My first completed song - Butterfly

Hey.

I'm doing some songwriting behind the scenes right now, so I'm gonna use the next month or so to revisit older songs - almost all of them odes - and talk about how they came to be written.

Here's Butterfly.  It's the first song of my own that I ever finished.  I started out as a fair enough singer, aspiring writer, and one terrible guitarist.  Roommates would suffer as I plunked one or two strings over and over, pining over some crush or another.  They were always named Heather, too.  A whole flock of Heathers - Heather with the pixie brown haircut and the sexy Boston accent who abbreviated EVERYTHING... even her "vag".  This was 1998, way before that little diction tic came into vogue.  Or Heather, the alto in a college a capella group who had sad eyes and a welcoming grin.  Or Heather the RA, who smelled like jasmine and cactus blossoms.  All those Heathers....
 
 So, I finished no songs on my own in college.  Collaborated on a bunch of music with a ragged, iconoclastic guy named Andy Ben.  I'd sing and write lyrics, he'd strum.  At first, the goal was to help him score with this adorable Japanese model who studied theatre with us, but when that didn't pan out, we just wrote songs to write them.  Or, we'd have crazy adventures all over Los Angeles.  Ones that started that with him showing up unannounced in my apartment and ended at a protest rally dodging broken glass and riot cops deep in the heart of Compton. 

I finished college with no prospects.  I was chubby and no grad school wanted me for their theatre programs. Twelve dollars in my bank account.  Knew I had to head back home for a spell.  And it broke me.  To realize that I wasn't able to continue doing theatre and music and writing for a while until , as Andy once said while high, "I cleaned my spaceship" .  Normally, I intuit that odd phrase to mean tidying up my place.  But I felt it resonated so clearly with this point in time - finding survival work, saving up, and getting out of Modesto, CA for good.  Make my own autonomy. 

So, while I was back home for seven months, I lived in a small, bare white room with my family.  For the first few months, I did three things:  taught myself to juggle, I listened to Phillip Glass constantly, and I kept playing terribly at guitar.  Those arpeggios felt so welcome - a drone of music that I listened to for hours on end. And somewhere, amidst this crazy behavior, I stumbled upon a series of notes which haunted me. I kept playing them again and again, staring at the wall until my fingers bled.  And I wrote this song.

21 years old.

When it was finished, I played it for my father.  He nodded, and in his slow, sure way, he drawled, "Well, son, that sure is pretty.  But it'll never be on the radio"   He was right.  No offense.  It's not poppy like a lot of my modern work.  Verse, bridge, chorus, wash, repeat.  It was meandering, dream-like.  It sounded like a vulnerable, scared animal.  Which I was.

Plus, as I wrote it, I thought about the women who always strike my heart.  I distrust constantly smiling women or obscenely attractive women at first.  It's a prejudice of mine.  But, if I see someone or in time get to know someone beyond the smooth pallor of their skin or the glint of their toothy smile and I see a real, strong woman who has been slapped hard and often by this ramshackle life, and has triumphed over such an ordeal, I love them. My heart trembles. I want to share time with them.

And, this habit of mine has had some side effects.  Sometimes I try to over help them, or end up accidentally being paternalistic. Sometimes they push away and don't fancy me back.  Sometimes they turn out to have a serious shoplifting habit.  No two people are the same.

Here's the song and the lyrics:

Wicked little thing
your face, a box of questions
I want to
I want to
wrestle you down
and give you a name
I want to
I want to
beg let me in til you got no room
but that would seem immature
I don't want to seem
immature
lord I'm always so goddamn immature
you too
you look battered up
knuckled down
looking over your shoulder
you're just tuckered out
caving in
fighting time
you're just growing old
growing cold
flailing quietly
you're just worn out space
human race let you down
you wicked little thing
so why i am i still chasing you
you just flitter away
flitter away
i have no weapons
yet you look at me like I'd hurt you
you think you're still the girl you see
some bloated underestimated bunch of skin
nothing safe but dreams you dream
you hurt
because you're beautiful
you hurt because you're beautiful
you are so beautiful
you hurt so much
listen to me
you have grown
you have grown
you have grown
you are lovely
the jig is up
you butterfly

One year ago - what I've learned, and where I need to go from here

Hey.

I remember one year ago today waking up to a wild, unsettling batch of turbulence.  The plane was shaking, passengers started screaming, and I was convinced we were going to crash.  I'd given up a lot of my old life, sold or thrown away so many long-held possessions, and pointed myself east. 

Why?  Why did I do that?

I was in a rut, basically.  Wasn't challenging myself or really applying myself towards serious artistic endeavors. I was shutting off, disappointed in my lack of growth. And, I don't think California's ever liked me. I've grown up strange all my life, and I knew , in the marrow of my bones that New York  held more life, more possibilities.  Heck, maybe even an absurd kind of love.

Back to the plane.  I hadn't slept for over 29 hours, and had already changed planes twice.  Sat down, and didn't even remember buckling my safety belt.  Awoke to the rancor and the panic of the crowd.  And the sick, buckling skips of the aircraft.   I was sure death was near.  And in an odd way, I was sort of glad.  I altered my breathing, deliberately induced a calmer heart rate, and waited patiently for the end.

But the plane was fine. And I arrived in New York City just a little after 10:30am on February 1st, 2011.

What a year.  Let's break it down into three parts:  What I've done, what I've learned, and what I need to do next year.

WHAT I'VE DONE

Performed in 5 different productions this year - a lot more than I've done consecutively in a while. It's a town where there's work to be had, and I've enjoyed the variety of each experience.

Lost 30 pounds - selling a car and walking everywhere will do that.  Also, I've been eating mildly better. I didn't even know I'd lost weight until a doctor's visit proved otherwise.  God help me if I still see pictures of myself from the back, though - sheesh.  It's like watching a sad elephant shuffle.

Wrote 7 new original songs this year - which really surprised me.  They're all on this site and are each varying levels of quality, but I can see myself using these new songs to cope, to grow, to narrate the changes I'm making. Once I shore up cash for a new guitar, you better believe I'll be taking these little ditties and some older songs of mine to the streets!  Probably won't sing the Vagina Song on the subway, though...

Getting paid on a regular basis to act and sing - it's not a lot of money, but it validates me.  It is the essential nature of being a professional in a field.  Beyond the dry aesthetics of theory and academic art.  Sure, in a perfect world the acting you're paid to do is just as skillful as the acting you do for free, but for now, just getting paid is a minor miracle.

Created a solid draft of my one man show: Ghost on a Stick.  Now, to edit further and work to get it workshopped and performed before this time next year.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED

NY actors and creative people are kinder - they just are. Something about dealing with such a harsh environment and coupling that with sharing transit with actors fosters kindness and respect.  Sure, there's a fair share of jerks and self-absorbed types, but  most are just as scared and hungry as you and want to reach out and help.

You can never really clean a hardwood floor.  You just can't.  You can sweep and mop and get on your hands and knees with a scouring pad and punish the ground, but it will never be clean.  That's okay.  A little dirt's part of life.

I will never be able to see every new play or eat at every new restaurant  - so it's okay to have gaps.

People sure love to see me nude or near nude in plays/musicals - whether it's pantless as the Porter in Macbeth or as Pete in the new play Home, or my ass crack sticking out for the cabaret, I've earned a following for taking off clothes for comic effect.

Working from home is wonderful and strange.

Don't read THE ROAD on the subway unless you want strangers to ask why you're sobbing openly.

There is a mayor of my neighborhood, and he is my brother's three legged poodle, Peter.

Despite all the slices I've had, I still go crazy for a Di Fara slice. Health code violations and all.

My brother is a complicated and charming guy, and moving here has really given me a chance to spend more time with him.  I love him to pieces, and I'm ever so proud of his heart and talents.

Even in this modern age, cash rules everything.  So few non-chain stores take plastic.  I end up loading up at the ATM and stockpiling it like an old-timey prospector, under the mattress.

I owe the comedian Paul F Tompkins so much for my creative sanity this year in NY.  At my darkest, he'd always have some podcast or album I'd listen to and become galvanized by the sheer multitudes of his playful, passionate creative output.


GOALS

1)Lose 30 more pounds - getting to 270 was a snap.  Now, it's time to drop to 240.  I'll sleep better, I'll have less aches and pains, and get a wider variety of roles that way.

2)Give myself more - I've always had a hard time doing things for just me. For example, it's really tough for me to see plays or try new restaurants by myself.  Just seems sad.  But screw that.  I deserve new experiences.

3)Invest in a daily and diverse analysis of acting opportunities in NYC - more research.  Not just Playbill, or Actor's Access or Backstage. Really pore over the trades and get to know just how people get cast in theatre, film and tv in this city.  Who does what, and who do I know involved in new projects.



Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going on a date!

Thanks to the following people for helping me this year:
Jeric Jones and Stephanie Girard
Mom and Dad
Jelina Seibert
Jennifer Moraca
Jessica Larson
Josh Walters
Tess Suchoff
Bobby Lux
Joe Hogan
Winnie Lok
Shannon Fillion
Michael Irish
Garrett Blair
Bekki Doster
Mark Kinch
Dave Benger
Carole Taylor
Charlie Grosso
Mark Harborth
Zach Stasz
Ginger Reiter

The Contents of My Pockets - or - Memoirs From My Pants

Hey.

I've been doing a lot less writing over the past 11 months or so.  More theatre and songwriting and such.  But not writing writing.  Clear, adult reflections on what's been going on so far with Jara Jones.  What I've learned, and where I want to clear up patches of my ignorance.

And, after a rare morning where I actually spent two hours sitting in a diner having a leisurely breakfast, reading a novel and sipping coffee like the fantasy version of the grown-up I'd always wished I'd resemble, I thought:  Why do you make writing so damned hard, Jones?   It's not.  Good writing, sure - it's a horror.  It's a story of abandon and draft after perilous draft, of sending out copies of what you've done and getting less and less feedback to the point where you're convinced that it's garbage and that it has no value but you keep honing the text , keep loving and attending to it with fanatical devotion in an effort to beg its purpose. (Exhibit A:  My one man show of fear, love, and collapse - GHOST ON A STICK.  It will be completed and produced  -if only as a staged reading at first - before 2012 leaves me.  It fucking has to  - it's eaten up a decade of my life and constantly taunts me with its lack of completion and the fact that somewhere in that show is something wonderful and I need to find it and deliver it)

But not all writing has to be good writing.  In this digital dayscape, with text spilling forth from everywhere, we can write effortlessly and raw sometimes and let it live in the moment. 

So, that's the idea with a thought experiment I'll be starting.  I call it - THE CONTENTS OF MY POCKETS.  Basically, I'll reach into my wallet or pockets and pull something out at random and riff on it and not edit it.  See where it goes.  Make it a bite-sized memoir.  Here's the first entry:

Red Casual Male XL Rewards Card

It's a fat card.  A card for being fat.  Even the store name is condescending as fuck.  "We at Casual Male believe our customers have no desire to sweep away the crumbs from a fortnight of meals off their distended and pillowy lakes of flesh.  So, we keep them happy with ill-fitting slabs of prison-drab attire!" 
I hate it.  I rarely shop there unless I have no other option.  I'm fat.  I've been fat since I hit puberty and I went from being rail thin to just ballooning up and my weight's been see-sawing from there.  I was always a guilty kid, and I clearly remember forging my parent's signature on a note in the sixth grade for a disciplinary mark I got from my teacher because I was reading in class instead of paying attention ( I had already finished the lesson and was bored, bored, bored , but she got extremely upset and made me stay after class and wrote this note which she said my parents had to sign).  I was and am an extremely straight-laced , anxious kid, and it gave me the dry heaves to imagine my parents being ashamed of me getting in trouble.  So, I faked their signature on the form. Practiced my dad's almost epileptic-esque scrawl for a few hours and gave it a go.  Handed it back to the teacher, and that next day, my parents took us on our big family trip to Disneyland.  But I couldn't enjoy it at all.  I felt so rotten, so terrible.  I lied and without being honest I had nothing.  The trip ended, and my parents asked me what was wrong and I broke down sobbing and confessed my crime and they looked at me like I was crazy.  And then I immediately started puberty.  For the longest time, I felt my obesity was a way to punish me for lying.  And, since I shared my parent's habits and brain chemistry, being depressed didn't really make me want to exercise or improve my diet. I liked reading and playing video games and spending hours and hours just staring at the white, pop corn speckled walls, daydreaming about the plays or films I'd one day create, or the songs I wanted to make up, or the grand, passionate romances I would have.  Not really calorie-crunching activities.  And my folks were dismayed.  They saw my skin buckling and my clothes growing tighter, and they tried to encourage me to get better, but I never did.  And today, I still see my obesity as a weakness. Women see it as another reason to avoid me. I treat it like a dog I never liked.  Ignore it, press it down.  Hide from it.  And, if those feelings bubble, dive into bed.  Sleep it away.  Distract it with a story or a song or writing.  But when I have no option to hide, when I'm trying on new clothes or staring into the mirror or feeling strange, unfamiliar physical pains or actually skin to skin with a rare, wonderful woman, it assaults me.  I've wished for so long to be the very archtype of aloof humanity Alan Watts joked about:  the human consciousness as a head with a long, ignored string for a body.  But I'm not.  I'm fat.  And I really don't know how to get better.

Waiting - first draft of new original song and thoughts on depression

Hey.

I was in the doctor's office the other day.  Nothing wrong, just finally making a check-up and finding my own physician in New York City.   And I'm talking with the doctor, just summing up what I've been through medically in the past.  She stops me halfway through, asks me when's the last time I saw a psychiatrist.

And her tone is obvious.  You really need to see a shrink.  Do it.

I've never had a positive experience with therapy or pills.  It feels like one drawn out magic show where I know all the tricks and it's not entertaining and I don't want to watch it.  I know I've inherited a lot of biochemical triggers and habits which lead to depression (another reason why I will never have children)  But  I haven't found a pill yet or a mode of therapy which engages me or helps in the long run.  Instead, I live off these little highs and lows from creating things or writing or doing plays or making music and when I'm running ragged or lonely or have a lot of free time on my hands, I hide by sleeping.  I'm not a cutter.  I don't binge eat or drink or have a relationship with anyone at the moment.  I sleep.

And sure, a lot of that habit is rooted in fear.  With every second, I feel insignificant and ugly and convinced that I'm not going to be loved again.  I fear that I won't be able to make a creative impact and that I'll never have much of an artistic career.

And then I make a song or do a play and that muck clears for a brief window. And that's why I do it.


Here's the song.  It's called Waiting.  It gets a little loud at the end; just a warning.

LYRICS

First Verse
I spend the hours in my bed
Close my eyes, the shutters drawn and tight
This humble bargain that I've pled
I lie, pretend it's all I've wanted, right

The silence, see it crumble and wither
Gone awry, senses are reeling, pain to deliver

Chorus

I keep waiting
I keep waiting
for the building
to burn down

I keep waiting
I keep waiting
for the building
to burn down

Second Verse
What came first, being bitten or being shy
Haven't seen the sun for days and days
You can't hurt me if I don't even try
Spend my time in a still malaise

Forgotten what it's like to be needed
Damn the lot, entropy crying out to be feeded

CHORUS

Bridge
Now, will I find serenity
Among the ash and misery
 - the char and chill  -
come what will
as sure as every story ends in death
can't turn the pages, hold my breath
 the day will come
 Damn you, start living -
 don't keep waiting
I keep waiting
just keep waiting
I keep waiting - why am I still waiting?

CHORUS

Faking - updated draft of original song and a meditation on Delusion

Hey.

I did some more polish over the months on my original song "Faking", and you can check it out below.  I'll post lyrics, too. 

Here's the inspiration behind the song.

Playing this song today made me think about a topic I've been racking my brains about these past few weeks: delusion.  Mainly, how we humans cling to delusion and blanket ourselves in its downy, lush embrace in order to stay alive and sane. We delude ourselves into thinking we will never die, that we are indeed special and unique and glorious and that we have worth.  Delusion whispers to us, tells us that we will find that love, that career, those bold, striking moments which will make our future biographers wet with desire.

I'm an actor.  Poems and songs and writing is just other random fluff I do.  But it's all centered around acting. Constant, unflagging delusion which leads me to open up in front of people.

But why?

Who should care?

There are millions of people who have done it and do it and do it far better than I.

I guess it's because I really don't have anything left.  I'm not gonna be rich.  I'm not going to have kids.  I'm not skilled in any other field which can help out this broken, mottled world.   I will most likely not find love.

So, it's me and this delusion.  That writing words down, singing them, playing other people will produce some benefit for me , for whomever looks at them.

First Verse
When the money's run out
and the day grows still
sleep sickness masking your sorrow
got a jealous heart, it's a bitter pill
in search of strength you can borrow

Chorus
but hey, what am I   - a dreamer who's been faking
someday this world's gonna love me
gonna sing along to the song I've been making
til then I'll sing to the wall.

Second Verse
When the riots start
and the blood fills the ether
doesn't make much sense to give up
take a proper job, sell insurance
pretend that you never wanted anything other than this
because your pension's gone, love's commodity shattered
streets are filled with the dead who've been torn up and battered
there was anytime at all when the fight truly mattered
it was now
(please speak)

Chorus

First verse again, and chorus.

Syllables - first draft of new song

Hey.

Been cleaning house a lot lately, music-in-my-head-wise.

Songs I started to write decades ago, but was never confident enough to finish 'em.

This song's title was based on one of the first  plays I wrote in college:  Syllables.  Language has always fascinated me.  Its ability to cloud reason, trigger deep, primordial responses.   I'm a bit of a drunk walrus with words, and I like tweaking them around.  It's why I do what I do.

Lyrics:

To the untrained eye
you think that I'm broken, on my knees
lacking intuition
barely listening
Better hold on tight
you're never gonna know the blow
that knocks you down
fills your mouth with copper
that's what I'm talkin' bout.

Chorus
And all I've known
are syllables you press upon me
more sound than sense
those syllables you press upon me

2nd Verse
For a moment, weakness
your body looks good and ripe
I won't give in , though
damn your beauty
masking hate
I'm such a fool to know you
oh, release me from torment
what other wretch could love you
tell me truthfully

what other wretch could love you
tell me truthfully

Chorus

Bridge
And it's coming out of the woodwork
your admission all your words were noise, fickle poise
'Stead of  "sorry" , you laugh, such a rude quirk
Any one could see I loathe you, love you
Leave me

3rd Verse
This bitter game
this heart of mine
this bond's been broken
what have I done
an errant choice
this pain, awoken
and you don't stop the grieving if the grieving is hard
don't stop the grieving if the grieving is all that's true
stop the grieving if the grieving is all that's left of you
and you don't stop the grieving if the grieving is hard
don't stop the grieving if the grieving is all that's true
stop the grieving if the grieving is all that's left of you

Chorus

Cold Missouri Waters - cover of James Keelaghan song

Hey.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge sucker for folk music. 
One, because I'm an incredibly mediocre guitarist, and quite a few folk songs are grounded in pretty simple chords.
Two, because they're wonderful ways to immortalize a story, a person.  And my voice has always been best suited for a quiet, somber song.

When I first heard this song, it unraveled to me to its core.  Such a perfect depiction of loss, survivor's regret. And, it's based on a true event: 

The Mann Gulch Fire

I made Jenn play it over and over again for an hour and a half, and each time, I kept weeping.  Sure, I was a bit of a wreck at the time, but there was just something so remarkable about how the song was constructed.  I wanted to get into my blood, find a way to make something half as creative and raw as this. 

The narrator of the song is Wagner Dodge.  He died five years after the fire from Hodgkin's  Disease.