Tag: Romance

Clown School Day 6: Putting the Text on the Game

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In which Our Hero attempts to cohere the visual-auditory media 🧐

Should the game be a visual metaphor for the scene, or should it be an unrelated game?

My suspicion is the former. A coherence between the game and the dialogue makes for richer depth of audience experience. It does, however, bring increased danger of “playing the text”, which is bad.

The scene is Taming of the Shrew, Act II Scene 1. The scenario is: Petruchio (me) commences his wooing of Kate (my classmate). The game is… well, that’s what we’re deciding.

We want the game to be not so on-the-nose as to be boring (ie “playing the text”). I also want the game to be sufficiently related that the visual experience parallels the auditory experience.

My partner suggested catch. I think it’s a sufficient, satisfactory choice, a serviceable game. I wonder if we can elevate the experience by mirroring the text more. Dodgeball instead of catch, for instance. Or we line up a row of soda cans behind us and have to defend them while the other throws a ball to knock them down. These games mirror the text: verbal prods à la dodgeball; or Petruchio attempts to knock down Kate’s defenses → Kate fires back → we repeat.

It’s fun to watch people play a game. It’s fun to watch multiple communication media cohere. I think ideal theater is both.

—

My roommate received five zeros today. The most zeros I’ve seen. Brutal.

When he strode onto the stage, the teacher said, “This guy never understands anything.” Then, after he spoke one single word, the teacher banged the drum to kick him off stage. He walked back to his seat. She said “You get zero. No: zero is too good for you. You get double zero.” He said, “I understand it now: give me another chance”. She said, “It’s Monday, so I give you another chance”. He returned to stage. He spoke one word. She banged the drum and bestowed upon him three more zeros.

An hour later, I saw him at home. He told me he understood what he had done poorly. Her zeros had taught him. He went to the bar to socialize with friends.

In April, my final presentation received a zero. The one thing I had practiced for three weeks: when it came to my final performance, zero. “First zero of the day”, my teacher told me.

Somehow, being first didn’t help.

Maybe that’s the game: collecting zeros until you crash. And the moment you give up: you receive your first one.

Independently Dependent

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Hello Loyal Readers! 

I come to you with an exciting creation. It’s written by my friend Jocelyn Simms, who wished to remain anonymous. Let me know your thoughts – either through the comments here or by shooting me an email. 

Cheers,

Julian 

P.s. If you want to publish something on my blog (either under your own name or under Jocelyn’s), reach out: Julian.w.wise@gmail.com . I have dozens of loyal readers and the coveted #1 page-rank on Google for people who search “Julian Wise comedy cooking humor punctuation grammar blog”. What a reach! 

Independently Dependent

It’s not easy to admit that I’m waiting for love. It sounds like the stupidest, corniest thing to say. But it’s true. I want to be in love. I want to feel the way I do when I listen to Ben Folds’ The Luckiest. I want to feel swept off my feet, full of butterflies and fireworks. I want to feel the ease and comfort of knowing I have a person who is in it for the long haul. I wouldn’t say I want to be a wife. I would say I want to be a partner. 

When I was younger, I didn’t concern myself with love. “Falling in love” and “meeting the one” were rites of passage. They would happen when I was older. 

When I hit high school, I wanted a taste. Just a taste. I knew my relationships wouldn’t last forever, but I thought being young and in love was a rite of passage too. Everyone gets to experience it. It’s tragic if you don’t. It’s like you did something wrong, held yourself back, or failed to make some sort of effort. I can’t think of a single highschool movie without a love story. But it doesn’t work that way for most of us. At least it didn’t work that way for me. 

Some of the happiest times in my life have come from convincing myself I was finally part of a partnership. Freshman year with ______ was easy. Junior spring with ______ felt magical. My favorite parts of college were when I filled this gap in my soul with a guy and a creative project. _____ and I got his band on national television. ______ and I revolutionized undergraduate art. _____ and I produced a film viewed by thousands. I loved those guys, I loved those projects, and I loved those teams with everything I had. They may not have been romantic, but these were fucking partnerships. We were in it to win it, together, to the very end. And those endings were always tough for me. I cried when ______ moved. I fought for a closer friendship with _____ so I wouldn’t feel the emptiness between projects. I held hands with _____ and cried outside his dorm when we graduated. I knew it’d never be the same.

For most of my life I’ve followed my mom’s advice. Focus on school; you don’t have time for boys. That will be later. My innocent highschool relationships and creative teams gave me enough to hold me over. But I long for that intimacy. That trust. That depth. That sense of belonging with another person. I know it won’t be easy. I know there will be rises and falls. But I feel like I was made to be a partner. Half of a dynamic duo. Maybe it’s just my clock ticking, but as I get older that gap seems to widen and deepen and it feels more and more impossible to fill. And as that happens I become even more desperate to fill it.

Sometimes I wonder about the received wisdom that everyone has a soul mate… it’s just that some soul mates have already left Earth. Maybe their life was tragically cut short. Maybe they’re still around but life threw them off course. Or maybe some people end up alone, never finding a partner, because that wisdom is wrong and their partner never existed. 

Being part of a team is the one thing I can’t do by myself. That scares me. And learning how to live alone feels like I’m giving up. It feels like living a shadow of my life. And the older I get, the more I feel like I’m running out of time. I worry that jetting off on a romantic weekend getaway just won’t be the same in my 30s. People won’t be as forgiving of us making out in the rain in the middle of the street or trespassing on the beach in the middle of the night. We should know better. There are still so many things I want to do while I’m young and dumb and in love.

Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it pathetic? That I so desperately want to fall in love. And all of the incredible friendships I have. The loving family I’m part of. The incredible education I have and expansive career possibilities. They just aren’t enough. Isn’t that selfish? Disrespectful? Immature? 

As much as we pretend we can get rid of these feelings, they still linger for some of us. And that’s okay. It’s possible to live full and happy lives on our own. But it’s also okay to want to be in love. I’m coming to terms with it. It doesn’t make me weak. It doesn’t make me less independent. It just makes me human. We all have wants, needs, and desires. We all feel a sense of purpose driving us to become who we want to be. Among many other things, I want to be a partner. I hope that it can be a reality. I really want it to happen soon. 

Stood Up, Standing Down

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I daydreamed about her all day. She stood me up.

We agreed she would call shortly after 10pm. At 11:15, I call her. She says she’ll call me back by 1am. 2:52 and still no call.

I feel like a seventeen-year-old British woman out of Jane Austen, leaning on the windowsill, complaining to her cat:

And I told him, too. I told him I’d be gazing wistfully, like all the proper ladies do in the books. He must have known he had my heart to break.

He broke a promise. He tallies his emotional work of writing a letter at more than my hurt feelings. What price would that fetch for half of me?

The breakage will heal, but in a hard and crusty scar that prevents the next lover going so deep.

We must inform him it hurts my future husband and me, and insist he be more careful with hearts in the future.

This post was inspired by the song Mis, sent by my friend Omri. What song would you want me to write on? Link it in the comments. 

I asked her out, hoping she’d say no.

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I asked her out, hoping she’d say no. Well, not hoping beforehand, but I was happier after her rejection than I would have been otherwise.

We were in the grocery store. She inspected a can of Campbell’s soup. She replaced the can it back and grabbed another. I asked, “Good read?”

“Not really,” she said.

I asked what she was looking for.

“Sugar,” she said. “It’s in everything.”

“Why?”

“I gave it up for Lent.”

“Do you always give something up for lent?”

“Yeah, it’s like a second shot at a New Year’s Resolution.”

I asked if she’d enjoy grabbing coffee. She said she has a boyfriend, “but it’s still nice to talk in the grocery store.”

Walking away, I celebrated. I hadn’t asked her out because I wanted to go on a date with her. I had asked her out because I decided to start dating again. Asking someone out is uncomfortable, so you’ve gotta hurdle it at your first opportunity.