Watch this.

Joey wrote it and I filmed and edited, yay!

Talk to your children about...

I hope that one day I am this brilliant...

Magic, no, not The Gathering

This past Monday night, that same "inspirer" friend of mine and I were on our way out the door to go for a walk when suddenly another good friend of ours stopped us.

He said, "You know how sometimes people think and see in colors...? The two of you are the same color. I'm not sure what color it is, but it's the color I think of when I think about your scooter [to me] and the color I think of when I think of the walls in your apartment [to her], and I just wanted to say that I like it when the two of you are together, because you are in fact the same color, and it's just right."

Or something to that effect.

As he walked away as though he had just said hi, we couldn't help but stare and stammer at each other for a few seconds and then just smile.

During the walk that followed we began to really think about what we had just experienced.

I turned to my friend and said, "That's magic." It was very matter-of-fact, and very earnest. You see, friends, I believe in many forms of magic. I believe we can see colors. I believe our brains are capable of innumerable things of which we are not aware.

My favorite example of magic in our world is the following story:

A man is blind for the first forty years of his life. One day, by God, science, or luck, he becomes sighted.

He is in a grocery store. Someone points to an orange and asks, "What is that?"

"I don't know...," he replies. You see, he's never SEEN an orange before...

He goes over to it, and picks it up. Immediately his brain rewires and he knows it's an orange. He doesn't gasp out of realization, he doesn't drop the orange out of shock. He merely says, "Oh, it's an orange."

The same thing could've happened as he tasted or smelled it for the first time. You see, friends, that fifth sense had never been attached to the others.

It's that magical ability of the brain that let's us, in the middle of rush hour traffic, without even closing our eyes see the face of our mother right in front of us. Or gives us the ability to view a panoramic of our Kindergarten classroom (if we can remember it).

The idea of memory is magical to me.

The fact that we can create them without even trying. Hell, we can't try not to do it. It will always be happening. Unless we are blacked out from some outside stimuli, our brains are always recording.

All this stemmed out of "...people can think in color?"

It was a good conversation. One that if you engaged me in, I would become very passionate.

_____ to inspire.

I recently came to the conclusion that the world is full of two kinds of relaters: Inspirer and discouragers.

Being a discourager doesn't make you a bad person. Not at all. If it weren't for those that discouraged, there would be no safety in the world and particularly in the arts.

With that said, I wanted to share something that an inspirer friend of mine recently shared with me.





Fill in the blank with any of the following words: create, perform, act, sing, write, teach. There are more words, of that I am certain.

quandary

I have never realized how possible it was to feel smart and stupid at the exact same time.

It is not just that I feel smart, and then something happens to make me feel dumb. The two just happen simultaneously.

We are working on the difference between por and para in Spanish right now. One of the conditions for the use of para is a "surprising comparison," like, "Se porta muy mal PARA reina." Which means, "She behaves poorly FOR a queen." I explain this to you, because it seems interesting that there is a rule called surprising comparison.

It seems to apply here...

I feel really dumb FOR a smart kid.

I can't wait to learn more. I really can't wait. I feel like I am slighting myself, because things like Spanish get sacrificed for one class, and then another for directing, and then my acting class gets completey shat upon. It's not that these things aren't ALL important to me, I just don't know how to get it all dealt with. I need a timeturner...really bad. I also don't need to be spending so much time browsing random blogs...

Neat-

I have a habit of saying this word in certain situations.

These situations would not typically elicit the word "neat."

Obviously what I mean is that I use it sarcastically, one may even say, ironically.

I daily find myself thinking, "...yeah, and?" or, "what the hell kind of bearing does that statement have on this situation...AT ALL?"

I must say that I am a people watcher. I like to observe. I love to hone my skills of perception. It sometimes makes me seem like an ass, but you know what? I don't care. I am not an ass. I just really want to understand others. What makes them tick. This is really grounded in, "I don't want to dislike anyone. I just want to understand them."

I was recently involved in a production that said, "To idealize is to fundamentally mark as different; it is not to respect. It is to fundamentally mark as different and, therefore, not equal."

Some people might somehow interpret my desire to understand others as analyzing or idealizing. I just want to say that that is not the case. I love my fellow man, and I believe I above all am so very very flawed. I just never want to hate or dislike someone simply because I don't understand where they are coming from. Everyone has justifications for their outwardly upsetting behaviors. I think my problem here is making up "problems" and calling them "justifications." This in turn goes right along with the "when you assume you make..."

Thus. I see the point. I can be kind of an ass...But I mean well.

TANGENT RECOVERY:

When someone says something like, "Yeah, this is my last day of crew for a while. My last day for the semester. Man. Yeah. Gonna be busy with other things for awhile. You know...'Cause of...Yeah. You know."

I simply have to smile and say under my breath, "Neat."