Multitudes of Yodas
Happy Friday!
In an earlier newsletter I wrote about visual intelligence and how I was trying to train myself to get better at seeing the little details in the world around me. I've been using our morning walks with Ellie to do that and recently it paid off in a surprising way.
We were one street over from our house on a block we've walked many times before when I happened to look over and notice a strange shape behind my neighbor's fence. On further inspection it was revealed to be a GIANT TORTOISE living in our neighbor's backyard.
I became kind of obsessed with it for the next couple of weeks and kept steering our walks past their house trying to catch a glimpse of it. Remembering my desire to catch up on experiences I might have missed out on and "the power of strangers" I wrote that perfect stranger a very nice card telling them I'd love to meet their tortoise if they were comfortable with it. I dropped it off in their mailbox and an hour later they texted me back and invited us over to meet Ted, their 30-year-old, one-hundred pound sulcata tortoise. It was a magical half-hour.
Keep your eyes up and be willing to reach out and make those connections and maybe you too will get a chance to scritch a tortoise on the chin.
This week is a collection of thoughts I had while learning from the masters.
I hope you have a great weekend!
Move On
The very first Broadway show I ever saw was INTO THE WOODS when my high school jazz band made a trip to New York for a workshop session with members of the Glenn Miller orchestra.
The very first quarter of my freshman year at The University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music I was cast in the main stage production of INTO THE WOODS as Milky White, the cow. To be more specific, I was the ass-end of Milky White. (I was brilliant)
My sophomore year of college the original Jack from Broadway, Ben Wright, joined our program. The first day of school the incoming students give a diagnostic performance in front of the whole program. Ben sang "Johanna" from SWEENEY TODD and he was astonishingly good. I remember it like it was yesterday.
We became friends and the following summer he got me a job teaching acting for kids at a summer theater workshop that his mom had started in Carmel, Indiana. I spent those months living in Ben's old bedroom and that first night, while I was putting my stuff away in his closet, I noticed his original score for the show, autographed in the front by Mr. Sondheim like it was a high school yearbook. I remember kneeling on the bedroom floor and flipping through it like it was a sacred text.
In 1997 when I moved to New York I got a job working for Dodger Productions as an office gopher for the producers and company managers. When I went for my interview the original plastic Milky White was in the reception area. It was the first thing I noticed when I rounded the corner in the hallway coming off of the elevator. It was like seeing an old friend.
In my very first issue of this newsletter I reposted an old blog about toiling away in obscurity in which I talked about my love for the Sondheim musical SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE.
I was introduced to it by Mr. Handley, my theater director/speech teacher in high school. He gave me a VHS copy of the PBS broadcast and I watched it over and over again my senior year. I didn't quite "get it" but there was something in it that just connected with me emotionally. It wasn't that I saw myself in George, it was more like I wanted to BE him. He was so emo before that word even became a thing.
Over the past thirty years that show and the painting that inspired it have been constant companions. When I lived in Chicago I would go to the Art Institute and sit there in front of the painting every month or so and marvel at what he'd accomplished. Every couple of years I go through a phase where I listen to the cast recording again and like Milky White, it's like seeing an old friend. An old friend who hasn't changed a bit but has all kinds of new and exciting things to tell me about their travels.
At some point I did become a little more like George in that I became an artist with a desperate desire to "connect," to "break through to something new, something of my own." I live in my head most days, "finishing the hat." No doubt these songs will have new things to teach me as I get older. At some point I suppose I'll begin to identify with George's mother, longing for the old view.
Unlike George Seurat Stephen Sondheim was celebrated for his art while he was still alive. He got to see so many tributes and birthday concerts with his songs performed by the most talented artists of at least three generations. I'm glad he got to see that. Unfortunately the one he missed was the most powerful of them all, when hundreds of Broadway actors assembled in Times Square last week, pausing on a Sunday to lift their voices in appreciation for what he gave us. I'm so grateful he was here and that I got to exist in his time.
GET BACK / Dave Grohl
I highly recommend GET BACK, the Beatles documentary on Disney+ about the making of the "Let It Be" album.
It's approximately nine hours long and I'd say a good six hours of that is just the four of them messing around, cracking jokes, breaking into weird character voices, playing covers, noodling around, and then casually writing "Get Back" and "Let It Be" in between noise jam clusterfucks where they're all playing each others' instruments and Yoko Ono screams into a microphone.
What I love so much about it is seeing how making space for that freewheeling atmosphere and procrastination led to those creative breakthroughs. They were so loose that at a certain point Billy Preston stops by the studio and they say, "Hey, we've been thinking about adding some keyboards and by the way there's a piano behind you." He jumps on the keyboard, they run through "Get Back" one time with him and John says, "You're in the band." His sound is ALL OVER that album. We've been hearing it for decades and it wouldn't have sounded that way but for the fact that all of them, Billy included, were in a truly inspired state of play.
In between episodes I happened to be listening to Dave Grohl on World Cafe and he told the story about the origin of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Nirvana used to do the same kinds of noise jams that you see in GET BACK, where they would just literally make noise together, no structure whatsoever, and in the middle of one of those sessions Kurt started playing that guitar riff that launched an entire genre of music and subculture.
It got me thinking about how I can incorporate even more of that into my own writing process. When I sit down to work I tend to have some kind of plan of attack. I've been thinking of the story and where I want it to go, I may have bullet points or an outline I'm working from. Most of the writers I know work the same way.
Maybe we need to do more of our version of noise jamming. "Word jamming?" Christ, that sounds pretentious. Not word jamming, we'll call it something else. But I'm going to make it a practice this week to spend more time connecting with the subconscious mind and seeing what emerges. It may not be "Let It Be" but as long as it's unexpected and takes me off my well-beaten path I'll take it.
New Tool - A Trailer Playlist
I'd never listened to the Script Apart podcast until I saw another writer recommend the MITCHELLS VS MACHINES episode. If you haven't heard about it the host goes through the first draft of a script with the writers, talking about the origin and evolution and how it differs from the finished, produced film. It's a fantastic concept and this episode is a lot of fun.
At one point Jeff Rowe says that before they screened cuts of the movie Michael Rianda would make a playlist of trailers that were in the same vein to watch beforehand as if they were sitting in a theater getting ready to watch their movie. I thought that was a really smart way of tricking your brain into seeing your story in context of what else is out there in the world.
Before a writing session this week I picked five trailers that I thought represented not just the genre of the script I was writing but also the tone and some that were related thematically. It actually helped me triangulate on my tricky tone and led to a cascade of new ideas.
So many other great bits of advice and insight in this episode, check it out!
Episode 34: The Mitchells vs The Machines with Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe — Script Apart — www.scriptapart.com We delve into the first draft of the year’s most riotous animated comedy, which originally involved a kung fu-kicking President of the United States.
Don't Lose Sight
I have been kind of overwhelmed with all the content lately. I'm so far behind as a viewer and I've been feeling somewhat nihilistic as a creator. Like, what's the point of spending all of this time trying to make things if they're just going to get buried in the absolute avalanche of new shit that is being released every week? Are we just making disposable stuff?
At my lowest point last week I came across this tune and it's been on repeat ever since. It reminded me not to lose sight of why I wanted to be a storyteller in some form or fashion since I was a little kid. Because I live for those moments of connection. Because people like George Seurat and Stephen Sondheim and Lennon/McCartney and Nirvana and Rianda/Rowe created works of art that spoke to me and will keep on speaking to people through time and eventually space. Because if even one sentence of one piece that I write makes an impact on one other person then I become a part of that chain.
And if you make an impact on one person with something you've made - a song, a story, a poem, a letter, a meal, a pie, a handmade card, an insight you pass on - then you're part of it too.
Then it's not just content.
It's connection.
Lawrence - Don't Lose Sight (Acoustic) Cinematographer: Leo GallagherArrangement by: Clyde Lawrence @clydelawrence21Audio Mixed & Mastered: Jonny Koh @jonny_kohVideo Produced by: Gracie Lawrence @...