Now, I don’t want to give anything away about my actual performance (you gotta wait for the DVD to go on sale as a stocking stuffe…eh, and/or make one crazy night a little bit crazier), but I will give you a little behind-the-scenes/in-the-bathroom look at my pre-show ritual. The first 30-seconds is about right.

Besides the fact that cross-over athletes (Bo anyone?) are cool, I honestly believe Nash would have stayed out there until he got dragged off if he had not yet made the header into the hoop. And if it came to that, he would have had a lousy second half (maybe even trying to head the bball on a fast break). I love that this type of determination even in a goof-around expo is so obvious. Reminds me of every time I leave a court needing to hit my last shot (even if it comes down to a layup in order to beat sundown), every time I try a silly trick shot (like a between the legs bounce from the foul line) feeling the need to drop it (and pressure, which builds after each miss – notice how 3 tries jumps to 5 and then 10 and then…), and every time I lose a game of 2 on 2, wanting “one more run, same teams.”

Give a guy a lemon and he’ll start tossing it at a target. Give a guy a ball and he’ll make lemonade. (Huh?)

We spent the greater part of an hour doing a timed writing exercise. This is a fairly common way to practice I believe but she referenced this book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg as a good intro for us. Back to the exercise: pretty simple, she would say a phrase, ask a question, play a song, show us a picture, etc. and we had to write what comes into our minds. The only rules were keep your hand moving and on the page, don’t cross out (or worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation), and don’t think to hard (or worry about making sense).

Honestly, it doesn’t sound too unique or amazing, but at the end of the however long (40 minutes I’d guess) I felt incredibly rewarded. Not because what I wrote was so poignant, rather because liberating thoughts from my mind, giving them life on paper was something I hadn’t done in a while. I should clarify that it’s a certain type of thoughts—about Judaism/Jewish stuff mostly—; however, writing was a completely creative endeavor without any purpose other than to get comfortable writing. Still with a deadline (each new question she asked) but not a typical schedule deadline like sending the pov to a client for example.

Rather than use that train of thought to go into how I think this type of exercise would be appropriate for certain types of qual, I’ll show you the first thing I wrote. (The whole point of this post was to pass on the date/time for my performance by the way.) It was my answer to “Do you have any Jewish memorabilia, like jewelry, an accessory, or even a t-shirt?”

Should I raise my hand – the first thing that comes to mind is that cheesy Urban Outfitters t-shirt. The one that I wore in public only once. Not for fear of religious persecution. But scarred shitless, as I should have been) of the fashion police. Yes, you know what I’m talking about by now – “Everyone Loves A Jewish Boy.” Fuck. That wasn’t therapeutic like I thought it would be. It was straight up embarrassing. Whatever. It sucks and I feel like a loser every time I pay to put it in a washing machine. Well, at least it’s comfortable.

Re-writing it now (I suck at using the scanner in my office. Plus I don’t trust it not to be found by anyone else.) is weird, especially since I think that “straight up embarrassing” line made me sound like Kenny from Can’t Hardly Wait. Either way, I wrote a couple pages that night on everything from a freestyle group my friends Craig, Vaz, and me loosely created (meaning we’d break it down drunk at house parties or leaving bars our first year out of college) to female IDF soldiers to JAPS.

Onto the reason for the post, I’ve written something else for this Monday, November 5th at 7PM (doors opening) at The Slipper Room – 167 Orchard Street (Corner of Orchard and Stanton Streets). I think you’re supposed to email alumni@birthrightisrael.com to get on the list. There’s also a show on the 19th of November, which I’ll probably be more prepared for :) if you this is too short notice. Last night was the first night I saw everyone do their pieces and they are really different and really great, so as much as I don’t think it would be the worst thing if no one I knew came, I do encourage you to try your best to make one of the shows.

Update: Ruvym agrees and offers his own encouragement. He’s opening the show, and he’s really awesome, so definitely be on time!

Tonight’s the first rehearsal and it’s fair to say I’m scared shitless. I don’t know if the fact that it’s a group rehearsal makes it better or worse. I guess it depends on how many of these people have that theater resume they asked for.

I’m not ready to share that piece yet, but maybe I’ll feel differently after tonight. I’m not sure if that’s what I’ll be performing or if I’ll be asked to write something else. I guess I’ll just have to see. I’m not ready to send out the performance info either…but that I’m sure I’ll pass on close to the date in early November. And lastly, far be it from me to give advice, but I do want to mention two things:

1. As uncomfortable as this whole process (mostly, the idea of performing spoken word poetry) makes me so far even the act of auditioning was rewarding. It felt like pretty good public speaking practice if nothing else. So, I’m of course not the first to encourage anyone reading this to try things outside of your comfort zone, and I surely won’t be the last.
2. The process of creating something from scratch was extremely rewarding. Every once in a while I’ll start with a blank piece of paper, word doc or powerpoint for work, this blank blog post rectangle even. But even in almost all of those cases I have an idea of what I’m going to write – some slides to recycle from presentations past, google to search for topic pov’s, a link or video to embed. I don’t draw or sew or build (Ikea furniture doesn’t count, and even if it did, I don’t think I could count it), and I only had my own mind as a resource/to get me through this exercise. It was worth it even if I hadn’t gotten picked (but then who knows if you’d ever know :)).

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted but in the meantime would love to hear any similarly rewarding stories (comment or shoot me an email – seth.gaffney@gmail.com).

Thank you everyone on my Israel Outdoors trip. I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Sababa.

Shalom.