Paraphrased from Ben Kamine

You are your own worst enemy – and that's wonderful news.

Possible Mantras

Precision is heroic.

Commitment is heroic.

Commitment does not preclude doubt.

The Life of an Actor

"This doesn't smell as good as it did yesterday."

– Lauren Cipoletti, on her dinner

Side Effect

I don't know if this is a fringe benefit or a fringe drawback of being in India, but I've had the Aerosmith song "Taste of India" stuck in my head for a solid week.

Drunk Man's Secret

It is every drunk man's secret that he is not really drunk.

A Better Goal

Don't think about what you want to have; think about what you want to earn.

A Nasty Little Irony

The obsession with freedom is itself a kind of prison.

Cosmology

Make small things matter. They are the only things.
Love is nothing without its tells;
Family is that glass of orange juice you are now pouring
For your sullen daughter;
And history means nothing
Unless a farmer wakes tomorrow,
And yawns, and stretches, and feeds the cows
In boots he only bought last week.

The Perils of Comparison

Tricky to craft a steady life
With a brain that’s tuned to changes –
Wired for difference, hog-wild for contrast,
Seeing what is only as not what is not.
Delight makes habit, and habit blunts delight,
And new delights are dangerous
To the dangerous old ones.
Boredom is Charybdis,
And desolation Scylla,
But boredom is desolation too.
Risk, or atrophy;
Venture, or keep.
Let accustomed music tire the ear,
Or brace for wretched screeching.

Or make no simple answer.
Navigate.
Weave, dodge, and dare the chicanes.
Outsmart your change-mad brain
With cunning modulations
That keep alive the melody –
But never say I told you it was easy,
Or that I failed to warn you
About the whirlpool
And the sneering cliffshackled beast.

The Search

If I knew what I was looking for, I wouldn't be looking for it.

Career Goal

The goal is not to peak early, nor to peak late, but to peak as many times as possible – and with interesting slumps in between.

Excuses

Excuses are like oncologists: it's much better not to need one than to have even the very best.

Winter Comes

The leaves are brightly dying,
In desperate, festive hues;
New hats and coats are lying
Along the church’s pews.

And you and I, in summer dress,
Are drifting through the fall;
Not speaking what our hearts confess,
In frantic hope we stall.

But frost will not be bargained with,
And fate will not be shy,
And having nursed a tender myth,
We weep to watch it die.

Our long agreements splinter;
Cold armies brain their drums.
We gird our souls for winter,
And winter comes.

Harlem, Afternoon

Black shadow-birds dart up the sides of buildings,
Mimicking the real birds, who mimic each other.
The bright sun carves their outlines
Against the stoic brick,
And up they glide into nothing,
While the real birds breach the sky.

Theater 2

The theater stands against entropy. In a chaotic, ever-dilating world, the theater says, Hold on. Stop for a moment. For two or three hours tonight, the laws of thermodynamics are suspended, and we will be, against all odds, bringing things together.

Theater

You are standing on a stage. There are three people in the audience. One of them is a child, nine years old – bright and attentive, in a theater for the first time in her life, ready and eager to be taken on an unforgettable journey. The second is a banker, here at his wife's insistence. He has no interest in theater, and is thinking only of intermission, when he will have a scotch. The third is a critic. He knows all the tricks of the trade, and is hoping to see them deployed with cleverness and skill. He believes that nothing can surprise him any longer. His notebook is open, and his pen is poised.

What do you do?

I believe I know the answer. Speak to the child. If you can thrill, delight, and transport that expectant child, the other two will sense that you do not need their indulgence or their approval, and they will straighten up in their seats and begin to take notice.

Delight the child. This is not easy. It is not lazy, and it is not pandering. Nor does it mean that you have given up on the banker and the critic. On the contrary, it means that you are taking aim at their hearts.

Resolution

I will become superstitious.
I will stuff secret meanings into
Ordinary places.
I will endow, imbue, animate, sanctify,
Making the simple stand for the sublime.
No more arid searching after truth;
I will make myself prehistoric,
Believing in signs and demons, and the angry spirits
That heave up the swallowing sea.
I will make sacrifices.
Burn a virgin, if need be.
Some scoff at prophecies that self-fulfill –
But what could be more elegant? And after all,
Belief in a false thing is a real thing –
A dangerous, beautiful, useful thing.
So let me bow to idols, tremble at symbols,
Decipher the unencrypted entrails of dead birds.
Let my lips mutter and my eyes roll back;
Let the cynics laugh their dry defeated laughter
While I, ridiculous, conquer the world.

Glad? Well ...

The books of Malcolm Gladwell are basically fact porn.

Happy New Year

Walking through Times Square the other night after watching the final performance of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the streets were still littered with New Year's confetti. Looking up, I could see it blowing off the nearby rooftops, spiraling down slowly like flat, overgrown snow. As I started down 42nd St., I turned back to get one last look at the ghostly flakes, and a working-class, red-haired, middle-aged man addressed me.

"It's still falling, isn't it?" he said. I agreed. "It'll be falling in a week still," he continued. "Seriously." I smiled. "Happy New Year," I said. And he said the same, and we both walked on.