I dig your little laugh and I'm lovin' your quick wit - I even love it when you're faking it

Friday already ?? Blog??

Holy crap, so the iPhone can partially be blamed for totally destroying my blog-ethic lately but only partially. The rest I blame on our kids.

The boys (all of them, the teenager in the basement and the twins sharing a room) got white noise machines this week to help shield them from noise that would wake any of them too early, nice little devices that have a few sounds to choose from and you can leave on all night at a nice, mellow volume to try and help them all get the sleep they need - which is great and actually seems to be working pretty well. Here's the problem: the twins so far love the sound on theirs labeled "Heartbeat", which is exactly what you'd think it is, the sound of a thumping heart.

I don't know or care if it reminds them of being in the womb or just the steady, if not a little slow, rhythm just lulls them to sleep. So far all I know is their bedroom is right upstairs from my office and after bedtime when I usually try to get a little time on the computer there's the clear sound of a thumping heartbeat coming out of the ceiling. And I haven't even hidden a body in the walls of that room yet!

So sitting down to write anything but a desperate murder confession has been difficult.

Outside of that the big, looming thing that is eating up all my attention, despite how I try to ignore it is the Renaissance Festival - which I haven't been doing any of the normal teaching and work for earlier in the year which gets me ready and arrives just as my work travel season also ramps up so I'm less prepared than normal and it's going to suck a little bit more than usual in the real-world-impact dept.

I don't write about the Festival much in the off-season and actually try to put it away most of the year for my own sanity (and the sake of my marriage) but this year feels like I'm starting cold - not ready in any way. I'm sure as soon as the costume is on and the makeup hits my eyeball the old familiar energy will be back.

there's no arguing with the fact that it's nerdy as hell - it is.
But there's also no place or performance or audience like it in many ways (many of them have to do with the really extreme level of nerdiness, but getting past that for a moment if possible) but as a performer I love the show for all the unique moving parts that go into any given Festival day and the experience and emotional level of connection with the audience that you can only find there.

Just as a space - an enclosed street theater - it's difficult to replicate what you have there as a performer. In most street theater (having never been a busker but speaking as someone that had to spend a good deal of time on the subject) you find yourself performing for people that wander by looking for something else and going somewhere else, you are a distraction even if you're an entertaining one. At the Festival the theater is still 'street' but it is now the destination instead of the distraction.
The entertainment can be stupid (says the guy that will spend at least a couple hours a day trying to hit another grown man in the groin with increasinly heavy or dangerous projectiles. this is NOT "high art"), it can be sublime and beautiful (especially when little kids are involved - they aren't a bunch of judgemental, cynical, mocking jerkwads like the rest of us and actually believe in magic and all these crazy things they see. The looks on their faces alone would get me out there) and you can push it as far as you want as a performer and it's all between you and the people right in front of you. That's pretty great.

As an audience the place is crazy - yes there are insane geeks that really think they are descended from magical creatures (yes...there are) and people that want to live out some kind of fantasy (of being dangerous, or adventurous, or sexy) and lots of other really great examples of how looney people are. But the audience there loves the show like no other audience loves a show.
You will never find a Guthrie-goer that loves the Guthrie this way (sure some of it may come from a mental illness - that doesn't make the love they have for it any less endearing or scary) or anyone at the Brave New Workshop that got up at 4am to drive for several hours to stand in the rain to be the first one in the door EVERY DAY of the run of a show.
Yes, some of them are nuts. Yes, many of them are comic gold and really easy to mock.
But they might also be the best audience anywhere.

So as much as it's going to suck for the next few weeks and no matter how tired and beat up I get because of it, there are few things I look forward to as much all year than being out in the crowd in the sun and the dirt and trying like hell to leave it all onstage.

Condolences should be sent to my family, who get the wrecked remains at the end of the weekend and who may or may not understand but have to put up with the fact that I do.
Starting to feel it a little more now....