Davey Morrison

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

I drew this comic over Christmas break. Merry Christmas! (Click to enlarge the picture and read the text a little easier.)

Snake III

2011-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

Snake II

2011-12-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

Snake I

2011-12-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

These illustrations were for a book about a little girl who arrives at school, only to find that the class pet has destroyed everything and everyone in sight.

Panda Finale!

2011-12-20T13:36:00.001-08:00

Panda, Part Deux

2011-12-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Go Panda!

2011-12-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

The first half of a series of illustrations I did for a book about measuring pandas with pencils.

Happy Feet: The Expansion of Moral and Spiritual Point-of-View

2011-12-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

George Miller’s 2006 computer-animated Happy Feet uses classical Hollywood editing conventions adapted to the animation “camera,” along with a realistic approach to a computer-animated world integrated with live-action footage to establish a specific and limited perspective—and, in the film’s last act, create a significant split in the viewer’s emotional identification that is vital to the film’s moral and spiritual significance. This very deliberate and artful manipulation of the spectator’s response transforms an ending misunderstood by many of Happy Feet’s critics as overtly didactic and politically heavy-handed into a far more universal (and far more mystic) moral statement, echoed in the Abbey Road musical quotation that bookends this very musical film: “And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” This use of traditional cinematic codes of camera placement, movement, and editing to orient the audience’s sympathies and create emotional identification, only to overturn these established attitudes in the film’s final sequences, explodes, enhances, and broadens the thematic ties between romantic love, communal love, and love for the individual beyond even the global level, suggesting another realm of higher beings beyond the visible expanse of space.

Happy Feet follows Mumble, a tone-deaf misfit (he was dropped as an egg) in a community of emperor penguins in which the only way to win a mate is by singing for them the “heartsong.” Though he can’t carry a tune in a bucket, Mumble is born with an incredible ability to express himself by tap dancing. Mumble’s gift, however, is frowned upon by his peers, his teachers, and especially by the village elders, the community’s religious and governmental leaders, who even at one point accuse Mumble’s inability to measure up to social expectations of having brought a fish famine on their community.

The film establishes the complex world of the penguins in its first act—the penguins’ religion, hierarchy, social customs, and beliefs about family are observed with an almost anthropological attention to detail—but, with its opening shots, Happy Feet also significantly orients that fictional world within the grand expanse of the cosmos. The film begins with the image of a nebula, which briefly takes on the countenance of a mother penguin and her young, before hurtling us through space and through Earth’s atmosphere into the penguin’s community. The rest of the film reverses these opening moments, taking us instead from the micro to the macro, building from the individual’s story into the story of a planet—even the entire universe.

In Nick Browne’s essay, “The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach,” Browne examines the means by which director John Ford creates in the audience emotional identification with a specific character or characters in a given shot, scene, or film, by allowing us, through the camera, to quite literally see through their eyes. The camera orients the characters within the space (through some form of a master shot), and then proceeds to orient us emotionally by shooting from a given character’s geographically established point-of-view; the result of this spatial identification is a parallel emotional identification.

Miller uses a subjective camera—kinetic, constantly swooping, darting, and moving—shot frequently from Mumble’s perspective, and intercuts this viewpoint with occasional wide shots (the only entirely static, “objective” shots in the entire film), in which Mumble and the other characters are contextualized within a much larger and more impersonal reality. There is a physical beauty and reality in the animation that makes these moments particularly breathtaking—almost as real as a big-screen nature documentary. In one such shot, Mumble and his friends journey across the static frame, left to right, battling the fiercely cold wind and snow, the setting sun casting harsh, glorious light across the barren ice; it’s an image of classical, elemental struggle and practically tangible severity.

Later, as Mumble leaps off the cliff into the water to go in search of the “aliens,” we follow him through the subjective camera (plummeting down along with him, as he squints his eyes against the whipping wind); after this, Miller cuts to the expansive view, and Mumble becomes a tiny dot moving through space—highlighting both the sheer size of the white cliff from which he jumped, as well as his own existence as a tiny (but distinctive) speck in a huge world.

The use of a subjective camera centering on Mumble’s experience is integral not only to the way in which the story is told and its immediate emotional impact, but also to the means through which meaning is communicated, once again, expanding from the micro to the macro. Once the world of the penguins has been established (and Mumble’s place in it), we get our (and Mumble’s) first encounter with the Other—the attack of the skua birds, revealed, once again, in a camera move that provides for us as an audience the equivalent of Mumble’s revelation within the scene: he falls over, and the camera moves away from Mumble until two enormous bird legs frame the shot, so that we recognize them the very same instant as Mumble, and, just as Mumble is trapped physically, so we as viewers are trapped visually.

The move is significant in that it provides us with the emotional equivalent to (and subsequent connection with) the protagonist, but it is also the first of several such “alien” encounters throughout the film, in which the world up to that point is broadened and contextualized by the sudden intrusion of something larger and as yet unknown. Significantly, it is during this scene (the first time we see a living thing that is not an emperor penguin), that we also get the first indirect reference to humans (another “alien”—literally, as the skua bird relates the story of an abduction by aliens that we, as an audience, recognize to be humans).

The film’s narrative can be divided into these moments in which Mumble comes in contact with a new and unknown species, each apparently bigger and more powerful than the last. The second of these is a tiger seal, which first makes its presence known by rocking the tiny block of ice on which Mumble sits, then appears as an indistinct shadow under the water, and finally emerges from the water to reveal itself in what quickly turns into a fast and frightening chase (if one wants to see Miller’s use of the subjective camera, look no further than this chase scene—the camera swoops down hills and through snow and ice). And, as soon as Mumble has escaped, the tiger seal (at first seemingly indestructible in its massive size and strength) is also contextualized (the macro made micro), as he becomes comically immobile and powerless on dry land. The conclusion of the chase also leads to the next introduction of a new species: the Adelie penguins, another, smaller species of penguin with other customs and beliefs (and even Hispanic accents to anthropomorphize their racial difference from and relation to the emperor penguins). Again, Miller’s camera moves with Mumble, crossing the threshold of a snowy hill at the same moment he does to reveal thousands of other penguins like his new friends.

This process of anthropomorphization (and, by contrast, photorealistic depiction) is also important in how Happy Feet operates to create meaning—the thematic, emotional, and intellectual movement and development of the story inform even the most basic visual design. The penguins in Happy Feet exist in a world between the photographic realism of The March of the Penguins and the conventional, cartoonized computer-animation of a Disney or Pixar film. These penguins are unique, with slightly exaggerated human qualities, but they never become cartoons—Miller originally conceived of the film as a technical hybrid between live-action and special effects, using animated mouths and faces on live-action animals (as in the two Babe films), and, although the majority of Happy Feet is computer-animated, he’s really using different techniques to achieve essentially similar ends. The animals in Happy Feet exist as the expected, animated-anthropomorphized audience surrogates, but also as actual penguins—the females are curvy, but in a penguin way, rather than a human way, and they all eat their fish, blood, skeleton, and all. It is this sense of reality (and our contextualization in the mystery and vastness of the heavens) that anchors the film and gives it a sense of gravity—and turns a group of recently-graduated penguins singing Queen’s “Somebody to Love” to the school-dance-like Northern Lights not just a moment of imaginative cinematic bliss, but also a genuine plea to the heavens, yet another instance of the linkage between romantic and cosmic love established in the film’s opening image, and that will be integral until Happy Feet’s last frame.

Unlike Pixar’s Wall-E, when the humans appear in Happy Feet, they are not cartoons; Miller and his team seamlessly blend the realistically rendered world of the animals with the live-action human world. As Mumble lies washed ashore after attempting to make contact with the “aliens,” darkness absorbs the screen and the film fades to black. Then, we see Mumble emerge from the dark as he enters the shimmering white light of the zoo. “You’re in heaven, Dave. Penguin heaven,” he is told. Mumble explores his new surroundings, and we explore with him—until he realizes, painfully, that the distant, snowy horizon is really just a mural painted on a wall. He dives into the water, and there he sees, faintly (and through a glass darkly), two human faces gazing back at him. As Mumble screams out in the depth of his despair—the cry falls on deaf ears, as the zoo patrons continue to walk about, play their Game Boys, and so on—the camera again moves away, and the cry echoes throughout the earth, and throughout the cosmos. The opening image of the film is mirrored, and, in a way, the film has come full circle, enveloping us in the penguins’ world only to remind us again of the external reality in which this constructed, fictional world exists. We’ve been drawn into Mumble’s experience by the limited parameters of the story and camera and lulled into the emotional immersion that we have come to expect from narrative film—and then, with the introduction of the live-action human form, our sympathies are split. Our investment in Mumble and his journey remains, but our universal, instinctual identification with the photographic human form (“the transcendent subject,” as film theorist Bela Balazs has called the human face) creates an opposition in our emotional identification; we are now, as viewers, Mumble trapped in a cell, and we are also the unlistening men and women going about their business on the other side of the glass. From this point on, we are responsible.

The use of the term “alien” is also significant in the development of the film’s moral order. Once again, the audience’s identification is split, this time verbally rather than visually—as viewers, we see the “aliens” through the eyes of the penguins (and skua birds), even as we easily identify them (based on the bird’s description) as humans. An early cut of Happy Feet actually included another storyline involving an alien race which resembled penguins (perhaps this will figure into the sequel, which is on its way); though the space aliens make no appearance in the film, their presence is still keenly felt. Through Mumble and the world of the penguins, we feel the presence of a being higher and more powerful than ourselves (the humans), on which we must depend for survival—and, through the introduction of the on-screen humans, this feeling is both transferred and transformed. We are imbued with a recognition of our responsibility to the earth, even as we become aware of our own dependence on higher forces for existence. Thus, Happy Feet becomes more than an excellent expansion on a traditional family film structure (the outsider who proves himself to the community); it is a spiritual meditation on our moral responsibilities to one another, and on our relationship to God—or even, as Happy Feet seems subtly to suggest, a world of unknown gods and goddesses, existing somewhere in physical space, but beyond the visibility of the eye.

The last sequence of the film makes the final move from the penguins’ world into the world of the humans. Mumble has been released back into his community, a tracking device attached to his back. He tells his story, is reunited with his family, and finally wins the support of his community, when they realize that it is Mumble’s dancing, rather than the shifting dogma of the superstitious elders, that will ultimately save them. The elders are obvious Pharisees, and in many ways Mumble acts as Christ—experiencing a sacrificial spiritual death in his time at the zoo, a “resurrection” of sorts through his return, and ultimately acting as the intermediary between the penguin world and the humans; dancing is the redemption of the community (which, at the mercy of the humans, becomes as an entity an outsider itself, like Mumble)—the message of universal love is spread as the community becomes united, and Mumble and Gloria are united romantically, fusing the individual, the community, the family unit, and a dependence on and reverence to higher powers. This sequence, too, begins from the point-of-view of the penguins, as Mumble returns; then, with the entrance of the live-action helicopter, our viewpoint shifts. We see the penguins’ perspective, looking up at the four powerful pilots standing like ominous pilgrims (or aliens, or gods) on the mountaintop; then, we cut to the pilots’ perspective, looking down upon the throng of birds, and all is silent. And then: dancing. We gaze on the sea of tap-dancing penguins with the wonder and the panoramic position of the pilots; now the penguins are the Other—foreign, but beautiful, and even awe-inspiring in their mystery. The camera moves away yet again, turning the pilot’s vision of the dancing penguins into the digital image of a TV screen, as people elsewhere in the world see the same thing, and the viewer is also metacinematically made aware of his or her own position as a spectator. These viewers, however, are not only witnesses, they are imbued with a capacity for action—the film ends with the controversial montage, as people around the world discuss the phenomenon, argue, attempt to pass bills, and so on. But this is not simple-minded political propaganda, and Happy Feet is not only a call to resettle Earth’s environmental imbalance—as we have seen, through the split in human-penguin identification, it is also a much broader plea to restore balance in the universe in every way. This is not just a film about penguins—because we identify with Mumble, it is also a film about us, about every minority and every outsider, and, in depicting both points-of-view (the dance from the penguins’ perspective, the dance from the humans’ perspective), the film suggests that it is in making this connection, in finding a common ground, acknowledging, embracing, and seeking to understand the Other that we are able to save them—and be saved. Like the humans in Happy Feet, we all have a responsibility to reach out and save the many beautiful, vulnerable lives around us. And, like the penguins, we are all at the mercy of higher powers—we are at the mercy of gods, and we are at the mercy of each other. There is salvation, but only after all we can do, both for ourselves and especially for one another.

"Vision," A Short Comic

2011-12-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

I wrote and my brother, Steve, illustrated a four-page comic for a special all-comics issue of Sunstone magazine last year. Here it is! (You'll have to enlarge the images to see and read it better.)

You can download the entire issue for free from sunstonemagazine.com.

Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project

2011-12-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project is a collection of nineteen short (ten-minute and one-act) plays I edited, which was published last year by Peculiar Pages. It's available for sale on Amazon.com in paperback (prettier) and as an ebook (cheaper).

"With these 19 plays, the New Play Project ably makes its claim as one of the most ambitious and vibrant going concerns in the world of LDS culture to all of us mission-field Mormons who have only heard rumors and testimonies. Out of the Mount delivers comedy and tragedy and social commentary, allegory, politics and healthy doses of armchair philosophy and theology in plays that mainly focus on (as most good plays do) relationships that unfold via crackling dialogue. Whether it s Clark Kent and Lois Lane applying for a marriage license or Adam and Eve feeling their way towards some sort of post-fall rapprochement or young couples falling in and out of love, these playwrights are writing for these latter-days, even when there s nothing particularly LDS about their characters and settings. That said, what I love most about this anthology is that we get--especially with the fantastic concluding trio of 'Gaia,' 'Prodigal Son' and 'Little Happy Secrets'--works that artfully and poignantly explore key aspects of the grand drama that is the Mormon experience."
--William Morris, A Motley Vision blog

"Jonah and the Great Fish"--Now on DVD!

2011-12-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wanted to see me as a dimwitted shark named Murphy, now is your chance! Liken's Jonah and the Great Fish is now on sale. Here's a trailer.

White Dog Black Heart

2011-12-19T16:23:00.000-08:00

The final image of Samuel Fuller's White Dog fades from color to black-and-white, and from black-and-white to a negative. Nothing has changed--it's only been inverted.

White Dog is a critique not only of racism, but of the ways in which we address it--Fuller's final film acts as a commentary not only on the blacks and whites of skin color, but on black-and-white thinking. Hatred is instilled in individuals and instilled in the culture collectively by repeated abuse. Like the dog, we're either indoctrinated, pummeled into ideological submission, or else we're simply born into prejudice, heirs to the sins of the fathers--the film's take on racism recalls a statement from one of Fuller's earlier films, Shock Corridor, in which racism is described as a "disease carried to those yet unborn." And, like the dog, this disease may be incurable. In the film's climax, the dog learns to accept Keys' black skin, only to attack the white Carruthers immediately thereafter. When hate has been instilled, legislation can only go so far--we can't seem to find a cure, the best we can do is to switch sides. We need an enemy. Nothing is changed--only inverted.

In the book on which it's based, the white dog is counter-programmed by Keys, a black Muslim, to attack white people--a blatant metaphor for the Black Panthers' response to civil rights: to fight violence with more violence, to take the oppressor's tools and use them against him. But Fuller's adaptation complicates the conversation, addressing problems that may be more lingering and less easily negotiable. Here Keys isn't seeking revenge, he is sincerely, even obsessively, attempting to cure the dog of its aggression altogether--only to find out after several attacks and at least one death that the dog is incurable. Once it's been instilled, cultural violence cannot be eradicated, only displaced. Only inverted. Nothing changed.

In White Dog, those "yet unborn" who inherit the disease are embodied by two innocents, the beaming granddaughters, their heads held in unnatural headlock by an ostensibly harmless, apparently affectionate, chocolate-bearing grandpa: the proud racist who trained the dog to be a killer. When Julie finds him standing at her gate, she yells, she swears, she lashes out--and, while her anger may be justified, her response is just more of the same. Abuse. Aggression. Hatred begetting hatred.

White Dog isn't merely targeting the reactionary violence of the Black Panthers--Fuller's film is an indictment of an inherently violent cultural mindset, a tradition of inflammatory rhetoric, a society that seems to always needs someone to attack. We need enemies, and the most we ever seem to do is to give them different faces.

Invert the image. Swap allegiance.

Change nothing.

Körkarlen: Christian Stories and Christlike Storytelling

2011-12-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

Körkarlen, released in Sweden in 1921, was the fourth of director Victor Sjöstrom's adaptations of Selma Lagerlöf's stories. In 1912, Lagerlöf was commissioned to write an informational piece on the dangers of tuberculosis, and, with a sister and a niece who both suffered from the illness, it was a sensitive subject for the author. Instead of an essay, Lagerlöf opted to communicate the same message through fiction, writing a novel that borrowed the basic structure of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and adapted it into a far bleaker, far more terrifying, and even more deeply redemptive tale set at the dawn of the New Year.

David Holm, the protagonist who dies in the first act of the film only to be visited by the haunting carriage of the title, is, like Dickens' penny-pincher, haunted by his horrific past—but David Holm's sins are far more damning than Scrooge's misanthropic miserliness; Holm's descent into drink and illness (both physical and spiritual), extraordinarily realized through Sjöstrom's direction and his astounding central performance, is a truly hellish journey. While Dickens opts for easy (and effective) sentimentality, focusing on a man drained of his innate goodness, Sjöstrom's David Holm is something far more frightening—a convert to evil, a destructive agent who bitterly and vengefully uses his illness to infect and destroy others. Even the structure, while lifted from Dickens, is complicated by an almost labyrinthine Proustianism—flashbacks occur within flashbacks, and the chronology and context only gradually come into focus, like a memory or a nightmare (or a memory of a nightmare). Lagerlöf's original purpose in writing the story is evident in Holm's lethal handkerchief—a warning against the ways in which communicative disease may be spread—even as the story's complex structure and emphasis on character elevate it from public service announcement into something far more enduringly mythological. As dramatized by Sjöstrom, David Holm's fall is deliberately and dramatically biblical; Holm's family life is depicted as edenic, with a stark contrast between the rippling, sunlit farm field exteriors and the dark, murky, eternal night of the studio-bound city scenes that chronicle his drinking and destruction, self- and otherwise. Coming on the heels of Sweden's Industrial Revolution, Körkarlen is, among other things, a romantic ode to a simpler time and a lament for an increasingly ugly and dirty world, with Holm's spiritual corruption mirrored by his decaying surroundings. But, while Holm's fall from grace is classically Old Testament, his climactic redemption is just as thoroughly Christian; Körkarlen is the parable of the prodigal son brought to life in terrifying and profoundly moving detail, a sermon on mercy and a demonstration that even the most apparently hopeless and corrupt of souls is not beyond the transformative love of Christ. The embodiment of that pure love in the film is Edit, the Salvation Army girl who sees David at his worst and loves him nevertheless, seemingly without reason (when she sews up the rips in his jacket, he makes sure she is there to watch as he violently tears them back out again). In the film's finale, Edit's sacrificial death miraculously and paradoxically brings David back to life, providing both he and his family with a second chance. Lagerlöf was commissioned to write an essay on preventing disease; what she and Sjöstrom came up with was one of the most beautiful religious parables of the 20th century.

The didactic possibilities of Körkarlen were recognized and seized upon for its American release, which re-edited the film into a straightforwardly linear cautionary tale fit for the Prohibition era—the story of a good man turned bad by drink. While the complex series of flashbacks in Sjöstrom's original film give the material powerful psychological complexity, the American release ironically jettisoned the complicatedly Dickensian structure in an apparent move towards reassuringly Dickensian melodrama; the American edit uses the individual character as a means by which to highlight the social problem, whereas Sjöstrom uses the social problem to give definition and dynamism to a fully-rounded and complicated character, the focus of his story. It's an approach that would seem to reflect Sweden's own more nuanced political response to problems surrounding alcohol, with the implementation of a ration rather than an outright prohibition—a moderation and understanding of circumstance that may well be the difference between propagandizing and storytelling, between Lagerlöf's commissioned essay and her resulting story. It is Christlike compassion for the individual and charitable attention to detail that transforms the mere distribution of information into the communal and potentially transformative experience of storytelling.
Sjöstrom's background in the theater is evident in his simple framing, detailed design, and especially in the focus on the performances to carry the story—but while Körkarlen harkens back to a classical mode of silent storytelling, the film was also blazing bold new trails in Swedish cinema. Sjöstrom, a pioneer in shooting on location, moved most of the production indoors to create the controlled environment necessary for the dozens of complicated special effects shots. The decision paid off. The ghostly, double-exposed phantom carriage is no mere gimmick—the image casts an eerie, otherworldly shadow over the entire story (early in the film, we see the carriage riding over the waters of the ocean—it goes anywhere, there is no escape), and it also allows for some striking mis-en-scene, as when, in the midst of the cemetery, a single white cross shines through the center of the transparent carriage. It's an image that encapsulates the thematic thrust of the entire story—a glimmer of hope in the midst of death and decay. In Körkarlen, Death's carriage is physicalized, but God's mercy is something quieter—it must be taken on faith. In the midst of a lone and dreary world, surrounded by horrors, and even in the heart of death itself (both physical and spiritual) there is the possibility for redemption and renewal. Sjöstrom's film depicts a bleak world of seemingly insurmountable sin, and Christian love—that is to say, perfect and unconditional love—is more necessary here than anywhere.

You can watch Körkarlen (a.k.a., The Phantom Carriage) for free at Archive.org. It's also available for sale through the Criterion label, with a beautiful new transfer and a slew of great extras (including two great scores).

Head

2011-12-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

"An Exercise in Mormon Criticism: 'Pan's Labyrinth'"

2010-06-30T08:33:00.001-07:00

I presented this essay at the 2010 Mormon Media Studies Symposium; it was also published in The Mormon Review. It is rich with spoilers for the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which is one of my favorite movies ever, for many reasons I discuss in this paper, and for its inclusion of awesome monsters like this one:

Read! Enjoy! Consider! Comment!

I. The Case for Mormon Criticism

Much is made in the LDS community of the need for great Mormon art and artists. Orson F. Whitney said it perhaps most famously: “We shall have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” While these conversations are frequently worthwhile and sometimes even inspiring, they often miss a couple of simple and significant points. First: great Mormon art and artists already exist. No matter your definition or your standards, there is much out there that is of very good report indeed. Second: all art for Mormons need not be “Mormon art” for it to be valuable. While there is no reason not to tell stories unique to Latter-day Saint religion, culture, and community, there is also no need to be entirely exclusive, either as artists or as audience members—the majority of spiritual experiences, after all, most likely take place outside of the temple and the church meetinghouse.

Separate from, but related to the need for great Mormon artists is the need for mature, thinking Mormon audiences. In order for an artistic movement to flourish, a number of requirements are necessary. An audience must exist to receive the work. Equally necessary is the existence of a critical community. With Sunstone, Dialogue, Irreantum, the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), BYU Studies, and other like-minded enterprises, a body of intelligent critics and criticism has developed in the Mormon arts community. What is largely missing, however, is Mormon criticism of non-Mormon texts. Richard Bushman recently launched The Mormon Review in an attempt to fill this void in the Mormon critical community. So far, it has published a number of very worthwhile essays, on topics ranging from Vertigo to Dan Brown to the original Battlestar Gallactica; the website, however, is still in its infancy, and, between the blog-like format and the inconsistency of new content, it has yet to receive the attention of the aforementioned publications. Other examples of Mormon criticism of non-Mormon texts exist, but it seems they are still too few and far between.

What might be the purpose of a Mormon criticism? The same as any other school of criticism, I think—to reveal something new and worth investigating in the work, the reader, the critic, and the ideology being used. Our theological background gives us unique insight into certain works, just as certain stories reveal to us things we had never realized about our own doctrine and beliefs. Not every work of art warrants a specifically Mormon reading—most probably do not, just as not every work is suited to a psychoanalytic reading—but that should not deter us from using our Mormon lens to examine those that seem to invite it. Steven Spielberg may not have intended E.T. as a celebration of how Christ's Atonement so personally heals that which is broken in us, but it is certainly a valid interpretation of the film; and, while there may not have been any Latter-day Saint involvement in Disney's Pinocchio, the film still acts as a very moving parable of the Plan of Salvation.

And so, as those entrenched within Mormonism and within the arts continue to ask the questions: “What is Mormon art?” and “What is Mormon film?” I would like to suggest one possible answer: Mormon film is any film as seen by a Mormon.

II. Case Study: Pan's Labyrinth and the Sanctity of Disobedience

Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) follows the frightening and fantastical journey of a young girl, Ofelia, through a series of magical adventures, set against the backdrop of the real-life horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Del Toro frames Ofelia's story with, essentially, a mythological conception of the Plan of Salvation. The film begins with voice-over narration: 

“A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew the Princess' soul would return.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

Spiritual royalty, lost in a fallen world where she is prone to the frailties of mortality, separated from her pre-Earth memories by means of a “veil,” Ofelia discovers and accepts her divine identity by navigating a series of moral complexities, in an attempt to reclaim her heritage and return to live with her true father, the King. This is the basis for a story that takes the moral logic of a uniquely Mormon conception of the Fall of Man, and extends it to an Abraham and Isaac narrative. The result is powerful, and the implications profound.

Mormonism holds a unique view of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. While a variety of interpretations exist within Mormonism, Latter-day Saints tend to believe, more so than other Judeo-Christians, that Eve’s partaking of the fruit was less a momentary vulnerability to temptation than it was the wise and courageous decision of a strong woman choosing to take on mortality in the face of pain, death, and difficulties. A poem by Sarah E. Page, “Coring the Apple,” published in Mormon Artist magazine, eloquently expresses this view:

“Instead of the thorn,
Hast thou found honey?

I would like to ask Eve someday
What she saw in the apple.

Before she chose
The fire-stung glory of mortality,
Did she pause for even the space of a breath,
Tremble at the bruise of pain, the sharpness of the briar?
Perhaps she sensed the hope nestled star-like
In the core of the fruit
And so risked all she was for the quickening--
The promise of the seed dreaming deep in the loam.

I would like to ask Eve someday
What she saw in me.”

The “commandment” not to eat of the fruit, then (the word “commandment” is used more in discussions of the Genesis story than it is in the actual account of it), is less a commandment in the traditional sense, and more a statement of cause and effect: “For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). In God’s plan, partaking of the fruit was essential, but it was to occur only when Adam and Eve had matured to the point that they were able to make the decision for themselves, and to take upon themselves the consequences of mortality. This understanding of the Adam and Eve story celebrates the innate individual spiritual conscience—the Light of Christ—capable of making significant moral choices even when they may seem contradictory to the commandments of God Himself. This is a radical and profound re-envisioning of a classical myth. The Mormon Adam and Eve are gods in embryo indeed—their spiritual and moral instinct bears even greater weight than a perceived commandment.

This dichotomy between moral reasoning and unthinking obedience is central in Pan’s Labyrinth. The film’s villain, Captain Vidal (also Ofelia's stepfather), is a foil to the celestial cosmology of the fantasy world—where Ofelia is the spiritual heir to a glorious throne, Vidal is the dark lord of a corrupt land. Ofelia must resist Vidal’s evil—and, ultimately, overcome it with good—in order to save herself and redeem Spain.

Throughout the story, Ofelia is presented with a series of tests, administered by a faun (the literal translation of the title is The Labyrinth of the Faun); the faun acts as an intermediary between Ofelia and her father, whose existence she must take on faith. For one of these tests, she is asked to retrieve the contents of a small box from a large dining room filled with delicious food without touching or tasting it—“Do not eat of the fruit,” she is told, in effect. The Ofelia in this scene is, in many regards, a traditionally Christian Eve—she disobeys and eats a single plump, juicy grape, and so unleashes a terrifying monster when she “partakes of the fruit.” She escapes the creature's clutches and returns in safety, but the faun's wrath is kindled—and, through her ignorant act of disobedience, she has very nearly forfeited her royal heritage.

These challenges Ofelia faces in the magical world are juxtaposed against a backdrop of the all-too-real horrors of the Spanish Civil War, in which she finds herself mired. In the woods surrounding Captain Vidal's house—even in the household itself—a resistance movement has been building. Dr. Ferreiro, a medical doctor who works for Vidal—and who is also an undercover force for the resistance—is presented with his own moral choice, one that once again echoes that of Adam and Eve, albeit in an inverted form. Vidal has captured one of the soldiers of the resistance, and is torturing him for information. The Captain commands Ferreiro to keep the prisoner alive after he has tortured him nearly to death—Vidal wants the man to suffer as much as possible, and also wants as much information as he can extract from him. Rather than keeping the prisoner alive, Ferreiro mercifully administers a lethal injection. Vidal is enraged by the doctor's act of disobedience. When confronted, Ferreiro responds, “To obey—just like that—for the sake of obeying . . . without questioning . . . That's something only people like you can do, Captain.” It is important to remember Ferreiro's words in the climax of the film, when Ofelia must prove herself in her third and final test, and in which these thematic and theological strands are finally united.

For this final test, Ofelia must take her mother’s newborn baby, her own little brother, into the middle of the garden maze outside their house—when she arrives, Ofelia is told she must offer the child's blood as a sacrifice. The blood sacrifice of a pure and innocent child immediately conjures up Christian parallels (especially taking place, as it does, deep in a garden in the dark of night), but this story even more specifically recalls that of Abraham and Isaac, with a powerful and seemingly cruel God requiring an offering of a vulnerable child upon the altar.

In his story “Abraham's Purgatory,” included in The FOB Bible, B. G. Christensen recounts the story of Abraham's sacrifice, as he plays out the event time and again in his mind, in every possible iteration. Each time, the story concludes with a cold, piercing finality: “He placed the knife against his son's neck and cut.” Abraham pleads with God again and again—he asks for a sign, but he is met with silence. The story concludes:

Once again, Abraham lifted his knife and tried to ignore the fear in his son's eyes.
The knife trembled.
“I'm sorry, son. There is no other way. We must obey the Lord. We—we must—” No.
No.
I will not.
Abraham lowered the knife to his son's wrist and cut the twine. Above Isaac's grateful sobs he heard a rustling in the bush.
(“Abraham's Purgatory,” Christensen)

Christensen's rewriting of Abraham's sacrifice turns on its head the traditional story of unshakable faith and absolute obedience. In this story, Abraham's test of faith remains just as unendurable, but the angel who appears to Abraham here is not a physical being or a vision of light; instead it is his own spirit, his moral conscience—the godly within him. Like the Eve of Mormonism, like Jesus among the Pharisees, Abraham breaks a commandment to fulfill a higher law, and it is in his act of willful, reasoned disobedience that he paradoxically finds salvation.

Like Christensen's uniquely Mormon Abraham, Ofelia, too, renounces the blind obedience decried by Ferreira, and refuses the faun’s request of the infant’s life; where her act of disobedience in the first test was weakness, this resolute refusal is strength. Captain Vidal, who has been chasing Ofelia through the garden maze, appears, and Ofelia is shot and killed. In a moment of beautiful irony, Ofelia’s own blood acts as the necessary sacrifice of an innocent, and, as in Eden, seemingly contradictory moral necessities are clarified and unified, fulfilled and transcended. Ofelia acts as a Savior for her younger brother (and, by extension, the future of Spain itself), and, in wisely disobeying, she has proven her obedience, her strength, and her purity.

“Many, many years ago, in a sad, faraway land, there was an enormous mountain made of rough, black stone. At sunset, on top of that mountain, a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone... Forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

This is the bedtime story Ofelia tells her unborn sister early in the film, and it is a telling metaphor for and summation of Del Toro's rendering of Mormon doctrine. Eternal life is atop a high mountain—cold, dark, and steep—the way is strait, and the road narrow. It is a frightening journey up this personal Moriah—so frightening that many never even attempt it. But it is in this journey—through both the darkness that lies around us, and the fear that lies within us—that our faith is tested, our character proven, and this corruption takes on incorruption. Only by passing through mortality may we transcend it; only (like Eve, like Abraham) by facing the impossible questions of our faith, until we fear it might crumble around us—only by daring to do what is right even in the face of eternal damnation—can we become exalted, and find the god that dwells within us.
“You have passed the test,” the faun says to Ofelia, and bows—and, in the film's final moments, she is welcomed to take her place next to her spiritual Father, as Princess.

“And it is said that the Princess returned to her Father's kingdom. That she reigned there with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. That she was loved by her people. And that she left behind small traces of her time on Earth, visible only to those who know where to look.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

III. Towards a (More) Mormon Audience

Pan's Labyrinth is just one example of a work of art that takes on greater depth of meaning when examined through a specific religious lens. Mormonism provides an unusually fitting framework through which to understand and explore Del Toro's film, even as the film itself illuminates and expounds upon the sublime heresy at the heart of Mormonism—namely, that when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit in Eden, they truly did become as gods, proving their ability to discern good from evil, even in the face of death and damnation.

While the Catholicism and the classical mythology present in Del Toro's moral fairy tale are undoubtedly deliberate, and can be traced throughout the filmmaker's body of work, it seems unlikely that Pan's Labyrinth was ever intended to have anything to do with the intricacies of doctrine in a somewhat obscure 19th century American religion. Still, once acknowledged, the parallels are undeniable. It is these sorts of critical contexts that enlarge even the works they interpret, as we find in other artist's stories the “small traces” they may have left—clues that allow us to remake the work of art in our own image; analysis becomes essay and even autobiography as we find out new things in ourselves, in the art, in the artist, and in our own doctrine. In this way, the active audience member becomes a participant in the creative process, adding to what is onscreen rather than simply and distractedly consuming it. “Indeed we may say,” says Joseph Smith, in the thirteenth Article of Faith, “that we follow the admonition of Paul... If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” Truth, beauty, and wisdom—virtue, loveliness, and goodness—these are all ours to discover in our experiences as viewers and as critics, if, as in the final words of Del Toro's film, “we only know where to look.”

"Jonah and the Great Fish"

2010-02-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Right now, I'm acting in a play called Jonah and the Great Fish. It's playing at the SCERA theater in Orem (click the link for info on tickets and showtimes). It's being produced by Liken, and they're shooting the film version back-to-back with the stage production. It's a fun show, and it's been a great experience getting to know some of the cast members (it's an amazingly talented cast) and getting involved with Liken, which is a very cool part of the Mormon media world right now.

Here's the first review of the show, and a story on the production from ABC 4's site.

Barton Fink

2010-02-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry, for anyone who happened to start it (assuming such people exist, and that any of them were interested in ever finishing it), that I still haven't posted the latter half of the short story "Sinners." It will happen someday.

In the meantime, here's me in a BYU student film project--a 319 directing project (an exercise before one's final senior project as a director) in which the student takes a scene from a pre-existing script (in this case, the Coen brothers' Barton Fink), and reshoot it (casting, shooting, editing, etc.). This was how I spent one strange morning in November, from midnight till about 5am. Enjoy

A Scene from BARTON FINK from Jordan Petersen on Vimeo.

"Mormon Artist" Contest Issue

2009-11-29T13:41:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, the first Contest Issue of the Mormon Artist magazine was published, which includes my play "Adam and Eve" and my poem "Blind Man," including essays on each, and interviews with me. Several other great poems, essays, stories, and so forth are included as well, along with essays on them and interviews with the authors. I also did the illustrations for two poems and a series of short stories, and my brother Steve did the illustrations for "Adam and Eve." Enjoy!

Read or download the Mormon Artist Contest Issue here.

Also: I'll be posting a video of the latest performance of "Adam and Eve," starring the brilliant Becca Ingram and Tyler Harris, sometime in the coming weeks.

Video: "Much Ado About Nothing," Grassroots Shakespeare 2009

2009-11-05T23:32:00.000-08:00

Video of a complete performance of our Grassroots Shakespeare Company touring production of Much Ado About Nothing is up on Facebook, if you'd like to check it out. Here are the links.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
You have to be a Facebook friend of me or someone else in the cast to watch it, but, if you're reading this, you probably are. Enjoy!

A Fairy Tale

2009-10-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom, there lived a prince, the son of a great king and queen. When he was born, the stars shone brighter, and when he let out his first cry, the birds stopped their singing to listen.

Now, it happened that on the day of his eighth birthday, the king and queen had a wonderful banquet for their son. All the citizens of the kingdom brought food—the sweetest fruits and biggest vegetables and meatiest of meats. The men harvested their grains and the women baked them into rich, enormous cakes. The table in the grand hall was so packed there wasn’t room for another peanut.

When the time came for the food to be served, the king announced, “For the young prince’s birthday, he will eat of the first dish.” Four men dressed in four long, flowing suits appeared, and put on the prince’s plate everything he asked for: cucumbers, chicken breasts, ripe, plump tomatoes, raspberry tart—and the king, queen, and citizens of the kingdom watched as the prince devoured it all. When he was done, the young prince wiped his mouth with his napkin and politely asked for more. Again, the four men in the four suits appeared, and again they filled the prince’s plate with all his requests—long orange carrots, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pudding, apple pie, chocolate cake, radishes, turkey, bread, gravy. And once again, the king, the queen, and all the kingdom watched as the prince licked every morsel clean. The same thing happened again: a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time, and still the prince asked for more.

It was well into the second day of the feast when the king called the court physician. “What’s wrong with our boy?” he asked. The court physician listened to the prince’s heartbeat, checked his pulse, felt his forehead. He didn’t get a chance to look at the boy’s tongue, as he normally might have, because it was too busy slurping plate after plate of the most succulent dishes. “I can find nothing wrong with the boy,” said the physician, and he was dismissed.

The king and queen gave the citizens leave to go home to their empty tables, for each of them had brought all their food for the great banquet. Four more men in long, flowing suits were brought to replace the first shift. And still the young prince kept eating.

Years passed. The good king and queen grew very old. Every day they would wake up at dawn and go to the table in the grand hall, where their son, now a young man, was still eating. “You must find yourself a princess to marry,” they would say, “So that together you can rule our kingdom when we are gone.” But the young prince would never answer, for he was swallowing a cantaloupe.

Then after many more years, one morning came when the good king didn’t wake up. The queen came down at dawn, as she had every other day, and found her son, still eating, and still as small and as thin as ever, for although he had been eating every moment since his eighth birthday, even eating while he slept, he had not grown an inch—indeed, he had even shrunk just a bit.

“My son,” the queen cried to the young prince, but he did not respond, he only shoved a slice of fruitcake into his mouth. “My son, your father the king has died, and still you eat!”

Through tears, the queen made orders that throughout the kingdom a special fast would be observed in mourning of the good king’s passing. No one ate or drank anything for three days—no one, that is, except the young prince.

“My son,” the queen cried. “My son, your father the king is dead, and all the kingdom is fasting in his honor, but still you eat! You dishonor yourself, and your father, and this kingdom that is to be yours, if ever you should stop eating—but you do not!”

Then, for the first time in twenty years, struggling between bites and chews and swallows, the young prince spoke: “I’m just so hungry.”

“Hungry?” the queen responded. “But my son, you’ve been eating every moment of every day for the past twenty years. Many hunters have had to journey to far-off lands to find food for you, for you have swallowed our forests clean. Farmers from ten kingdoms have had their crops stripped bare trying to feed you. You have drunk two oceans, sixteen lakes, and four rivers, and you have made the unicorn, the griffin, and the dodo all extinct, but still you eat! How can you want more?”

“I don’t know,” said the young prince, tears streaming down his face and into his mouth, which had grown so tired from so many years of chewing. “Each day I eat more than the day before, and each day I wake up with an even greater hunger rumbling in my belly.”

The prince stayed at the table in the grand hall eating for many more years. The good queen remarried, and with her new husband she had a daughter, who grew to marry a prince and, when her mother was gone, they ruled as the new king and queen. The young prince, meanwhile, grew older, and hungrier, and then, one day, his jaw stopped moving. When four more men in long coats came the next morning, they realized he was dead.

Grandma & Grandpa Sonderegger's 60th Wedding Anniversary

2009-09-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

A little montage I made for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary a couple years back.

A Poe movie

2009-08-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

A former seminary teacher of mine recently asked me to help him out with a project for his Master's degree in education--he was putting together a 9th grade unit on Edgar Allan Poe short stories, and wanted to introduce it with a movie with an eerie vibe and an emphasis on different kinds of phobias. Here's the result. (The music is the best I could find at the time on Creative Commons--one of the few things that didn't sound like a 13 year old sitting in his parent's basement and looping stuff on a synthesizer for eight minutes. I would've preferred some dissonant classical something or other, but we can't have everything.)

Fishmongers; Tomfoolery

2009-06-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

Richard Dutcher interview

2009-06-19T15:36:00.001-07:00

I recently had the opportunity to catch a private screening Richard Dutcher's film Falling (you can read my review here, and check out links to other reviews, essays, message boards, etc. on the much-talked-about film here), and then had the great honor of being able to sit down with Dutcher himself (one of my heroes) for about an hour and talk. You can read the full interview here, and soon I'll be editing the audio into a podcast version.

The Show Must Go On! (Grassroots Shakespeare Company)

2009-06-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night we had the first (and, I hope--and fully expect--only) performance of our run canceled. Here's a brief timetable:

Late Friday Night: Wes sends out a message to everyone informing us that he was feeling ill, and Without Voice.

Saturday Morning: The clouds gather--both literally and figuratively. Several of us debate via Facebook the pros and cons of going on with the show, and feel like Wes should probably make the final decision whether or not he feels up to it.

4:00PM: After an afternoon of uncertainty, a verdict is reached--we'll do the show, with our stage manager, Daniel Whiting, on book as Wes' characters.

4:30PM: We congregate at Wes' place for our pre-show barbecue, as planned. Wes decides he'll play Borachio, while Daniel will read The Messenger. The skies clear figuratively, if not literally.

7:00PM: It's time to ship out, and, two-and-a-half hours later, we still haven't generated enough of a flame for any of the hamburgers to cook (except for one lone, medium-well-done burger right in the middle of the grill, which may or may not have actually ever been eaten by anyone). We load everything up (including the grill) in the back of the truck and head over to the park by Springville High School where the Art City Days events are going on, to appease the Muse with our theatrical passions and our unfilled bellies.

7:15PM: Joel and I arrive first. We head on in to the festivities, and, after scouring the premises for twenty minutes or so, conclude that this thing is contained within practically a square foot--there's absolutely no place to set up and do the show, except, perhaps, on the perimeter by some parents enjoying a peaceful chat on a bench by the playground as their wee ones frolicked. That, or on the edge of a parking lot, with our audience sitting in the street, a chain link fence between us, and competing with a classic rock cover band.

7:30PM: We return to the Springville High parking lot, and report the bleak news to our comrades-in-arms. The more enthusiastic rally us round and convince us that the show must indeed go on.

8:00PM: After lugging my 40 lb. accordion for what seems like (and could possibly have been) a half a mile, we set up in the field just outside the festival, where our stage may or may not be invaded by either, a) some kids playing soccer, or b) some kids in a Shetland pony-drawn carriage. We struggle to find a spot that isn't either overshadowed by the giant glowing rollercoastery circle-of-wonder, or made up entirely of mud (since we also have an audience to consider--we hope), all while trying to make as much use as possible of the limited foot traffic we have.

8:15PM: Against all odds, the show begins.

8:30PM: Cue torrential downpour.

8:45PM: Our audience of ten-or-so stalwart souls cowered under umbrellas, the guitar getting soaked, the accordion having fled into its plastic case, those of us wearing glasses now rendered blind either with or without them (covered in obscuring droplets of water as they are), all of us freezing and those in dresses ultra-freezing, the tambourine incapable of producing a decent jangle because the head is so saturated from the moisture, we have, after a hard day's night of fighting the good fight against the anti-Shakespearean gods, finally been defeated. We gather behind the scenes and discuss the best plan-of-attack, and, at the conclusion of Wes and Joel's evil conspiracy scene, step out and thank the audience for their gracious weather-enduring--as we struggle to laugh in spite of the buckets of water being poured down our lungs--then let them know about our next show and where they can find our schedule online (i.e., here).

9:00PM: We retire to the parking lot, bruised, battered, beaten--and, by golly, very beautifully bonded by the shared experience of doing our darndest, by gum. Never has the phrase, "The show must go on" meant so much; and, oddly enough, never have I felt closer to all those in our wonderful little cast.

9:02PM: I search my drenched pockets frantically for five minutes, thinking I've lost my keys.

9:07PM: Phew. I drive home.

Grassroots Shakespeare Company

2009-05-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Some friends of mine from "As You Like It" decided to put together a Shakespeare company this summer, in the spirit of "original practices," as it's known in contemporary Shakespeare lingo. That means:

- We don't have a director, we just have a troupe--it's pure democracy, or pure anarchy, depending on how you want to look at it. Casting was a wild experience, with fourteen actors trying to cast each other. We'll block ourselves in our own scenes, and create our characters without the help of a director.
- We don't have any designers. We come up with our own costumes and any props we may need--and, as in Shakespeare's time, it will wind up a hodgepodge of styles and time periods.
- We don't have a "concept"--the script is the concept.
- We don't have any lighting, except for the sun.
- Many of us will be playing more than one role.
- There will be lots of audience interaction.
- None of us has a full copy of the script. Instead we have "cue scripts"--our lines, and our cue lines. I know the play fairly well--it's one of my very favorite Shakespeare comedies, and one of my very favorite Shakespeare plays in general--but I'll really have to be on my toes to figure out where my entrances fit in.
- And we only get a week of rehearsal (which is probably a bit more than Shakespeare & Co. had, so we're sort of cheating).

Should be an adventure, to say the least! We'll be performing "Much Ado About Nothing" throughout Utah during the month of June, for anyone that cares to watch us (if that's you let us know, especially if you think there's a group--school, FHE, whatever--that would be interested)!

You Rustle Me

2009-05-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

you rustle me as long grass,
stirring and scattering
me to grow
in places where I otherwise
would not.
I want to grow a garden for you,
to teach you the beauty of your
nurturing,
to put in colors and leaves and
petals and
fibers
the sunlight-directedness that from
you I have learned,
that perhaps,
when your roots are plucked
and your flowering withered,
you may look to me,
remember the springtime,
and together we might cycle.

______________
This post is an installment in a continuing series of content coordinated by theme or motif with posts from Enoch Allred of Chiltingham, John Allred of clol Town, Jon Fairbanks of Funkadelic Freestylings of Another Sort, Eli Z. McCormick and Miriam Allred of Modern Revelation!, John D. Moore of Whatnot Studios, Davey Morrison, Joseph Schlegel of Sour Mayonnaise, Sven Patrick Svensson of Sadness? Euphoria?, and William C. Stewart of Chide, Chode, Chidden. This week's theme: Symbiosis'.

Longboard Shmongboard

2009-04-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

I was asked to paint a pirate longboard by my friend's uncle for some guy's birthday, so I did.

"Coring the Apple" Illustration

2009-04-30T20:39:00.001-07:00

An illustration I made for a poem called "Coring the Apple," by Sarah Page, to be published in the upcoming issue of "Mormon Artist" (which will also feature my play "Adam and Eve" and my poem "Blind Man").

You can see one of a few illustrations my amazing brother Steve made for my play "Adam and Eve" here. It'll be fun to see it all in print! (Also, kudos to Bianca, my beautiful hand and foot model.)

"As You Like It"

2009-04-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm currently performing in "As You Like It" at the Hale Center Theater in Orem (now through May 23, on most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays). If you'd like to come see the show, you can get tickets here. Here's a review and a couple articles on the show, which has been a lot of fun:

Sharon Haddock at the Deseret News liked it
And the Daily Herald decided to write about it not once,
but TWICE!

There was also a really positive review in the UVU Review, but I can't seem to find it, or figure out how to properly search their archives, if such a thing is possible.

Tanya and Hailey as Rosalind and Celia. They're brilliant and awesome, even if they're usually in the other cast.

LDS Film Festival Review: Short Films

2009-03-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

You can read the article as published in "Mormon Artist" here, or download the PDF of the entire issue.

I was able to see ten of the twenty short films in competition at this year’s LDS Film Festival. Having been a regular of the short film programs at both Sundance and the LDS Film Festival the past several years, I can say without hesitation that I think the level of production values and the substance of the majority of the shorts at Christian Vuissa’s festival have been superior to that of the Park City competition. The shorts this year were a wonderfully eclectic group of very fine films from genuine LDS artists.

Some of the standouts of the festival were the pieces that broke from the conventional narrative structure of the average student short film mold. “Do or Die–08” was a South American import (the only international work that was screened among the shorts), and a visual and aural collage along the lines of “Baracka” or the “Qatsi” films (though with an even more experimental and modern aesthetic, blending narrative with documentary). Some of the audience laughed at the very serious twelve minutes of layered images, music, and sounds, some of the audience was baffled, and some riveted. It was hard for me to find any real thematic thread in director Ragnar Go’hjerta’s film (listed in the program as a trailer for a feature-length work, which might explain that), but it was made with the confidence of a filmmaker with something to say, and many of the individual moments were electrifying—ultimately, a film like this succeeds when it allows its audience to slip into a state of hypnotic, meditative celluloid transcendence, and in this Go’hjerta was very successful. It was a work to be experienced, and, for me, perhaps the most spiritually moving of the shorts.

The first-place winner was the very, very deserving sixteen-minute “Mind the Gap” from director Kristal Williams-Rowley and writer Marcy Holland. It followed the emotional turmoil of a teenager (Sara, played by Teagan Rose) dealing with the death of a high school peer who threw herself in the way of the train Sara’s father drives. The film follows Sara’s emotional journey and makes great use of voice-over narration; as the very powerful premise was developed, the film never felt contrived or unfairly manipulative, and the journey towards hope, forgiveness, and redemption rang gloriously true (it’s rare for a contemporary independent filmmaker to take a chance on optimism, and rarer still to see it pulled off so well). The low-budget cinematography and sound actually added rather than detracted from the film, giving it an honesty that might well have been lost in a glossier production. “Mind the Gap” is, quite simply, one of the best “Mormon movies” I’ve seen.

As in past festivals, there were a number of BYU student films showcased this year—“The Teller’s Tale,” “dirt,” “Best Wishes! Love, Adele,” and “Unhinged” were all final directing projects for a number of my film student colleagues. Of these, “Unhinged” was definitely the standout—a lovely story about the importance of authenticity and humanity in art, and about finding a healthy balance between personal creation and personal relationships. The acting was strong, the photography of the beautifully-designed sets was luminous, and director Nick Stentzel fused all these elements naturally and effectively. It was an exceptional little movie. Tim Hall’s “dirt” was often beautifully photographed and well-acted, but some slow and rhythmless editing hurt the film and its story, and both “The Teller’s Tale” and “Best Wishes! Love, Adele” suffered from a combination of poor performances and heart-on-sleeve moralizing, however sincere (and having seen “Teller’s Tale” in an earlier cut, I can say that the score did nothing but hurt it). More than anything, however, all four of these pieces represented a technical polish lacking in most of the other shorts—BYU is producing some very fine craftsmen and women.

“Face to Face,” written and directed by Spanky Ward, featured an admirable performance (or two) from David H. Stevens, and some very nice lighting in its very limited location and camerawork. Unfortunately, the concept was a bit clichéd—a man comes home and finds himself (or, more accurately, his black-leather-jacketed self) sitting at the kitchen table, and what follows is a sort of good-angel/bad-angel conversation with two parts of his damaged psyche. There were a few moments in the dialogue that were powerful for their brutal honesty, as the villainous alter ego mocked Stevens’ meek protagonist for being a loser, not getting any dates, etc., but there were probably even more moments of unintentional humor. The film was well executed but could definitely have used some rewriting—and would really have benefited from playing up the dark comedy inherent in the situation (the film was taken a little too seriously by itself to be taken seriously by its audience).

“The Skeleton Dance” (named and modeled after the classic Disney short of the same name) came from East Hollywood High School (a private school in Salt Lake City) and was one of my absolute favorite films of the set. I’m a sucker for any kind of stop-motion animation—there is a texture and a reality and an energy to handmade films that you just can’t get with a computer—and “Skeleton Dance” was really just an excuse to make some cool clay creatures do some funky things (and I confess a delirious delight in seeing a crudely-rendered skeleton rip off a cat’s head at the LDS Film Festival—there is nothing like the sheer joy of kids and movies and violence to lift the spirits). Sometimes as filmmakers we can get so caught up in trying to say something meaningful and trying to make something look professional that we lose sight of the absolute magic that is at the heart of the cinematic contraption, an art form built on optical illusion. “The Skeleton Dance” was a wonderful breath of fresh air.

My own film, “Medicine Man,” also made for a BYU (documentary) class, was a profile of David Hamblin, a medicine man for the local Native American church, whose Mormon beliefs and background inform his practice as a spiritual healer. With the film, I tried to allow Hamblin to express his beliefs and experiences with as little a degree of overt commentary or censorship as possible—his understanding of certain aspects of The Book of Mormon and Mormon doctrine is certainly outside the world of mainstream Mormonism, but I feel there is a sincerity, a conviction, and a real beauty to his story that deserved to be seen by others. I hope I was successful in presenting it.

“The Edge of the World,” by E. R. Nelson, followed the journey of an animated Everyman to fill the emptiness in his life. It was clever, funny, very engaging, and the animation (Flash?) was creative; it’s very exciting to see the virtually one-man films that are being made. The view of God and theology, however, had a curiously a-Mormon flavor to it—neither a strength nor a weakness in the piece, but something that struck me as I watched it.

In fact, the breadth and variety of religious and spiritual voices represented in the festival was both exhilarating and a little troubling—where were the specifically Mormon stories? Certainly not every Mormon film need include explicitly Mormon-related content, but there is an infinite number of fascinating and engaging and honest stories to be told within our culture and within our own set of beliefs, and they are not being told. Every artist exists within a specific cultural context—what would Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen be without New York City, and why should Dostoevsky set Crime and Punishment in Paris when he has a perfectly marvelous grasp and understanding of St. Petersburg? Latter-day Saint filmmakers would do well to follow the old-as-dirt screenwriting-class maxim, “Write what you know.” In between the proselytizing of the institutional Church films and the outsider perspectives of Big Love and Latter Days, we are missing an important and substantial body of honest and authentic stories not about Mormonism, but told from within Mormonism. The 2009 short films continued to demonstrate remarkable growth within the Mormon artistic community, even as it begged the question, “Why aren’t we growing even faster, and even larger?” In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told to “meet together often,” teaching one another, each member speaking and each member listening, that all may be instructed and edified together. In the lay ministry of Mormonism, the teacher becomes the pupil and the pupil becomes the teacher, and all voices are heard; our conversations may at times lack the presentational polish of a trained minister—but, as any Dylan fan knows, not every voice need be classically trained in order to be beautiful, to touch the heart, to engage the mind or move the soul or make history. In the age of YouTube democracy, anyone with access to a camera, a computer, and the Internet has the tools to make a masterpiece and broadcast it to the world. This is exciting! We should all be instructing and edifying one another, engaging in global cinematic conversation with those who share our beliefs and with those who don’t—speaking to them and listening to them—building the kingdom of God by developing and sharing the pure love of Christ within ourselves even as we receive it from others. The power of the Spirit is gentleness, meekness, quiet persuasion, and love unfeigned—not propaganda, but the personal anecdote, the autobiography, the individual testimony. Let us bear our testimonies. Let us instruct and be instructed. Let us tell our stories.

"Story Problem"

2009-03-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

PAM
You want to know the way to my heart? Chocolate. What can I say, I’m a Halloween and Valentine’s kinda gal. Dark or milk, no white. Once the chocolate’s gone, I’m gone. Which is too bad, because I’ve dated some really nice guys, some really great guys. I just lose interest. The excitement. The thrill. The energy. All gone. Once the chocolate goes, it all goes. I go. Once the chocolate goes I’m just going through the motions.

MARTY
I’m in love with a woman who’s nine inches taller than me. A girl can date a guy who’s nine inches taller than her, but a guy can’t date a girl who’s nine inches taller than him. That’s wrong. That’s injustice. That’s un-American. That’s why we have affirmative action.

NORA
I’ve never told anyone I’ve loved them. No one. Not even my mom. Not even when I was three. Sure, I’ve loved a lot of people, and I think I’ve even expressed that to them in different ways, but I’ve never said, to anyone, “I love you.” In fact, that may be the first time I’ve ever used those words in that order. “I love you.” Funny. They all sorta come out all at once like that, like it’s all one word. It sort of makes me feel like I am three years old again. “I love you.” “I love you I love you I love you.” Like baby talk. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Weird. Huh.

INGRID
I fell in love today. I didn’t want to, I’d been fighting it, but I knew it was going to happen sometime, sometime soon, I was going to cave. It happened today. We had lunch together and he was licking something out of his teeth, trying to do it real quick and sneaky so I wouldn’t notice. He licked something out of his teeth, and that was it. I was in love.

WALT
There she is. The girl of my dreams.

Not what I was expecting. I was expecting a brunette, and she’s a redhead. Her nose is kinda big, I always liked little noses. She wears glasses, also a surprise. Funny how that works out. But no doubt about it, that’s her all right. She’s got great teeth. I love that in a girl.

INGRID
Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it. Damn him for being so adorable.

WALT
Small, white. Great shape. Teeth can be very sexy.

INGRID
I don’t want to be in love. Love is a biochemical reaction to the way someone smells. Which is ridiculous. Ridiculous and gross and I don’t want it. Even worse, it’s unsustainable. It’s ridiculous and gross and unsustainable—and I don’t want my heart broken anymore.

PAM
I can’t believe you said that.

A.J.
Yeah, me neither.

Well, I’d better get to Albertson’s before they close.

PAM
When do they close?

A.J.
I don’t know.

PAM
I think you’re OK. It’s, what, nine o’ clock? I think you’ll be OK.

A.J.
Yeah, probably. I just want to make sure I’ve got milk for my cereal in the morning.

PAM
Right, well, I’m pretty sure you can go later. Grocery stores stay open pretty late.

A.J.
OK…

PAM
Look, if they’re already closed let me know, I’ve got an unopened gallon of milk, you can have it.

A.J.
What kind is it?

PAM
Two percent.

A.J.
All right…

You hot? I’m hot. It’s hot in here.

PAM
No.

A.J.
Oh.

PAM
So.

Do you want to talk about that?

A.J.
What?

PAM
How you just told me you loved me.

A.J.
Oh. That. No.

PAM
Fair enough.

A.J.
Sorry.

PAM
No. It’s fine.

A.J.
OK.

PAM
OK.

A.J.
Well.

I better get that milk.

PAM
Yeah. OK.

A.J.
See ya.

PAM
See ya.

INGRID
Falling in love is what they call it because it feels like you’re falling, with your stomach, your heart, your small intestine feeling like they’re up in the top of your torso trying to break through your lungs and fly up and pop out of your mouth onto the floor.

PAM
It’s an addiction. You betcha. You bet I’m addicted.

NORA
Like a drug. Overdose on love.

PAM
And chocolate.

INGRID
I am sure he wouldn’t date me if my small intestine popped onto the floor.

MARTY
Hi, is Nora there? Oh she’s not? Oh this is her boyfriend? Oh hello, this is a friend of Nora’s. Well no. No. No, not really a friend. A sort of acquaintance, really. Oh. Well not even really an acquaintance. No. No. No. I mean, we sort of ran into each other once. On the bus. Once. Well she didn’t give me her number. No. She didn’t, no. Actually, no. I found it. Yes. I found it. Well I found it in the phone book. Under her name. In the phone book. Yes. Alphabetically. No I didn’t. I don’t. No, I don’t know her. No, I don’t. I didn’t. I never said that. Did I say that? I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean to say that. No, I don’t know her. I’m sorry, I’m not a stalker, I don’t know her, I must have the wrong number.

He’s probably very tall.

NORA
Where are the scissors?

A.J.
I have beaten up 63 men in my life. 22 men have beaten up me. Of those 22, 19 were taller than me. Based on this information, if I got in a fight with a man who was shorter than me, how likely is it that I would beat him up?

The answer is 95.23%.

NORA
Who was that?

A.J.
Just some dumb-bum jerkwad.

PAM
Also, two-timing.

NORA
I once said “I lung you.” That was very close. I said that to A.J. on our half-anniversary. If people know their half-birthdays they should know their half-anniversaries. This is my philosophy. I celebrate them. A.J. doesn’t, but I do. He doesn’t know why he’s getting a present and being taken out to dinner and treated so nice, he just thinks it’s any old day, when really it’s our half-anniversary. It makes it more exciting when it’s a secret. But it makes a lot more sense to do something on a half-anniversary than a half-birthday. I don’t remember the day I was born, but I do remember the day we started going out.

WALT
Walt, Ingrid, A.J., Marty, Nora, and Pam are friends. Each of them is in love with someone else, and one of them is in love with no one. Pam does not love Ingrid. Nora loves A.J. If A.J. is in love with Pam, but dating Nora, and if Marty is in love with Nora, who does Walt love?

INGRID
Not enough information.

MARTY
You are…?

NORA
Nora.

MARTY
Marty.

NORA
Cool.

MARTY
Cool.

Yeah. I mean, cool.

NORA
Yeah.

OK I better go.

INGRID
There is nothing more adorable than watching the man you secretly love get rejected.

WALT
If she doesn’t love me I will cry for ninety-six years, and then I will be OK.

PAM
Since I was hired full-time at Lawson Lawson Smithy Poindexter Zapfino & Lawson I have had a very fine salary. I have had a very fine salary since I was hired full-time at Lawson Lawson Smithy Poindexter Zapfino & Lawson. And now I can buy my own chocolate, whenever I want, which is all of the time. I need no one. I am an island unto myself, and here in my gluttonous palace on the sea I shall grow fat and aged.

MARTY
She’s very tall.

NORA
He’s very miniature.

MARTY
And lovely.

NORA
I love A.J., but I can only say that in an aside to the audience.

A.J.
I love Pam, but I am dating Nora, who once insisted that I wear only denim.

INGRID
I love his teeth, when he picks things from them.

WALT
I love her teeth, when she picks things from them and when she does not pick thing from them, always, and forever.

A.J.
I could probably beat up the majority of the people in this room.

INGRID
Perhaps I will marry him when he sees that I am small like he, and we shall produce smallish offspring and live happily ever after in a low-ceilinged dwelling.

MARTY
But I cannot see the forest for the trees.

WALT
And I cannot see the trees for her teeth.

NORA
I cannot see the trees for the forest.

PAM
I can see neither the forest nor the trees, for I am underground on my island of chocolate, where everything is underground, so I can only see roots, from which I may, if I choose, imply a forest.

A.J.
I see what I want, yo.

NORA
He makes my heart feel gooey.

INGRID
Gross.

WALT
If I love Ingrid.

INGRID
And we all love someone else.

PAM
And I love no one.

MARTY
And here’s another fine mess.

INGRID
But isn’t he adorable?

NORA
I love you.

A.J.
Oh.

"Tree little peak to"

2009-03-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is "The Three Little Pigs," as told to my old computer's speech recognition program thing. It's awesome.

Was, time they were three little pieces they lived in a house with their mother coordinator Michael of the Dolby houses of their own sump own days when still does houses a first little peak built his house commerce from Strom Beach eye it was vastly do it in an a second little peak found a person stakes selling to his stakes and build a house audited by the third little came the was a smart little peak so he built his house outbreaks so it was very strong audited the battle fatigue and he said to Island peak and for lunch solve bloom down the first little peak discounts on extra and eight balloons he got so he went to second little peak discounts and blew the house native stakes and an allocate a team the then he went the third little peak discounts and tried to float down but the house was too strong and because it was made a break seafood while down so he was very mad up peak was very happy so the band will find out, house and when oxygen is laid down the month luckily third little peak and I how to believe boiling water hundreds of under the she and debate by pools, will not and third Little League was happy and that's CNN's story the end

Star Stricken

2009-01-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

This two-minute play of mine is being produced by the New Play Project, with Danica Anderson directing, and Dane Allred and Amber Hurley starring. It will run from February 19-23 at the Provo Theatre Company (105 E 100 N) as a part of the short play set, "Do You Love Me?" (I'll also be assistant directing Eric Samuelsen's terrific script, "The Exact Total Opposite" in the same set.) Buy tickets here!

JERRY
Aren’t you…?

PATRICIA
No.

JERRY
You are.

PATRICIA
I’m not. I’m not. I’m really, really not.

JERRY
You really, really are! I can’t believe it. I love your work.

PATRICIA
Leave me alone.

JERRY
You’re… you’re on that one show, the one with all the doctors. What is it called? Man, I can’t believe I’m forgetting the name. I watch it every night, I swear.

PATRICIA
OK.

JERRY
I swear.

PATRICIA
It’s OK, I believe you.

JERRY
No, really, what you do means so much to me. I just want you to know that.

PATRICIA
Thanks.

JERRY
I mean, I really want to act myself someday.

PATRICIA
Good luck.

JERRY
What you do just thrills me. I mean, it really connects with me, you know? I feel like we have so much in common. I grew up in Iowa, you grew up in Iowa. I want to act, you act. You just give me inspiration.

PATRICIA
Glad.

JERRY
Man, if I just had a piece of paper or something—can you sign my shirt?

PATRICIA
That’s OK.

JERRY
Please? I mean, I’m sure you get this all the time, I hope I’m not just another annoying fan, I just… man, I can’t believe I ran into you like this!

PATRICIA
Small world. Well, this is where I get off.

JERRY
Oh come on. Can’t I please have something to remember you by? I mean, it’ll really help me when I’m getting discouraged and all—you get so much rejection in this business, you know?

PATRICIA
Some do, some don’t.

JERRY
Something? Please. A lock of your hair?

PATRICIA
What?

JERRY
Ha, it was a joke. A joke. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

PATRICIA
OK, I’m leaving. Good luck with everything.

JERRY
This is my stop too.

PATRICIA
No it’s not.

JERRY
Something. Anything. Please.

PATRICIA
Here’s my subway map.

(She exits. Silence.)

JERRY
She loves me.

Prisoner of the Molepeople

2008-11-21T16:44:00.001-08:00

By Stephen and Teresa Gashler,
Featuring Davey Morrison as Bobbert

11 O' Clock News

2008-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Buy Tickets to the Show!

Read All About It!

(A bedroom. QUINN, in his 20s, reads a book— His wife SID watches TV.)

SID
Guess what?

QUINN
I can’t concentrate when the TV is on.

SID
There’s—

QUINN
Will you turn it down?

SID
I turned it down.

QUINN
I can still hear it.

SID
Of course you can still hear it, I’m not going to watch the news on mute.

QUINN
Well I can’t read.

SID
You can read anywhere, I can only watch TV where there’s a TV.

QUINN
What is this? Suicide bombings, natural disaster, people murdering their children, you never used to watch this. You used to just watch Doris Day.

SID
I want to be aware of what’s going on in the world.

QUINN
Not much you can do about it.

SID
I can at least know that it’s going on.

QUINN
Great. That’s a whole load of help. That’s just what I’d want if I was some African kid watching my parents get blown away. I’d want to know that somewhere some woman on the other side of the world was lying in her bedroom hearing about it on the TV. That would just make it all worthwhile.

SID
You’re so sensitive.

QUINN
At least I’m honest.

SID
We can’t do anything unless we’re informed, right?

QUINN
Do you do anything?

SID
I vote. I’ve… signed some online petitions. Sometimes.

QUINN
You don’t need to know anything to vote. Look at who we elect.

SID
You’re such a pessimist.

QUINN
Out of the millions and millions of people in this country we get two options every four years. And how do those two get picked? By being rotten human beings, usually—

SID
—Not pessimistic at all—

QUINN
—And even then it’s a foregone conclusion anyway. They say every vote counts—

SID
So, what? We should just ignore everything and fend for ourselves? Overthrow the government?

QUINN
At least it’d be productive.

SID
Wow.

QUINN
I mean, we shouldn’t take advantage of people.

SID
We should just stop worrying about them.

QUINN
Right.

SID
Sounds like a good attitude. Real Christian.

QUINN
I’ll tell you one thing, if we’d all quit picking sides there’d be no more war.

SID
Well of course not, we’d all be Nazis anyway.

QUINN
Man, that’s the most loaded—

SID
What?

QUINN
Just call the other guy a Nazi and that puts an end to everything. What a cop out.

SID
I’m just saying if no one ever picked sides we’d all be Nazis. Or dead. Dead or Nazis.

QUINN
Listen to you—now who’s the pessimist?

SID
It’s true. What you’re talking about is total anarchy.

QUINN
What I’m talking about is being able to read a book in my own bed.

SID
It’s my bed too.

QUINN
I bought it.

SID
With my money.

QUINN
And mine.

SID
And mine.

QUINN
Well the TV’s mine, I can throw my shoe through it if I want.

SID
Look, it’s been a long day, why don’t you just go in the living room to read?

QUINN
Because I’m all settled in bed and in my PJs, tucked in like I like to be.

SID
What a baby.

QUINN
I was reading before you were watching TV, I claimed it.

SID
You’re such a baby.

QUINN
Hey, I’m the baby? I’m not the one name-calling. I’m trying to be reasonable here—

SID
Baby baby baby.

QUINN
(referring to the TV)
What are they talking about? Someone who robbed a convenience store? I’m talking about the fundamental inadequacies of American politics.

SID
Will you be quiet so I can listen?

QUINN
No I won’t be quiet so you can listen. If you can listen then I lose.

SID
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I had something I was going to tell you and now—

QUINN
Aha. That’s it. That’s exactly it. That’s the problem with this country right there. You don’t want to talk about this anymore.

SID
Well look at you. Thurber’s going to help you change the world?

QUINN
You think politics are more important than art?

SID
What do you think, Mr. I’m So Concerned About Global Crises?

QUINN
This is different. I read for fun. And culture. Fun and culture.

SID
I’m trying to watch the news so I know what’s going on. Social awareness trumps escapism.

QUINN
I don’t think you are.

SID
You don’t think I’m what?

QUINN
I don’t think you’re watching it just to know what’s going on.

SID
OK, whatever you say.

QUINN
You said there’s nothing you can do to make a difference.

SID
I never said that.

QUINN
Well, nothing really.

SID
I never said that.

QUINN
I think you watch the news for the same reason I read. For pleasure.

SID
Please.

QUINN
Only instead of an innocent, light-hearted pleasure, yours is a sick, twisted, sadistic pleasure.

SID
Let’s not talk about this.

QUINN
You watch war and murder and genocide to remind yourself about all the other suckers who have it worse off than you.
(A long silence.)
I’m sorry I said that.

(Another silence.)

SID
I was going to tell you something.

QUINN
What?

SID
I’m not going to tell you anymore.

QUINN
Please?

SID
No.

QUINN
Look, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.

SID
Go away. Just go read your stupid book.

QUINN
I can’t believe… I’m sorry, it’s been a long day.

SID
I don’t…

QUINN
What can I do to make it up?

SID
Just forget it…

QUINN
Really. I’ll get on my knees. I’ll buy you roses and get on my knees and sing Le Boheme.

SID
Stop talking.

QUINN
OK.

(He does.)

SID
Guess what?

QUINN
I’m sorry. I was joking. That was mean of me. I didn’t mean to be mean.

SID
Guess what?

QUINN
I don’t know why I said all that, it was stupid of me.

SID
Guess what?

QUINN
I’m such a jerk sometimes. I don’t know how you ever put up with me.

SID
Guess what?

QUINN
What?

SID
I’m pregnant.

(A silence. A long, long silence.)

QUINN
What?

SID
Didn’t you hear me?

QUINN
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SID
OK…

QUINN
Sorry, I just didn’t know what to say. I…

SID
Are you happy?

QUINN
Are you kidding? I’m ecstatic! What, wait… when?

SID
I went to the doctor’s today. I didn’t know how to tell you.

QUINN
I thought you were taking birth control.

SID
I was. Are you sure you’re ecstatic?

QUINN
Sure I’m sure. I’m just about a million other things right now, too.

SID
Yeah, I hear you.

QUINN
But ecstatic is one of them.

SID
I’m glad.

QUINN
Aren’t you happy?

SID
I don’t know.

QUINN
You’re going to be a mom! I’m going to be a dad! We’re going to have a little us running around the house, teething on everything! Don’t you think that’s terrific?

SID
If you say so.

QUINN
It’s terrific. Why are you… what’s wrong?

SID
It’s probably just normal pregnant mother anxiety.
(Pause.)
I guess I just don’t know if we’re ready to be parents, that’s all.

QUINN
What do you mean we’re not ready? We’re going to rock as parents!

SID
We’re still in debt.

QUINN
Yeah…

SID
We’re both young and we’re both only children. Neither of us knows anything about raising kids—

QUINN
—Well yeah, OK, there’s all that, but we’re still going to rock.

SID
If you say so.
(Silence. SID turns off the TV and turns over in bed.)
You can read now if you like, just turn the lights off when you’re done.

QUINN
Are you kidding? We’re having a baby! A little baby! You’re not excited?

SID
I don’t want to talk right now.

QUINN
You’re not excited? How can you not be excited? This is exciting.

SID
I don’t know, all right? I’m pregnant, I need sleep.

QUINN
You can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. This is, like, Christmas times forty. A baby… man, I mean, we’re having a baby!

SID
That’s what they tell me.

(Quiet.)

QUINN
What’s wrong?

SID
I already told you, I don’t want to talk about it.

QUINN
I know, but I want you to.

SID
Well too bad.
(Silence.)
I just… I don’t know if I want kids.
(Another silence.)
You know? I don’t… The world is kind of rotten sometimes. Yeah, you know, the wars, the convenience stores. I don’t know that I want to be responsible for bringing another person into it. I mean, if I really loved this baby I’d never have had it. I’d have had my tubes tied. If I really loved my child.

(Silence.)

QUINN
I didn’t know you felt that way.

SID
Now you do.

(Pause.)

QUINN
Yeah.

(Pause.)

SID
You know, there are people starving to death, kids in orphanages or foster care or with abusive dads or whatever…

QUINN
Right. Well we could adopt. Too, I mean—we could adopt as well, maybe. I’d be OK with that. What about that? Maybe at the same time if we hurry. My mom said the twins were always the easiest to take care of, they’d just keep each other entertained.

SID
No, I didn’t mean…

QUINN
OK. That’s OK. I mean, we don’t have to.

(Silence.)

SID
I’m sorry.

QUINN
Why?

SID
I’m sorry I’m not as thrilled as you are. I’m sorry I’m ruining this.

QUINN
Don’t be sorry.
(Beat.)
I’ll watch the news with you if you like.

SID
I don’t want to anymore. Just read.

QUINN
I don’t want to read.

(Silence.)

SID
OK, will you turn out the lights then?

QUINN
Sure.

(He does. Silence.)

SID
I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so upset.

QUINN
It’s OK.
(Pause.)
I love you.

SID
I love you too.

QUINN
It’s probably just the shock.
(Beat.)
I mean, you seem a little better right now.

SID
(she’s less convinced than
he is)
Maybe a little.

QUINN
Things always look better with the lights out.

SID
I guess so.

QUINN
You should sleep.

SID
Probably.

(Pause.)

QUINN
I love you.

SID
Thanks, I love you too.
(Beat.)
Thanks for talking.

QUINN
Yeah.

SID
It’s been awhile since we’ve… talked.

QUINN
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

SID
It’s just been awhile. It feels good. I like talking to you.

QUINN
Good. I like talking to you. And I like when you tell me things, like, you know, your being pregnant and all.

(She laughs.)

SID
Right.

(Beat.)

QUINN
I didn’t…

SID
What?

QUINN
Nothing.

SID
What?

QUINN
I didn’t know you felt that way about things.

SID
What things?

QUINN
About the world in general, I guess.

SID
Oh. Yeah. Sometimes.
(Beat.)
But it doesn’t seem quite so awful right now.

(Quiet.)

QUINN
I’m glad.

SID
Me too.

(Silence.)

QUINN
I hope she has your eyes.

(They kiss. Lights down.)

Two-Minute Play

2008-09-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

This was an assignment in my playwriting class. But I'm thinking it would be fun/cool to write a ton of little mini-scenes like this and have an evening of two-minute plays.

PHYLLIS
I can’t believe you said that.

GARY
Yeah, me neither.

(Beat.)

GARY
Well, I’d better get to Albertson’s before they close.

PHYLLIS
When do they close?

GARY
I don’t know.

PHYLLIS
I think you’re OK. It’s, what, nine o’ clock? I think you’ll be OK.

GARY
Yeah, probably. I just want to make sure I’ve got milk for my cereal in the morning.

PHYLLIS
Right, well, I’m pretty sure you can go later. Grocery stores stay open pretty late.

GARY
OK…

PHYLLIS
Look, if they’re already closed let me know, I’ve got an unopened gallon of milk, you can have it.

GARY
What kind is it?

PHYLLIS
Two percent.

GARY
All right…

(Beat.)

GARY
You hot? I’m hot. It’s hot in here.

PHYLLIS
No.

GARY
Oh.

(Beat.)

PHYLLIS
So. Do you want to talk about that?

GARY
What?

PHYLLIS
How you just told me you loved me.

GARY
Oh. That. No.

PHYLLIS
Fair enough.

GARY
Sorry.

PHYLLIS
No. It’s fine.

GARY
OK.

PHYLLIS
OK.

(Beat.)

GARY
Well, I better get that milk.

PHYLLIS
Yeah. OK.

GARY
See ya.

PHYLLIS
See ya.

To Be Continued

2008-08-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

[A hospital room. A long, white, metal bed, with long white sheets and long metal machinery around it. RANDY, in his early 30s, with a few days’ growth of facial hair, lies in the bed, his face pale, shrouded in hospital garments.

As the lights come up, he wakes up from a nap, presses the palms of his hands against his eyelids, and sighs loudly. He opens his eyes, then shuts them.

A knock on the door.]

RANDY: Come in!

[ERIC enters, in his early 20s, dressed conservatively in a white shirt, black suit,
and striped tie. He shuts the door quietly behind him. Randy sighs again and closes his eyes.]

ERIC: Hi.
RANDY: Hi.
ERIC: Brother Jeppeson couldn’t make it today. His wife is sick.
RANDY: No worries.
ERIC: And I was going to bring you some of Nancy’s cookies, the pumpkin chocolate chip kind. But she didn’t get them in the oven in time. She’ll drop them by when she picks me up.
RANDY: It’s fine. Last Sunday of the month, I understand.

[Silence.]

You’re my home teacher, aren’t you supposed to ask how I’m doing?
ERIC: How are you doing?
RANDY: Ha! [Beat.] I’ve got maybe three weeks.

[Silence.]

Not to make things awkward or anything.
ERIC: Is there anything I can do?
RANDY: Cure cancer.
ERIC: OK.
RANDY: Thanks. So, yeah, how are things with you? How’s Nancy?
ERIC: Things are good. Nancy’s good. The baby’s good. Yeah, things are good.
RANDY: Glad to hear it. And the office? How’s that?
ERIC: We’re trying to get along without you. They just hired Dr. Stevens full-time. He’s moving into your old place.
RANDY: Right.

[Pause.]

And the quorum? How’s that?
ERIC: It’s good. They finally released you in church today.
RANDY: Eight months horizontal, I thought they’d never get around to it.
ERIC: Yeah. Jim Halliwell is the new elder’s quorum president.
RANDY: Yeah? Good for him.

[With some effort, Randy turns over on his side in bed.]

I hate being a medical doctor and dying. I wish Death would come a little closer when he’s laughing at me so I could punch him in the face. At least you can use me as an object lesson for your seminary class. Don’t drink when you’re a teenager or you’ll get liver cancer and die.
ERIC: Right.

[Neither of them talks.]

Sorry I’m not more talkative.
RANDY: No, I understand, that makes two of us. I’ve not got a lot to talk about. They haven’t fixed the remote yet, so mostly I just lay here, I sleep, most of my meals are pumped into me. Not really that exciting. It’s sort of like being a three-toed sloth who gets the Home and Garden Network.
ERIC: How is that?
RANDY: The Home and Garden Network? It’s not bad. You’d be surprised how exciting “This Old House” is when your only alternative is staring at white plaster and thinking about your impending death.

[Silence.]

Does that make you uncomfortable?
ERIC: No. No, not at all. [Beat.] I mean, yeah, it does a little, but—
RANDY: It makes you uncomfortable. That’s OK. It makes me uncomfortable too. [Beat.] So did you bring your Ensign or some scriptures or anything?
ERIC: Yeah. You want me to read you something?
RANDY: That’s kind of the routine, isn’t it?
ERIC: Sure.

[He opens his Ensign and flips aimlessly through the pages.]

Look, do you want to talk about anything, or—
RANDY: No.
ERIC: OK. [Beat. He looks at the article.] Well, this month’s article is about the evils of pornography.
RANDY: Great. Just what I need in my situation! Thank you, God!
ERIC: So you want me to read it?
RANDY: Don’t do it.

[Silence.]

Do you believe in the afterlife?
ERIC: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
RANDY: Sure you do. Well, I’ll tell you. Eternity looks a lot different from up close.
ERIC: Yeah. [Beat.] This one time, when I was young, I almost drowned, my brother and I were at the ocean, my parents weren’t watching us, the tide came in and I was about three or so, and so I ran out, it was so exciting, my first time on the beach, and then suddenly it just grabbed me and my knees buckled and suddenly, I mean, I was only like six, but I suddenly knew I was going to die and I saw what that would be like, it was weird, it was more terror and more peace than I’ve ever felt before, both at the same time, and I was really disappointed it was happening, that I was dying before I’d really even had a life, but I knew everything would be all right. I knew—
RANDY: You didn’t die.
ERIC: No.
RANDY: That’s the difference, man. I’m going to die. You said you knew you were going to die, but you didn’t know that, because it didn’t happen, you can’t know something that’s not true. I know I’m going to die. It’s just a question of whether it’s in two weeks or three. Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s going to happen. I won’t be here to vote in the next election. Or give kids candy this Halloween. Or wake up early for work, ever again. It’s different.
ERIC: I’m sorry.
RANDY: You don’t need to be sorry, I’m just saying it’s different.
ERIC: Right.
RANDY: Sorry, man, I’m a little pissed, maybe it’s the radiation.
ERIC: No, it’s OK, don’t be sorry.
RANDY: Too late.

[Silence.]

Faith is easy. You can believe in what you want. There’s hope. You can make stuff up, it’s all hypothetical, it’s not here-and-now. Knowing is hard.
ERIC: But you believe in God, right?
RANDY: No.

[Silence. Randy casually leans up on his elbows, reaches for a glass of water from the end table, exerting all of his energy and avoiding eye contact.]

Will you hand me that?
ERIC: Sure.

[He stands up, goes to the table, and hands Randy the glass.]

RANDY: Thanks.

[He drinks.]

Man, this stuff is good.
ERIC: Do you, um… do you want to talk about that?
RANDY: About what?
ERIC: You know… not believing in God.
RANDY: Oh, that. Well, I think it’s been going on for awhile now. A long time. I mean, I didn’t know it or anything, but it was there. Once it occurs to you how ridiculous the whole thing is, God, how much it makes absolutely no logical sense, none of it—well, a lot of people choose to keep on believing to avoid worrying about death. That’s what I did. But once it’s here, death, you can’t ignore it anymore. The big black elephant in the room just gets bigger. And blacker. And you just have to face it, you can’t pretend anymore. You can’t play games, you can’t play Pretend There’s No Elephant! [Beat.] You don’t believe in God, do you?
ERIC: Yeah, I do.
RANDY: Yeah, I know, but not really, right?
ERIC: Yeah, I really do.
RANDY: OK, whatever you say.

[Neither of them speaks. Neither of them moves. Randy breathes loudly, his eyes still closed.

Finally, Eric clears his throat.]

ERIC: “As we encounter that evil carrier, the pornography beetle, let our battle standard and that of our communities—”

[Randy groans loudly. Eric looks at him.]

What?
RANDY: I don’t have a computer, the only channel I get is the Home and Garden Network, I’m not looking at porn.
ERIC: I’m sorry.
RANDY: Don’t be sorry, just stop reading that.
ERIC: I’m sorry.
RANDY: I’ve got three weeks left to exist, you want to waste them?
ERIC: I’m sorry.

[Silence.]

So, you want to watch “This Old House” instead?

[Randy looks at him.]

RANDY: You want to know what I’m going to do with my last three weeks of life?
ERIC: OK.
RANDY: I’m going to call everyone I know. Everyone. Family, friends. Enemies. Apathetic acquaintances. Tell them they don’t need to have a funeral for me, they don’t need to do anything, they don’t need to make me cookies or bring me anything while I’m still here. Just take all that money, take all of my money too, and go to the store or get on eBay and buy some telescopes. They don’t need to be expensive, but as many as they can afford, the nicest. Call up everyone they know, ask them if they have any telescopes, if they know anyone who does. Send out chain e-mails. Tell everyone. And they’ll amass this huge collection of telescopes in my honor, hundreds, thousands, and then they’ll take them all to NASA or wherever, some supertelescope, the biggest one in the world, the one that sees the farthest, and they’ll line them all up, eyepiece to eyepiece, and look through. And hopefully it’ll be enough, hopefully they’ll have enough and they’ll be able to see far enough, that they’ll be able to see the end of everything. The blackness. The non-blackness, the anti-blackness, whatever it is. The end of the universe, of creation. And then they’ll know. They’ll know what I know. They’ll see the elephant and they won’t be able to pretend they didn’t.

[Silence.]

ERIC: Let’s watch “This Old House.”
RANDY: Did you hear what I just said? I’m talking about nothingness! I’m talking about the meaning of everything, I’m talking about the meaninglessness of everything and you want to watch “This Old House”!
ERIC: Hey, it’s better than the alternative—white plaster, impending death.
RANDY: Are you listening to me? You come here with your scriptures and your talk about God but are you really listening to what I’m saying? Do you really care about me and what I’m going through or am I just an obligation, a statistic? “Well I’m sure glad that cancer guy is gone, one less person to visit next month! Check that off my list!”
ERIC: Of course I care about you. I just don’t know what to say.
RANDY: Say you’re sorry.
ERIC: I said I was sorry, you told me not to.
RANDY: I take it back. Say you’re sorry. Say you’re sorry I’m dying and you’re not. Tell me it isn’t fair. Tell me nothing is fair.
ERIC: I’m sorry you’re dying…
RANDY: Tell me nothing’s fair. Tell me there’s no forgiveness. God doesn’t forgive. I gave up drinking a decade ago and today I’m dying.
ERIC: I’m sorry … I know God loves you—
RANDY: No you don’t.
ERIC: (taken aback) I do.
RANDY: No you don’t. You can’t. You can’t know that, because God doesn’t exist.
ERIC: I know that God exists—
RANDY: I know that He doesn’t. There. What now, Mormon boy?

[Neither of them speaks for a long time. Then, a knock at the door.]

Come in.

[NANCY, early 20s, dressed in a black skirt and a turquoise blouse and still showing from her recent pregnancy, enters with a plate of cookies.]

NANCY: Hey guys… um, everything OK? I brought cookies. Pumpkin chocolate chip?
ERIC: Thanks, sweetie, you can just…
RANDY: You can just set them down on the table here.

[She does, then stays, strokes Randy’s face once with her hand, kisses Eric on the cheek, returns to her post by the door, and stands there waiting, not sure what to do.]

ERIC: You can wait for me in the car if you like, I’ll be down in a minute.
NANCY: OK. See you, Randy. We’ll stop by again on Tuesday.
RANDY: See you, Nancy. Thanks for the cookies.
NANCY: You’re welcome.

[She leaves. Eric and Randy sit. Eric stares at the floor. Randy stares at Eric. Then—slowly, deliberately, without taking his eyes off Eric and without blinking—he reaches over, takes a cookie, bites it, chews it, and swallows it.]

RANDY: Sorry.
ERIC: For what?
RANDY: For destroying your faith.
ERIC: No. You didn’t really do that.
RANDY: Well I should have. I tried.
ERIC: You didn’t.

[They’re quiet.]

I should go.

[He stands and walks to the door. Randy is startled.]

RANDY: Wait.

[Eric turns around without moving back towards him.]

ERIC: What?

[He waits a long time to respond.]

RANDY: You’re leaving?
ERIC: Yeah.
RANDY: You’re my home teacher, you can’t just leave. You didn’t even read the whole porn article.
ERIC: Do you want me to?
RANDY: No.
ERIC: OK.

[Pause.]

RANDY: Hey.
ERIC: What?
RANDY: Are you…
ERIC: What?
RANDY: I… could you give me a blessing?

[Eric looks at him, long. Randy avoids his gaze.

Finally, Eric pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and dials a number. He holds the phone to his ear.]

ERIC: Let me call Nancy and tell her I’ll be a few minutes.

[Lights fade out.]

I Heart NY

2008-07-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

The closet door mural I painted in my bedroom.

Wedding Video

2008-07-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

A movie I made for my bro and sis-in-law Matt and Amanda Morrison to show at their reception when they got married.

Jack, Flash Jumpin'

2008-07-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

For our high school drama class we were supposed to make a short movie. My friends and I had delusions of grandeur, and then we realized we didn't actually have time to do any of the stuff we'd envisioned, so we met together the day before it was due and shot a bunch of stuff impromptu for some lame Making Of mockumentary about people shooting a western or something. It was real awful, and watching the abyssmal footage I had to edit that evening was depressing like the dickens. So, in a stroke of brilliance, I realized how to salvage this wretched project: make it a silent film; that way I could do whatever I wanted.

Dinner

2008-07-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

A cool assignment in my beginning production class, and totally unethical.

Accordion Boy

2008-07-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

A short documentary I made for class, that played in BYU's 2007 Final Cut and the 2007 Sego film festival.

Like Urban Tumbleweed

2008-07-16T00:20:00.001-07:00

Like urban tumbleweed the
plastic grocery bag blew across the empty
overcast park, green with the whispers of
storm;
we watched it approach, you
nestled into me, silent, from across the
grassy expanse and pavement, with the same
nervous smiling, quiet intrusion any other
stranger might have greeted us--
tipped its rustling head and averted its eyes,
leaving us to our leaves
and our close, closed eyelids.

Before dusk
the city silence
can only be cherished for its fleetingness--
we speak reverently, hushed, as though
any great noise might break this moment
like a cloud breaking through the
taught fragility which we breathe like sighs,
and rain with beautiful
expectedness.
With the first damp nose speck,
with drizzling inevitability
I find out your texture,
find myself entangled and enmeshed as
roots breaking through the surface;
And in this instant each chip and fragment
returns and
reassembles a
wholer man, a stronger man,
I feel I could hold you always under this
umbrellatree,
caressing each hour as a living thing,
a stray,
could smile and,
hansclasped,
defy these lovely clouds with our
tearlessness,
our inviting orphaned togetherness.

Trees and wind offer an alto prayer for my
ineloquent lips.
Distantly
I can see only shapes of mountains through the
dirty unshowered haze,
but near me I can see you
and you are beautiful.

If Only

2008-07-16T00:17:00.000-07:00

If only my spirit could flow
out in the ink of my pen,
as my closeness to you also
pulses
through my
arteries,
quickening with each
quickened heartbeat
when I think of you,
smiling or sleeping,
then you might know and
read, and keep always
enfolded in your pocket,
how I love you.

Back In The Saddle

2008-06-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

Agua

2008-06-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

I made this movie as a high school freshman for my geometry class of all things.

Magical Mystery Tour

2008-06-17T11:04:00.001-07:00

To this day the four-seconds-ish wherein some bread crawls into a toaster remains, I think, probably the best thing I've ever done in my life.

Treelike

2008-06-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

I am treelike.
I grow,
expand, and my
roots reach even
deeper,
my trunk higher,
until I joint the
molten earth's
frothy core
with the
passingly white
cotton sky, the
blackened
star sprinkled
outer atmosphere,
until I
myself
am celestial,
reconciling,
seasonal.
I am treelike,
and I sprout and
shed
and thicken with
years and
wrinkle,
offering produce,
fruits of the snow,
ripened, swelling
appendages the
culminating roundness
of my
artery twigs
and
my gift to my
fellow
dustfellows, as we
each
reach
further,
above and below,
stepladders.
We are treelike,
and You are our Sun.

Toy Story

2008-06-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

More animation from my younger days.

Jumpin' Jack

2008-06-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

The first movie I made as a lad of not-quite-12.

Adam & Eve

2008-05-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

Maggie Laurencell and Eric Anderson as Adam and Eve (directed by David Thorpe, produced by New Play Project, Provo, UT)

The Critics And Provo, UT Bloggers Are Raving! Read 'em and weep with joy:

Gideon Burton

Association for Mormon Letters (Reviewed by Nan McCulloch)

Blog: Kazzy's Ponderings

Blog: Marian Dashwood

KBYUFM

“Adam and Eve”
by Davey Morrison

(The stage is empty—bathed in the yellow-blue warmth of sunrise—except for a single short tree stump Center Stage.

As the lights come up, EVE enters, holding a bright
red apple, and sits.

A few moments later, ADAM enters from Stage Right, scratching his rib. He looks at EVE and then Doesn’t Look At EVE. He saunters across the stage, checking every few seconds to see if she’s noticed him yet—she hasn’t—and then wanders over behind her tree stump.)

ADAM
Oh, hey! I didn’t know you were here. I hope I’m not interrupting or anything.

EVE
You are.

ADAM
Oh.
(Silence. He fidgets.)
So… How you doing?

EVE
Considering we just got kicked out of Paradise? Not bad. Been better. It was almost worth it. The apple’s good.

ADAM
You bring any more of those?

EVE
Yep.

(He waits for her to offer him one. She doesn’t.)

ADAM
Mind if I have a seat?

EVE
Go ahead.

(ADAM sits on the ground and looks around, trying to find something to say next.)

ADAM
Yeah, so about that whole be fruitful and multiply thing…

EVE
Adam.

ADAM
Hey, I’m just saying.

EVE
We fell from innocence a half hour ago.

ADAM
OK, I was just trying to make conversation. Forget it.

(Silence.)

ADAM
You want to talk?

EVE
No, I don’t want to talk.

ADAM
You OK?

EVE
I’m fine.

ADAM
You don’t sound fine.

EVE
Then why did you ask me if I was fine? If you’re not going to believe what I tell you then why are you asking?

ADAM
I don’t know, I’m sorry.

EVE
I’m just upset.

ADAM
Yeah.

(He reaches over and holds her hand. She looks at it, baffled.)

EVE
What are you doing?

ADAM
I’m holding your hand.

EVE
Why?

ADAM
I don’t know. It seemed like a good thing to do.

EVE
It’s weird. Stop it.

ADAM
OK.

(He does. Silence.)

EVE
How would you like it if I held your kneecap or something? Would that make you feel better?

(He thinks about it.)

ADAM
It might.

(She doesn’t look at him. Another silence.)

ADAM
What’s wrong?

EVE
Nothing’s wrong.

ADAM
Something’s wrong, what is it?

EVE
I told you, I’m just upset. I don’t know why. Sometimes this happens to me, I don’t really get it.

ADAM
You get upset and you don’t know why?

EVE
Yeah.

ADAM
That’s messed up.

EVE
Thanks.

ADAM
No, I mean, you have to know why, you’re just not telling me.

EVE
I told you. I don’t know why.

ADAM
That doesn’t make sense.

EVE
Sue me!

ADAM
Is it the whole apple thing?

EVE
I don’t know, all right? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.

ADAM
Maybe it comes with mortality. Emotional instability, I mean.

EVE
I just need some alone time right now. OK?

ADAM
OK.

(He gets up and starts leaving, then stops.)

Is there anything I can do?

EVE
Just leave me alone for one minute!

ADAM
OK.

(ADAM exits.

EVE sits down on the ground. In spite of her best attempts to stifle it, a single, ugly sob escapes. She holds the rest of her tears back, sniffs, clears her throat, wipes the moisture from her eyes, and pauses to collect herself.

ADAM enters.)

ADAM
Hey.

EVE
Go away.

ADAM
You know, I don’t feel good about leaving you alone like this.

EVE
Adam. You don’t know anything about women.

(ADAM thinks about that.)

ADAM
You’re right.

(He doesn’t move.)

EVE
Are you going to go?

ADAM
I don’t know. Should I?

EVE
I don’t know.

ADAM
(nervously)
I like you a lot, Eve. You know that?

EVE
Yeah.

ADAM
I don’t know if that helps any.

EVE
Yeah. Me neither.

(ADAM goes to hold her hand, then stops himself. She doesn’t notice.)

EVE
I mean, like you a lot, too, but…

ADAM
But what?

EVE
But… I don’t know.

ADAM
I’m not your type?

EVE
No, that’s not it. I don’t know.

ADAM
What’s wrong?

EVE
I just… If I wasn’t the only woman on Earth, would you still want me?

(He thinks.)

ADAM
That’s a good question.

EVE
(standing up)
I’m going.

ADAM
I mean, yes.

EVE
You’re awful, you know that?

ADAM
Really, I would!

EVE
Goodbye!

ADAM
I would! I just had to think about it for a second.

EVE
Yeah you did.

ADAM
Yeah!

EVE
Yeah.

ADAM
Hey. Out of the billions and billions of other women who might have been here, you’re not even allowing me a second to even consider any one of them?

EVE
Nope.

ADAM
Come on, Eve.

EVE
This isn’t going to work. Sorry, God, but this isn’t going to work.

ADAM
You’re beautiful.

EVE
Ha!

ADAM
And wonderful.

EVE
Shut up.

ADAM
Really. You are.

EVE
Shut up!

(She exits.)

ADAM
Fine. OK!
(Pause.)
You know, I’m glad you had the apple. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I’m not supposed to be. But I am. You really are beautiful. I never really saw how beautiful you are till… after.

(EVE re-enters. She stands there, looking at ADAM sitting on the other side of the stage.)

EVE
I don’t know if you’re just making all that up or if you really mean it. I want to think you really meant it.

ADAM
I did. I do.

(Silence.)

EVE
Who does that? “Don’t eat from the tree”, “go forth and be fruitful.” Who does that?

ADAM
Yeah, I don’t get it either.

EVE
It doesn’t make sense at all. At all. You’ve got more sense than that.

ADAM
Thanks.

EVE
I didn’t mean—OK, I’ve got more sense than that. Better?

ADAM
Better.

EVE
I just feel guilty… I don’t know.

ADAM
Sex?

EVE
Yeah.

ADAM
Yeah.

EVE
…Yeah.

(A pause; then they both start talking at the same time.)

ADAM
I was wondering—

EVE
What would you—

(They stop.)

EVE
You go first.

ADAM
No you.

EVE
Talk.

(ADAM struggles for a moment to work up the nerve to speak again.)

ADAM
Do you think I’m… attractive?

EVE
I guess so.

ADAM
Ouch.

EVE
I mean, yeah. Yes. I do.

ADAM
OK.

EVE
(putting her hand on his knee)
Really, I do.

ADAM
I believe you.

EVE
OK, good.

(A moment. EVE notices their position and moves away.)

EVE
It just feels so… base, you know? I mean, you are the only guy on Earth. It makes me feel, I don’t know—cheap maybe? Does that make sense?

ADAM
Yeah…
(He thinks about it.)
No, not really.

EVE
I mean, it’s so animalistic. I’m a girl and you’re a guy and we’re stuck here together, so we make babies.

ADAM
Right.

EVE
No romance. Purely physiological. Isn’t that gross? Ew. That’s gross. We’re gross.

ADAM
Well, when you put it that way...

EVE
We’re gross.

ADAM
OK, we’re gross.
(Pause.)
But I’d like to.

EVE
I know.

ADAM
You would too?

EVE
I didn’t say that. I just said I know.
(Beat.)
It’s weird. This whole wanting thing. I can’t decide how I feel about it.

ADAM
So you would?

EVE
Do what?

ADAM
Want to… you know, be the mother of all nations. That.

EVE
I didn’t say that. Stop putting words in my mouth.

ADAM
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, I was just… curious.
(Beat.)
God told us to.

(Silence.)

EVE
You want a pet?

ADAM
(taken aback)
What?

EVE
Yeah. You know, a pet. A little animal. We could keep it around. Be nice to it. Play fetch.

ADAM
Oh. Why?

EVE
Just because.

ADAM
Okaay…

EVE
We don’t have to, I was just asking.

ADAM
Like, what kind of a pet—animal?

EVE
I don’t know.

ADAM
The big guys are off limits you know.

EVE
Right.

ADAM
Right. You saw that. We have our apples, a couple seconds later a lion is tearing off a gazelle’s leg. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty fond of my legs.

EVE
(musing)
Isn’t that a funny word?

ADAM
What? Leg?

EVE
Well, that too.

ADAM
Which word?

EVE
Apple.

ADAM
Funny? I don’t see how it’s funny. How is “apple” funny?

EVE
I don’t know. Just listen to it. “Apple.” Apple apple apple apple.

ADAM
(getting annoyed)
Hey.

EVE
Apple.

ADAM
It’s a perfectly decent word.

EVE
Apple!

ADAM
Why is it all my words are stupid?

EVE
I didn’t say it was stupid, I just said it was funny.

ADAM
OK, sure, “apple” is funny.

EVE
You don’t have to agree with me.

ADAM
OK.

EVE
Stop it.

ADAM
Stop what?

EVE
Have you just been agreeing with everything I’ve been saying?

ADAM
I don’t know. Maybe.

EVE
Stop it!

ADAM
Maybe we just agree on a lot of things.

EVE
No.

ADAM
Maybe.

EVE
You’re just agreeing with everything I say and it’s ridiculous.

ADAM
All right, I’ll stop it.

(Beat.)

EVE
I’m sorry.

ADAM
Why?

EVE
Because I’m crazy.

ADAM
I don’t think so.

EVE
I am.

ADAM
I don’t think so.

EVE
You’re just trying to be nice.

ADAM
Well if I can’t agree with you and I can’t be nice what am I supposed to say?

(Eve thinks about this, then laughs.)
ADAM
What?

EVE
That’s funny.

ADAM
Apple!

(She laughs again.)

ADAM
Apple apple apple.

EVE
(laughing)
Stop it!

ADAM
Apple!

EVE
I can’t breathe!

ADAM
Aaaaappppppllllle!

(EVE laughs till she cries. She finally calms down, and then she takes a look at ADAM’s face and starts laughing again. He waits for it to end and it finally does. EVE takes a deep breath.]

EVE
Hey.

ADAM
What?

EVE
You know when you held my hand a little while ago?

ADAM
Yeah.

EVE
That was weird.

ADAM
Yeah. I know.

EVE
But I kinda liked it.

(ADAM looks at her. He holds her hand.)

EVE
I wish God was here.

ADAM
You miss Him?

EVE
Yeah.

ADAM
Me too.

EVE
Well, a little. I don’t know. I feel like I should. Maybe it’s just so recent it hasn’t really sunk in yet, you know?

ADAM
Yeah.

EVE
It doesn’t feel like He’s really… It feels like He’s still around.

ADAM
It does.

(They sit together. She leans her head against his shoulder.)

EVE
Are you scared?

ADAM
A little.

EVE
Me too.

(They think about this.)

ADAM
That’s OK.

(And it is. Lights down.)

Portrait

2008-05-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

I make you up as I go along,
each curve and bone my eye
detects with linear curiosity,
springing forth
before me as a line from my
(running out of ink, there's more
where that came from)
pen--
lazy and sure like our daughter
when we've left her in a room
with some colorful
object.
Finger lapsing into hand, your
hair a curling tributary
into muscly rivers--
I notice things that startle
me--how could I have
overlooked that beautiful
wrinkle in your cheek
that tells me how one day I will be
tired
and still I will cook you breakfast and
love you and
that wrinkle,
for I was the first one to notice it,
the only one,
and this makes me yours for
caressing your every crease
with my paper.
Until that cheekline, our parenthood seemed
only incidental, a happy
stork misplacing--but now
I see you now and twenty years from now,
when I will love you with twenty more
years of
skin-gazing, of
mapmaking, and this wormhole
lets me love both the now and future us,
and every next week
aches my throat with today's
affection,
each on the other, a log cabin,
until I feel that I shall corporeally burst.
Curving your
neck with the slow spontaneity of
my wrist's discovering,
I take a last squinting look at my
feeble, lovely attempt to suggest
your newness, to record for future
generations this relic of my religion,
which will be studied one
day under dusty glass and glasses
as we
are together
climbing cloud trees.
And now I smile, and
you smile, and I will
change a diaper and you will set the
table, and
tomorrow we will
find each other out again.

First Resurrection

2008-04-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

when only a sparrow
(counted)
witnessed the cracking of an
anciently stony Law,
and granite spelled Death
as the grass
overtook its weeds;

as i plead on scratched knees
for briar healing,
for quickened skin,
for the seasonal thawing of my
amphibian blood,
and the red, vein-ridden
leaves residual
crumbled into the outstretched
womb
of Earth,

two stars fell.

the implosion was such that
all inverted--
stray, floating dust
collided, and
the chaos of a new dimension
ordered
matter matter,
lake
sky,
the most fanciful unicorn
imaginings
no more false than a
pebble in a windstorm;
my habitual correction
fell away,
(my eyelids' scales)
and all appeared
as if i were walking on a ceiling,
stepping over the space
of a doorway;
and when i slept i dreamt of
nothing that
wasn't

the First Resurrection,
a land where scars are
loved

when Psalms were etched in my
self,
where clumsy dialect
can only never hope to paraphrase
the freckles, the hairs, the burns
and leprosies
all as unconquerable maps laid out
by the One Cartographer,
diaries plain as triumphant;

all that matters,
neither created nor destroyed,
our love living as a fish,
breathing and feeding and splicing
through waves
or clouds;
moist
and precious,
never unsuspended,
the heavenly host
and
and all universes in one,
a momentary and
unwritten oratorio
of creation's plan

i kiss Your feet.
Your broken,
lovely feet.

2008-04-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Man And The Moon

2008-03-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

"morning tide"

leave me,
let me
lie among the stormy sand
and feel these shells upon
my feet

engulfed in
foam
this sea shall fill my lungs
and bring me
closer to the moon.

Victims of Rare Diseases

2008-02-25T23:56:00.000-08:00

A movie made by some friends, in which I appear.

Road Enraged

2008-02-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

A short film I made for Driver's Ed about the dangers of road rage.
NOTE: Like 97% of films made by underage individuals, this film contains violence.

All I've Got Is A Photograph

2008-02-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

Another segment from the New Zealand project.

New Zealand

2008-02-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

Segment from a documentary of mine on my family's 2003 semester abroad in New Zealand.

Raging Bouillon

2008-02-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Moon Series, Part II

2008-02-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

6.

7.

8.

9.

Moon Series, Part I

2008-02-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Noir

2008-02-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

My Award-Winning Sentence:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20051031/ai_n15819171

The moment I laid eyes on her I knew I'd like the dame -- all long legs and elegance, which was odd anatomically speaking, but when Private Eye Bud Mahoney (i.e., me) lays eyes on a gorgeous creature such as this, he shoots first and asks questions later, a procedure which has, in the past, put a quick end to many a blooming romance and resulted in several awkward one-sided conversations with dead women; but she was different.

Zorba XII (Excerpt)

2008-02-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

Short segment from a forty-minute film I wrote and started shooting a couple years ago. I'd like to rewrite and maybe reshoot it someday, but we'll see if it ever happens. I did, however, cut a few sequences together. They mean nothing on their own, but some of them are kind of fun to look at nevertheless.

Gargantuan Mechanics

2008-02-03T18:44:00.000-08:00

Inner Battle

2008-02-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

A movie I'm in made by a friend.

Faith

2008-02-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

I walked into the interrogating room and Donald was standing over a dead man, wiping a blood-drenched carver across his smock. Things didn’t look good.

He looked at me, and his eyes squinted against the light. I shut it off and flipped on the tungsten.

“I know what this looks like,” the preacher began glibly.

I scratched the back of my head from underneath my cap and fingered my holster. I’m a pretty laid-back guy, but when you’re a cop you can’t just let this sort of thing go, not even among friends. Donald could see I was troubled. I felt my mustache and stood up to my full five-foot-five height. “I think you’ve got some explainin’ to do here,” I said, and then added: “Buddy-O.” Well, that wiped the smile off his 66-year-old, smile-wrinkled face, which wasn’t really my intention, so I stopped smiling too, and tightened my grip. I hate it when you’re trying to be friendly and you wind up talking like Ernest Borgnine.

“Right.” He forced a chuckle and let out the biggest exhale I’ve seen in a career of watching a lot of big exhales—“giving up the ghost,” I think they call it, in Donald’s business. He grinned again, showing off his two straight rows of unusually small teeth. “Well, see, here’s how it all went down. Last time you were in here we were both alive, right?”

I nodded slowly.

“Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat and sat down. The carver clattered noisily on the table and a couple drops of healthy red blood fell. “I know this is going to sound ridiculous.”

“Keep going.” I sat down in the chair opposite Donald, closest to me.

“Well, all right.” He smoothed back his smooth, thinning hair with two smooth hands. Suddenly he laughed. “Why am I so nervous? We’ve been friends for how long now, Paul? More years than I care to count candles on a birthday cake. Can I trust you?”

“You know you can, father.”

“Call me Donald,” he said.

“Donald,” I said. “You know you can, Donald,” I added, for continuity’s sake.

Donald smiled and sighed. “I can trust you. Here’s what happened. You left, and this… man”—he gestured towards Frank on the floor, blood oozing slowly from the middle of his body—“he started getting… mean. Not just mean. He started yelling. Yelling at me. Cursing. Taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Donald looked up at me and he was no longer smiling. “He told me to sign this paper saying I’d stolen all that money, and that if I didn’t by the time he counted to five then I’d regret it.” The preacher buried his head in his hands. He had long since stopped smiling. It was hard for him to talk. “Then he pulled out this knife,” he went on, with difficulty.

“And you were just defending yourself.” I don’t like seeing a friend cry. I leaned my chair against the wall and pressed my palms against my eyes. “This isn’t good, Don. This is not good.”

Donald started. “But no, Paul. That’s not what happened at all. I—I didn’t stab this guy… this man. No, I’m not afraid to meet my maker, Paul. I’ve led a good, honorable life, unlike… some—No. When the time comes when I shall shuffle off this mortal coil—”

He was getting Shakespearean on me. “What happened, Don?”

“He fell on the knife, Paul! Don’t you see?” Donald was a good guy, but he could sometimes talk funny.

I sighed, and stood up. I walked to the corner. I didn’t want to look at him. Either of them. “Look, Don. I’ve been a cop for thirty-eight years. It doesn’t take a cop of thirty-eight years to know that three open wounds in the back of a guy on his stomach don’t get there just from gravity.” I stopped there, and shut my open mouth.

There was a long silence. I stood there, my head in the corner. Donald sat.

“You’re right, Paul. There’s something I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Well you’d better—”

“—I’m going to—”

“—Good.”

He paused, and leaned back in his seat. “When your friend here was shoutin’-and-a-cussin’ and knifing at me, a young man came through the door.”

“That door is locked, Donald. I’ve got the only key in my pocket.” I turned towards him.

He looked up at me. “It wasn’t just any young man, Paul. It was an angel.”

We looked at each other.

“Donald,” I began. “Donald. We’ve known each other… More years—”

“I tell you it was an angel, Paul,” the preacher said, standing up. “He came through the door with the glory of God, dressed all in white, long blonde locks—he came not with peace but with a sword.” Donald can get a little carried away in his sermons from time to time, a little crazy. Some people like that, it’s not really my thing. He wasn’t crazy now. He was perfectly serious. Looking me in the eye, and serious.

“So you lied.”

“I didn’t lie, Paul! I said he fell on the knife and he fell on the knife! But it wasn’t that knife that stabbed him, Paul—it was the angel!”

“And that knife in your hand when I walked in—bloody?”

“The knife was under him and I knew it’d be red with that foul, thick life seeping out of him. I knew we were friends, Paul, but you’re not a stupid man. There’s only so much a man will believe when he’s not a stupid man. I took the knife from beneath him and was trying to get rid of the blood before you came, so you’d see I wasn’t lying that it wasn’t his knife killed him.”

“So you got rid of the evidence by wiping it on your robes, father.”

“Donald.”

“Donald.”

He paused, and sat back down. I did likewise. He spoke in a hush. Reverent. “You can’t stand six inches from a man being stabbed by an angel from on high and keep your robes clean, Paul.”

I stood up and paced the length of the room twice before stopping and turning to him. I put my hands in my pockets, then pulled them back out. Finally, I spoke. “You’re a man of God, father,” I sighed, and looked away. “Donald.” He watched me. “This is crazy, but I believe you. We’ve been friends… a long time. You’re my priest. I’ll go tell them I walked in on you guys and tell them Frank died in the struggle. Self-defense. It won’t be easy, but you should be fine, Donald.” He buried his head in his hands and started jiggling up and down without making no noise. “You should be fine.”

I opened the door and left the room. The preacher got up, moved behind the door, and when I came back five minutes later he stabbed me in the gut.

Pygmalion

2008-01-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

Alone: the clay and I. Aching for
solace, for companionship, I take the
muddy matter in my palms and, playful,
create. But soon, like all art and like all

Artists, the formless mass takes form, breathing
life through lifeless lungs, animating nostrils;
I can only watch--dumbstruck, mute. It is
a sadness far older than the earth that

All created must transcend the flawlessness
of imagination, dying in the
very instant of its birth. Through just such
deceit we are conned to try once more: And

while my mind will sculpt the perfect woman
My hands shall craft the perfect whore.

Cronos

2008-01-16T12:12:00.000-08:00

As a day-old phoenix immersing himself
in the lake he finds immortality
through no ashes (knowing, as he does, the
future as the hunted knows his hunter).

Exaltation at worst is the perhaps
prolonging of an ill-begotten status
quo: so future is devoured by hungry
past like vomit to its dog and all leaves

ground to a nurturing, deadly sod, sons
to so digest and decompose. Do not
think me filthy--I weep for what I do.
And do not find me gluttonous: my teeth

cringe, grit, spitting, endlessly loving their
begottens as we fear them all the more.

Event Horizon

2008-01-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

it is called an event horizon,
that decision to become one with the
inwardly absorbed, secretively unlightened and
vacuously coy mystery,
but just what transpires when the pencil-like
shuttle submerges, surrendering submissively
to the deepest of most unseen chasms and
mating with the blackness
is any physicist's guess.

perhaps it is welcomed into the
hidden club of the gods, where only
the courageous are angels,
or maybe, in some far solar system,
a new daisy emerges.
it is possible that the hungry emptiness,
appeased, returns her lovers' generosity
with giftful creation, and the two
enter together a mutually birthed
dimension, in which
the mortality of senses stays
completed by a more celestial everlastingness--
or does the swallowing extend,
contagious, and the fevered astronauts
implosively consume themselves in a
frantic killing search for
an unfindable
core within a core?

it is unknown, for of all travelable
distances this allure remains
only ungraced by any sufficiently
brave or brainless Columbus;
"cats are killed by this," they each explain
through foot shufflings, "far more frequently
than continents are found."

Sisyphus

2008-01-14T10:46:00.002-08:00

it's not that i am without memory, or
stupidly optimistic--all yesterdays i've known
appear identical, symmetrical, when organized
by thought into rows and columns, and
with such dependable monotony i abandoned
any tomorrow-ridden expectations by week
one.

no, that is not at all it. rather, as spent-
years have worn all the natural bouldery
crevices spherical, and carved a niche quite
particular in this acted-upon hillside, so hope
and failure have become as perfect--linear and
smooth--as any other merely gravitational
tumbling, devoid of tops or bottoms.

at each dawn's most initial tolling i know the
journey will recommence, with a most spiteful
lack of recognition, that any single progression
will unerringly be rendered void.
but i continue, nevertheless, each day--for
there is something untellably wonderful in the
thinning, however-fleeting air.

Would

2008-01-14T10:46:00.001-08:00

would i could muster all the ingeniousness
necessary to master the dizzied mechanations
of your so often distant soul;
to learn a simple clocklike learning
(i always was adept as a pupil)
so that i might pop you open at
any given hour--examine you,
tinker you to feel restored, to
help you function in the ways you like best,
in the ways you were designed,
a diagnosis as perfectly solvable as
an enormous cloud-green nebula or an
uncertain oyster coerved into openness.
(or perhaps you yourself, like
myself, have only a transparent grasping of
that very bone-ridden, most skeletal of
keys, capable only of unrusting your three
decayed rib-hinges. if
this is so, i'm sorry: foolish though it is, i know,
to try to withhold the wishfully redemptive
wetness from my bagged, browbeaten lids is
more saneless than a net seeking to catch the
sea--but i will try; for i would not
more than all, my most submerged friend,
corrode you further.)

The Edge Of The Universe, Part 2 (Or: Sketches of Yuri Gargarin)

2008-01-14T10:45:00.002-08:00

when one is amidst the quietly immobile chaos
of the stars, it is hard not to feel
expansion.
as space extends into, i suppose, spacelessness,
an inverse motion plummets through the
increasing deepness of my bones,
and i become a mediator, spokesperson,
unspeaking median between the smallest of perhaps
multiple universes and the widest, or broadest
unseen microcosmal wonders.
floating like a sea turtle in this easy, heartfelt
growing, my ungodly mind cannot help but consider
some rubbery limit, find out a place
wherein place ends, when widening becomes
contracting--or bursting--and order is
made violence.
but with each new stretching of thought
this strain loses all tautness, and
the newly-encompassed terrain encloses,
gently, with a shaking head and loving,
downturned eyes,
the fencings of my mortal doubts.

Things Not In Us

2008-01-14T10:45:00.001-08:00

there are things not in us, but
in that space which is
between, or around, above-beneath us,
things
that are not measured
or even detectable by any thing
which we can call a sense--
only they are sensed, we feel, by
something
far more beautiful or more buried
than
any sensing; they are scented in the
quiet pale-gray stillness of a
sunlessly
murmuring tree-speaker,
when we are most comfortably
alone.
if there is a God (as i
believe), perhaps these All are
Him, and our
deepest of prayers not so much uttered
as rather seen
by the eyes behind our eyes.

Mirror

2008-01-14T10:44:00.004-08:00

few ever truly see into your face,
gazing beneath its surfaces like spelunking
lovers, seeking out truths with a
discontent reserved only for those who see
flattery as merely
many incomplete, half-believed
byways;
you reflect lovingly, gently, knowing
what can be bourne and not and duplicating
that which is presented you
even as it is duplicated back unto (deeply focused,
like infinity) to propagate
an endless race of emptiness
if the seer so chooses--
you know that
youth is in the eye of the lifelessly gaunt
beholder,
just as the child is first to see the beauties
of a wrinkle.

David

2008-01-14T10:44:00.003-08:00

Beloved of God,
how like a giant you have
fallen,
how trembling the moment
when your knees sunk
and you grew
shrouded in dust,
it curling about you like
a thread,
singing mournful
a sacred graveside hymn of
you,
O shepherd, now missing from
the flock.

Jonah

2008-01-14T10:44:00.001-08:00

I
am
swallowed
up in my faithlessness,
preserved
by God from
fishy stomach acids to
even more stingingly rediscover
my own undead
decayal--
filthier even than any
fly-beckoned
rot.
The stagnance repels me.
Surrounded by black,
startled by
an underneath blackness inside
the inside which I
have kept so unfrighteningly
distracted. Even
my face has now
grown buried and without light:
bearded.
When nothing else is
but a moist and gaping mouth
there is no longer any escaping
one's
selfness--
and the sea is nowhere near so
drowning as the sin which fills
my lungs:
Forgive me, Father. Resurrect me
from my bellied tomb that I may
praise thee longer,
save me that I may God-like
saves
make this drowning baptism.

The Man With No Name, 1887

2008-01-14T10:43:00.004-08:00

Lawless justice, orphan pilgrim
in a land more scorched than an
easy-snapped twig.
And just as black.
Open to the highest bidder:
a country whored,
in the prairie a dog and piano.
Losing what they contain
the fences spread
and seek to encroach upon even
more ruthless terrain;
the man who loves trails
scatters courteous
and frightened,
like a fly to more
dung
till both he and his land
die, drained and starved.

The Trapeze Drummer Inside Me

2008-01-14T10:43:00.003-08:00

the trapeze drummer inside me
says that time for sparks are past--
that any fire so suddenly ignited
will with equal brevity fade to
ash before even it touches
earth;
no, he urges, better to seek out
heavy logs, the tinder, only
laced with softly-aired kindling.
a burning such as this may
last both day and night, until even
the next.
and when its flame is ebbed,
(its embers hopeless),
that smoke which remains may
yet act as a guide, or kind of signal,
directing the help-bent
rescuers hither
and yon,
into the dusty friendly flooring
where the trembling traveller
lies.

Fireworks

2008-01-14T10:43:00.001-08:00

Each of our tiny communities has been
packaged very strategically together
for optimum individual
performances

by many glasses-wearing Japanese.
My neighbors and myself
were specified for our uniquely
deeply different indifferences,
for our reactions, for sulfurous yellows.

We each now keep to ourselves
(reading books, doing crosswords),
knowing the altogether dangerousness
were our paths to ever more fully
cross,

understanding that all it would take is
one single quite unintentional spark
to ignite our destructively latent
energies and bring about a

breakable immediately excitable expansion
and sudden, deathly-cooled
apocalypse.

The Actress

2008-01-14T10:42:00.004-08:00

each seven-thirty evening i
return unto existence,
rather like a phoenix.
endowed with identity;
masked, costumed, plumed
to lift me out of dull
obscurity.
behind the curtain i am
fetal, as though
with its rise i shall pass
from dark canals
into bloody, sobbing
life,
and each disposable day
endured
for what these
two hours bring--
between my pregnant mother
curtain's womb,
and before its falling felt
is lowered
like a mossy earthbound
coffin.

The Admirer

2008-01-14T10:42:00.003-08:00

the greatest of unresolved anticipations
is reserved for the admirer of the actress,
who will always in his own mind
be unbilled casting director,
as though this woman had quite
unintentionally become lost amidst a plywood
kingdom and found herself reciting beneath
footlights like some nameless,
crumbless Gretal,
and he her unsung hunstman,
for whom the play itself is but
a nightly offering, some long prolonged
overture to a most resplendant climax,
a tuneless triumphant aria when this
goddess muse
appears in all her naked splendor over
a rumbling timpani of many-handed acclaim,
roses flung like cymbals from
the encore of his mind--
and he
to relive this moment ceaselessly
through darkness of day
until the next night's
sixpence moonshine.

The Spring

2008-01-14T10:42:00.001-08:00

and still i smell the spring,
that scent of sunlight particles
and still-cold embryonic buds,
with closed eyes and
expansive nostrils,
smelling like sighing.

it is in the air there, dodging
between the
now-willess leaves, old, their
crackling skin barely concealing
veins,
browned with age like a
photograph or manuscript,
as if coffee-stained themselves,
existing in the space
between snowflakes, lending
understanding
to the chill, reminding us
of the great labour pains
of death;

it sings even now, i will testify,
that reborn breeze:
even (and perhaps especially)
the sledders
move through it,
and their mittens bear witness.

JC Penney

2008-01-14T10:41:00.003-08:00

it is curious, the
shop clerk notes,
how the young child

longs so without a
motive to be orphaned,
how he ambles

with delicate gracelessness
and comically-proportioned
toddlings, too big

for his own legs
into the mystic blue
haven of a
clothing rack.

each carefully-priced and
cleverly-tailored velvety
concoction is

one more enchanted elm
demon, to be chopped
and sawed through, barely

emerging, the flashing
red battery power of
shoes

very nearly giving the slip
and signalling the
wayward prodigal to

that which he fears
most: the prison
he flees to

be issued an even
stricter sentence,
that worried care and

fleeting fury
(strangely comforting)
the incarceration of
a frantically relieved and
motherly embrace.

Sailor's Song

2008-01-14T10:41:00.001-08:00

The yellow-bellied
blue-hearted sailor wishes he could
live docked. He'd give his right tattoo
to be happy without the ever-impending
seasickness, even to
exist without a flirtatiously hair mussing
wind loved by both seaman and
landlubber alike, if only
it meant
that for just one oceanic turn of the earth
he did not feel obligated to drift
or
to banish stillness,
and could instead feel fully lit
and equally exhilarated,
still breeze-tossed,
merely
washing dishes.

Forgotten Doll

2008-01-14T10:33:00.002-08:00

Quarantined by the riverbed
the discarded China doll
strives amid reeds to
be ladylike, to let
inquisitive toads know that she,
she is somehow loftier,
lighter, more smooth and reflective
than even the river,
more immobile and less
prone to moss.
She will not let a tear
stain
her perfect complexion--
it is her cold dryness
which keeps her distinct in this
foreign land;
to succumb would be
to admit the inadmissable--
so there she will lay
with forever pursed
raspberry lips
until she is covered and assimilated,
till time
most mighty and most merciless
camouflages this doll
(as all dolls)
from passing amphibians.

Gentle Apocalypse

2008-01-14T10:33:00.001-08:00

there was a curious peace,
a transcendence of faith
which occurred
possibly in my bloodstream
as i stood overlooking
the valley flooded in
heaving molten.

the eruption's initial response
had been one of awe and
even cheers--
i alone seemed to recognize
at once
the ending which the smoking
bowels
heralded.

but somehow this knowledge
perfected the hours
between now and then;
when i tried unsuccessfully
to reach my loved ones
through liquified wires
(disconnected or no longer in use)
i was not sorry, only
counting the hours before our
exalted reunion,
purified in fire.

and as i and others--strangers, all--
mounted higher with the gradually
rising tide,
the red ocean seemed to bubble
not out of malice, or even
menace,
but merely with the messenger's
bittersweet acceptance.

four hours, by my guess,
until i meet my God.

Frames

2008-01-14T10:32:00.001-08:00

It is unbearable when
dark windows meet you at silent home,
and not even the tawny owl
notices its greeting.
Drawn curtains are their own fences;
he who lives inside a barricade,
surrounding it with furnishings and
empty sounds to disguise
will always be the last to notice
desolation, always the first to be apart
of it.
Outside, awake, the owl cooes
softly and wisely to his undisciplined
pupils,
lurking in treeshadows, skeltering,
imparting
the wisdom of a forest nightfall.
For only owls know that
frames do not a portrait make.

Spider With The Power Out

2008-01-14T10:31:00.004-08:00

when the electricity snapped,
pulled like a string past its
breaking point,
along with the somewhat comical puff of smoke
there came a cloud of vision, or
an apparition with the density of a pillow,
and what had moments prior,
bathed in unflattering tungsten,
filled me with a killer's primitive compulsion,
now in darkness (like,
I thought, some pre-Edison mentor)
bade me unhinge these
toilet paperish plottings and
instead
meditate on a Creator so distant,
so distinct,
His Kolob too divine for any possible
planetarium,
that He sought expressive perfection in this
eight-legged gravel creature that I,
in my own dogged naivete,
had found merely a nuisance.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

2008-01-14T10:31:00.003-08:00

like an image from a newsreel
the long-chinned, hat-brimmed rabbi
crosses a Manhattan intersection,
looking both ways more times than one
and carrying a splendidly white duck
under one arm,
this man so lost in his hair,
his unexplained, unacknowledged companion
equally homeless--
and one could almost hear in this
ballad of light
the echoing minor laughter lilting
of a clarinet,
its unsteadiness belying an
inherited sorrow,
the weary humility of a Moses,
wandering leader in a wilderness of
street lights.

Each Day Always

2008-01-14T10:31:00.001-08:00

corridors rendered in guilt,
hidden in sod,
the crime of touch,
an indecently exposed spirit--
the time signature masks
and orders these sundries
as a God in His
first uncreated heaven,
willing in a ballet of motion--
patches of unorganized
laundry on a line,
slowly passing from
eyelash-bathed abstraction
with the blank purity of
receding dreamtime--
decomposed beings, the rivers
through which they passed--
their wind-trembled roots
grasping with broken fingers,
the heralding branches an
evidenced mitzvah--
and many lives will
thrive on this placental
woodland crypt,
as it unites blues with all the
unkempt exactness
of a water cycle,
defying architecture,
usurping the tide,
and making familiar children
from gravely unspeaking
granite.
each day always
is a resurrection.

The Great Flood

2008-01-14T10:29:00.001-08:00

here is where God planted his mightiest seedlings--
clinging with their knotted, unkept muscles to the
anxiously red dirt, rock-encountered and never watered since
that Great Flood which brought them here (not quite
two of every kind, but floatingly scattered, sewn like a
needle over the broken earth,
feeding on her own enraged contours, convictions,
for there is nothing else).

fumbling aggressively towards oppenness,
vegetation in question
has never the ease of horizontal progress,
the pleasures of shade; its
bark bears the sunbaked atrocities of generational pain,
an untold history which would incriminate if he only knew his own
steepedness.

the forest breathes with a heaving mammal's heaviness;
this tree, standing as a lone and thirsty cemetary
unto itself,
wrings the dirt with its struggling claws, his
dried tongue flailing like a broomstick to the
cobwebbed corners of vision.
there is admirable--even envious--strength in this doomed struggle;
not hopefulness, but unaware, opaque endurance, one which
brittles and embitters and
leaves in its wake a monument to the boxing martyr.
the visitors would not have this Babylonian sight
any other way, with its
geometric testaments of cataclysm,
the rust-tarnished scar of an
only superficial healing.

dead things may be admired safely,
if, perhaps, with more effort--
but ease is easily offered when its
offspring is ensured.
the artist with his failing pen is
quick to sketch
branches gnarled and twisted in death.
only the virtuoso and
the newborn
dare face themselves with the
dangerousness,
the overwhelming odds
and the sobbings
of forfeited strife.

Wildfire

2008-01-14T10:28:00.002-08:00

the burned land ravaged, a cruel brown with
definite charrings at each crackled tree's
base--blacker than the rest, like a
dry fiery watering, when the
roots are soaked up to their surfaces,
the ground around these dark
demarcations
a splotchy uneven crispness,
each square foot its own personality,
its own courage and tolerance.

such ethical cleansings are needed, says the
park ranger, so that new life may
begin.

scanning, brow-shadowed, the
emptied map of non-surfaces, I
wonder if the seedlings know
through what carnage they come.

Driving Interstate 15

2008-01-14T10:28:00.001-08:00

you are receding into the distance
like a powerline
weaving directionally down the
labyrinthine highway
to the mountain,
showing more clear than white
on green how easterly I
am bound.
there is zen in cruise control--
a fixed truck driver distance
as dotted lines, fences, and
listless unmown yellow cow grasses
unfold
like a mystery
or a paragraph,
soliciting the right
foot brake, exit unknown,
a detour without cones or
orange signs,
a valley without a marker.
littered splotches of
tents bespangle the schoolyard;
a Philips 66; S Main Street
1 mile;
long and generous sprinklers
spew in stretched neighborhoods,
divide like a fault line the brambles.
you do not feel divided from me--
no jagged warring plates within my
dashboard--only
behind, as a curious, sad yellow
wildflower which stole the notice,
the turning gaze, the straining neck
of this traveler,
leaving no trace but that
sunspot pupil memory
which fades
like the interstate, the segolily,
singularly each time it is recalled,
from peak before to peak after,
as if the rear views were
turned inwardly by one another,
one towards the other,
reflecting an infinity of roads,
of possible journeyers
like I,
of wheels in a constant rotational
lullabye.
good night,
is the whisper of the
traffic,
good night,
my sweet prince.
the sky is wide before me
like a lake.

Something Behind My Eyes

2008-01-14T10:25:00.002-08:00

something behind my eyes
--and what is behind? veins?
darkness? nothing?--
something even more further backward
or inside,
and almost actually behind me
(chronologically also, such that
i grow younger with each successive
moment spent in your
merlin-like
presence of a
meek and ebbing fatigue),
this Unnameable transfigures me with its
otherworldly, pain-ridden sublimity,
and dares with a smile
to retain the sensation one more
whisker,
the holiness, the holocausts,
and suggests it likely that your own
tumbling honesty might well cause my
very slight frame to
collapse,
that the vibrato
which cuts most tenderly through conversation
might, without warning, explode
in tears withheld since
one long ago day on a playground:
all this and more is
how i would embrace you;
doing that which is undone,
unfolding that which is folded.

Lamentation

2008-01-14T10:25:00.001-08:00

it is sterile as a doctor's office Newsweek--
floral, stiff upholstery, latex, peppermints, etc.--
that look of unadorned content which
radiates toxically
from between your temperedly gazing eyelids.
a compromise, a lost little girl,
astray in the Clorox-bleach desert
swirling with many unspecified insects,
with scorpions, owls clutching their formerly
furry life-mourning prey, mice
in this thin dry chaos of
cactus and rocks which you
sadly pretend is paradise;
you have a perfectly magnetized compass
(in your sidebag, middle pocket,
neither the smallest nor the largest;
i put it there)
but i note with a helpless anxiety
how you deem yourself too innocent for even
direction.
perhaps a storm of dust will clear your eyes.

The Wedding Ceremony of Foxes

2008-01-14T10:21:00.000-08:00

Like angry fists pummeling the soil
retaliated upon by their foe's
impenetrably peaceful stillness
the rain begs anguished, and
her thunder responds with
the dreaded certainty of fish,
as if a sky-tearing
pageant
were also an inversely evaporatory
ocean;
it is in the repentent quiet
between these heavenly tantrums
and the eternally forgiving heal
of re-emerging
softly as a caress
sunlight that foxes make their
cautious way through a
gently sobbing forest,
comforted by the trees' empathetic
drips,
to exchange their secret,
unwitnessably sacred
wedding vows.

Air On An E String

2008-01-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

the unscrupulous player will twist my
straining tautness until, with a too-sudden
anticipation, he breaks me dead.

but i must be broken only as a horse:
ever so patiently bended and stretched
by a gentle, limit-comprehensive master
for each refrain's one tuning.

he knows that i may only comply briefly--
a half an hour, perhaps to begin--before
rebelling lazily to my worn, familiar
learnings.

no dog of any age learns immediately,
as any callous-fingered musician
will tell you.

but when his hands, string-like, exercise
a long-suffering felt only in owner and
object, he may, i know, lift my
stubbornest self to more fully-stepped, less
staffed peaks, an altitude where no
instrumentalist even may breathe--

to melodically soar over a wind of skylessly
forgetful, pained months now passed,
a being i both of lowing lows

Medicine Man

2008-01-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

This 'un will soon be showing on the local TV station. In the meantime, here's its e-debut.