Three Years

Officially three years ago I packed a duffle bag, a backpack and a grand and moved to a strange city I’d never stepped foot in. I’ve depended on the kindness of strangers. I know what manner of bed the concrete here makes. I’ve found family in darkness. I’ve lost so much. I’ve loved in more ways then I knew possible and I’ve been broken.

I came here expecting to throw my head shots to the wind and hope. I came here expecting to tap at this keyboard and write my way into a future. I’ve done a little bit of that. I made my words and the words of my friends come to life in a movie we can call our own. A movie that is doing fairly well considering. Mostly though I’ve been fulfilling my mother’s greatest wish for me.

“I just want him to get experiences.” That is what my mom said when asked what she felt about me moving to NYC. I couldn’t possibly have asked for a more varied education then the one I’ve gotten here.

Still my wanderlust whispers to me. I’m still not really sure where I am going. I’m still a lost boy finding shelter in the wilderness. The difference between today and then is that now I feel the wilderness, the uncertain, the unconventional, is where my future is and will always be.

This wandering life, this living by the seat of my pants recording what I see and hoping those records are worth reading, it stops being cute at a certain age. Then the real challenge begins. I’m not sure if my life from this point on will be a total and utter waste. I don’t know if I will die alone, unrecognized and disregarded in a dirty gutter somewhere or if I will die peacefully surrounded by my friends and loved ones. I just know it is too late to turn back now. I just know that this is where I am meant to be.

So I’ll try to stop questioning myself. I will say yes to the roads that call to me. I will let my heart be swayed and my ambitions change with the seasons. I will invest in what seems to stick around and disregard what is obviously a passing infatuation.

In three years what have I learned?

There is no script. People are so much more complicated than they appear. Love is so much more mysterious than I ever thought it could be. I am so much more lost than I originally thought.

I’ve learned I am large, I’ve learned I contain multitudes. *Walt Whitman*

I love you all

KH-

The Road So Far.

I have totally and shamefully abandoned this blog. It’s irresponsible of me really because I built the perfect story telling platform for myself and let it fall into disrepair before I knew what I had. I am going to try to recall and recount a few of the bigger more interesting stories that have happened since the last time I was active here and post them over the coming weeks.

Until then though I wanted to put pen to paper and reflect a bit on this blogs theme and how that is going for me so far. Everything has changed since I moved here and my passions have taken on a completely different form since I set out on this path.

When I moved here I had my eyes set on the screen. I was going to be an actor and I didn’t care what bench I had to sleep on, what dumpster I had to dive, or what sacrifices I had to make in order to get that done. I still intend on pursuing that to some degree but I learned something while making “Dry Spell” (www.indiegogo.com/watchdryspell for a copy it is out right now). I can not be satisfied with acting and acting alone.

I want to act but more than that I want to tell stories that I find important and relevant. I want to bring characters to life in such a way as to emirs someone in another person’s experiences...but I also want to be holding the pen that scrolls the story.

I always called myself a writer with a wink and a nod because it wasn’t my primary focus . And why would it be? For some reason I deluded myself into thinking that I didn’t enjoy it as much as acting and that it was some how more difficult. I don’t know what woke me up to how, not only ridiculous, but a little simple, this idea is.

I love acting and I love performing but writing has been the real common thread in my life and I am starting to accept that I have an aptitude for it and it would be irresponsible to ignore that. The older I get the more I start to realize that my mother was teaching me things I wouldn’t realize she was teaching me till much later.

When I was in High School I would come home and go on and on about my plans for acting. She used to say to me as she poured her glass of wine “just don’t forget writing, okay?” “I wont mom but I really like acting.” “I know you do but you are such a good writer, and I’m not saying you aren’t good at acting but I really enjoy your writing and I think it would be cool for you to do something with that.” That is an almost verbatim conversation I had with her over 8 years ago that hit me with startling clarity the other day when I was working on a new poem. She had no idea just how wonderful a mother she was.

I had an inkling that my focus would shift while Travis and I were writing Dry Spell but it wasn’t until I started to re-discover spoken word poetry where things finally clicked. Here is a medium that marries my two great loves, performing, and writing. It does this in such an elegant way that it is hard to believe I didn’t see it before.

I’m not saying I am packing my bags and hitting the road as a wondering poet (don’t think for a second I haven’t considered it though). I have made a new writing partner in my friend Cara, we have started a website to host our poetry (flatbrokepoets.com) and we are actively pursuing having our voices heard. However, at the end of the day, it all serves to remind me that I can have exactly what I want in really unique and unexpected ways as long as I stay open and receptive to all possibilities.

So now I set out to write myself into a new future. I told the world that I could do it all, act, perform, write and I finally think I’m starting to get a feel for what that might look like. This is all thanks in large part to an open mic in the East Village called “Penny’s Open Mic” as well as the hospitality and graciousness of the artists that inhabit that pandora’s box theater of inspiration. I think I will save that story for a later date. I will say that the people I am meeting there are beautiful burning angels of creativity and the support they lend is nothing short of life changing. When I am on that stage I have the attention of giants, and I damn well know it.

More to come.

I love you all.

KH-