The Greenpont Machine  

February 28th 2002: Beautiful Day

Looks like a winner to me. It's a beautiful day with tons of meaningful stuff to do and axiom tonight. Looking forward to it all.

February 25th 2002: Things du Jour

I keep bouncing back and forth, trying to solidify my internal power base. Motivate the troops in my psyche to wake it and shake it. In the mean time, I found a great article in the New York Times about pirate satelite TV in Iran. This is, and will continue to be my $0.02 for the "War on Terrorism": you eliminate more terrorist threats with honey than you do with bombs. Put another way, exporting civil liberties, liberal culture, and economic prosperity will make the world a safer place than all the daisy cutters $300Billion can buy.

Site update: added a page about Christine. Not to be confused with Christina.

February 24th 2002: Six of One...

On the plus side I've discovered some new tunes to fuel the mind machine. I slammed them into the old MP3 player and I did a killer high energy bike excursion along the North Brooklyn waterfront... warehouses, abandoned factories and a surprising amount of hanky panky in parked cars. Sweet sweet sweat. On the minus side, I'm lonely.

This causes the bike ride to take on a dangerous edge. Somehow I find myself trying to do things to my emotional heart by elevating its physical beat-rate. I need the adrenaline rush of fast rides and hard corners to substitute for the high I'm not getting from slow dances and soft curves. Sometimes, in the thick of reaching out for something to feel, you fantasize about a crash, about flying through the air and leaving some skin on the pavement where you land. That would feel like something, that's for sure. Thankfully, that doesn't happen.

February 23rd 2002: Catching the tailwind

I think things might be coming around for real now. I don't feel quite so sick of it all today. Let's see if I can not go out on this Saturday night and really make a strong recovery. Let's think positive, because as the second law of thermodynamics tells us:

"Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out."

The beauty of that is "spontaniously" and "tends". It's not an absolute. Entropy can be countered by intentional use of energy. Every system creates some entropy, but it should be possible through intellegent system design to create a means of reducing entropy, for instance a machine that produces 5 "entropy points" but in the process of operation reduces the entropy in the surrounding area by 6. Yeah baby! A bang, not a whimper!

February 22nd 2002: A-Mazing Links

I'm adding WOMEN to the site. After realizing I seem to be reluctant to add my female acquaintences to the site (just based on the ratio) I've made pages for Julia and Christina. Viva Feminina!

Sometimes the corporate internet machine deredges up some good culture too. Here are some links you should follow, nervo. Five page Linda Barry Cartoon (on salon.com) about taking LSD in Chinatown. She is the author of Cruddy which is now one of my favorite books. Navy all the way, baby.

He may be a flaming liberal, but it's always innaresting to hear Noam Chomsky's point of view (this is about micro$oft and the internet).

If you're even a little but hippy, have a look at this link. It's complete e-text of Stephen Gaskin's Monday Night Class, which is a transcription of a series of guru-talks this guy gave in the 1960s in San Fransisco. I've used many bits of idea and language in here to spark my own performance writing. He later took his little tribe to Tennessee and founded The Farm, a big aggricultural commune.

Finally, a little self-promotion: I've made a new website for Axiom, the artist-friendly performance lab I founded with some friends a while ago. The url is www.axiomlab.org, kids. Disseminate.

February 21nd 2002: It's Been a Long Time Since I...

I've come to realize I haven't really socialized with anyone on any kind of consistent basis for about 2 months now. I'm starting to feel like a hermit! But what are you going to do... I've been trying to catch up on my regular job, pick up two more and start a couple theater companies in my "spare time". Doesn't leave much time for Josh. That's what we call workaholism: the guy focuses on projects so he doesn't have to face the emptiness of his own life, which in turn makes his non-work-life all the more empty, thereby closing the loop and re-enforcing the cycle. Evil shit.

February 17th 2002: Shiverin' in the corner's no kind of life

My my how the tables have turned. Sam and I ran a gala kickoff event for our Valhalla Theater vehicle last night. It wasn't what we'd hoped for in terms of cash flow (minor profits for the company coffers, but profit is profit), but it was a great success in terms of impressing on people that we've got the vibe and the verve and we want to do "zomething different." It's odd to me to be The Man at a thing like that. It wasn't really my crowd (I'd been too busy Quick Fixin' to help out significantly with the organization), but everyone seemed to give me respect and make me feel sexxy. I like that, you know. Everyone does.

"Now you're sick and tired of your square life/ lookin' for kicks that'll set you right..."

So it's time to grease the gears, but the pedal to the metal, wake it and shake it, open up the nitro, etc etc etc. Calloused hands, open mind, friends. Tune in to the universal frequency and follow the beat to the end of the road. "Hitch your wagon to a star," as Emerson said.

February 15th 2002: The Morning After

I got a great V-day phone message from Mark, reminding him that it was 5 years ago that I drove him and Shannon across town in the middle of the night so they could make love for the first time. Way to go, kids. They're livin' the dream.

But for me it was a rough one last night, as anyone could have predicted. But we're rising from the ashes, the flu, the hangover. I think I'm going to write a play and produce it via the Valhalla Theater vehicle. Something on masculinity and jazz and living the lush life of a dharma bum on the road, probably have to have it done in a month to get it producted. Deadlines are my preferred way to work. I'm also going to try and kick Axiom up a notch with some help from Franker. Business with good old Peter Crawford is heating up as well: my career as a corporate bigshot is a shoe-in I'm sure.

So once again I'm stone lonely, 22-years-old, tortured and sensative and all cut up and raw. But kick it over, be a coffee-burning lumberjack souled street biker business mogul sonafabitch, and we're gonna whup it somethin' fierce. Not by God alone, and without compromises. I'll have a cup of that tea, buddy.

Finally, lest we forget what we as a nation do in our fits of rightous and patriotic indignation: they let this (apparently innocent) man go after holding him on basically circumstantial evidence for five months.

February 13th 2002: Gaelic Fantasies

I've decided Irish lasses are the ones for me. The more of 'em I meet, the more they sing me on home. Tonight at Scratcher (sometime yuppified but generally comfey pub joint in the village) the sparkling bartendress threw me some vibe wile serving up hot toddies -- bitchin' cold night to be bike riding -- and bought me a Guiness at then end of it all. Needless to say, I was excited. Unfortunitely, it never died down enough for me to do more than thank her and exchange a couple fleeting looks. Still, maybe I've found a new quest.

Also, finished Sometimes a Great Notion by good old passed on Ken Keasey. Fucking fantastic literature. Emboldens me to wake it and shake it, embody raging lumberjack masculinity and seek the wild woods woman to soothe my hard-working soul.

February 12nd 2002 (at a decent hour): Cookin'

Dispite my recent suspicions that my life's balance has been tipping too far into the creation realm and I'm running low on the fuel provided by sometimes rapacious consumption, I've been making updates with new photos from Oregon. So far I've added a page for dear old Shannon and updated slightly the stories for my buddypals Luke and Mark. I'll round it out later with more people pages and a photojournal of my most recent trip home.

February 12nd 2002: Life's Deeper Choices

Sitting here eating some good old eggs and onions and mushroom scramble, thinking about what a friend of mine in LA said about "the rats closing in."

Do you know, this time (this last week I was in eugene) I wasn't ready to leave when the plane came? I wanted to stay for another week, another month even. It wasn't that I wanted to stay in eugene per se, but I was having such a good time I didn't want to experience the end. Mark and Luke and Dan and Cian were there, as were my hippie friends like Brian and Mary and Amon and even sick, feminine, old Ben Newman. Anyway, I was having fun and doing theater and meeting the people I loved afterwords to get fresh squeezed margaritas or play late night foosball, and I even met a woman, a gone little L-train girl (vintage clothes and lots of tom waits LPs), with bobbed kettle-red hair and a sexy tomboy smile, who was a dancer and sweet and maybe wanting to hang out with me more.

The fantasy spings to mind in an instant - can't this be my life, can't I have this feeling all the time? I know everyone's with me, the cast, the friends, the bartenders... I even get some of that vibration from the girl. It's sangri-la, coming down to me over the faces of strangers: live here, with love and beauty and good food, and be happy that you've made it this far! You're a winner, here are your laurels, rest ye upon them!

And then I have to come back to freezing and cold New York. When I first moved here I thought it was cool, that this was the place, where the people were really doing things and the big shit was happening, where opportunity and fame and subcultural blazing glory lay embodied in every lighted window on the marvelous night sky-line. But that was then. Now I see a place with much of the promise and some of the hope as before, but riddled with petulent decadence, with spite and envy and trust-fund foolishness, where the idle rich are fools and the working rich only moreso and anyone not working or just plain poor can cram it where the sun don't shine. It's a place with little real human energy anymore. It feeds itself with the basest scum on both ends of the spectrum: the highest highs, the lowest lows, and the rancid nervous permutations that surround them. It's still direly exciting at times, it's a place to be to make a difference, but when you start seeing the wrecks on the side of the road, driving in the fast lane takes on a new quality. Maybe I need a break.

I just want friends that accept me for who I am, a woman who I can respect and love, and work that fills my life with meaning, purpose and triumph. Is that too much to ask? Now that I re-read that sentence, it seems a bit much.

Well, I hope that speaks to your condition at least in some oblique way. Trust in the possibility of progress and believe in the divinity of your forward momentum.

February 5th 2002: Still Kickin'

Almost there with this Quick Fix thing. It's some of the hardest yet most rewarding work I've ever done in my life. I'd forgotten how much energy it takes to do... but the potential to make a real difference. That's addictive shit, man.

February 3rd 2002: Back on the Best Coast

I'm rocking Oregon again, this time with The Quick Fix. No sleep, third-wind full-time genius. Loving it!

February 2nd 2002: Kick out the Jams

Whoooo! Last night was a bona-fide fall down the bottle. Started out on dinner with Yuliya, which was good in the big picture, but kind of uncomfortable. Then down to see Julia, Andrew and Sam downtown. Then into the world, an Irish rover.

Jeremy sent me a great email because he was out with squares and went home early. He has more ideas on how to combat hipsterism. Click his name to see.

I Couldn't seem to hang on to anyone all night. I went from spot to spot, group to group. People want to go home, I just hit the next scene, then that goes south and I make for Brooklyn. The party there clears out, or at least all the people I know do. I walk a bright eyed NYU senior to the L-Train, and I keep walking north, end up at Enids (Greenpoint Hipster Bar), drinking Irish Whisky on the rocks to settle the foundation a bit. Things were getting shaky. I think I hit on some ladies from the University of Wisconson at Madison (where Luke wants to go) in the tail end of my stupor. Don't really know if that was good or bad. Probably neither. Then home. Apparently I made some quesadillas with creme cheese and jalapenos. It's been a while. I took a lot of photos... the last 7 or 8 were a surprise to me. I think I cought my neighbors getting home as I was shambling in (around 4:30am). Some of the others: your guess is as good as mine.

Back in time to January