Lazy day today. Against my better judgement, I ignored the voices that said I should be house cleaning and podcast editing, and lay down for a nap. I snoozed and just had a little daydream, which became a dissection of Lysistrata and why I don't like it. 

Then it occurred to me to write a play in the style of Greek tragedy (with some comic elements) in response to Lysistrata, and as a prequel to Phaedra, about Hippolyta and Theseus. 

Ended up scribbling a couple of pages in a notebook about the idea. Theseus wants to conquer the Amazons and make Hippolyta his queen; Hippolyta will bear his son, who eventually will cause Theseus to lose the Greek throne through his own stupidity. 

Essentially, she's playing a very long game against Theseus. 

There is a lot of reading that needs to be done before I can move any further. It may be that Hippolytus' mother is Hippolyta's sister, and he was named for his aunt. 

I don't know why I want to write another play right now. But I do. I also think it's nice that this idea came out of a Sunday afternoon nap; it feels like it came from good soil. 

Since April I've been working on posting once a week, though not here, and the title of the post is typically my current weight in pounds, starting at 220.

Oogy. I look quite different in the mirror. Still want to lose another 10lbs. It's more difficult with the colder weather coming in. Discipline. Or just bacon.

Unfairly annoyed with lack of progress on several life-related fronts. Had an "everything is the same, my life hasn't changed in 10 years, I've wasted the last decade" attack on Friday, said I was ready to just burn the house down (saving cats, backup data) and walk away. It's one of those things that surfaces now and then. Like many such attacks, the feeling is strong in the moment, and when the moment passes it's less urgent but still there as part of my psyche. 

How do people look back on their lives and value what they've done? I know I've done a lot of cool shit in the past 10 years. But sometimes it just feels like I've done nothing and have nothing to show for it. I suspect this is rooted in the "lack of multiple strong friendships and a good support network" problem. Which I am now feeling upset about. Great, thanks, journal counsellor. Now I need to talk myself down from freaking out again.

So Thursday we went to see a queer variety show; music, dance and theatre. Some good stuff there. The musical numbers were cute, even pleasant. Some disappointments in the theatrical performances. Learning more about theatre as a director has the super-power of seeing where problems are in productions. Like if there's a particular performer who clunks, that may just be bad acting, but if everyone is mostly on the same level, that's a director problem. Or if you get great acting moment-to-moment but scenes don't flow, or if need/intent isn't visible, also a director problem. Or if scenes just don't make sense, or don't connect together, that's a script problem. Or if an actor emotes well in some places but not others, or feels like they are not connecting to the audience or other actors. Could be a lack of warming up.... or it could be that rehearsals didn't really push the actor. 

By contrast, yesterday afternoon we saw HMS Pinafore put on by an amateur theatre group in another town (Guelph). It was really rather amazing to see a "little" theatre with 300 seats (half filled on a Saturday afternoon), a real stage, a lighting grid with catwalks, separate rehearsal space, workshops and so on. And a cast of 20 who all pulled their weight; not perfectly, but no clunker performances either. Decent directing, modest but adequate lighting and choreography. With a little pit band. And in a community 1/4 the size of ours. Makes one think. What are they doing right? What is our community doing wrong?

My friend James drove all the way the hell down from Brooklyn to play in a half-empty bar. He's playing his ass off. A bunch of dumb drunk bitches just showed up. One of them is giving him a look of pure disgust. She's blonde, with elfin looks, and I want to rip her hair out by its ugly dark roots and feed it to her. 

There's a play in this and I don't know what it is. 

First off: this is a ridiculous premise. There's no such thing as a "music problem." 

And yet...I have one. My iTunes music library currently stands at 18483 items - if I listened to one song at a time without sleeping, I'd be entertained for almost 48 days straight before I heard any repeats. I'd also probably be dead, but that's another story. 

               Not that you want proof for something like this, but here it is
               anyway. Note my careful choosing of visible cool band/album
               in my totally "random screenshot." No novice, I.

But my song collection isn't my problem. Even though it's become a cliché to say it (or tiresome, at the very least), my tastes really have always been all over the place. I'm not one of those knew-'em-before-they-were-cool hipsters - while I understand the painful joy of watching the world discover your favorite "secret" indie musician, most of the indies I love remain stubbornly undiscovered. But while I'm not much for genre, my iTunes and iPod (until they invent a phone that can hold 200 gigs o' music, I'm sticking with the Pod - and fuck Spotify in its nasty little o) is loaded with hefty amounts of R&B, country, hip-hop, mellow gold, jazz, folk, and, of course, rock and its many subgenres (metal, punk, oldie, indie, corporatie, progressivie, singer-songwriterie, super-abrasive avant-garde screamo jazz, Tom Waits, and pop). 

So far, so what, right? We're all collectors, and it's only natural for a musician to gather up all the music he/she can get his/her ears on. And it's just as natural to want to organize your spoils a bit, and sometimes organization goes a bit beyond the Apple-offered categories. 

Thus, the Playlist. 

The Playlist is a bit of a bugaboo for all of us who used to practice the Art of the Mixtape, back when a mixtape was a cassette. A Maxell XLII-S 90 was mandatory - pricey, but you don't serve 19-year-old Glenfiddich Bourbon Cask in a Solo Cup. Speaking of art - mixtapes took time, man. They took planning (which usually began in history class). They had themes, they were living, breathing entities. Making a mixtape a commitment, and the execution was pure zen - all encompassing, from concept to actual recording (better get those levels and gaps right - you'll want a couple seconds after "Until the Night"), and ultimately life-affirming and cathartic. And listening to one, whether it was a gift or self-made, was a proud, active experience.

         Come to me, Max. I wish to demonstrate how perfectly "The Card
         Cheat" leads into "Dancing Barefoot" into "All Good Times are Past
         and Gone" into "Swan Song H" into "Black Night White Light" into...

I'll be writing about mixtapes in another entry, probably with the assistance of Jill "xtingu" Knapp, a Mighty Mixtape Maker herself. But I'm really here to talk about playlists. The thing is, they take very little effort - you just slide the song into the folder, and if you change your mind, you x it out. You can take great pains to put the songs in proper order, of course - I certainly do - but I'm not sure why, as even I often give in to that tempting "Shuffle" button. Sure, few gifts give me a bigger smile than a nice, thoughtful Mix CD, but the effort of the creation was always a major part of the charm (of course, we've all received not-really-welcome mixtape gift from admirers, and knowing they put in several hours can ramp up the discomfort exponentially). There's a lot to be said about the digital age of music - while I hate how easy it is to steal music, I love how easy it is to buy, how easy it is to distribute, how it will always sound great - but we lost something when drawers full of cassettes, milk crates full of records, and shelves and shelves full of CDs are replaced by laptops, phones, and spreadsheets.

But still...I fucking love playlists.

And I am fucking addicted to them.

Remember when I bragged about the diversity of my collection? Well, it appears some insane synapse deep in my psyche wants to organize it. So while some of my playlists are practical or straightforward - 80's music¹, Metal, and Instrumentals are all WYSIWYG, as are the ones containing every Billy Joel and Tom Waits song in chronological order - and some  leave more space for personal interpretation (Garage, Acoustic Chill, and Funk n' Motown) - some are...well...let's call them "esoteric." And they almost always start with a single thought about a single song.

Example: my Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall playlists. They began a year ago when I listened to "Man on the Moon," and it occurred to me that acoustic-driven, earthy alt-rock feels like a warm flannel jacket against a crisp autumn breeze and the smell of burning leaves (doesn't it?), and you know what, so does Richard Julian's "Don't Wait Up," and "The Thing About Boats," and I wonder how many other songs in iTunes feel like fall?

So I create the playlist, sort the spreadsheet by "Artist," and start scrolling through, looking for other autumnal tunes. Remember - I've got over 18,000 songs. Even with focus, it takes some time to get from Aaron Nathans & Michael G. Rondstadt to 5th Dimension (sorry, ZZ Top, but iTunes put numbers at the bottom). But I have the attention span of a flea hanging out at a meth lab, which means detours are inevitable. Oh, there's Bill Finley's "Faust," from Phantom of the Paradise - that's fall-like, sure, but it's also piano-based acoustic rock. Do I have a playlist for that? No? Well, let's just make one of those! Okay, back to the top, just in case I missed anyone.

Oh, while I'm doing that, you know what? It's not fair to just have a Fall playlist. Sure, it's my favorite season, but you don't turn down a Snickers just because it's not a Reese's PBC. So let's add Winter, Spring, and Summer, and...yeah, I better start at the top again. But this is tricky: "Thunder Road" is definitely summer, but "Darkness on the Edge of Town?" Is that winter? Does it even have a season? I don't know. But you know what "Darkness" is? Big. It's a big song. Sometimes I wanna hear big songs, you know? So...

You guessed it. Another playlist. Another several hours. Another several detours.

Guys, I can't stop. I've got a problem. I mentioned Acoustic Chill, but there's also Zone and Mellow Gold and Psychedelic Chill, and while there are some overlaps, I need them both. There's E-Dance, which is electronica, and Dance, Sucka, which is loaded with R&B and funk, and Funk n' Motown, which - but no, it's not the same as Dance, Sucka, you see? There's a difference in tone, in attitude. Just as Oldies, loaded with 50s & early 60s rock n' roll, is not to be confused with Nostalgia, fulla songs that marked personal milestones for me. But then why not just put those songs in Matt's Favorites, a 1600-and-counting list for when I want a nice, safe shuffle? Because they aren't the same, that's why. Just like Big and Dinosaurs aren't the same, even though Dinosaurs are big songs too, and...

So yes, It's a problem. A music problem. I do listen to these playlists - I often fall asleep as they play, generally on shuffle, on my trusty little under-the-pillow speaker - but the creation is the monkey on my back.

What bothers me, honestly, is the solipsism of it all. I'm not creating anything new, or deploying my brain to conjure any useful insights that might prepare me for future challenges. I'm just rearranging my spoils. Playing in my own mud.

My own beautiful, beautiful, musical mud.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got pointing, clicking, and dragging to do...

                                  Where are you going? Don't you want to
                                  help? JOIN ME OUR PLAYLIST KINDGOM
                                  SHALL RULE THE WORLD HA HA HA HA
                                  HA HA hey seriously where are you going?

I was a Kickstarter backer of The Theatre of the Tiny Clandestines. 

Today I received this in the mail: 

Pins! And a thank you note! And a story! 

OH MY. 

Which reminds me, I have my own fulfillment to do...

Every time I'm up in the morning, I think of this phrase.

Vanessa returned to the office today, and she read my email asking when I'd be receiving the other half of my book advance as well as my grant, since I'd completed my payment-dependent tasks well over a month ago. 

Instead of replying to me, she copied me on an email asking my (idiot) editor for approval. Said editor included me on her one-word reply that said "Approved."  So yeah, now I'll have a nice chunk of change coming my way.

Why do we have contracts and automated systems if I still need to manually babysit someone else's process?

The Arden Museum is doing an exhibit on authors from Arden.

They asked me for a bio.

http://www.rmbryan.com/about-rm-bryan

Maybe you've heard this already, maybe you haven't. 

Kyle Jean-Baptiste, the youngest and the first African-American actor to play Jean Valjean on Broadway, 21 years old, died either last night or this morning. He fell off of his mom's fire escape. 

I saw this video before, and it bugged me how hard these guys were on their mics (come on! let the mic do the work! it exists for a reason!), but I wanted to share it with you, if for no other reason, than letting his delivery of  "before you chain me like a slave again" resonate in your viscera, and how he sings "I am warning you, Javert" at 2:08. 

Whatever your art is, keep practicing. 

is the average of what I spend cleaning. That's dishes, kitchen, laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the table, cleaning up after people in the bathroom. I work 14+ hours a day, and every day is the same. Pizza or fast food left out on the floor, milk from breakfast on the table, pile of dishes. So that 2 hours after a long day, I'm spending it cleaning up after everyone in this house. I get that people have long days, and I get that the last thing anyone wants to do after a long day is pick up after themselves, but it's getting really close to me picking everything up and throwing it off the balcony to save space. And that sounds like a really great idea right now.

If we lived in any other climate, this place would be contiually filled with bugs. Instead I'm putting up with everything being sticky, or crumbs, or wondering what that smell is when someone decided to move a cup somewhere and forget about it. I'm tired and I just want a little help, and a little respect about how I feel around this damn place.

50/50 would be amazing, but right now I'd even settle for 20% effort rather than 0.