Mwahahahaha....

Dammit

Why can't things ever just be, you know, good?

In my more patient moments, I understand that the dichotomy of the universe extends to all things, and that lightness and darkness constitute two sides of the same mortal coin.

In this particular moment, however, I am just annoyed.

Now, my life is not as bad as some. My friend Bill comes to mind, who listed off about three or four mega-depressing things that hit him in the span of a couple days: a memory slip at a big audition in front of his old piano teacher, marital crap, a $165 parking ticket, rejection, plague, pestilence, etc... But when bad things happen to you, you being you and only capable of being you, measure those bad things against the other things you experience, so regardless of how many bad things you've been through you're only ever really relating them to the good things that are going on in your life.

I've begun to question my competence as a relationship partner. Jessie and I seem to be on two different levels of existence, both saying the same things but the wet goo that is air and distance and time garbles the words so we end up shouting just to get a message across. It's like trying to talk underwater sometimes, and its only when we can put our arms around one another that we get any real sense of connection, can feel the real and palpable love that is between us.

This polio project, which is exciting and challenging and time-consuming, presents a difficult question. My job now is to assemble a trailer that will knock the socks off of potential donors and champions. If we get funding (six figures worth), then not only does my compensation go up significantly but I'm a shoe-in for staying on the project until its completion. That would also mean, however, that I would have a strong tie to Pittsburgh for another year, and so it would be difficult to make the move that Jessie and I are planning to Chicago or Washington, D.C.

Why not stay in Pittsburgh, you ask? Lemmetellyahsomething.

I love Pittsburgh. It is a great city. The best thing about the polio story is that it showcases my awesome city. I love its rivers. I love its skyline. I love its people and its roadways. I love its story and its problems. I love my steps outside my apartment. I especially love my friends, dodgeball, my family. But, that's the problem with Pittsburgh. When you're born here, they implant little teeny tiny tractor beams that keep you connected to this place no matter where you go. It's like the Shire and its little rivers. And if you don't leave, if you never leave, then you will NEVER leave. You might as well start that family, add that new garage door, and pick your plot, 'cause you is gonna die here.

Now. That is not bad. This is a great place to live. Seriously great. Lot of character. Way too many stories that need to be told and not enough people to tell them.

But Jessie and I have only ever really lived here, and if we stay, we're under the influence of her parents, of my parents, of our friends and our old habits. What we've never really had, not in six years, was a chance to share a space, share the sunrise and sunset, share the mundane things like dishes or laundry or shopping for towels. And even when we did live in the same place, Jess lived at her parents and I lived at my mom's. It wasn't exactly a verdant paradise of relationship bliss, let me tell you, especially when you're trying to not get arrested for making out in the back of a car.

So now I'm presented with this very interesting set of waves that my little Life's boat has to navigate. Somehow I have to make all these oblong puzzle pieces which are dearer to me than anything fit together. They don't have to make a pretty picture, they just have to hold together if the cat walks on the puzzle. It's asking a lot, but everything depends on my being able to do it.

You see, once you get to know me (and you do quite a bit, if you read this thing), you realize that my laissez-faire approach to things is actually a calculated, deliberate defense mechanism against the very stress I'm feeling right now. I can't make everybody happy all the time, but at the end of my life I have to answer to two people, one of whom is incorporeal and the other one is God.

I don't want to look back and go, "If only..."

m

...On The Wall

Damn it has gotten cold at night in Pittsburgh. I'm buried under my comforter (well, okay, a comforter that is itself buried inside a very manly (very) denim duvet (pronounced "doo-vay" and not "dove-it"), trying to stay warm. We've closed all the windows, turned off all the faucets, fired up the potbelly. They say the toes are the first to go.

Anyways. Where was I.

Ah! First, let me point out that this is the only time in CB's history that I've ever actually provided a continuation of a previous post in which I promised a continuation. Every time the words "Part I" appeared, thou knewest that thee would never see Parteth II... eth. But now, that's all about to change.

Get ready for...

PART II

Actually, in re-reading my last post, there isn't much to continue on about. I'm spending the majority of the next two weeks working on the second draft of the trailer, stopping only briefly over the weekend for a trip to Rochester to visit my mentor and friend, Tony Caramia. Most everything I am as a pianist I owe to him - there are pre-Tony recordings and post-Tony recordings, and it's *amazing* how much better the latter are - and his recordings of Billy Mayerl, whom I love, have shaped my soundscape for nearly 10 years. Do your ears a favor and listen to his recording of "Get Happy" on his Eastman page. You will not regret it. The highest compliment someone ever paid me was that my playing sounded like his, and I would have written it off except it was his wife that said it! Haha. They are great friends, and they love me and my parents. I think they're as excited to see my mom as they are me, which is frankly how it should be. I hope I have enough music prepared.

Actually, this month is CRAZY when it comes to ragtime. The next three weekends are chock-full of ragtime goodness. Memorial Day weekend I'm competing with some friends in the World Old Time Piano Playing Championship at the Hotel Pere-Marquette in Peoria, Illinois, and then I'm off to the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO. I got the hugest buzz the other day when I checked the Joplin Festival site and saw my name and picture in the list of featured performers. I consider it a real honor to be featured amongst the other people there - these people are HUGELY talented and I rock out to their CDs all the time. Check it out here (scroll down to Spitznagel to see me!).

I admit I'm actually really nervous for all these gigs. I set the bar pretty high for myself this year, and I'm working hard to try and learn new material for this year's festival. I've got another Billy Mayerl or two, a Latin piece by Hal Isbitz, and I'm trying to get "Space Shuffle" in shape in time, a ridiculously hard piece that is amazing.

So, that's going to be fun. Jessie has offered to lend me her laptop so I can keep track of, you know, the world when I'm traveling all over creation. I'm going to take my camera and my camcorder - maybe I can do a Captain's (travel)Log(ue).

Gots to get up early. Take care.

m

Mirror Mirror

Damn it has gotten warm at night in Pittsburgh. I just lie sprawled out, no heavy comforter keeping away the cold, no chill air to cool the blood. Now it's just balls-out allergies and heat, wipe the snot somewhere, take a Benadryl, and sweat. Well okay, maybe not all at one time, but there are moments, damn you. Moments.

Aside from the transforming world, I am doing the best I've been doing since I started doing anything at all.

I am now officially a professional Avid editor. The polio movie brought me onto the project, and my task for the next three weeks is to deliver a trailer so sparkling that no one with change in their pocket will be able to watch it and not throw money at us. Aside from the creative challenge, the miracle is that I'm getting paid, generously so, which is unbelievably satisfying because I earned this opportunity. I worked my tail off in class, and I delivered on my promise of a development trailer.

A little backstory to make the mountain peak seem higher:

When I was a freshman at Pitt back in, lord help us, 2003, I took a screenwriting class. It was a graduate-level course, and looking back now, and on how poorly I did, I understand just how out of my league I actually was. That said, I found the class amazing. My professor, Carl Kurlander, seemed like some kind of demi-god, having come from the land of Hollywood and with real credits under his belt. He dissected stories and pitches for stories like a chef flays carrots, and he had people in tears, myself included, in the war of ideas that was the class.

He encouraged us above all to tell personal stories. I remember proposing a biography of Scott Joplin. Surely, I thought, Joplin's life would make for good drama: chance encounters, lost loves, tortured genius. Carl obliterated the idea, saying it was much too difficult for a first screenplay and that I needed to find a more personal angle. I agonized over what to do - then, as now, I had a lot of trouble with conflict, with raising the stakes. I am, by nature, a peacemaker, and in writing I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to do bad things to good characters. A lot of my stories, without outside expectations, would be like oil paintings, detailing out all the colors and shapes of a singular moment, unconcerned with the stirring clouds to the east. As a person I avoid conflict, and as a writer I do, too. That's why, when I went to shit a couple months ago, I was actually delighted to have so much conflict to write about (and, frankly, the blog has been missing some antagonism, don't you think?). It made for much better, easier writing. The conflict drew out and supported the language.

After agonizing over it for some time, I developed an idea about a young boy who, estranged from his divorced parents and picked on at school, finds a haven in his love of Scott Joplin's music. It was called "Solace," named after one of Joplin's best pieces, and I wrote the first ten pages of it for Carl. He told me it had real promise - that if I didn't write it, he would, and he'd make a lot of money.

I realized, though, that I couldn't write it; that it was actually my story, and I wasn't mature enough to talk about that yet. It's impossible to write fiction when you haven't figured out the truth yet, if that makes any sense. Until you know what something is in your own heart, it's hard, if not impossible, to take it to the page. Fiction requires distance and detachment just as much as it requires connection, and I wasn't mature enough to do it.

So, instead of turning in 30 pages of "Solace" and getting an 'A,' I turned in the first script for "Hunt for the Holocron."

I got a C-minus.

Fascinated, I signed up for another class with Carl. Here was someone who didn't like my writing, who didn't like me or the things that I created, and it was precisely because of this that I felt compelled to be around him, compelled to subject more and more of my creative self to him. The second class I took was introductory Fiction writing. I finally wrote something there that had real, genuine pathos, the only problem being that the conflict, at the end, was haphazard, even kind of disturbing and out-of-place. I did a little better in the class.

B-minus.

So imagine Carl's surprise, as we sat in the offices of WQED the other day, to be offering me, Martin, a job working on an important documentary. It was the greatest comeback in life's history as far as I'm concerned, and it only happened because I made a promise and kept it. I worked my tail off for free to show Carl that I was serious, that I was competent, that I was dedicated. It's one of those things for which you'd find a cliche like "If I had a nickel for every time..." or the like, you would use it here.

(to be continued...)

Little Rivers

Hi.

Not much to say tonight. I'm sitting in the dark, listening to the night sounds outside my bedroom window. Cricket. Cricket. Freight train. Cricket. Scott is chatting with his girl in the next room. I can't make out any of the words through the wall - you know the "Sims" game and how they speak in like a weird, muffled, syllabic language? Sorta sounds like that, interspersed with laughter. I can tell her laugh is from New York. He seems happy.

I've only got another three months here. I can't believe nine months has gone by so fast. For awhile I was letting myself get overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the changes, sinking rather than swimming. I think I just wanted to know where the bottom of the pool was, you know? Now I'm floating, if not swimming, though it seems like those pesky personal projects keep after you until you resolve them. I know I've got a couple loose ends still. I've been sick for nearly three weeks, coughing and the like. I haven't quite gotten up the will to go to the doctor (always an expensive, annoying proposition) but if it keeps up I will have to. At the very least its been a great excuse not to smoke. My pack of Marlboro sits half-smoked on my piano, and has been that way for six weeks. I was amazed that after only two weeks of doing it, I would find myself thinking about smoking, wishing I had one in my mouth. Two weeks. Imagine the people who keep it up.

Things have been good. I am at WQED nearly every day now, working on something or another. Soon I will get paid for the work (or will have to stop doing it). Right now its gratis as I ingratiate myself with the people there. I got this amazing tour today of an Avid Unity system, and it was rather mind-blowing - 16 500GB hard drives networked over fiber-optic cables, delivering 1080i HD to the Avid system. It was beautiful. And surprisingly comprehensible, I might add. I knew what everything was, even the fancy stuff, and I could look at the timeline and know what was going on. I even picked up a couple tricks which I can't wait to try out on my own. HFTH can only benefit from the experience.

I'm working at Apple from 1-7 tomorrow. In the morning Mat and I are working with our dodgeball teammate Julie on planting a garden on Mt. Washington. I don't really do volunteer work like, well, ever, and now I'm plotting to wake up in 5.5 hours to plant flowers to which I am allergic instead of the sweet, tender embrace of sleep which I yearn for like the gods seek virgins. Not that I'm bitter or anything! What can I say, I am selfish about my sleep. I'm sure it'll go great. It will be good to have my hands in the earth.

Does my life sound incredibly boring? I can't decide whether it's at its most exciting or whether it is the caboose on someone else's streamliner. But the things I have, I enjoy - the people I have, I enjoy more. I'm glad it works out like that. I look around at all my stuff (of which I have a LOT) and go, Wow, this is no way cheers me up when I'm bummed out. I've even avoided buying much stuff at the Apple Store, which is hard because man those iPods are slick and I could always use another computer... Money is tight, and after a bit of a panic the other week, I leveled out and got serious about finding work. Not that I'm exactly ready to cut out my soul and leave it on the doorstep of some corporation, nor will I ever be, but I definitely feel motivated to find another job that's going to add some money!

A big shout out to the Doubleshot peeps, who compete for honor and eternal glory in San Francisco!!

Take care. Tend to your little rivers.

Martin

Walking in Circles

Holy God I've graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.

What are you standing there for? Jesus, get me a drink or something!

Wrote my last paper ever tonight. I would offer you choice phrases from it but that would be ridiculous. Suffice it to say the topic was post-modernism, and if that isn't enough to turn you off from wanting to read it you should go into academia where self-negating theoretical approaches to things are bandied about like acorns amongst drunken squirrels.

That said, I think I had some pretty brilliant things to say, but that comes as no surprise to you, dear Reader, does it?

Ahh. I've been so motivated to write on the blog recently. It's certainly not because I've had more time to write. I find that the more time I have to do things, the fewer things get done. My productivity is inversely proportional to the amount of time I have to be productive. Mum says that the things we do expand to the time allotted them, and so if you're doing nothing, well, nothing is all that you'll do all the time. I should make a list of wise things people tell me. It would be long and worthy, and worth rereading.

So does quoting my mom change your perception of me? Does calling her "mum" instead of "Mom" make any difference? I bet you it did. I bet you you just read that and said, "Why is he quoting his mom? He must live at home and play with himself all the time."

How have you been? I heard about the thing. I'm sorry, I... I didn't know. They'll be able to sew it back on. I'm sure of it. You did the right thing.

So in addition to walking around in circles, wondering where the heck I am supposed to go next, I've been working on a couple of projects. I've got a couple of really neat things in the works (I know, I know, "checks in the mail," but things are actually happening). I'm the lead editor on "The Pittsburgh Polio Story," currently working on the development trailer. My dear friend Dr. Sheahan out at Mother of Sorrows School has me doing something akin to a development trailer for her school, and that will air on local cable here in June. It'll be the first project that I'll have shot, edited, and scored myself. I'm proud of how it's turning out so far. The polio thing should be done within the year, and we're hoping for national distribution. At the very least it'll air on WQED here in Pittsburgh, though I think the story is worthy of everyone.

Still working at Apple. I would write more about it but, um, they fire you if you talk about your job, especially on the internet. Actually I might get fired just for telling you they fire people.

And of course, work continues on HFTH. Mark is coming home in a few weeks and we're gonna bust out some more ADR. It's time consuming but awesome, and he's great at it. Just need to finish out Dan and Jenn and we're good to go on that front. I'm slowly getting a second-wind here, about to besiege the internet with requests for effects help.

I don't feel very pithy tonight. I know how you like it pithy. Like I said, I'm walking around in circles. I picked a bad time to quit sniffing glue. Mm... sweet glue clarity.


Martin