Beauty Hurts

Beauty hurts.
Beauty demands too much.
Beauty makes me feel small and skinless.

I like a little buffer of numbness
Between me and the world.
Just a little extra hide.
A carapace.
Is that wrong?
It works for me.
I'm open to experience.
I just don't need it to ravage me all the time.

I get caught out.
I get ambushed.
The beauty lurks in unexpected places,
Like a brigand,
And I am not always on my guard.
It leaps into my eyes. I close them.
It's too late.
It has already leapt in.

It stays with me.
Burned onto the brain.
I get no respite.
I close my eyes.
I get no respite.
The beauty burns and burns.

I am a small person.
All I want is to be small and comfortable.
The beauty mocks me with a glimpse of greatness.
A taste of deep feeling.
A hint of a higher grace.

I don't want that.
I want to wake up slowly from a blank sleep
And eat a little cereal
And read something sad in the newspaper
And shake my head
And have a muffin.
I don't need the sublime ache of awareness.
It doesn't help me.
It doesn't help me get through my day.

New York Blooms

One week a year, New York blooms.
Between their scarecrow bareness and their lush green plenitude,
The trees give a brief riot of white, as if to say

We are not so sad amid the gray and the brick;
We are not so tame as you may think we are;
We are Nature in her glory, and our bounty is a kind of overcoming.
Be thankful, and do not flatter yourselves;
You may flourish, but we flourish also.

New York does not reply.
She has other calls to answer.
But she relaxes her shoulders a little,
And begins to forgive the winter.

One Certainty

Crane your neck out the window
As the eve-lit trees rush by,
Or stroll among their twilight shapes
While starlight pricks the sky;
Stop and take a photograph,
But you can never win –
However hard or well you try,
You will never take it all in.

Face the trembling vagrant;
Do not avert your eyes –
And nurture in your deepest heart
The terror of goodbyes;
Take the coldest breath of life
And press it to your skin;
Smell the bullet; taste the knife;
You will never take it all in.

Positive Nihilism

"I just don't think that meaninglessness necessarily negates joy."
- Darcy Boynton

I love my sister.

Feature Film 2012

MIKE: "We're going to need a lot of meat."
KEITH: "This will go down in history as the day you said that."

Project: Feature Film 2012 is officially on.

Keith's Big List of Playwriting Heresies

Conflict is overrated.

Conflict, in and of itself, is as boring as anything in creation. Negotiation and play are much more interesting than outright conflict. Suspense is closer to the heart of storytelling than conflict will ever be.

Subtext is overrated.

The unsaid can be very powerful, but it's often bracing to hear a character say exactly what he thinks. Too much of what passes for subtlety is actually just stalling.

Truth is overrated.

A play should contain precisely the amount of truth that makes it most compelling. No more, no less. Resonance is important. It is not the same as truth.

Controversy is overrated.

It's easier to shock people than to please them.

Seriousness is overrated.

A great comedy elevates the spirit. Fun is a major spiritual principle.

Originality is overrated.

It's good to be original, but it's much better to be good.

Relevance is overrated.

History is littered with forgotten topical dreck. A good play makes us care about its subject matter. People love to gush about how Shakespeare's plays are "still relevant today." Honestly, who gives a shit? What matters is that they're good.

Quality is underrated.

Most of what is said about any given play is an attempt to dodge the awkward question of whether it's actually any good. "Daring"? Sure. But is it any good? "Timely"? Okay. Is it any good? "Ambitious"? Almost certainly not any good.

The real purpose of any play should be to HOLD AND REWARD ATTENTION. That's it. That's the whole ballgame. If you've done that, then you have something worthwhile. If you've held without rewarding, then you're wasting everybody's time. And it's impossible to reward without holding. Once you've lost the audience, you've lost the whole show.

The audience is the ultimate testing ground. The audience is who you're writing for. If your play doesn't work in front of an audience, then I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work.

Paraphrased from Ben Kamine

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