Associate Artist, Atlantic Center for the Arts

So happy to have earned a spot at the Atlantic Center for the Arts this year for my playwriting. I’ll be working with Master Artist, James Lecesne, a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers.

I’m thrilled, actually…but rather than go on about my expectations, I’ll just cite Mr. Lecesne’s own…

…Residency Statement:

I’m interested in working with anyone who has a story to tell and who also has some experience doing this in the theatre, TV, film or prose. During our morning sessions together, we will review the basic elements of story so that we all have a common language, and then discuss how those elements apply to the play, A Streetcar Named Desire. As you present your own original story to the group, we will support you in puzzling out the underlying conflict, illuminating the characters, uncovering your deeply held beliefs and creating a vivid map of your story. You will have time on your own in the afternoons and evenings to develop your ideas further and write deeper into the work. We’ll come together to present our work to one another and continue mapping out the structure of the overall work. The idea is to be familiar with the landscape of your story by the end of the three weeks and to have a clear idea of where to dig.
Stay tuned for more updates!

Rooftops of the Artists’ Colony, ACA, New Smyrna, Florida

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ST. KEVIN AND THE BLACKBIRD

I would also be St. Kevin, and ignore what keeps us from working with him, from emulating his example. I would work to a loss of self–a no-self–only gesture. Not for reward but to strive for the thing itself. To become the thing itself. To tree.

ST. KEVIN AND THE BLACKBIRD

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

Seamus Heaney

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Awake this Morning

That time you threw the towel over the rack so effortlessly

when there was no comment that fractured the certainty

beyond being took you back to fifty years–

seeing no comment

…hearing sans judgment

thinking no name

…touching not felt

smelling no scent

…tasting w/out gesture

Another shore the wind sea foam at water’s edge

a child who once waited for the water to take him away

the tide lied because it pretended to divide the ocean

It may be that even the concept of One is flawed

to name is to lie and so let’s call it All.

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Where Home Is

Another Article that helps identify some profound concerns of Buddhism…the concept of being in the present reality. That is where our home is.

The Gods Become Human by John Aske

We all have to learn the comfort of being ourselves – and not someone else. It is much harder than it looks and the problem never really goes away. I might notice in my laugh someone else’s laugh; and a turn of phrase – which whilst not appropriate – was picked up from a memorable encounter.

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Color, Fear, Control

if only with color I could write

sift through the skeleton wall

of cells that refract the light

which collects in our minds

to create color

i need words to be both phenomenal and to take up space.

fear is nothing but unrealized control

dependence is where to find freedom

because we are frightened, panicked

by the absolute freedom granted us.

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