Month: April 2017

Spinning Art

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Inspired by The Daily Post: Yarn

I come from a family of storytellers.

My earliest memories are of the family folklore as told by my father, his cousin, his two sisters.

It was something I loved as a child. Listening as they worked their tongue magic, savoring details, their limbs and faces in lively animation. Laughter would erupt from all of the adults and the older kids, and I would feel buoyed by the effervescence in the room. I couldn’t follow the stories per se, but I loved the way the room felt.

My father was perhaps the best of them. He had a presence that commanded attention and he used it well. He also had an understanding of the use of a pause for dramatic build, and used this as deftly as Bruce Lee used his signature one inch punch.

However, my Aunt often elicited the strongest responses with the often shocking sexual innuendos that she had learned to weave into the fabric of her tellings. She worked bawdiness like a pro, and often had us teary-eyed with aching sides.

Once I became a teenager, of course, I became less than enthusiastic of their talents, these yarn-spinners.

I had no appreciation then that these stories had been developed over many re-tellings. That what might appear to an observer to be a spontaneously shared anecdote was actually a nuanced and practiced yarn, carefully spun over time, punchlines and timing finely honed through repeated sharing at family gatherings over the years.

I also had not yet developed an understanding or respect for this kind oral storytelling, that it is actually an experience wherein the storyteller and the audience create live art together. As an actor, as a human, I appreciate that more and more every year.

I think they call it a yarn for this reason: the storyteller connects the listeners together through the shared experience of the story itself. My memories of our family together are held together by the colorful threads of those yarns. I am connected to those people by these invisible strings. They live on in my heart.

Today, I relish my memories of these two masters at work. My Aunt still holds court at family gatherings, but my dad has since died. I have to rely on conjuring up sense memories of his booming voice and that devilish timing. My husband tries to re-create some of the best around his family. I’m glad they are given continued life through his breath.

Fortunately, I married into an Irish family. To my delight, I am able to witness an even stronger oral storytelling tradition through them. Talk about masters at weaving yarn! I think the Irish have perfected the art.

#storytelling #oralstorytelling #yarnspinning

 

Eau du vie

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I’d hurry up if I had to go in after she did

Try to hold my breath

Didn’t want to smell Gran’s scent

Coudn’t put my finger on it

Something musky, something stale

I didn’t know then what it was

But it made me feel scared

She’s long since gone

But I smelled it today

I know what is is now

The perfume of age

Daily prompt: perfume

# perfume #dailyprompt #aging

 

Danger Will Robinson!

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If you are old enough to get the reference of the title of this blog, you may share my opinion on the word “someday” because you’ve lived enough days to have noticed a few things.

If not, here’s some context. Will Robinson was a character on the series “Lost in Space” that ran in the 1960’s. It was long in reruns by the time I watched it: my high school friends and I would watch it on Saturdays, hungover, laughing at the campy melodrama. It had a robot in it, and in one particular episode, the robot warned Will of impending danger. (I also remember one episode where I think the robot actually said “take a chill pill” too, but we might have been playing a drinking game then so who knows if that really happened.) But I digress.

I believe that there are some words and concepts that are dangerous. “Someday” is one of those words.

An adverb, it is defined as: at some time in the future. As in: I know someday my whole family will be together and happy.

It is a word to hang your hopes on.  Hopes for dreams coming true: “I’ll be a star someday.” Hopes of people’s poor behavior righting itself: “Someday, they will treat me better.” Hopes of exacting revenge: “Someday, they will be sorry.” (These are completely random examples, of course. Totally random samples.)

Seems pretty innocuous, right? What’s wrong with a little hope?

The problem happens when you start living so much for “someday” that you stop living this day.

I know firsthand that it’s possible to live from a deeply buried “someday” mentality and not even realize it. To live floating so much on that hope of the ever-elusive day in the future that life becomes the way you so desperately want it to, that life becomes a stream of yesterdays that weren’t really todays at all because the siren call of “someday” muted the music of the moment. I couldn’t even see what was because I was so fixated on and attached to visions of what I wanted life to be. I landed shipwrecked on the boulders of la-la-land, which before last year used to be a term that described “a fanciful state or dreamworld.” To put it another way, I awakened to the ugly and hard truth that I was way off course.

Once I realized that I was living from this hidden “someday” philosophy, after the shock wore off, and the anger, I had to forgive myself. After all, I was conditioned to live the world of “someday.” I grew up on fairy tales filled with songs like “A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes.”

And “Someday my Prince Will Come.”

I literally took these songs to heart, and they shaped my view of the world.

I am not blaming Disney! (But there is something to be said about the powerful affect of replaying songs hundreds of times. Don’t they use that technique to break prisoners? Isn’t that a kind of brainwashing?) I love those songs.

But they promise. And “promise,” like “hope” and “potential, ” are words and concepts that can be used for the better or for the worse. They are potent. They are to be measured for use.

These days, I watch myself. I steer myself away from using words like “someday.” I practice gratitude for today, this present day. For what is, not what I wish will be. Yes, I have wishes and dreams. But I also have goals and action plans. I am not adverse to a little hope in my heart. I love me a Disney movie and sing those songs right along with the best of them.

But I live in today. My yesterdays are well-lived and appreciated. My tomorrows are what my todays become. They are the result of today, not the point of them.

My “someday” is now.

#livefortoday #carpediem

via Daily Prompt: Someday

Unnecessary Loss

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Where oh where did you go

Oh Blankie of mine?

Who would I be now

if it’d been up to me to let you go?

They just saw tatters of a well-worn blanket

An outgrown toy, a nuisance, embarrassing proof of their failed parental skills

You were the key to my security on this spinning planet

My anchor, my buddy

Maybe it would have made all the difference

I wouldn’t still carry this feeling that there’s no thing and no one on this earth to truly rest my heart on

This ever-constant ache for more of something I can never put my finger on yet can never have enough of

One day you were just gone

No one would tell me where you’d gone to

Which was worse — thinking you’d abandoned me

Or that they’d betrayed me?

What book suggested that solution

Was it you, Dr. Spock?

I know, I know

“I am my own Blankie now”

Fuck that.

 

#blanket #childrearing #loss #betrayal

Daily Prompt: Blanket

Roots for a Generation

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Inspired by The Daily Prompt: Roots

Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, television was a profound presence in our home.

My earliest memories are of hearing the word “Watergate” being discussed on nightly news. I don’t recall images or specifics, but I do remember wandering through the room and the adults being very interested in the TV screen.

I remember loving Romper Room with every fiber of my being, awaiting the day when the hostess would say my name as she held her magic TV mirror up in front of her face at the end of the show, calling out to little viewers in their living rooms as if she could rally see us there. (If you are too young to have any idea of what I am referring to, this is what I am talking about.)

But the biggest television event from my youth (pre-MTV that is) was, hands-down, Roots.

Roots was a 1977 miniseries based on a book written by Alex Haley. It was the story of African teen Kunta Kinte, brought to America to be enslaved, and the generations of his family and eventual emancipation.
A remake was made in 2016, and it once again became a television event. But the impact it had in 1977 can never be repeated. It was a different time.
In 1977, it was pretty huge that network TV was devoting so much time to an African American story. And we didn’t have the internet. Our cultural exposure was limited to television, films, art and books. As a young person, television was pretty much all.
And to my middle class, fairly all-white community, Roots brought to full technicolor glory some of the stories that had only been read about (barely and I am sure very biased-ly) in our history books.
I remember clutching pillows and crying, feeling outrage and shock at the outrageousness of the treatment of Kunta Kinte and his family. My friends and I talked about what we saw on-screen at school the day after the episodes. It opened our little minds up to whole other realities of our history.
According to Wikipedia: Roots received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which still holds a record as the third highest rated episode for any type of television series, and the second most watched overall series finale in U.S. television history.
Apparently, the making of the miniseries was quite controversial in that the executives are afraid it would bomb. The Museum of Broadcast Communications recounts the apprehensions that Roots would flop, and how this made ABC prepare the format:

Familiar television actors like American [sic] actor Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Edward Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley’s novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade. Even the show’s consecutive-night format allegedly resulted from network apprehensions. ABC programming chief Fred Silverman hoped that the unusual schedule would cut his network’s imminent losses—and get Roots off the air before sweeps week.

— Encyclopedia of Television, Museum of Broadcast Communications
 All important to examine today, and I am sure there are wonderful articles that analyze and explore such things much better than I can, but I didn’t know any of that then.
Then it was just a really riveting and important piece of television, one that told the stories of people and of a time in American history about whom I knew very little about up until that point.
I am so grateful for that. Historically accurate or not, it brought into our living room and into our classrooms another way of understanding who we were, where we had come from. It was a powerful use of the medium of television, and it opened up more than a few minds, I hope, to considering more than just what we had been told about America up until that point.
May there be many more “Roots”-inspired works to come. Maybe now more than ever we need such powerful television to be created.
#Roots #television #powerfulstories

Comes the light

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When you live in darkness and the light finally comes

The dark doesn’t just “fall away” the way the say it will.

It’s still there, waiting for you

like a terrified child awaiting an adult’s comfort.

So there’s that.

But what about what’s in-between dark and light?

There’s all that gray.

Harder to look at than the deep of dark

or the bright of light.

Easy to dismiss what’s in shadow.

But something important that lives there

needs freeing too.

Inspired by The Daily Post Prompt: Gray

 

Spike

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One of the more interesting “day jobs” I have had as an actress was selling products on one of the major home shopping channels.

Or should I use the official term “guest product specialist?” Sounds more important, right? “I was a Guest Product Specialist.”

At the time, green and eager, I was thrilled when my agent told me I had booked the gig. It would be a challenge! It would be live television! I glossed over the fact that I was essentially a sales person. I was going to be live on television and that was exciting. (And scary.)

The studios were located outside of a small town in the Tri-state area. I lived in Manhattan, so that meant a 2- 3 hour drive there and back for each airing depending on traffic, but I didn’t mind that. I loved traveling for acting work. It made me feel sophisticated, like a true “working actor.”

So what if some of those airings would be at ungodly hours like 4:25 AM? I was a professional! This was exciting!

I went through the training that the home shopping channel requires of all its potential “guest product specialists.” Some of it was on-line, essentially to introduce us to their approach to sales. The final part was a trial on-camera segment with one of the real hosts. When the trial came, I was so nervous, but the host I was paired with was just exactly how they seem on the channel: she was great at her job and charismatic enough to make me feel like I was her very best friend in those minutes together on-camera.

Described as a kind of dance, the synergy between the host and the guest specialist is very important to a successful home shopping channel sell. As the guest specialist, you are coming into the hosts’s “home,” so they are given the lead, but as the specialist, you are the one with the details and the passion. I felt like I was in a spell under the capable host’s lead. What was an 8 minute segment flew by in a blur that felt like 2 minutes.

After reviewing my taped segment with a producer, I was told that I passed. I was ready to start going on the channel to sell my product live.

And so my home shopping channel career began.

One of the products I sold was used in hot weather months. It was a personal comfort item that was used to help cool the body in the heat. So my sales pitch included a large table, several mannequin heads and some lucite display trees. I brought the heads in a rolling suitcase, as well as samples of the product, but the table and the lucite trees I had to hunt down and borrow from production for my segment. I’d find what I needed and set myself up in the assigned studio, then go to hair and makeup, and then sit in the green room to await my pre-sell 1- 2 minute meeting with the host to go over the features of my product.

Hair and makeup was a hoot. Sometimes I would be in there at the same time as one of the celebrity guest product specialists (think Joan Rivers or someone like that) or one of the top-selling guest specialists who had become the stars of the home shopping network because they’d sold millions of dollars’ worth of their product on the channel. A part of me could not help but be in a bit of awe of these people. Everyone else certainly acted as if they were awe-worthy. These were the homecoming kings and queens of this microcosm, and they knew it, too.

Many of the other quest specialists had worked hard to get their product on the show. I was in awe of them as well. Some had invented their product and this was their shot to “make it.” I could sense that in some cases, everything was on the line for them: all of their hopes and dreams of making a good living at this, and who knows what else?

There was always a mix of us waiting to do our thing. Everyone was jacked up no matter the hour.

I especially loved doing sells in the middle of the night because the studio was being run on a skeleton crew and it felt like I had the run of the place. It was a super high to sell when it was in the selling shank of the day and things were buzzing, but the quiet of the darker studio suited my pre-sell jitters. I could get very grounded and prepared essentially on my own. Sometimes it seemed hard to believe that a sell was actually going to happen, it was that quiet and dark. But just when I’d begun to panic that maybe I was in the wrong location, a camera person would show up, the lights would flood on and at the very last moment, a golf cart would zip the host over from some other part of the studio and we’d start the dance.

I had a demonstration, or “demo” in my sell: a bowl containing one of the ingredients of the item I was selling. I would plunge a thermometer into the bowl to show to the television audience that this item would cause the temperature to plummet, a definite plus in product promising relief in hot weather.

I would come to learn that these demos where key to a successful sell.

I would also learn that the hosts were juggling many different things as they danced with the guests specialist. They were in constant communication (as was I) via an earpiece in one ear with the producer who was running the show. But they also had an earpiece in their other ear and were also hearing simultaneous real time feedback from the line producer.  So the host was having a live on tv conversation with me, while also taking information from the producer and the line producer. If there was a caller on the line, that added a fourth dimension to their roster. These people had to be able to be incredibly focused: their ability to keep so many balls in the air in their minds and seem totally present and charming at the same time was quite amazing.

The line producer would be keeping an eye on sales as the sell progressed, and if there was a spike in sales, they would tell the host, so that the host would know what out of what we’d just done or had been talking about had moved people to pick up their phone or get on their computer and buy. The host would then go back to whatever it was in an effort to spike the sales again and again.

Maybe it was the mention of a particular specific use for that product, or perhaps I had painted a picture with a particular word that had ben particularly affecting. Maybe it was the plunge of the thermometer into the bowl – the visual of the digital temperature going down. Maybe it was the host putting the product on and responding with an “Oooohhhh, that feels so cool.”

You wanted those “spikes.” You knew if you were getting spikes you were getting sales, and sales, after all, were the name of the game.

shutterstock_444455845

You’d finesse repeating whatever it was that had created the spike, whilst trying to appear in the moment of whatever conversation point you were in. It was a delicate part of the dance, and it was exciting, because you knew those spikes were making or breaking the success of the sell.

When it was over, I’d pack up my product and my mannequin heads and then go back to change back into my street clothes, eager to see how successful the sell had been. The people who hired me would have watched, and they’d have feedback and criticisms for me. What had I not gotten in? Where could I have taken more charge and gotten more of my points in over the host’s lead? That part was a bit nerve-wracking, as I had to abide by the shopping channel’s philosophies and yet serve my boss’ needs as well. Sometimes the two philosophies were at odds and I was in the middle, so I had to finesse the gap.

I was always grateful when it was all over and I was heading back home. It took a lot of energy and preparation for such a short “performance.” But I did love doing it all the same. It was a challenge, and I learned a lot during the year and a half I did it. It definitely helped me learn how to stay in the moment under high pressure. I developed terrific focus and concentration that has served me well for all my other acting work, particularly on-camera.

I look back now sort of in awe of myself. I jumped headfirst into that world, and I was pretty good at it. I was jumping off the skinny branches each time I went out for the dance to sell that product, and even though it was nerve-wracking every time, I have to say I loved the sensation. It was a rush.

But eventually, I got a tour of a musical that would have me away for the selling season. And thus, my career as a guest product specialist ended.

I sent back the mannequin heads and the samples, ready to embark on the next thing. But I carry with me that love of the spike, that desire to feel that jumping-off sensation. Not a bad thing to seek out, that feeling of being totally alive and in free-fall through the air, only to find that you can, indeed, rely on your own wings to get you to the next landing place.

#actorslife #dayjobs #salesjobs #takingflight #spike