A Life in the Theatre (sort of)

     “All the world's a stage,

     And all the men and women merely players:

     They have their exits and their entrances;

     And one man in his time plays many parts,

     His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

     Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

     And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

     And shining morning face, creeping like snail

     Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

     Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

     Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

     Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

     Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

     Seeking the bubble reputation

     Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

     In fair round belly with good capon lined,

     With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

     Full of wise saws and modern instances;

     And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

     Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

     With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

     His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

     For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

     Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

     And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

     That ends this strange eventful history,

     Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

     Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

                                                  ~ William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

                                                     As You Like It

                                                     Act II Scene VII

There are many things in life that interest me. I live to learn, to experience, to discover, to create. I work, so that I can live. And to live means I am exploring. In the course of this life I have played music, I have written, I have drawn, and I have taken photographs. Truth is, most of these I still do, if only from time to time. 

Theatre (I prefer the English spelling of the word) is another thing that I do now and then. There was a time, many years ago, when I was heavily involved. It seemed as though I was either in a production or planning a production constantly. It was exciting and it served as a way to distract me from the things that I didn’t much care for. However, as with so many things in life, we move on. Things that were once so important lapse into memory - still a part of who we are, but not what we do. 

Except, on occasions perhaps. 

I think that once you’ve experienced “the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd” there is forever a small part of you that yearns for the stage. We’re drawn by that tightness in our guts as we patiently wait for places to be called. We want that rush of adrenaline as we step out into the light and then the peace that follows that opening speech as you settle into the rhythm of the words. We need to hear the laughter when there should be laughter and the sobs when there should be sobs. And we must hear the applause after giving it our all for two hours.

There are times when I need to break out of the usual quietness that is my life. For me, that breaking out is the theatre. It is the occasional time that I allow myself to be bold, to be loud, to be someone other than who I am. Playing a role gives me the opportunity to become someone else. That someone may be the hero or it may be the villian. The character may be comic or it may be tragic. It may carry the production with endless lines of dialogue or it may have only a few lines in the plot. Each presents its own unique challenge; the former has you spending every free moment memorizing lines while the latter has you discovering how to create and portray a character without much to go on. Both have you digging in and bearing down on who it is you are becoming. 

Questions fill your mind. Why does he say that and not this? How does he move? How does he walk? What is he thinking? What things happened (unknown to the audience) that brought him to this exact moment in time? Is he quiet? Is he loud? What is it, within your own personal history and experience, that you draw from to create and to stir an emotion. These are some of the many things your explore as you prepare. 

But the character doesn’t end with the preparation. There is the evolution that occurs on the stage. These are times that you do things in the moment; on stage, in front an audience, simply because it feels right. A turn, a slightly different delivery of a line, a slight variation in motive. Each, because the process of discovery is ongoing, happens in the emotion of the moment. That, is exciting! That, is theatre! And theatre is live!

When I was really busy, I played R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Norman Thayer, Jr. in On Golden Pond, Martin Vanderhoff in You Can’t Take It with You , FDR in Annie (I don’t care to ever sing “Tomorrow” again) and many others. Now, every so often I step out. The roles are fewer but they are interesting. I’ve made people cringe as Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and creating the role of Willie Wainwright, reducing entire theatre’s to tears, in A Scattered Smothered and Covered Christmas. Tonight, I will sing “Tradition” and “If I Were A Rich Man” one final time as Tevye. 

Theatre!  It gets in your veins and is something you can’t easily or entirely walk away from. The characters you are able to play and the size of the roles may change, but still you’re drawn to it. There is that time when you say, “I must do this again.” It is life-giving for someone who wishes to create.

We began with an Englishman of some reputation in the theatre. Let’s close with another Englishman who penned a few classic works for the stage.  

     “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

                                                  ~ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Art, in all its various forms, is how we explore, communicate and celebrate what it is to be human. We pour our whole self into the method that we choose to interpret our humanity. It is our emotional responsibility to the generations to follow. Our art, our music, our theatre, our whatever, is one way in which we say, “we were here.”

In my life, that one moment that someone holds onto while watching me explore a character is one way that “one man in his time" played his part. It is one way that I say “I was here.”

~ Greg

Moments

“There are few things in life that are equal to great conversation, and I feel that last night was great conversation.”

We all have those moments in life that help to define our lives. They become part of our personal fabric and shape who we are. These become the stories that we tell of ourselves and eventfully, the stories that are told about us. They are the things that become our mythology

These moments I speak of are wide in their variety. One may be the first time that you ever did something. Another could be a particular piece of music or a passage of music. A scene in a film or a passage from a book my stir something in your spirit. Perhaps it a place or a feeling. All these things and more, taken together, are what give us life. They cause us to live. To seek after that moment in a day that becomes that part we set aside for our memory.

As I sit here, I am drawn to two such moments. Both of these concern friends; one old friend and two newer ones. One takes place in pub near Trafalgar Square in London, the other in a restaurant near The Gulch in Nashville. One involved few words being spoken; the other was a tapestry of conversation. One celebrated the simplicity of life and a few quiet, sometimes silent, moments over a pint. The other celebrated those many points of interest, that variety of who we are. Each one only lasts for a short while.

They were mere seconds in an eternity of time. They are over and you part company, wishing that the clock could have stopped for just a moment.

Friends and conversation. Two essential elements of life.

~ Greg

On A Cool Summer Evening...

Not long ago I came across a folder. It was tucked into a desk drawer and long forgotten. Inside the folder were a number of things I’d written years ago. There were small snippets of lyrics for songs I never finished and pieces of poetry.   

I read through some of what I’d written thinking that I might find something that I could share here. That was my intent, but in reading, I came to two conclusions. The first is that I really don’t care for the person that I was at that time. Most of what I wrote was reflective of a young man looking for something or someone - a young man frustrated, stumbling through life, waiting. I suppose it was a stage I had to pass through. 

The second thing I concluded is that what I thought was good poetry then, and remembered as being good poetry, is, in reality, not very good at all. It seems rather sophomoric now and causes me to wonder how someone filled with such angst could not have composed something better. Even so, I can find the odd line or passage here and there that doesn’t seem so bad. I don’t know. Perhaps I am an extremely bad judge of what constitutes good poetry.

I thought I might share just a small excerpt from a piece I wrote in 1987. The full text of the poem is a remembrance of an evening spent with good friends at a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert. The venue was the now shuttered Starwood Amphitheater. The weather was a quite pleasant for a July evening. The best word to describe the atmosphere is, hippie. It was a memorable evening and I closed my poetic telling of it with this.

          When all has been said,

          and my time comes to pass. 

          Lay me down gently, 

          on a carpet of green grass.

          Play music softly,

          and bring the stars closer too.

          On that cool summer evening,

          with the band and you.

Again, I really don’t know what is good poetry or what is bad poetry. Much like art, I know what I like and I like these lines. 

The young man who wrote those came through. He is now just beyond middle age and has experienced much in life. He has been blessed with a wonderful, a loving family and some of the best friends a person could ever hope for. 

Now I look back at words I wrote 25 years ago yesterday. The setting is much different, but the sentiment is the same.

~ Greg

The Railroad Bridge

In my hometown there is a stretch of U.S. Highway 62 known as East Malone Avenue. It runs between downtown Sikeston and Interstate 55. About half way between the two, the highway passes over a small stream known as St. John’s Ditch. To my knowledge, the Ditch serves no real purpose though I imagine it provides water to irrigate the adjoining fields.

Bear with me here.

Sikeston is a town that stays under the radar for the most part. The university town to the north, Cape Girardeau, gets more attention. I guess that is fine for the locals. Still, it has some things of note; both famous and infamous. First the infamous. In 1942, Sikeston was the scene of the last lynching in Missouri as a mob broke into a state jail and murdered Cleo Wright. Somewhere in between famous and infamous is the Bootheel Rodeo, a tradition for 60 years now. The famous? Well, the famous is the original Lambert’s Cafe “Home of the Throwed Roll.” Also home to the best Chicken Fried Round Steak that I have ever eaten.

There is one event that leads us back to St. John’s Ditch. On May 17, 1948, former President Bill Clinton’s father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr. was in an accident that threw him from his car. He landed in the ditch where he drowned. This was three months before Clinton’s birth.

So, this brings us back to the Ditch and why it holds a small place in my memory. I spent my freshman year of high school living with my grandparents and attending school there. During that year I renewed my friendship with Stephen Rogers. Stephen and I were born four days apart at the Missouri Delta Community Hospital. I was the older one. During family visits we would sometimes see each other at the church his parents and my grandparents attended.

But during this school year, we became best friends and Sikeston was our playground. Our bikes took us just about everywhere we wanted to go. The music shop and library on N. Kings Highway were frequent stops. On that same street was Kirby’s Sandwich Shop, where we’d have burgers and fries. In those days Kirby’s served Coke-Cola out of glass bottles and we’d try to keep track of how many different locations the bottles came from. We saw our fair share of movies at the Malone Theater on Front Street. We would set in the back at church. We’d always try to sing the bass line of the songs and we played paper football on the hymnals during the sermons. From time to time, we found ourselves in a bit of trouble.

One afternoon we were riding our bikes around in the neighborhoods just south of East Malone, near the Ditch. There on the south side, crossing over the water was a narrow , cast iron, black pipe. It was not too wide, but wide enough for us to challenge each other to see if we could walk across the pipe to the other side. Dicey. So we steeled our courage, and in turn, we both made it across. The trouble was, our bikes were back on the other side. We need to get back across. So, up to the road we go.

The easy thing would have been to walk the few yards down the highway, get our bikes and be on our way. But really, where is the adventure in that?

You see, just across the highway are railroad tracks. And across the Ditch is a suspended, iron encased, railroad bridge*. Ah, something to be explored! So instead of turning west and walking to our bikes, we sprint across the highway and up to the bridge. Without much effort we were down the bank and climbing out into the bridge.

Is was quiet under the railroad; for a short time. It wasn’t long until we felt the bridge begin to vibrate. It started as a slight vibration but grew steadily over a few minutes. Then, we heard it. The sound of a train horn, not too far off. There was train on the track and it was headed straight for us! It didn’t take long for us to realize that we were in trouble. We were half way across the bridge, over the water, and there was not enough time to get back to the bank. So we positioned ourselves as low in the bridge as we dared and wrapped our arms around the iron girders. Then we held on for dear life hoping to not be shaken loose and thrown into the drink.

It was a long train!

We just stood there for a few moments after the train had passed. Not really sure why. Perhaps we were too scared to move. Or maybe it was a quiet moment of thanksgiving  realizing we were alright. I can’t remember. But after awhile we crawled out from under the bridge and crossed back over the highway. We got our bikes and were on our way again. Only, we would be hard pressed that day, or any other, to find another adventure equal to what just happened.

I seem to remember not sharing this story with my grandparents; not that night at dinner, not that year. It would be years before they knew what had happened that day. I wanted be sure that enough time had gone by and the possibility of their grounding me had long since passed.

There are times that I miss my hometown. It has been a few years now since I have gone home and I need to visit there again soon. But any time I have gone back, I am sure to stop by Kirby’s for a burger and fries and Lambert’s for the Chicken Fried Round Steak. I drive down the cobblestone street where the old Woolworth’s used to be; where my grandmother worked. I stop and browse through the White Elephant and spend a few moments sitting on a bench in the American Legion Park. Remembering. 

On my way out of town I’ll drive down East Malone and cross over the St. John’s Ditch. In that moment I forget about everything else Sikeston was or is or may be. For that moment, I think about a Saturday afternoon in the Spring of 1972 when my friend Stephen and I felt the rumble of rails like never before. 

I smile a sly smile.

Greg

Postscript:  A few years ago I learned that Dolan Rogers, Stephen’s dad, died. The date was October 1, 2008. Reading his obituary in the hometown paper, I discovered that Stephen tragically died earlier that year in Carbondale. He was 51 and he was my friend.


* The photo of Kirby's and the railroad bridge across St. John's Ditch was grabbed from Google Maps.

Margins III

There are a few musicals that have caught my attention. But, my single all-time favorite musical is Meredith Willson's The Music Man. I remember seeing it on stage in the early Sixties with my mother and uncle in the campus theater at Southern Illinois University. In the years before video tape machines, I'd set my alarm and wake up in the middle of the night to see old reruns with Robert Preston as Harold Hill and Shirley Jones as Marian Paroo, the Librarian. Even now, it's playing here beside me as I write. For me, the Fourth of July holiday is not complete without "Ya Got Trouble", "Wells Fargo Wagon", "Till There Was You" and "Seventy-Six Trombones."

In my journal, in the margins, is a quote from the musical:

"Pile up enough tomorrows and you'll find you've collected nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays."

                  ~ Professor Harold Hill

Have a safe and Happy July 4th!

Coffee and Lipstick

My flight arrived late. I got a taxi at the stand and gave the driver the address near 8th and W 48th.

I walked into a crowded hotel. A few minutes earlier a fire alarm sounded and the whole hotel emptied into the lobby and out onto the street. No one was being allowed upstairs. Thinking anything would be better than standing shoulder to shoulder with total strangers, I left my bags with the doorman and went outside.

The night air was warm. Nice for walking. I set out to explore some of the streets in the area. The next few days would allow a lot of time to explore and experience, but I thought why wait. This area of the city is always busy and I felt that seeing it late at night would be interesting. A different perspective perhaps.

After awhile, the long day and the flight started to catch up with me. I picked up a few things at a corner market and walked back to the hotel. I picked up my bags, checked in, and took the elevator upstairs.

The room was nice. A corner room with a comfortable bed. I turned on the television, changed my cloths and laid down on top of the bed hoping that a sound sleep would be just a few minutes away. It was not.

I laid there, awake, for the longest time. It wasn’t the sound of the television; I like a little ambient noise when I travel. No, my mind was racing. It wasn’t anything specific. My thoughts were simply all over the place and it made falling asleep difficult. Finally, after a few hours, I drifted to sleep. But only for a few hours. My mind fixed on something and I was awake again.

It was no use trying to fight it. I got up, pulled on my jeans and a tee shirt and went downstairs. I found my way to the restaurant. It was a French restaurant so I knew the coffee would be good. I took a table next to a window and ordered coffee and a basket of breakfast breads. 

I took out my journal and started to write; nothing important, just random thoughts. Mine is not a great journal but it serves my purpose. It reminds me of things. Things I am doing, have done or wish to do. I must have been deep in my thoughts when I was startled by the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor.

I looked up and saw a lady. She looked at me and without saying a word, she hung her  bag across the back of the chair and sat down across from me. She motioned for the waiter and ordered coffee. Nothing else.

She was an attractive woman, not what I’d call beautiful, but not simply cute. She wore her hair straight and cut just above the shoulder. Her makeup was simple and complimented her complexion. She wore jeans, a white blouse and a short jacket.

We sat there in silence, me writing and she waiting.

A few minutes later the waiter arrived with her coffee. He refreshed my cup and then left.

She raised her cup and made a motion as if to say, “to your health.” I closed my book and returned the gesture. She bent her lips down to the cup and took a single sip, leaving a lipstick stain on the rim. She placed the cup on the saucer and laid a five dollar bill on the table beside it. Then, without saying a word she stood up and walked out the door.

Outside, she paused and looked in the window. She looked at me. She looked at the nearly full coffee cup. Then looking back at me, she smiled, turned and started down the sidewalk.

I set there, still in silence, wondering who she was. Where did she come from? Where is she going? What are her hopes; her dreams? And why a single sip of coffee? These are questions that I’ll never be able to answer. Trying to is only a game. 

Whoever she is, she left me with three things. Mystery, coffee and lipstick.

I took a sip of my coffee, opened my book and started writing again.