I’m staying in my childhood home over the Winter Holidays in Northern California. I’m 31 years old now, and my earliest memories come from this house.
It’s morning on the day after Christmas, and I just meditated on the porch. There’s no one around but a deer on the hillside, wary of me as it nibbles grass. The only sound is the far off hum of cars driving on the 101.
Read MoreIn my head, there are two voices. Those voices speak in many different harmonies, but they basically sing two tunes.
There’s the voice that likes me.
And the voice that wants more.
Read MoreI’m obsessed with doing. I like to get things done. Much like those horrible Fiverr campaigns plastered right now across the NY subway attest, I am a Do-Er:
Read MoreI saw my mind like a department store, and I was the security guard in the middle of the atrium.
For once, I could see my problems labeled clearly: There was the department of Distractions. There was the bodega of Crippling Anxiety. There was the greeting card store with a sale on Comparing Yourself To Others. There was the fast food court with News about our country falling apart. There was the Responsibility and Task Management desk, control panels blinking with notifications. All these stores in my mind, open for business, ready to set the tone for my day as I woke.
Read MoreI believe in sudden prophecies told by a best friend on a moonlit midnight in Switzerland.
“You’re challenge right now, Prince Philip,” Aaron said, “is going to be dealing with Patience.” We then got into a shouting match over the Senate testimony into Russian meddling in our election and whether America was just a shell country run by secret Russian capitalist overlords.
Read MoreI took a jet-lagged nap the first day I got back home from my trip to Europe, and I dreamed about being a magic dragon in a car outside the school for bears.
Read MoreA two-person scene is hard enough in improvisation.
Add more people to the equation, and it gets more difficult to manage. When the lights come up on four or more people, I remember the advice that Mick Napier taught me back training at The Annoyance: think more of the same. Rather than finding points of differentiation, aim to bring your disparate characters in alignment over the context of the situation and how you all feel about it. While an eight-person monoscene with eight disparate points of view can be done, it isn’t easy to improvise!
However, I want to take a closer look at and unpack the dynamics and methods for three people improvising together in a scene. In general, three bodies in play tend to align in common relationships, and there are both pitfalls and strategies we can employ to heighten each dynamic.
Read MoreUnless I am trapped in some god forsaken town without a gay bar, I’m done with online dating/hook-up apps. I hereby swear them off for good.
I’m done with Grindr and Okcupid and Squirt and Scruff and Tinder and Thrinder and JDate and Feeld and Bro and Match.com, and I would be done with eHarmony too if they didn’t think my sexual orientation was a choice.
I am done with profiles designed to show curated trappings of us at our self-selected best. People are messy, and I’m more attracted to the bumps on the seismographic of someone’s personality than the smooth first impressions they try to make.
Read MoreThere is a person I may be in love with. I met him a month ago, and we’re as close to a real-life version of fairytale soul mates as I’ve experienced. I knew it from the first time we hung out and got into a long discussion about Jodorowsky’s Dune. Now we’re friends for life, after just a couple months of knowing each other.
When you meet a new person and invest yourself in him or her this much, you create a mirror. You can see yourself anew through this person’s eyes — from the first impression you make to the soul you bare as you let down your guard. You reveal the dirtier parts of yourself in the reflection— the cold sores, the longstanding fears, the hangups, the hopes you’re afraid to admit, and specifically for me: the bitterness I carry.
Read MoreMy name is Philip.
I believe in the maxim: never date someone with your same name. It must be cursed from the outset. I’m not referring to cursed as in your future family-in-law confusing who’s who when asking for “Philip” to pass the green beans at Thanksgiving. No, it must be a law of nature that two humans of the same name shall never intertwine, lest catastrophe befall both.
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