I've been spending August away from home co-producing one of my own plays. And I have to say I'm noticing what a difference it makes when you're working in a place where most people you bump into actually do agree with the following statements:
Life is better with art.
Therefore we should all support the people who make it.
In fact, things have been going so swimmingly well here that I've been asked by some of our crew not to reveal the name of this city for fear it may lead to even more overcrowding and the kind of housing shortages that turn great amazing cities into... well, San Francisco.
Here are just a few examples of what I'm talking about:
I think I was 9 or 10 yrs. old when my mother, the sociology professor, revealed herself to also be a Holocaust survivor. It was then that, as she described it, her memories began to stir requiring her to sit down to write what would become one of the most important Holocaust memoirs, Dry Tears.
Dry Tears focused on her experiences in Poland surviving the war by passing as Christian, assuming a false identity as she and her family were harbored by Polish Catholic families.
Anyone caught assisting Jews under Nazi occupation was risking death. And the Germans were serious about this.
Following her memoir, mom followed her curiosity. She wanted to understand who these people were who risked everything to save the lives of complete strangers. And so she embarked on what would become her life's work, uncovering examples of altruism under the most extreme circumstances. And her next book, When Light Pierced the Darkness was the culmination of a decade of interviewing rescuers and survivors about their experiences. She was an unusually sensitive interviewer. Her colleague, Professor Joel Blatt, with whom she taught a Holocaust course at the University of Connecticut remarked recently that she was the best answerer of student questions he'd ever seen. Because "Nechama was able to intuit the deeper questions that lay beneath a student's question and she never let them go unaddressed."
A friend recently sent me a link to the Amazon streaming page for my first feature film, All the Rage. At first I was surprised by the choice of image they'd selected. But it didn't take me long to notice that out of 5 stars my film is listed as having earned only 3.5
And, look, 3.5 stars ain't bad... unless you know that in most newspaper reviews the film got 5.
So in that context, I'm thinking: What happened?
Of course we know what happened. Not unlike a Roberts Supreme Court decision, the facts on the ground may not have changed one bit. Only the referees are different. Amazon merely posts the average of all the consumer posted reviews to the site.
Consumer-Only Reviews Support the Amazon Narrative. Amazon is God.
From one perspective—the business interests of a platform eager to remind us of its own hegemony—the choice is sound. No need to look beyond the feedback posted directly to Amazon by consumers just like you. Because as long as there's never a need to leave the site to help choose your next purchase, it gets just a little more awkward to argue with the fundamental Bezos belief: There is nothing for you beyond the walls of the kingdom.
But You Want Help Picking the Best Movie to Watch. And Consumer-Only Aggregates Are Not Very Helpful at All.
To access all the previously published posts in this weekly series, click the Social Media category in the right hand column. NB: Posts that appear to be fine
Last week I shared one striking observation from the first 7 days of 2018 when as an experiment I decided to completely abstain from Facebook. That when the impulse to post to social media is not immediately attended to, the thoughts we just let lie have a way of expanding, collecting connected ideas and developing into stuff of far greater significance and impact.
But as I asked last week: Why should we care?
There are at least two angles from which you might consider the question of posting to social media vs. keeping your thoughts to yourself at the initial moment you first notice them.
I was treading water through one of the darkest times of my life when I really didn't know if I would ever make anything again. And my ex-boyfriend Andrew Altenburg bought me a present for no reason other than a desire to simply remind me that I was loved.
The gift was this simple black notebook, beautifully bound inside a black vinyl cover, about 100 pages of loosely ruled paper.
No big whoop, right?
Au contraire!
The gifts we're given in life are always wrapped in one way or t'other and Andrew's gift of this notebook (or journal, as some would call it) was wrapped in his explanation of its purpose. I paraphrase:
I'm giving you this book of blank pages so that you will have one place in which to jot down all your dreams for the future. Any time you have an idea for a project you might someday like to undertake, jot down your thoughts right here.
A friend who is a Tony voter (Yes, I'm that old.) recently sent me a curious text. It read:
Want to see a Tony show June 1? Trust me. You'll love it cause I'll choose it.
After a brief impulse to press her to reveal which show she was inviting me to, it occurred to me that if I could set aside my ego and my pride which whisper meaningless nothings like:
You are too important a person with limited hours in the day to waste an entire evening on some sub-par work! What if it's something empty and heartless and tedious? You'll never get those hours back!
On the other hand...
If I thought about it differently, it is a unique kind of openness we feel when we sit in the growing darkness as the house lights fade and the show is about to begin. Blissfully ignorant of what this thing we're going to witness is about or possibly even what its title might be...
About a month ago or so, my business consultant Marcy Stahl told me about a new platform that provides virtually instantaneous transcription of Zoom meetings in progress as well as audio recordings of past meetings. [It's called Otter.ai ]
I wasn't sure whether I actually needed this service but the entry level subscription was inexpensive enough to allow me to sign up for a service I wasn't sure I needed.
As luck would have it, one of playwrights in this year's Self-Production Boot Camp which I'm teaching again for the Dramatists Guild Institute came to me with a request for transcriptions of each class. It's long been understood that some of us learn best visually, others learn best by participating in a group discussion and there are still others among us who will retain new concepts most readily when they're presented in written form.
And so thanks to Otter.ai I'm not only able to provide my students with a group discussion in class, a video recording of each class, my usual handouts and homework assignments but also now... for the first time in more than 25 years of teaching, I have the luxury of providing a written transcription of every word that is uttered in every Zoom class.
Tomorrow, Suze Allen welcomes playwright Janet Kenney to share a few passages from her forthcoming memoir, What Else But Grace. If you read this blog or are an RT Inner Circle member, you know that on the first Sunday of each month at 4PM EST/1PM PCT you can find me tuning in to soak in the good work as a regular audience member and parishioner at Suze Allen's Memoir Church.
We Go Way Back... 3 Decades!
Janet Kenney happens to be one of my oldest friends.
We sort of heard of each other before we ever met. The first workshop of my solo show, A Better Boy was presented at the Boston Center for the Arts on a dark night on the set of Janet's play, Lucy's Attire. So I felt even though we had not yet met that her spirit was somehow holding me and my tough little play. As it happened, a few years later I would choose to adapt A Better Boyinto my first feature film, All the Ragewhich we shot in Boston in about 20 different locations tapping into the deep reservoir of performer talent for a film with 40 speaking roles.
So long before we both showed up for the first meeting of a writers group we helped found we'd heard of each other but never met.
She Lived Up to All the Hype
I looked up to her as a big shot among Boston playwrights and if I'm to believe her version of events, she was intimidated by me and my fancy feature filmmaking (sic). It didn't take very long for the seeds of an enduring loving friendship to take root. Week after week in that writers group above a Burger King I found myself delighted by the pages she brought in.
And I think she may have liked some of my pages too.
Truth Teller
I would say that Janet Kenney is certainly one of my favorite playwrights for a simple reason.
She writes characters she loves and wants to understand and so she tells the truth. Her ego doesn't get in the way of her characters. There's always something at the heart of her writing that needs to get out and it has nothing to do with a writer's ego and everything to do with her awe and wonder at the human condition.
A New Monologue at the April Some1Speaking
On April 3rd, Janet will be performing a new monologue she created in my most recent Advanced Monologue Workshop just a couple months ago. Like most of Janet's work, the piece invites us to take a look at a character we might be tempted to overlook, assuming (incorrectly of course) that we see everything there is to know about her at first glance. And oh how wrong we'd be! I've read and/or heard some version of the piece about a half dozen times and each time I discover something new and surprising.
A couple years ago as I was wrapping up another session of my 6-month RT Online Writers Workshop, Janet was one of the workshop members who responded to my request for a video testimonial. And what she sent in tickles me still.
Within the past 6-9 months how many times has a close friend or family member irritated you to the point that you thought it might just be time to be done with them?
If I'm honest, I'd say I've had that feeling a handful of times over the past year.
And chances are if I sat quietly and closed my eyes to really make an inventory, the actual number might be quite a bit higher.
I was walking with an old friend today and we got to talking -- as one does, or should, in the presence of a loved one -- and he reported a recent series of interactions with a family member that had pissed him off so much he wondered when, if ever, he'd pick up the phone again.
At the end of the 30 min. walk we both agreed that writing anyone off for their callous behavior, self-absorption, insensitivity, etc. etc. at this unique moment might not be wise.
Bottom line?
CoVid has fucked with all of us, specifically with our ability to self-modulate.
Now would be a time for us all to hit PAUSE before ending any relationships. Because, honestly, I don't know about you but lately I find myself feeling like certain social interactions are my first bike ride without training wheels. I feel a bit wobbly, unsure of my balance and bracing for an imminent fall.
Let's all take a deep breath, close our eyes and force ourselves to give each other just a little more wiggle room... for a little bit longer.
When I make my mental inventory of the folks who did something to seriously piss me off I'm so grateful NOT to have followed my impulse to sever ties. Cause nine times out of ten, there's something I really love or value deeply there. And life is better with than without.
Peace & Love, as my pal Merle Perkins likes to say. Peace & Love. :)
And here's some music to match this sentiment, courtesy of harpist-singer-songwriter Patrice Haan.
A past winner of the Hear Me Out Monologue Competition recently sent me an invite to an upcoming production of their work and I immediately went to the theater's website to check it out because once I'm struck by an artist's talent, I'm interested for the long haul.
I was delighted to find that in the brief bio paragraph for the writer, the Hear Me Out prize history was included prominently.
But this is not always the case. And of course, I would like to think that I'm a big enough person that such things wouldn't matter to me but I'd be lying if I said that when the opposite happens--if, for example, I find myself seated in the audience waiting for a new play to begin by an author I've worked with and my theater date informs me that we're nowhere to be found in the bio--it does bother me.
I still stay for the play. But I can't help but feel a little stung.
So... take it from me. Everyone cares whether you remember to acknowledge collaborations from your past and it matters that you use the most complete language.
On August 20th of this year I happened to be in Milwaukee for my nephew's wedding. It had been a rough summer on several fronts with the pandemic hitting several members of our National Circle of Judges hard with family emergencies, hospital visits and personal crises such that the Hear Me Out Monologue Festival and Awards Ceremonywhich usually happens on Labor Day was going to be pushed back to November 25th, the day after Thanksgiving.
August 20th had been widely advertised as the date by which this year's competition finalists would be announced. (That date has now been revised to tomorrow, October 25th.) And for that reason almost from the moment I checked in to my room at the Hilton Garden Inn Milwaukee I was attempting to access the hotel's WiFi to send out an email the 400+ writers who had submitted to this year's competition. A simple heads-up to let them know that the announcement would be delayed this year.
But weddings and travel and hotel WiFi being the unpredictable things they are, our heads-up announcement did not go out until the following day, August 21st. (Yes, folks,. you may occasionally imagine that I am surrounded by a dedicated staff of highly paid professionals but this competition is pretty much run by two people with the help of an army of volunteers.)
Writers Seeing Rejection Everywhere No Matter What
In the roughly 16 hours before our e-blast was sent, I received more than one message complaining bitterly about Hear Me Out having rejected work without even so much as a thank you. Here's one example of something someone (a former student no less) emailed me at 7pm on August 20th:
I'm in the middle (well, probably only 20% of the way in if I'm honest) of a steep new learning curve around social media algorithms, Search Engine Optimization and the very powerful and quixotic (not-to-be-overlooked) chill of audience disinterest.
And yesterday I came upon this paragraph in a pretty interesting (albeit somewhat depressing) post I'll link to here.
In early 2017 I made the decision to #unfriendfacebook. I decoupled. I changed my profile picture to this.
At the time I thought I understood my reasons. It seemed to me quite indisputable that the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election had been handed to Trump by Facebook. ///HOLD IT! STOP THIS BLOG POST RIGHT THERE!
As I write that last sentence, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind tap-tap-tapping for attention. And I have just interrupted this post to hear it.
It says:
Hold on there, Roland, are you sure you want to let your political position muddy the waters here? I mean, we are a country divided and suppose one of your students or potential students is reading this. With that little bit about the 2016 election, you may have just eliminated 50% of your potential target market.
Regardless of how one falls on the many sides of that strange interrupting worry, what concerns me most, and what I need to address here is the kind of landscape in which such a worry even makes any sense at all.
And by that I mean, an online world which through the powerful and slowslowslow moving and largely imperceptible forces of corporate interests has grown and continues to tilt further and further toward a kind of malignant embrace which play acts connection but at its core is really just pretty much always trying to sell you something.
Because if this blog is seen to exist to serve two masters -- my human desire to dig down to the truthand the promotional needs of my business-- aren't we fooling ourselves just a little bit? I mean, if we actually try to convince ourselves that these two impulses can live under the same roof? Without killing each other?
What do you do when you wake up one morning to discover that the world you've helped build is pretty much one enormous billboard?
As I thought about whether to move the RT Inner Circle to Patreon I had to stop and think about everything I'd been producing, presenting, performing or hosting over the past few years.
Would the offerings stack up and strike all of you as worth it?
Patreon offers artists a reliable revenue stream (albeit a modest one) by inviting members of the artist's sphere of influence to make a monthly financial contribution to the general health and well-being of the artist and by extension everything they create and offer to the world each year.
It's a tiered model so, those most casually affiliated contribute something you may hardly notice. In our case we set the lowest tier at a $3 monthly contribution.
$3 per month amounts to a little more than $.09 a day. Hopefully anyone who has found joy or value of any kind in any of my workshops or the Hear Me Out programming won't hesitate to join us.
I decided to simply keep the three existing benefits of RT Inner Circle membership as has been the case for free for all these years: subscription to the semi-monthly RT Inner Circle e-Notes, priority notice of contests and other submission opportunities and the exclusive RT Inner Circle Comp Ticket promo codes which allow you to pay zero at many of the online events I host.
This choice, I hope, sends a clear message:
That thing you were getting for free all this time now has a $3 price tag but no one is going to force you to jump on board. You can choose to continue in the RT Inner Circle without signing up on Patreon but I really hope you'll seriously consider enrolling at Patreon, thereby contributing to a community that chooses to honor the value of what I've been making happen for people with a small outlay of cash each month.
It's never simple when something you've been getting for free is suddenly protected by a Paywall. I remember the first time I clicked to read an article in the New York Times online only to be suddenly asked if I had paid for a subscription. It felt like a betrayal.
That's the last thing I want to make you feel. So, if you wish to remain in the RT Inner Circle and avail yourself of certain opportunities, announcements and bits of professional advice contained in the e-Notes and on the YouTube channel, no one's going to be policing you, waiting to stop you.
But, some of the things I've been giving away free of charge, like Wednesday Gathering, for example, have never been free of cost to me. So, in order to continue to drop in on the occasional Wednesday, all we ask is that you set aside $36 a year for the privilege. I hope you'll agree that that's negligible compared to what it means to you to know that the gathering is here. Because of course, the Wednesday Gatherings are not a writer's workshop, like the Roland Tec Online Writers Workshopin which an instructor (me) has carefully constructed a course in order to result in a specific result (your completion of a specific goal for your work over a six month period).
As I said, before launching on Patreon, I thought it might help for me to make a comprehensive list of all the things I'd offered the community since the start of this pandemic.
The other day I was chatting with a friend who is something of an expert in the field of SEO or Search Engine Optimization and all things WWW-related. And a fact of life of our brave new online world just sort of spilled out and I'm embarrassed to admit, although this fact of life or fact of internet architecture is apparently common knowledge to anyone posting content online, I had somehow never heard or read this fact.
Blog posts should be written around a set of search terms and the search terms should be carefully selected through research into the most common search terms in the topic about which you're writing. Apparently this is the way people who do not already know you and your blog will find their way to you.
When your posts have been carefully constructed around a curated set of key words and phrases designed to attract the right people to your blog, i.e. the people most likely to find it interesting and worthwhile.
Here's the very first post which now strikes me as a little wet behind the ears and possibly somewhat blind to the vast tundra that the internet can be to the writer who posts from the heart without even a moment spent considering how people might find their way to you.
In a way, then, this blog has been floating in the shadows, only entering the field of vision of the people somehow connected to its contributing authors. Maybe that's why what began as a group blog eventually dwindled down to pretty much me posting 90% of the time.
Were the other E.C. Authors simply not getting enough bang for their buck? I wish one of them had told me.
Since I founded Extra Criticum in May of 2008, I have simply been writing about whatever thing struck me as important, odd, amusing or troubling. The most thought I ever gave to search happened once I'd finished whatever post I was working on when I'd stare at that empty box and come up with about a dozen key words to enter which I assumed would assist the Google bots and any other search engine creatures to find the article based on... what I thought it was about.
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