The TEDtalk is coming!

Here we are

Failure

Noeli Acoba's interview

Summer has happened

Allies podcast featuring William Forchion

Shine

Focus

Soul Full Sunday 5/24

Tell your story and color it too.

Loving What Is

Happiness

Uprising

Soul Full Sunday 5/17

The Comfort zone

Facing Fear

Gifts

Transformation

Power

Soul Full Sunday 5/10

Uncage the Rage

Balance

Perspective

Happy Depression

Nothing happened

Soul Full Sunday 5/3

Good Grief

First of May

Currency

Perfection

Improvisation

Soul Full Sunday 4/26

Trust

Sacred & New

Expect the unexpected

Stepping forward with purpose

Soul Full Sunday

Poetry Friday

Meditation # 6

Support an Independent Artist

Meditation #4

You are enough

Be now here

Bias

In 1987 I was an eager energetic young man with dreams of performing on Broadway. In the spring of that year I was coming to the end of my first year at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy.  From the beginning of our training at AMDA we were encouraged to strive for greatness. All of our instructors pushed up to learn technique to absorb choreography to find proper placement for the sounds we spoke and sang. Each of knew that we were going to take the musical theater world by storm, once we were allowed to audition. The spring of 1987 I did my first regional theater and summer stock auditions. 

The audition was a cattle call audition, where hundreds of young singers, dancers and actors were gathered together herded into a room where they were given the chance to show their stuff. To one side of the room was a long table with many people sitting behind it. The people behind the table were the directors or choreographers of the different theaters represented. The audition process sorted out the singers from the dancers and the actors so that the people auditioning could be seen in the best way. I chose to go with the dancers who could sing group. In the room we were given choreography to learn. Each of us knew this was a crucial part of the audition. The folks behind the table were checking to see who was picking up the choreography and who wasn’t. They were checking to see who asked questions and who did not. They were looking to see who hung at the back of the room and who moved up front. After we had learned the dance combination the choreographer sat to the side of the room and let us show the dance to the folks behind the table. We were rearranged around the room and told to do the combination again. We were then asked to sit along the walls as groups of three and four dancers were called to show the combination. Some dancers were given a polite “Thank you” as they were ushered to the door. I got up a few different times with new combinations of dancers and each time allowed to sit back along the wall. The day went on and more and more dancers left the room. We were given a new combinations. Our groupings were changed. When there were about a quarter of the original dancers left a man sitting behind the table said “Congratulations” you made it through day one, We are going to need you to come back tomorrow 10am and we will do some vocal work and some more dance.” What and exhilarating sensation to make it through all those cuts and to be asked back. This was the first step to having someone hire me to perform in their theater. The following day I returned to the audition hall excited and ready to knock some socks off. We were called in individually. When it was my turn, I entered the room and greeted the folks behind the table. There were not as many people behind the table as there were the previous day. I was introduced to the guy sitting at the upright piano, whose name the decades have erased from my memory. We vocalized though some scales where the folks behind the table had a chance to hear my voice, my range and whatever else they needed to hear. I sang my uptempo audition song, then was asked if I could come back for the afternoon dancer call. I replied with a big smile and a resounding “Yes”. 

At the afternoon dancer call there were only about half of the people who were asked back from the previous day. There may have been twenty of us in total. We were all called into the room where the people behind the table introduced themselves to us. They said their names and what theater they were from. I thought “wow!, I made it”. Why else would they be introducing themselves if these were not the folks I would be working with? We were given new choreography and I danced like I was on Broadway. After each time we did the combinations they would call one of us over or call out one of the dancers numbers and say “Thank you”.

When there were just three of us left one of the folks behind the table said “thank you so much, I think we have seen enough. You have all done an amazing job I wish we had spots for everyone.” This fella looked at the other people sitting behind the table and each gave wordless shake of their heads punctuating the negative. He then spoke to me directly “Next year we are planning to do Carousel and Huck Finn and I know we love to have you in the company. This year we just don’t have anything that would showcase you well.” The translation of that comment was “We don’t have any Black parts for you this year.”

I spent two days dancing my butt off and singing from my heart only to have no black roles this year. Many of my friend left that audition thrilled beyond belief. My friends had gotten gigs at theme parks, renaissance festivals, regional theaters, summer bus and truck tours. I had one Black friend who got a summer stock job performing in Dreamgirls and Little Shop of Horrors. I was pissed to say the least yet I was not going to let anyone know just how pissed I was. This is not how life is supposed to work. I worked hard to get the skills necessary to go to work. I did everything my teachers had told me to do to prepare for life in the theater and I was not prepared for this. I was prepared for rejection, I was not prepared for exclusion.

I hid the only way I knew how. I hopped onto my bicycle and rode far and fast. Every day I would hid my disappointment in my workout. Riding a bicycle through NYC traffic tends to narrow ones focus. If I was not riding my bicycle I was running or swimming or taking Afro-Brazilian dance classes. Essentially I was trying to run away from the theater with each workout and yet the theater was where I felt the most alive. That summer I did run away. I was hired by the National Park Service to be an ocean front lifeguard. I chose to be stationed at Great Kills National Recreation Area in  Staten Island, NY. Technically I would still be in NYC, Staten Island is one of the boroughs, so not fully running away. I continued to take dance classes in the city when I could. I was working as a lifeguard because the US. Department of the Interior had an initiative to give minorities access into the National Park System and I was running from the theater where being a minority excluded me from the bulk of the work available. Getting the park service job took the same tact of preparation that the performing did. To prepare for the lifeguard job I ran, swam and worked out in the gym to make my body ready for what would be needed. I went to multiple tryouts over two years before I exceeded the requirements necessary to be hired.  I applied the same logic to my theater training, I measured my training growth and progress off of me and did not compare my performance to anyone else. As I watched show after show on Broadway I began to see the shows differently. I did not look at the shows and think I wish I were in this show. I looked at the shows and noticed how many people of color were in the performance. I constantly looked at each performer and wondered if that character could be me? Rarely could I see me on the stage. I love musical theater and thoroughly enjoy great performances on the theatrical stage yet died a little with each performance seeing stereotypical performances by people of color….

Before you judge me, what do you know about me? (air)

As a child I feared that I would die by drowning. It is somewhat funny that I did not have a fear of water. Remnants of the fear continued into adulthood but the fear was not debilitating. As an adult the fear would come in snippets at the fringe of sleep. In those snippets I would flash to another existence and I was drowning. I could feel the water fill my lungs. I could feel my lungs leaden and starving for air they could not get because they were already full. Throughout childhood I was quite familiar with my lungs straining for air. I am an asthmatic. All too often my lungs would betray me and stop working fully. The asthmatic response seemed to be so random. I could run and play for hours and then bam I could not breathe. I could enter a house and become short of breath. I could eat or drink something and then be starving for air. I did not make sense. Sometimes the asthma attack would last a few minutes and sometimes it would last days. There were nights that I gently cried myself to sleep. I had to cry gently so that the crying would not take away any more of my air. My cries were not for how laborious it was to breathe, the cries were because I was not sure if I would continue to breathe once I fell asleep. When I was twelve years old I was playing a game of tag with my brother and some friends at the Hammonton Lake. The local town lake had a floating dock. Two sides of the dock had shallow water and two sides of the dock had deep water. While trying to avoid being tagged I ran and jumped off the dock into the deep water. I jumped as far as I could to evade the tagger and mid stride I realized I was jumping into deep water. I did not panic. I can remember telling myself “sink to the bottom then push off toward the dock”. I took a big gulp of air and hit the water and willed myself to sink fast so I could jump back to the dock. I was sinking but there was no bottom. And still no bottom. I could not feel the bottom so I started reaching for the top flailing. Maybe just maybe if I flailed my arms for the top of the water I would start swimming. But I did not start swimming, I did start running out of air. The more I flailed the more I wanted air. I was twelve and I did not have a strong conviction and I was about to give up my struggle for air by trying to breathe water. Someone grabbed me. Whoever grabbed me was shoving hard. I did not have enough time to wonder who it was because the next thing I know I was touching the dock. I grabbed ahold of the ladder and climbed atop of the dock followed almost immediately by my big brother. I was gasping for air and my brother flopped down beside me also gasping for air. Although he did have enough air to say “Don’t jump into the deep end again. Next time I’m not saving you”. The following year I taught myself how to swim. By the age of fifteen I was a lifeguard. At sixteen I became a Water Safety Instructor where I was teaching others to swim and training lifeguards. I became comfortable and confident in and around water. I now have my advanced Open Water SCUBA certification. I have taken deep dives on the Cayman Trench in Jamaica and on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. My comfort level in and around the water remains and yet deep within the recesses of my mind surfacing irregularly is the fear that I will die by drowning. My adult brain reasons that my struggle with air as a young asthmatic is why I fear dying by asphyxiation. Will it be drowning in water? Or will I drown on land as the asthmatic? Last year my mother died in a drowning accident at a spa. For a brief period after her death waves of panic would overtake me as I lingered on the edge of sleep. As I would fall asleep I would sink below the water and starve for air straining to breathe only to snatch awake chewing on fresh air. I am not sure these are premonitions of my own death. I do believe this is the fear of life being taken away before it has been fully lived.

Before you judge me, what do you know about me?

At 19 years old I moved from rural South Jersey to NYC to pursue a dream of performing on Broadway. I only knew one person who had performed on Broadway and had no idea how I was going to manage the task of getting to the Great White Way. Some of the beauty of being young and clueless was I did not have to know the way I knew the beginning and I knew where I wanted to go the rest I would fill in by living. Not long after I arrived in NYC I heard a radio news report about the life expectancy of young Black men in urban areas. The news report stated that 3 in 10 Black men in urban areas would not live to see their 30th birthday. Although I had grown up in a rural area the life of the performer was lived in urban areas. I had a legitimate fear and the threat was the city itself. Every day I would hear on the radio or see on the news reports of young Black men killed in cities around the country. Many of these young men were killed because of mistaken identity. Some were killed for being Black in the wrong place. For unsuspectingly walking through gang territory wearing the wrong colors. For looking like the vague police sketch and fitting the vague police description. For appearing as a threat while wearing the hood up on a hoodie at night to keep a bald head warm. Some even for running down the street and making the police on the beat suspicious. With each incident my fears were pushed further. Each time a young  Black man was gunned down I wondered if I would be next. Each night that fell while I lived in an urban area I did not know if I would return home alive. To coin a phrase “I kept my nose clean” I did not hang with the wrong crowd, I wore colorful bandanas with rainbow unicorns on my head so that no gang members would suspect me of being from a rival gang. After all who would have a beef with the rainbow unicorn gang? I truly hoped no one would have a beef with the rainbow unicorn gang. As I drew closer to my 30th birthday I felt that each time I stepped foot out of my apartment I was tempting fate. While living in San Francisco in the early nineties there was a murder of a well known activist one block from where I was living. Having such a horrific event happening so close to home is unnerving and this event had a compounding issue. The report of the suspect was for a Black man 6 foot 4 inches with a mustache and goatee between 200 and 220 lbs with an athletic build. That was me. Each day I would walk in the neighborhood I would slow as patrol cars passed me. I would make eye contact with the officers. I would smile. I would give the officer no reason to suspect me to be a murder. I would also brace myself for the arrest. Two full weeks of this occurred before the suspect was apprehended.  I did not breathe a sigh of relief. I gave a silent prayer that they had gotten the right guy. My silent prayer was that they did not get another Black man like myself who was trying every day to survive being Black in the city. As I reflect a little smile comes to my face. The smile comes like a sigh because I would say I have lived a realatively stress free life and yet fearing for one’s life every day for a decade does not sound stress free to me now. One might asked “so why would you subject yourself to that kind of stress when you could easily resolve the issue by moving?” The only place I knew that I could ply my trade at the level I wanted was with urban areas, that is why. I am grateful that I survived. I am grateful that the career I sought materialized. I grateful that I could share my passion and my success and some of my struggle with other young Black men along the way. I hope those others received the hope for survival that I wished upon them. So before you judge me maybe this will give you a different perspective of who I am.

I'm eager to spread the word

The heart keeps beating

New sunrises

#ApoemAday now available at Amazon

New podcast on theearspoon.com

Into each life a little rain must fall

Into each life a little rain must fall. 2018 has proven the year of torrential downpours in my life. Early in the summer I was ordered to move out of the house I believed I would die in (in old age) as the result of divorce proceedings. Most of the rain during this portion of my life was coming from my eyes. I reeled twisting like a flag in a hurricane to find a place suitable for me and three kids (Serenity and I will split the parenting 50/50). Only days after finding out I must leave the house my mother died unexpectedly. Yes, she was healthy as an ox (a very healthy ox) and we had just made plans for her next visit to Vermont when she drowned in a Float Spa. There is a little comfort in knowing how much she was looking forward to taking the relaxing float she needed. I miss my mother dearly on the regular. I had only found a place to live the day before she died. I so looked forward to sharing the fields and the old house with her. My mother was my sounding board as I transitioned out of marriage, as I rediscovered who I was in the world and the community. In a very brief time I was introduced to two major life transitions that I had no choice but to live death and divorce. I have questioned how to share this information with my community of family, friends and colleagues as I felt great shame in the divorce and an unbearable pain at the death of my mother. Some of the sleuths out there have read deeper into my poems and writings and posts causing them to private message me about life. I have shared with a few of you as I seek a healthy way to deal with my grief and shame. So this is the rainy period of my life. My mother was a gardener who never lamented the rain. There was much I learned from her including ways to process life now. This is a transformation just as the trees transform each year growing leaves, processing sunlight and rain and earth nutrients, then dropping those leaves. Human lives can do the same. Just as in the spring when the new leaves sprout the tree becomes different (possibly new). Quite possibly this is my time to shed leaves and take a moment to become new / different. As my mother the gardener did not lament the rain, I will drink of the substance of life allowing it to feed my soul for growth. With each rain the gardens grow to produce that which we need to sustain ourselves. I pray, may there be rainfall in your life, enough to sustain you and sunshine enough to grow. And I pray the same for myself.

Words begin to flow

breathing again

Grief

Life is unpredictable

Fables July 11th

living life

Life

tweet tweet

a morning thought...

Step into your higher self. I am not sure I could say more pretentious words, yet what if there is truth to the words? And what if the words I speak are spoken to me? Well, now that I share this it no longer is just for me because I have shared it with you. The doubt that I have just expressed keeps me from “stepping into my higher self”. The doubt only serves as a backpack full of lead where the parachute could possibly be, where the parachute needs to be. The craziest part of this whole dilemma is that it is a wholly internal struggle. I know that as I recognize my struggle each face I look into faces their own internal struggle some as metaphysically simple as mine others physically life threatening. Acknowledging the other struggles does not diminish my own, it give another perspective by which to view it. The new perspective is also distraction from the process. Acknowledging the others does not attend to stepping into my higher self. Or what the heck it means to step into my higher self. Approaching the statement fuels the questions of what does it mean? How is it possible? How will I know if I have done it? And asking the questions I recognize marks my map as being no where near to my goal. The more I work this out the more it feels that I am attempting to untangle a knotted ball of twine from the middle with the ends attached. A difficult task but not impossible. 

a poem a day (5/10/18)

sometimes life interferes with life

a poem a day (5/3/18)

I too am Compassionate Creativity

Spring has finally settled in. The warm weather has hopefully truly claimed it’s place and the creative juices have begun rising like the sap. That was an attempt at poetic prose since the creative juices in me never seem to cease. There is always some outlet that needs to be accessed as a release valve for the creativity that constantly wells up inside me. I am currently editing the audiobook of a dear friend. We recorded the audio last year with sessions once a week over a couple of months. It was quite a fulfilling experience listening to Kali speak her words from the book each session. Now I get to revisit the words again as I listen to soul touching stories of her book “I Am Compassionate Creativity”. Many of the stories resonate at a deep personal level, although the stories of Kali’s life there is a common thread that is also in me. Each day I work on the project I am fortified by the words and the content. I am encouraged to boldly be me. I am empowered to find my authentic voice each day. I am eager to complete this work so that more people can have the chance to experience Kali’s powerful message in another way. As my creative juices flow I reflect and identify that audio editing was not something I set out to do as a creative outlet and yet here it is.

A poem a day - continues

a poem a day (5/2/18)

a poem a day (5/1/18)

Grieving (Stanley Strong)

Stanley

I drove past Stan’s shop the other day and was hit by a wave of hurt. He is still not there. He is supposed to be there. He isn’t coming back. He isn’t coming back. Six months after he died and I still look for him. All the stuff I wanted to say to him the next time we spoke is still waiting to be said. My eyes start to leak. Hell, I should call it by it’s name…. I am crying. I am crying I cry I don’t want to cry. I don’t know why half a year after his death I still cry when I pass his place or when I sit down and think about him not being anywhere. The big smile under the bushy mustache anytime I passed by his shop. We weren’t that close. We were as close as brothers who have a few things in common. Man, this aches right in the middle of my chest. It feels like a giant hand is squeezing my heart not enough to stop it but enough to make it have to really work. I don’t only miss Stan when I pass by the shop. Stan is in my garage too. My bike has a couple little drips that Stan was gonna get to when I brought the bike in some time. Two years of riding and we were gonna get to those drips. We both knew without saying it that if he didn’t get to the drips when I brought the bike in it was a good reason for another visit. I must have stopped in 10 times to deal with those drips only to leave after a good chat with plans to drop by next week to deal with them. We had time. The time we had together was so much more important than the bike or the drips or any of the material things that surrounded us. I’m not guessing at that, we actually talked about it. We had advice for each other. What we shared flowed both ways. And now it doesn’t flow at all. My eyes flow from time to time when I think of him. Did I really appreciate him this much when he was alive? Did he know it? Yeah, he knew it. Stanley was one of the guys who would say “I love you” to me while surrounded by gruff biker dudes and it was not awkward. And I would say “I love you” right back. One day this might not hurt so much, but today it still does.

a poem a day (4/30/18)

a poem a day (4/27/18)

a poem a day (4/26/18)

Grieving (4/26/18)

When is it okay to not be okay? Drowning in air, unable to breath as the muscles constrict daring me to stop breathing. Fighting breathe unsure why I am fighting when succumbing would be so much easier. My vision blurs allowing me to see only what I don’t look at and nothing that I try to see. I would cry but that would only make my vision worse. All this for what? What is the root of this? Are these feelings and emotions just visiting or did I create them am I creating them? Is this normal? I am saturated with…. This….. It has no name. “This” is the brick that is sitting on my diaphragm making it hard to breath, not allowing space for my heart to beat normally. “This” is the brick of false reality that signifies that “This” is not a fantasy, “This” is real. And yet “This” is not real. There is no brick, even though it feels like there is. “This” is not real, there is nothing to fear. “This” is not real, I am okay even though I  feel “This”.  Fantasy, Dream, Nightmare, Reality, Feeling, Fact all blur into “This”. Why am I creating “This”? Or Wha is creating “This”? What am I to learn from “This”? And I have just shifted from feeling “This” with my heart to rationalizing “This”with my head. I am not sure that my head and my heart will ever be able to reconcile their accounts. And I don’t care if they do because for the moment I am distracted by that dilemma and I can breathe. I am okay within the distraction. I am okay and I am also not okay, for now.

a poem a day (4/25/18)

Grieving

a poem a day (4/24/18)

a poem a day (4/23/18)

a poem a day

In thought

the silence stops

Be careful what you ingest

The heroes can rest

In between

U.S. - Turkmenistan cultural exchange stage 2

Farewell to a friend

Billosophy

A time to grieve

Be what you are

Wind

From where do you come?

no one seems to question the wind.

it either is or it isn’t.

yet we as a species struggle with GOD.

what generates wind?

not the stirred air of a fan.

not the gust of a closing door.

what makes that which blows the leaves from the trees?

what makes that which wreaks havoc in the trailer park?

we accept that wind happens

we don’t question why.

we don’t question how.

we do question an energy greater than us.

I guess this question of wind can be scientifically reasoned and we wholesale accept those reasons.

we accept that someone smarter than us has made sense of it.

if we did not accept the science and fully searched for an answer our brains would probably explode.

I do not question the wind. I ponder the wind.

for as long as there is wind anything can happen.

for if this thing that can not be contained or fully explained and conjures itself into a half existence can have a tangible and lasting  effect.

There is no art without struggle

Create !

In the moment

no matter how much effort I exert,
no matter how much time I spend contemplating,
no matter how much I worry, fear or hope
I only have control of myself right now.
the future will be a reaction to who I am now and what I do now.

Ashgabat

continue

impromptu

Morning

at the intersection

Groovin'

nothing / no place

The power of words

untitled

overflowing

creative

In my eyes

The Day After

power

Inside

self

ghost

human

patiently waiting

enough

Truth

I am butterfly

Today

Sacred vs. Sacrosanct.

Today

trash day

The Procrastinator

priceless masterpieces

creating is much like fighting for air.
the harder I work for it the harder it is to get.
straining to find it or create it only constricts its moving into being.
yet letting go allowing it to find its way out does not come natural,
to me.
when it is possible to create as when it is possible to breathe
it feels normal, it feels pedestrian,
it becomes common place and without luster in the eyes of the creator
in my eyes
which makes me wonder if it is possible for me to create something so incredible, so special, so magnificent that I look upon it with wonderment?
Is there a creation within me that when let out will knock me off my feet?
Or will I raise my standards at its completion to have it fall within the normal spectrum?
I create... and some say I create well.
I will continue to create and be a creator and I will leave the judging to the judges.
I will allow the viewer to accept what they will.
I will leave the appraising to the appraisers.
I know there is no price for the products of my heart,
no price for that which my head, my soul, my heart and my hands have collaborated on to bring into existence.
I will continue until I have mastered this that I do,
at which point that which I have done will retroactively become master pieces.
priceless masterpieces.
breathe.
create.

Love

journeying on

controversy

make it stop II / Baltimore

make it stop

unlock

Process

her innocence

innocence

listening

something died

contemplation

Draw a new map

just living

Black Friday

resurrection

in this skin

being / doing

nothing

searching for intelligent life

validation

Pain

the legend

the road ahead

the terms

frustration

nothing

Activism

Black history month runs out

I am black history too

I am black history

valentine

give up?

Cosmic GPS

it's all about me.

2 create or...

Miam day 3

Miami day 2

Heading to Miami

the cart before the horse

New Year

Have and Have Not

Seeking results

Self record

Pure Vermont