I realize it has been a while since I posted in this, as usual. I apologize once again but life is busy in the big apple, it always has been and I think it will always be. I am working on getting in shape, getting my ass kicked three days a week by my roommate and surrogate sister Amanda and watching my body totally transform. I am working on getting a movie and a short made in the fall, I am working on new job opportunities and trying to keep up some semblance of a social life. I am also rediscovering a spiritual identity.
While all of this sounds like it is incredibly hectic I have managed to find a peace in the chaos. Zen is probably the world I am looking for. Since I started the transformation of self about 5 years ago...I say started I mean was shoved into I have discovered one mantra that keeps my motors running.
In the spirit of that, in appreciation for how far I've come I wrote this bit of free form that I thought I might share with you. I hope you enjoy.
"Give Me Time."
The cloud of discontent, it’s voice is steady
When the tide rises its voice booms across
the horizon of my mind.
“You are not good enough,
You are not fit enough
You are not talented enough
You are weak.”
It forces me to find the eye of the storm
the place of hush inside
The quiet place my soul finds form
The world settles as I narrow my eyes
I find my center, my place in this world
This dark cloud can feel my will
It’s voice trembles
As I move into the still
My mantra builds inside
Like waves crashing to shore
The dark cloud knows I found it out
It knows what I know,
that I am the Master of my mind
Still it clings to desperate whispers
“You wont make it to the horizon
Give up now
It is too far down
The shore runs from you
You are the lost son”
It’s conviction is laughable now
It knows what is coming
In a moment the world stops
My lips set to release me from the storm
It knows this domain is Mine
When I claim the domain of my mind
And say with steady breath
“Give me time.”
Monday, April 30, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
New York Day ? "Just Dance"
I’m not entirely certain of where I’m going. I’m not entirely certain of where I am now. I know that I am in some strange nowhere land, a place not as terrible as the limbo between decision and opportunity. More like the wading pool between action and success.
The difference is in one you feel the urgency of life and the necessity for accomplishment. In the other you feel a cool breeze, a false sense of rest, the place that allows you to breath and heal the wounds this journey has inflicted on you. While this may sound fulfilling the entire time you are enjoying your moment of nirvana you can see the looming horizon reminding you that if you stay in this pool for too long you will drown and find yourself a shining example of mediocrity.
Fear isn’t what keeps you in that place. The truth is I have no idea what lies in wait for me on the next leg of this journey, it could be amazing. What causes pause for one in my position is the memory of the path just taken and suddenly every extremity feels like it’s been replaced with led.
The thing that is pulling me towards the shore and undoubtably saving my life is fear. I have bone chilling fear of building a life in that wading pool. The idea of pulling my self through my fairly tumultuous early twenties only to settle in the bog of “coulda been” makes every inch of me wince in disgust.
My problem is not a lack of effort, I’ve been working and making work. What is causing more than a little mental disruption is how passionless I seem to have become. I used to get out of bed and fight this city tooth and nail till one of us said give. Now I roll out of bed and play my part, make my moves because I started them I need to finish them, damn it. I keep on keeping on now because I know that the things I am doing are the things that I love, I’m just not doing what I love enough and in ways that remind me why I love them.
I’ve replaced art with commerce. I have been pushing so hard to produce something that I know will sell instead of looking for the story I am desperate to tell. I’ve been dismissing ideas, seeds of inspiration, because they didn’t sound marketable instead of developing them, allowing them to grow and mature into a solid, relevant and beautiful story. I have been dismissing my muse out of what feels a lot like ambition but looks a lot like fear.
“Dance like nobody is watching” the same goes for writing, acting, or any other creative endeavor worth a damn. All of this tells me where I am is that place where the universe tells you to shut the fuck up, and put on your dancin’ shoes.
I love you all
KH-
The difference is in one you feel the urgency of life and the necessity for accomplishment. In the other you feel a cool breeze, a false sense of rest, the place that allows you to breath and heal the wounds this journey has inflicted on you. While this may sound fulfilling the entire time you are enjoying your moment of nirvana you can see the looming horizon reminding you that if you stay in this pool for too long you will drown and find yourself a shining example of mediocrity.
Fear isn’t what keeps you in that place. The truth is I have no idea what lies in wait for me on the next leg of this journey, it could be amazing. What causes pause for one in my position is the memory of the path just taken and suddenly every extremity feels like it’s been replaced with led.
The thing that is pulling me towards the shore and undoubtably saving my life is fear. I have bone chilling fear of building a life in that wading pool. The idea of pulling my self through my fairly tumultuous early twenties only to settle in the bog of “coulda been” makes every inch of me wince in disgust.
My problem is not a lack of effort, I’ve been working and making work. What is causing more than a little mental disruption is how passionless I seem to have become. I used to get out of bed and fight this city tooth and nail till one of us said give. Now I roll out of bed and play my part, make my moves because I started them I need to finish them, damn it. I keep on keeping on now because I know that the things I am doing are the things that I love, I’m just not doing what I love enough and in ways that remind me why I love them.
I’ve replaced art with commerce. I have been pushing so hard to produce something that I know will sell instead of looking for the story I am desperate to tell. I’ve been dismissing ideas, seeds of inspiration, because they didn’t sound marketable instead of developing them, allowing them to grow and mature into a solid, relevant and beautiful story. I have been dismissing my muse out of what feels a lot like ambition but looks a lot like fear.
“Dance like nobody is watching” the same goes for writing, acting, or any other creative endeavor worth a damn. All of this tells me where I am is that place where the universe tells you to shut the fuck up, and put on your dancin’ shoes.
I love you all
KH-
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Its Always Sunny...
Friends, family, practical strangers, I believe I owe you an update. Work is fantastic and at some point I will have to write a book about my adventures in night life security. I won’t spoil the book by giving you a lot of bouncing stories now (that’s me covering my ass legally while also appearing to have artistic integrity), but if any friends or family ever get worried about me and my work I want you to consider your reaction to a 6’5” 350lb man walking aggressively towards you and saying “walk away right now!” and remember I am that man and your reaction is pretty much everyone else’s reaction as well.
In other work related news you may have heard the official announcement that me and Travis Legge have finished writing and plan on producing a feature length romantic comedy called “Dry Spell” starring Suzi Loraine. I’m so proud of the work we have done so far and I can not begin to describe how excited I am to start shooting.
What you have not heard, and you can consider this my official announcement, I have written a short that I plan on producing at roughly the same time as the feature. The short is called “One Night Stand” and I plan on releasing more details over the next month about both projects.
Business aside I have been feeling a bit out of sorts lately. My roommate would probably call it “bitchy” and that wouldn’t be off base. I’ve decided that every now and again I need to embrace my nomadic tendencies otherwise I get lazy, complacent and a general pain in the ass to be around. In an effort to remedy this I am heading to Philly tomorrow for a few days to stay with a dear friend and some of her friends which are total strangers to me (which makes it more fun for me honestly). Happy hippies, music, food, and stepping foot in a city and state I have never been to before...it’s shaping up to be a great week.
20 Dollar bus ticket, 2 hour drive time, a bag full of clothes, my harps, a book, and my music, pair that with my overwhelming wanderlust and I would call that a recipe for adventure and the formula for grabbing a piece of life’s marrow.
I love you all
KD-
In other work related news you may have heard the official announcement that me and Travis Legge have finished writing and plan on producing a feature length romantic comedy called “Dry Spell” starring Suzi Loraine. I’m so proud of the work we have done so far and I can not begin to describe how excited I am to start shooting.
What you have not heard, and you can consider this my official announcement, I have written a short that I plan on producing at roughly the same time as the feature. The short is called “One Night Stand” and I plan on releasing more details over the next month about both projects.
Business aside I have been feeling a bit out of sorts lately. My roommate would probably call it “bitchy” and that wouldn’t be off base. I’ve decided that every now and again I need to embrace my nomadic tendencies otherwise I get lazy, complacent and a general pain in the ass to be around. In an effort to remedy this I am heading to Philly tomorrow for a few days to stay with a dear friend and some of her friends which are total strangers to me (which makes it more fun for me honestly). Happy hippies, music, food, and stepping foot in a city and state I have never been to before...it’s shaping up to be a great week.
20 Dollar bus ticket, 2 hour drive time, a bag full of clothes, my harps, a book, and my music, pair that with my overwhelming wanderlust and I would call that a recipe for adventure and the formula for grabbing a piece of life’s marrow.
I love you all
KD-
Monday, January 2, 2012
The End Of The Beginning...
Happy New Year and good luck to you on the goals you have resolved yourself to accomplishing. Last year I was ringing in the New Year at a rave and the state of my life was that of constant volatility. I was consistently teetering on the edge of financial destitution and I was entertaining a number of less than healthy and dramatically unproductive attachments.
Keeping that in mind it seems almost prophetic that I spent the beginning of 2011 with the people who would eventually help me in achieving every goal I had set, and some goals I was yet to set for 2011. I could smell it in the air when the year started that this would be a painful but productive year and now look at me.
In 365 days I managed to destroy and reconstruct my entire life, again, and arrange it in a way that looks as if it may just be sustainable long term. Which leaves me with the obvious question that hangs over every January 1st, “what next?” What goals have I set where do I foresee my life going in the next 365 days?
Practically and vocationally I am going to be making a short and hopefully a feature before the year is over and I plan on finishing up a couple books I had started writing years ago as well as starting a couple more. I am excited about those prospects but what is truly important is how I plan on approaching my journey now that I have managed to, god help me, get used to the struggle and even manage it.
I said in a recent status update that my resolution was to make a lot of terrible decisions seamlessly and without incident. What I really mean by that is that I am not going to preoccupy myself with the survival. I have survival down and where sacrifices need to be made to keep that rolling I will make them but in the struggle of 2011 I have not been carnivorously and ferociously hunting down life to poach it’s marrow from every imaginable hiding place.
I plan on seeking out every experience worth having both in the cathedrals of the “common place” and the forbidden woods of the taboo. I am dedicating myself to the adventure and the journey and in doing so will recapture the inspiration that has been lacking recently due to exhaustion.
Life has spent a great deal of time fighting me against the ropes and I had felt a waning in my passion, I had sweat out all my piss and vinegar. Fortunately for me the last 6 months or so have been a time of recovery and heeling and I appear to have gotten my second wind.
The short version? To make Thoreau ashamed of how passively he pursued life and to search out experience like a blood hound so that I may be able to revel in the telling of it, in the reliving of my exploits through prose, poetry, film and any forum that I can get my greedy hands on.
The beginning of my story has ended, its time for the juicy parts now.
I love you all
KH-
Keeping that in mind it seems almost prophetic that I spent the beginning of 2011 with the people who would eventually help me in achieving every goal I had set, and some goals I was yet to set for 2011. I could smell it in the air when the year started that this would be a painful but productive year and now look at me.
In 365 days I managed to destroy and reconstruct my entire life, again, and arrange it in a way that looks as if it may just be sustainable long term. Which leaves me with the obvious question that hangs over every January 1st, “what next?” What goals have I set where do I foresee my life going in the next 365 days?
Practically and vocationally I am going to be making a short and hopefully a feature before the year is over and I plan on finishing up a couple books I had started writing years ago as well as starting a couple more. I am excited about those prospects but what is truly important is how I plan on approaching my journey now that I have managed to, god help me, get used to the struggle and even manage it.
I said in a recent status update that my resolution was to make a lot of terrible decisions seamlessly and without incident. What I really mean by that is that I am not going to preoccupy myself with the survival. I have survival down and where sacrifices need to be made to keep that rolling I will make them but in the struggle of 2011 I have not been carnivorously and ferociously hunting down life to poach it’s marrow from every imaginable hiding place.
I plan on seeking out every experience worth having both in the cathedrals of the “common place” and the forbidden woods of the taboo. I am dedicating myself to the adventure and the journey and in doing so will recapture the inspiration that has been lacking recently due to exhaustion.
Life has spent a great deal of time fighting me against the ropes and I had felt a waning in my passion, I had sweat out all my piss and vinegar. Fortunately for me the last 6 months or so have been a time of recovery and heeling and I appear to have gotten my second wind.
The short version? To make Thoreau ashamed of how passively he pursued life and to search out experience like a blood hound so that I may be able to revel in the telling of it, in the reliving of my exploits through prose, poetry, film and any forum that I can get my greedy hands on.
The beginning of my story has ended, its time for the juicy parts now.
I love you all
KH-
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
New York Yr1 Day 98 Walk Down The Right Alley In New York City...
I realized recently that I have been using this blog for it’s purpose (to update loved ones on my status) but I haven’t been using it for it’s potential. I have a drive for entertainment, I have a readership that would like to hear about the experiences and unique stories I have about this city, why am I boring you all with the broad strokes when I could be entertaining you with the details? That being said look forward to more activity here and activity that is a bit more worth the read.
Whenever I hang out with my friend Crystal I always end up in settings that appeal to my inner punk noir sensibilities and having a damn good time while I’m at it. So when she asked me to go to a “suspension” party with her I jumped all over it. If you don’t know there are two ideas of what a suspension party entails. In the fetish world it simply refers to tying up scantily clad volunteers and hanging them from a rafter or some other weight baring apparatus...this was not that.
This suspension party entails piercing the back or chest of a volunteer with hooks, attaching those hooks to a pulley system attached to rafters and lifting them off the ground. I am sure you have seen something similar on riply’s believe it or not. Well believe it or not there is a subculture of performers and thrill seekers who live for this activity.
The night starts with me and Crystal waiting outside of the building for the (for lack of a better word) leader of the group to let us in. The entrance to this place was in possibly the darkest alley in Brooklyn and I am smoking a cigarette wearing a suit because I had just come from work...yes...I am a Sin City character.
We walk up the staircase, walk through a large metal door and enter an apartment I can only describe as being an artists loft. It was a large room that struck me as being a part of a warehouse. Blue wooden floors, high ceilings, the apartment would have been big enough to fit a skaters half pipe. I hesitate to even call it an apartment I only do so because people live there but it really was like a small warehouse space.
I watched the eyes of everyone as they tried to work out my purpose there. The people here were a mixture of technicolor raver kids and tattooed, pierced rockers who had no idea what to make of the 6’4” man wearing a suit with a red tie that just walked into their den. The entire thing cracked me up because these are the kinds of people who's company I preferred in high school and to be honest they looked like the kind of people I imagined most of my family hanging out with growing up. Still I understood the apprehension and it passed quickly once I took a swig of someone’s vodka, lit a cigarette and started taking part in the festivities.
I enjoyed meeting some new people and feeling out the crowd but as soon as people sat down to get their backs pierced I kept an ear on whatever conversation I was in but the majority of my attention was on the isolated sterile area where people where having large metal spikes shoved through the slack skin of their backs. I was at no time repulsed or grossed out just utterly fascinated.
I wasn’t just fascinated by the piercings but also of the professionalism involved. These are not a bunch of dumb drunk kids, in fact if you are going to suspend or help pierce you are sober the entire night. This also wasn’t about cheap thrills but about achieving a level of transcendence, pushing your limits, overcoming fears and physical barriers. I got to witness this time and again this night because the majority of people going up were first timers.
The first girl I saw going up was such a pleasant, lovely hippy girl. She made waffles for everyone and had a huge smile on her face the entire night. Getting pierced was no problem for her and I could see the excitement and fear on her face when they hooked the hooks up to the (I believe the technical term is) ring.
The man on the pulley rope pulled the slack of the rope and this girl was on her tippy toes trying to pump herself up enough to jump. I saw the pain on her face as her skin pulled away from her body, I saw her face flush and the tears start to well up. She gritted her teeth and listened intently to the positive affirmations of the man helping her. She stood there trying to get over the pain for a long time before she was ready. She stepped forward twice, back three steps, forward four, back five and than she jumped up and the pull man held on tight.
In that instant everyone watching started to applaud. She asked to be put down pretty shortly after and she tried to get off the ground again but the second go round was too much for her. Regardless she overcame something, she fought an inner battle and for a brief shining moment she won.
On the total other end of the spectrum I saw a second girl go up who dove right in and was dancing mid air like a ballerina on meat hooks for 15 minutes. I saw some of the regular guys do some performing and I got to see one girl go up by her knees. She made it but it didn’t look pleasant.
The way Crystal explains it these people will be feeling an endorphin high for the next week and I wont lie I was a little jealous of them. Not enough to do it but it takes guts to face the fear of pain, to face the fear of the unknown, to overcome that way. Not only that but it looks amazing.
My life here is continually filled with new awe inspiring experiences and it surprises me that I can still be surprised and delighted. I love doing something that I would have never had the opportunity to do otherwise simply because of where I lay my head. What I love more is the realization that this is not over, these things will continue to happen as long as I keep an open mind because new, inspiring, strange and different things happen here every day.
I love you all
KH
Whenever I hang out with my friend Crystal I always end up in settings that appeal to my inner punk noir sensibilities and having a damn good time while I’m at it. So when she asked me to go to a “suspension” party with her I jumped all over it. If you don’t know there are two ideas of what a suspension party entails. In the fetish world it simply refers to tying up scantily clad volunteers and hanging them from a rafter or some other weight baring apparatus...this was not that.
This suspension party entails piercing the back or chest of a volunteer with hooks, attaching those hooks to a pulley system attached to rafters and lifting them off the ground. I am sure you have seen something similar on riply’s believe it or not. Well believe it or not there is a subculture of performers and thrill seekers who live for this activity.
The night starts with me and Crystal waiting outside of the building for the (for lack of a better word) leader of the group to let us in. The entrance to this place was in possibly the darkest alley in Brooklyn and I am smoking a cigarette wearing a suit because I had just come from work...yes...I am a Sin City character.
We walk up the staircase, walk through a large metal door and enter an apartment I can only describe as being an artists loft. It was a large room that struck me as being a part of a warehouse. Blue wooden floors, high ceilings, the apartment would have been big enough to fit a skaters half pipe. I hesitate to even call it an apartment I only do so because people live there but it really was like a small warehouse space.
I watched the eyes of everyone as they tried to work out my purpose there. The people here were a mixture of technicolor raver kids and tattooed, pierced rockers who had no idea what to make of the 6’4” man wearing a suit with a red tie that just walked into their den. The entire thing cracked me up because these are the kinds of people who's company I preferred in high school and to be honest they looked like the kind of people I imagined most of my family hanging out with growing up. Still I understood the apprehension and it passed quickly once I took a swig of someone’s vodka, lit a cigarette and started taking part in the festivities.
I enjoyed meeting some new people and feeling out the crowd but as soon as people sat down to get their backs pierced I kept an ear on whatever conversation I was in but the majority of my attention was on the isolated sterile area where people where having large metal spikes shoved through the slack skin of their backs. I was at no time repulsed or grossed out just utterly fascinated.
I wasn’t just fascinated by the piercings but also of the professionalism involved. These are not a bunch of dumb drunk kids, in fact if you are going to suspend or help pierce you are sober the entire night. This also wasn’t about cheap thrills but about achieving a level of transcendence, pushing your limits, overcoming fears and physical barriers. I got to witness this time and again this night because the majority of people going up were first timers.
The first girl I saw going up was such a pleasant, lovely hippy girl. She made waffles for everyone and had a huge smile on her face the entire night. Getting pierced was no problem for her and I could see the excitement and fear on her face when they hooked the hooks up to the (I believe the technical term is) ring.
The man on the pulley rope pulled the slack of the rope and this girl was on her tippy toes trying to pump herself up enough to jump. I saw the pain on her face as her skin pulled away from her body, I saw her face flush and the tears start to well up. She gritted her teeth and listened intently to the positive affirmations of the man helping her. She stood there trying to get over the pain for a long time before she was ready. She stepped forward twice, back three steps, forward four, back five and than she jumped up and the pull man held on tight.
In that instant everyone watching started to applaud. She asked to be put down pretty shortly after and she tried to get off the ground again but the second go round was too much for her. Regardless she overcame something, she fought an inner battle and for a brief shining moment she won.
On the total other end of the spectrum I saw a second girl go up who dove right in and was dancing mid air like a ballerina on meat hooks for 15 minutes. I saw some of the regular guys do some performing and I got to see one girl go up by her knees. She made it but it didn’t look pleasant.
The way Crystal explains it these people will be feeling an endorphin high for the next week and I wont lie I was a little jealous of them. Not enough to do it but it takes guts to face the fear of pain, to face the fear of the unknown, to overcome that way. Not only that but it looks amazing.
My life here is continually filled with new awe inspiring experiences and it surprises me that I can still be surprised and delighted. I love doing something that I would have never had the opportunity to do otherwise simply because of where I lay my head. What I love more is the realization that this is not over, these things will continue to happen as long as I keep an open mind because new, inspiring, strange and different things happen here every day.
I love you all
KH
Saturday, November 5, 2011
New York Yr1 Day 79 ...sup life...
Productivity, stability and serendipity. Those are the words that can best describe my life since the last time I updated you. In a strange turn of events my life has kind of come together. The evil troll known as hogell moved out (not without causing some physical damage to the apartment first of course) and I moved my things in.
The rhythm of the universe has finally caught up with me and one thing after another keeps falling into my lap. I found a job passing out flyers that kept my head above water just long enough to land myself a doorman job and a job at Godiva.
I was actually recruited for both jobs while either selling or promoting on the street. Apart from the practical, my life, my ego, my sense of self and well being have all been finding a kind of harmony. October came and went and I survived it, more than that I thrived.
I fully expected a heart wrenching month, the 1 year anniversary of my mothers death and the single most devastating moment of my life and it wasn’t impossible to get through. Tears happened but they were good tears. They were tears of healing and catharsis, they were tears of acceptance and understanding, they were the kind of tears that baptize you and bring a sense of emotional and spiritual salvation.
I am not one to believe that one “sticks around” after their passing but this October I felt the presence of my mother and it was palatable and I knew that while the pain will follow me for the rest of my life it serves no one for me to bare it like a cross. This is a pain that becomes apart of your skin and my mother’s memory is not honored by me cutting into this wound again and again in an effort to “not forget her”.
This acceptance and growth wouldn’t have even been fathomable without the friends I’ve made here. It’s like I just woke up one day to find that I had cultivated my very own NYC family. I have a real, honest to goodness home with a circle of people that honestly love me. This journey has made me a new person, I’m still figuring it out and I’m still in the middle of a metamorphosis but as of right now, for the first time in what feels like the past four years I have a moment to take a deep breath.
“But Kyle what about the reason you went to New York in the first place?” Yeah I know, all my posts have almost nothing to do with my acting or writing career. Well this year I guess I just needed to become the kind of man that could legitimately chase this dream. I had the ambition but not the tools.
Now I feel I have both. I am not auditioning, I have decided I will not be happy with the show unless I’m running it; so I have written a 20 min short that I plan on producing before the end of the year. I’m going to start fund raising for it in the next month so keep an eye out for that.
This project will serve as my acting, directing, writing, editing and production portfolio and with any luck it will bring me work I can really sink my teeth into. But I know I wont be sated by just making shorts and features and putting myself in them. This dream just got bigger and hopefully with the help from some talented friends both from good ol’ Rockford and from NYC I can put together a production company that is a resource not only for our own projects but something that is a resource for all kinds of filmmakers.
I feel like I finally have the know how, the ambition and the faith to get this done. All I needed was a few years of hell and a moment of clarity to make me see it all.
In short?...sup life
I love you all
KH-
The rhythm of the universe has finally caught up with me and one thing after another keeps falling into my lap. I found a job passing out flyers that kept my head above water just long enough to land myself a doorman job and a job at Godiva.
I was actually recruited for both jobs while either selling or promoting on the street. Apart from the practical, my life, my ego, my sense of self and well being have all been finding a kind of harmony. October came and went and I survived it, more than that I thrived.
I fully expected a heart wrenching month, the 1 year anniversary of my mothers death and the single most devastating moment of my life and it wasn’t impossible to get through. Tears happened but they were good tears. They were tears of healing and catharsis, they were tears of acceptance and understanding, they were the kind of tears that baptize you and bring a sense of emotional and spiritual salvation.
I am not one to believe that one “sticks around” after their passing but this October I felt the presence of my mother and it was palatable and I knew that while the pain will follow me for the rest of my life it serves no one for me to bare it like a cross. This is a pain that becomes apart of your skin and my mother’s memory is not honored by me cutting into this wound again and again in an effort to “not forget her”.
This acceptance and growth wouldn’t have even been fathomable without the friends I’ve made here. It’s like I just woke up one day to find that I had cultivated my very own NYC family. I have a real, honest to goodness home with a circle of people that honestly love me. This journey has made me a new person, I’m still figuring it out and I’m still in the middle of a metamorphosis but as of right now, for the first time in what feels like the past four years I have a moment to take a deep breath.
“But Kyle what about the reason you went to New York in the first place?” Yeah I know, all my posts have almost nothing to do with my acting or writing career. Well this year I guess I just needed to become the kind of man that could legitimately chase this dream. I had the ambition but not the tools.
Now I feel I have both. I am not auditioning, I have decided I will not be happy with the show unless I’m running it; so I have written a 20 min short that I plan on producing before the end of the year. I’m going to start fund raising for it in the next month so keep an eye out for that.
This project will serve as my acting, directing, writing, editing and production portfolio and with any luck it will bring me work I can really sink my teeth into. But I know I wont be sated by just making shorts and features and putting myself in them. This dream just got bigger and hopefully with the help from some talented friends both from good ol’ Rockford and from NYC I can put together a production company that is a resource not only for our own projects but something that is a resource for all kinds of filmmakers.
I feel like I finally have the know how, the ambition and the faith to get this done. All I needed was a few years of hell and a moment of clarity to make me see it all.
In short?...sup life
I love you all
KH-
Sunday, September 11, 2011
New York Yr 1 Day 24 "9/11"
A couple walked up to me tonight, he had his arm around her, she was pressing against him. They looked older than they were. They walked up to me with hope and sadness in there eyes telling a story of loss I couldn’t begin to speculate on. They seemed frail and weary and the last thing I expected them to ask about was my comedy show.
“You have a comedy show tonight?” They asked. “I do would you like to hear about it?” I said with all the pep and confidence you would expect from a salesman and the tenderness of understanding and foresight you wouldn’t.
The woman shrugged, they looked at me again and said , with meek but sincere smiles they struggled to maintain through out our conversation, “We just really want to laugh” and I could tell written on their faces the word need where want was spoken.
I began my show description no longer in the tone of a salesman but with the soft voice of hope, making certain to take any hint of patronization or pity out of my voice and leaving only tenderness and reassurance, listing off the names of the comedians as if to say “for a night, yes, yes I can help you forget.” I toyed with the idea of giving them the tickets out of my pocket but that just seemed like pity to me and these two deserved better. I cut them the best deal I could and it was still the saddest sale I had ever made.
The remainder of the night was spent with militant determination. It was a Sunday and the kick off of football season and if we didn’t sell enough tickets (which was entirely possible under these conditions) we wouldn’t have a show...and I needed that couple to have a show.
It turned out to be a better sales night than was expected and moments before show time I saw that couple across the street laughing with some friends, truly enjoying the night in a way only two people determined to focus on the joys of the world could. They drank in the laughter, it moved their entire being, they were savoring it as if it were their first drops of joy after a long and tedious drought.
...it was a good night...
I love you all
KH-
“You have a comedy show tonight?” They asked. “I do would you like to hear about it?” I said with all the pep and confidence you would expect from a salesman and the tenderness of understanding and foresight you wouldn’t.
The woman shrugged, they looked at me again and said , with meek but sincere smiles they struggled to maintain through out our conversation, “We just really want to laugh” and I could tell written on their faces the word need where want was spoken.
I began my show description no longer in the tone of a salesman but with the soft voice of hope, making certain to take any hint of patronization or pity out of my voice and leaving only tenderness and reassurance, listing off the names of the comedians as if to say “for a night, yes, yes I can help you forget.” I toyed with the idea of giving them the tickets out of my pocket but that just seemed like pity to me and these two deserved better. I cut them the best deal I could and it was still the saddest sale I had ever made.
The remainder of the night was spent with militant determination. It was a Sunday and the kick off of football season and if we didn’t sell enough tickets (which was entirely possible under these conditions) we wouldn’t have a show...and I needed that couple to have a show.
It turned out to be a better sales night than was expected and moments before show time I saw that couple across the street laughing with some friends, truly enjoying the night in a way only two people determined to focus on the joys of the world could. They drank in the laughter, it moved their entire being, they were savoring it as if it were their first drops of joy after a long and tedious drought.
...it was a good night...
I love you all
KH-
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