Long absence. Internet finally and I have the key to my apartment tonight.
First off a solemn note. I know it's on the news but Spalding Gray was found dead this morning after an apparent suicide. For any of you who have heard my discourse about why I carry a flask to a bar and how one goes about successfully refilling your drink without anyone noticing, well this is the guy I stole that pitch from. Most of you know I'm not one to watch all that many comedies on TV or in the movies, but this actor/writer/performer/emotional exhibitionist who wrote in such a naked and humorous way about life is someone I greatly admired. Here is a man who, whether it be on stage or on film, could sit down for two hours and hold your attention with no accessories other than a glass of water, a prop book, a desk, a couple lighting changes and whatever clothes he happened to be wearing that day. He told you stories with only small flourishes from his own life and razor-sharp observation that left you questioning if you should be crying in the middle of your pained laughter. A person who could talk about being in Russia begging for a drink and then have you rolling with a simple one line deliver of "One day, no Vodka". I think I must have been in high school when one night I was channel surfing and saw this middle-aged, greying man sitting on a stage. I'm not sure what caught my attention at the time other than it looking like he was doing a theater piece and wondering how it got on HBO or whatever move cable channel. Then I got sucked in. Here was the George Carlin of the stage without the bitterness. Here was a 40 year old child who at once saw innocence while dealing with his own depression. Sorrow brought on precisely because of the struggle that innocence leaves on an aging person who is great enough to maintain it. I regret not backtracking when you brushed past me outside the Paramount in Austin a couple years ago. It hit me moments too late once you'd dipped back into the theater. There was a presence that was at once as light as the clouds and at the same moment carried a weight heavier than most people dare face. I could barely make out the feeling as I stood between the two outside the door, my bafflement in hand. Mr. Gray, wherever you ended up when you jumped two months ago and washed onto the dirty shore that our cultivated and mature world has built in the name of progress, I hope you have found your peace. It's a desperate truth that so bare and warm a light is so frequently extinguished before its time.
So, did you ever hear the one about the stupid foreigner who paid about 300% too much for a 3 dollar cab ride because the incorrect denomination looked strangely familiar to his home currency (or maybe he was just stupid and not paying attention)? Then, as he stood knowing something was wrong in front of the two audience-less and unenthusiastic dancing advertising girls (there will be a whole entry at some point on this phenomenon), took off into a sprint down the street weighted by a needlessly heavy backpack to recover his lost funds? Did you hear that the taxi turned before right before he caught up with it, the driver thinking 'damn those foreigner tip well..."
Well, what about the one about the same sometimes absent minded guy readying his pockets after a day at work only to leave his keys sitting dead-center of his desk? Well, he got home unable to enter it. Slept on his coworker's floor.
Then there was this guy, who after a night of sleeping on someone's floor came home to an apartment flooded by his mysteriously pissed off washing machine. Then he went down to get the superintendent on this one, further reinforcing his expectation that foreign residents are nothing but pain in the ass monkey's with big eyes. Well, that's how things go.
Now, I would like to say that these things happened to different people, but in fact they've all been the situations of yours truly here in S. Korea. I'd like to think that I'm in the clear now but bad things do seem to happen in threes, and the first of these tales happened a couple weeks ago and I believe this disqualifies it from the trio. So, what blunder, accident, act of god will await me tomorrow? Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same absurd channel.
Ok, this entire entry has nothing to do with Korea per se. And I'm just going to leave it at that. I have another entry in my head, and it will have to wait for tomorrow. Sorry folks. Next one actually will deal with life here.
"I remember standing in that second-story window and looking down, wondering if I really had the courage to jump and if I did would it kill me from such a small height. I think I figured I'd just break a leg or something and end up in a cast for the rest of the summer, and that would be much better than dying because of all the attention I'd get. But then I also realized that Mom wouldn't be able to give me any attention, because she was cracking up and needed all of it for herself."
-- Spalding Gray
from Impossible Vacation
Music: Broken Social Scene
Mood: Shit, figure out from the entry.
It's really late, this is really long and I've not said half of what I need to so I'm going on to one more topic somewhere in between the tone of the preceding topics of this entry. Let's start, shall we?
Saturday night and life in a nutshell.
"There's no doubt in my mind that once you begin to have a clear sense that you are going to die, you really begin to live — and that's all there really is, because the meaning of life is in the living of it."
– Spalding Gray
"I remember standing in that second-story window and looking down, wondering if I really had the courage to jump and if I did would it kill me from such a small height. I think I figured I'd just break a leg or something and end up in a cast for the rest of the summer, and that would be much better than dying because of all the attention I'd get. But then I also realized that Mom wouldn't be able to give me any attention, because she was cracking up and needed all of it for herself."
-- Spalding Gray
from Impossible Vacation
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