but we don’t know which 75%, so we have to do it all…” and I think the wrinkle I would add is that ALL of your marketing doesn’t work 75% of the time, so you have to do it 100% of the time to get any response. We have to Facebook.

But your show still needs to be listed at all the listing sites, you still have to create a REAL WORLD story to go along with your show, and you have to be a physical part of your community. When we were marketing Viral, I posted a lot of stuff on Twitter and Facebook, but most of it was letting people know about stories that were happening outside these insular worlds. We set up interviews with the playwright, we doled out the announcements of awards and nominations and everything else that counted as news.

But more than that, we donated furniture to other shows. We did swaps of postcards. WE PRINTED POSTCARDS. We made sure to show up to the festivals BEFORE our festival, and we made sure to talk to the people who’s shows were awesome. We donated scripts to reading series’, we showed up to reading series and then talked to the playwrights and directors who worked IN the reading series.

And then, yeah, the next day, we wrote on Facebook about what we had done the night before.

Now, I’m staying with Facebook because it’s just such a nice way for me to disseminate information to the 600 or so closest people to me, but I am going to continue to be careful not to let the telling of the story to become the story. When I see pictures of my friends’ kids, I want that to inspire me to go see them IN PERSON. And when someone talks about seeing a show, I want to be able to comment and say I was there as well.

But Martin is absolutely right, and he’s in a very powerful position to inspire us to remember the primary source for our posts. Our posts should reflect our real lives, and our real lives are not being lived online.

The Desk Set

Posted May 14th, 2010 by Sean Williams

For about a year and a half in high school, I was a “punk”. I had a multi-colored mohawk, wore eyeliner and lipstick, shredded shirts, wrote on my clothes, the whole thing. Obviously, this was a phase, and my mother dutifully rolled her eyes at most of my shenanigans, but, to my credit, it only took me that year and a half to understand that by disregarding social norms, I was also embracing a different set of social norms. The other punks at my school were in the same uniform I was in.

When I went to see The Desk Set, there were some things I was expecting, because I know who this company is. I was expecting incredible sets, with details down to the drawer pulls. I was expecting articulated costumes, with period perfection down to the jewelry. And I was expecting powerful performances in drenched period styles.

Everything I had seen from Retro in the past prepared me for the possible psychological damage I would encounter at the hands of the brilliant support team they’ve built around themselves. Incredibly, instead, I just laughed all the way through it. They have proven they can handle turgid, taught drama, with stakes as high as murder at the hands of a madman and the killing of a child by an angry God, so for them to pull back and use their incredible skills to create a light office comedy – it’s actually an incredibly brave move.

They could continue to create dark and complicated period pieces, but by choosing to do a comedy… they’re actually taking a huge risk. It could seem to be trying to please a larger audience, but the truth is that they have shown they can do one thing very well. Even if it’s more difficult to do, it’s actually an act of bravery to create something lighter and more fun. Comedy is very difficult and the punk still left in me was really excited to see these guys rebel against themselves.

(I have to say that I have worked with three of the leads very closely, and I’m good friends with the producers and the director, but I ALSO want to point out that these friendships are based on mutual artistic respect. The first Retro show I saw, I didn’t know anyone but the director, these relationships have grown because of the theater and because of this blog. This is why “full disclosure” doesn’t always work, our relationships as friends have grown out of our artistic admiration, we haven’t created artistic admiration because of personal fondness. Also, I paid for my ticket. Two, in fact.)

Matthew Trumbull is marvelous, and Kristin Vaughan is as good as I’ve ever seen her. I marvel at how lucky we are to have actors of this much aptitude and art gracing our humble stages, I feel like both Matthew and Kristin ought to have, long ago, given up our ghettos for more celebrated houses. It’s actually a real testimony to Tim Errickson as a director that so many of the actors are so pitch perfect in this production. Ric Seacrest was phenomenal. As a dutiful mamma’s boy, and a suitor too innocent to see his opportunities, Ric’s open face and purity was perfect. Had the actor played this role with any darkness, he would have come across as taking advantage, as almost abusive. The entire ensemble dovetailed into the production effortlessly, but the most astonishing transformation was done by Heather Cunningham.

I’ve been following Heather’s work over the last few years, and had you told me, before I saw the show, what her role was, I wouldn’t have believed you. Heather has played the innocent and the ravaged, and has always plumbed the depths of her own shock and misery in such a way that my heart was just shattering during each of their last few plays. A woman, alone at a table, eating a donut… you wouldn’t think it could move me to tears, but it did.

So, suddenly, she’s the femme fatale? Suddenly, she’s the man eater, as devilishly flirtatious and sexually powerful as Mad Men’s Joan. This is not a role that many theater companies would consider Heather for, and yet she knocks it out of the park. Again, props have to go to Tim for committing to such a brave and damn smart casting decision. Tim also wrestles constant action and motion out of what is actually a very, very small playing space. One gets the sense of a constant storm of questions and demands are flying into this giant company, and our characters are pushing the information from one side of the stage to the other, like waves crashing. There’s never a lull, never a pause, and thanks to the wonderful direction, the staging is matched perfectly with the performances to create that pace.

But it is Kristin Vaughan’s show, and for those of you who’ve been waiting to see her slip into a role tailor made for her, this is your show. She couldn’t be more beautiful, she couldn’t exude more intelligence or charisma. I have seen her handle emotional depth, and I’ve seen her handle scripts that didn’t live up to her talent, but this show is a master class in classical timing and panache.

If you haven’t seen a show by Retro Productions, this is the perfect time. The piece is funny and, at three short acts (each about 35 minutes), it’s extremely comfortable. This is the perfect introduction to one of the smartest and most articulate production companies making theater at the Off-Off level. More than that, if you really want smart established scripts, and you’re accustomed to really high production values, then you NEED to start seeing Retro’s shows. This is where that is happening.

Money Where Mouth Is

Posted May 13th, 2010 by Sean Williams

I have stolen the idea of Social Media As Investment from… someone. I don’t remember. Everyone I know who’s smart and talks about new media, I stole it from all of them. Top of the list, of course is Tammy Oler, who gave Gideon a crash course in new media marketing, and I’ve pretty much gone from there. Invest all you can, put in your time, try not to withdraw too much.

But I’ve been asked a number of times for specific ideas about how to expand one’s audience. Because the first level of ideas are obvious, if not always followed. One level outside your own company are all the other companies who are doing what you do. So, if you’re a playwright or an actor or a producer or a director, you support your own fellas, and then you go see other production company’s plays.

Here’s a quick list of the plays you can go see tonight, tomorrow and the rest of this weekend.

• Jacob’s House, presented by Flux Theater Ensemble*
• Children of Eden, presented by Astoria Performing Arts Center
• Barrier Island, presented by Mauietic Theatre Works
• Killing Women, present by KEF Productions
• The Desk Set, presented by Retro Productions*
• City Of Angels, presented by The Gallery Players
• Noah’s Arkansas, presented by Wide Eyed Productions

*I’ve seen both of these shows, loved them enormously, and will write blogs about them for publication tomorrow. (Also, I know people involved in all of these shows. Because, basically, everyone knows everyone and this is a blog.)

But what is just outside that? The truth is, if you go see these plays, all of them, you will find that many of these people are already friends with each other, and already willing to go see other plays. So where else can you turn? Here are a couple of ideas.

At Length Magazine is having a party. Now, these are decent guys, and Jonathan Farmer, who edits the magazine, is someone I love a lot, but believe me when I say, my love gets you absolutely no respect artistically. In fact, my brothers and sisters and best friends who play in bands or go to open mic nights can COUNT on me not to show up. Same for improv. But At Length is just a marvelous, marvelous magazine, and this is exactly the kind of crowd that you want to spend a couple of hours with. These are serious artists, serious New Yorkers, and they are aggressive in their support.

Devoted and Disgruntled is a fantastic and passionate group of theater artists who meet in an open forum design and vent their frustrations, and find solutions, for their problems working as independent theater people. The two times I have gone have been two of the most exciting and uplifting afternoons of my life, I was as inspired by this as I have been by almost any *play*. It almost seems strange that this is so new, it is so DESPERATELY necessary here in New York.

Jeremiah Frei-Pearson is being hassled into running for Onorato’s seat. I think that’s awesome. But I bet, wherever you live, there are people running for elected office, and the election is this coming November. Show up, get active in that community. Look, if you’re a bible-beating, hard core, right wing Tea-bagger, then you can find a guy who shares your views here in New York. Hell, I’ll give you some of my friend’s email addresses, that way they’ll stop talking to me about it. But it is worth it to invest your time working for people you believe in, because the guy working next to you might not even know that he really wants to see your show. He doesn’t know because he doesn’t know you.

Okay, I’m sure this is a good enough starting point. There are audience members everywhere, and they’re doing something with their time that’s probably as interesting as your show is. If you go to them, they’ll come to you.

Taking A Personal Day

Posted April 23rd, 2010 by Sean Williams

I’ve been producing this wonderful evening called “The Soundtrack Series here in Astoria for the last few months. Basically, one Thursday each month, we bring in some of the most creative writers, musicians and performers that we know, and we ask them to choose one piece of music and write 10 minutes on it.

It’s been amazing. Ehren Gresehover who writes for New York Magazine as well as a bunch of other things, did “To Be With You” by Mr. Big. Jamie Block , recording artist, did “Free To Be You And Me”. James Comtois did a piece on unwanted dance erections… It’s just been an amazing, amazing night, every single month.

Abe Goldfarb was meant to perform last night, but he got a gig hosting for some real money, so I stepped in to fill his shoes. I was reading with some real heavy weights, Kate Spencer, Kevin R. Free, and Tammy Oler, among others, so I was actually pretty anxious about it.

When you have an evening that you’re producing, and you end up both writing and performing… I mean, it’s pretty much on you. If it sucks, you really have nobody else to blame.

So, as I am taking a personal day today, I’m gonna post my piece. This is pretty long, and some of it only makes sense in context and performance (like the fact that many people were disappointed when they heard I was doing a Counting Crows because they were hoping I would rip on a bad pop song instead), and there are stars throughout that remind me to take a beat, because I tend to read really really fast… Anyway, here it is.

***
Let me get something out of the way very quickly. “Roll To Me” by Del Amitri is an unforgivable song, a sin against our fellow man, and as much as I might enjoy listening to it, and like singing along, it does to my heart what a dozen donuts does to my stomach. I find the protaganist of the piece to be almost comically loathsome, like a Bill Murray character, except he’s meant to be taken seriously. The lyric is, actually, “and I don’t think I have ever seen a soul so in despair/So if you’d like to talk the night through… guess who will be there!’ I can just see this guy on some girls bed, chin propped up on two hands, legs kicking up in the background, ready to gasp and laugh and gently touch her leg when appropriate, only to, every so often, reach down and surreptitiously adjust his erection. I hate this duplicitous piece of shit, and every note of this relentlessly happy song.

I’m sorry, it had to be said.

This has nothing to do with my piece tonight.

Now.

There is a scene in 500 Days of Summer, I movie I loathed almost as much as the Del Amitri song “Roll To Me”, where the main character is suffering from depression. You know this because he shows up at a liquor store in a bath robe and buys booze and junk food, and I believe he pays for it with change that he sidearms on to the counter.

My first thought was “this is not depression, this is a guy who wants everyone to think he’s depressed. And if you care enough to pick out a costume and a location, you aren’t actually depressed. You’re actually sorta having fun…”

*

My first marriage ended in a fiery crash at some point in 1998. The two of us had moved to Los Angeles with the hopes of pursuing acting careers, but I quickly began to sink under the knowledge that it wasn’t in the cards for me. I was becoming the guy who would stand in front of the camera with several other actors, point to the person on my left and say, “this guy is really good, you should use him.” I remember showing up for a commercial audition where they only filmed my neck as I loosened my tie. I was meant to be watching a car drive by, in awe. My time as a theater actor had not prepared me well for this moment.

My wife at the time was a fantastic looking sociopath, so Los Angeles worked out perfectly for her. Our marriage dissolved and I began to sink further and further into a legitimate depression. The scary thing about these black emotional abysses is that you won’t actually be able to dress up and let people know, you won’t be able to call for help, you spend every single calorie you’ve got trying to convince everyone that you’re okay.

*
There’s a line from this song, “Anna Begins”, this counting crows song, where the lyric says, “My friends assure me, it’s all or nothing, but… I’m not really worried. I am not overly concerned.” And that was largely what I attempted to tell my friends. “Nah, it’s fine. It’s good! Let’s get a drink!”

And I did. I went to the gym, I went to bars, I talked to girls, I talked to a ton of girls, I got drunk, I got a ton of drunk, I would get up, play tennis, go to auditions, go to bars, go to the gym, get drunk, eat a burrito, get drunk, go to the gym, get up… There was no order, no sense to it, time didn’t move in any direction, it just limped around the room, crashing into the dresser and sitting down in an old chair, holding up one hand, trying not to laugh. My days and nights stacked up, and in Los Angeles there’s no sense of time, no sense of season, no understanding that the birthdays that crash past you, one at a time, represent years, ages, time lost.

I hung on to the idea that I was still listening to popular music as proof that I wasn’t old. Those years weren’t bad, Fastball and Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin and Sixpence None The Richer… and stuff like “Tubthumping” and “Never Be Your Woman” by White Town were all great. Even the pop crap was “Wannabe” by Spice Girls and “Mmmmbop” By Hanson. It wasn’t a bad time, musically. And I held on, dancing in bars, dancing at house parties, cornering gorgeous girls and making them insecure, recognizing the girl from The Blair Witch project at my gym, seeing Ed Norton and Jenna Elfman at the bar across the street from the Scientology Celebrity Center. I WASN’T DEPRESSED! I GOT DRUNK WITH DHARMA! I PLAYED BASKETBALL WITH GEORGE CLOONEY (WHEN I WAS AN EXTRA ON ‘THAT SEVENTIES SHOW’) I WAS FINE!

*

Had she left in August? October? Over Memorial Day? I stopped even remembering, and I found myself telling my story like a guy who lost a dream job some years ago, like an old actor talking about the time he played Hamlet. When I would talk to people who didn’t know me, and because I was an actor in Los Angeles and not famous, there were very few people who knew me, the story was always, “I just moved out here a little while ago” and “we’re having a trial separation” even though it was quickly becoming years for both of these things.

I had a kind of mania about it, a ferocious scrambling attempt to keep moving forward. I was running out of money, running out of youth and running out of chances to escape my twenties free of STDs. I had a few weeks-long relationships, mostly because I liked to have sex with my friends and that always ends up being a confusing thing later when you look at each other and say, “you’re a reasonable person, and the genital co-rubbing is certainly nice, but if we were caught on a desert island, it would only be a matter of time before I either ate you, or I begged you to eat me…”

Then I started dating a girl named Jordana. Our friends called her Jordi, but her family and those close to her called her “Dana”. Of course, I called her “Jordi”. Dana was a little familiar. Clearly, although she was decent and reasonable, this was another thing where I ended up sleeping with one of my friends and pretty soon we’d just all be standing in a room, rocking back and forth on our heels, hands in pockets, and she and I would just nod and say, “Hookay, that was… Listen, I’ll call you and we should totally grab a movie. Y’know, with, like, everyone…”

*
This song is full of money quotes. He repeats, several times, “But I’m not gonna bend. I’m not gonna break, and I’m not gonna worry about it anymore…” Jordana was very cool, and even seemed to have some flexibility about the possible crushed soul that was hidden just beneath this devil-may-care douchebag I had invented. There was a certain amount of drinking I had to do to forget my marriage, and then a certain amount more to forget myself, and I remember being blind, on the verge of passing out, having said nothing about anything and Jordana looked at me with real kindness and just said, “I’m sorry you feel like you have to do this.”

My money was gone. My ex-wife had taken everything in the divorce, mostly because I didn’t want anything, and I was running out of stuff to sell. I made some money doing extra work and picking up editing jobs here and there, but the same kind of manic denial that had my emotional state constantly in the black was not going to work with something as binary as a checking account, and I knew I had to figure it out. My dad had some money, and I was pretty sure he would help me out. Actually, I was sure he *wouldn’t* help me out, but I was starting to run out of options. Liquor in LA isn’t cheap.

So I grabbed my stack of CDs and started to make the horrible journey up Interstate 5, from LA to Napa Valley, where my dad lived in a mansion on the mountain behind the Coppolla Winery. If you haven’t seen Interstate 5… Let me put it this way. It goes the same place that the 1 goes, right from LA to San Francisco, except the 1 is right on the water and is a two lane highway with switchbacks and horror cliff dropoffs that you have to drive 20 miles per hour on – it literally adds three or four hours to a five hour drive, and yet, every time I drove up there, I thought long and hard about which way to go. The 5 is straight through the most apocalyptic desert imaginable, straight through a giant expanse of bombing ranges. The area is literally the only war-torn 200 miles in all of the United States.

I had the Counting Crows album on. It was among the CDs that weren’t lost, and the only radio in that part of California is Right Wing Talk, or Right Wing Christian, so I was fumbling through CDs. I kept shaking my head and bouncing in my seat to “Mister *JONES* and me, tell each other FAIRY TALES as we stare at the beautiful women…” and I’m wondering how early my dad will break out the high end red wine, which was his particular brand of alcoholism, and I’m doing the math of how much he’ll lend me and how long that’ll last and how long that will keep me in drink, and I’m half thinking about my birthday coming up in a few months, when I’ll turn thirty, and for some reason I kept thinking about my sister and my grandmother and I keep seeing them laughing at my jokes, and I keep seeing their eyes crinkle up at the corners, their blue eyes laughing at something I’ve just said, and the CD rolls along and this song, this song comes on, and I hear “my friends assure me, it’s all or nothing, but I’m not really worried. I am not overly concerned…”

And then I hear her voice saying “I’m sorry you feel like you have to do this.”

I mean, it’s the desert, and it’s hard, it’s really hard to maintain that sense, that tightrope walk, that cobweb tightrope walk that is easy to balance on when you’re buttressed on all sides by bar stools and ex-strippers and the palpable sense of desperation in every person you meet, so of course, here in the desert it’s gonna be harder to convince myself that the shaky douchebag, the womanizer, the dramatic sarcastic is actually a giant protective tortoise shell I’ve been carrying around. But something is cracking inside my head. I don’t want a drink, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t want a drink, I don’t want to drink at all, anymore, I just want my dangling feet to touch ground, but I’ve been flapping my arms so hard for so long that I’ve half-convinced myself that I’m actually flying and I’ve had to forget what the ground even *feels* like.

If you don’t know the song, Adam Duritz uses an old trick, the modal shift. My mom, the composer, was once told, “if you want a hit, write it in 3/4, put the verses in minor and the chorus in major”. This is exactly what the band has done in Anna Begins, and I had enjoyed the trick so much that I hadn’t really noticed what they were saying. It was only at that moment, in the car, in the desert, that I realized the verses, in minor, were all lies, “I’m not really worried, I am not overly concerned” and the chorus, in major, was where he saw this woman for the first time, not as a context for his life, but as the promise of something better. Suddenly in the car, I heard

“her kindness falls like rain. It washes me away. And Anna begins to change my mind. And every time she sneezes, I believe it’s love, and Oh Lord. I’m not ready for this sort of thing.”

I could tell you that there was a magical oasis in the middle of the desert, a small landing pad that had two gas stations and a Jack-In-The-Box. I could tell you it was a miracle, if you knew nothing about California, but I would be lying. Californians need to stop at gas stations like Whales need to surface, there are no areas of California that *don’t* have available fuel. And where there’s gas, there’s fast food. It’s a given.

I pulled off the road, not knowing what I was gonna do. I was in a part of California that didn’t support Sprint (otherwise known as “Almost All Of California”) but I’m pretty sure I was pulling off the road to eat something, or to get gas, or just to try and stop crying. But I couldn’t eat, my car was full, and some distance away from the rest of the garbage was a lone payphone, sitting under a tree, probably the only organic shade for 20 miles.

It wasn’t until I was walking to the phone that I realized I was calling Jordana. In New York. And I realized that it wasn’t my sister’s blue eyes, or my grandma’s, it was hers. And I knew that those eyes were already part of my family, that she had already become something that I couldn’t make a decision about, whether I was ready for it or not. And I realized that, when I heard the song, when I heard him sing “she’s talking in her sleep, it’s keeping me awake, and Anna begins to toss and turn. And every word is nonsense, but I understand”… I wasn’t hearing “and Anna Begins”, I was hearing “And… Dana begins…”

She listened to me, and she said, “go back to LA. Don’t go to your father. Buy a ticket to New York. Come here. It’s gonna be fine. It’s all gonna be fine. Come home.”