Late News on Budding Mythologies

When I was in college, my first directing teacher (I should say "our first directing teacher" because he really was the department's first directing teacher--I only personally had one directing teacher--but to avoid people thinking I'm using the royal we, I say "my first directing teacher. But enough digression...) once commented that someone really ought to tell our paper that the operative syllable in "newspaper" is "news". After two or so weeks, which is when the paper generally opted to review our plays, it no longer qualifies as news. It is, in fact, olds.

That said, I probably should have posted this a week ago, when I first found it on Neil Gaiman's blog, but I procrastinated. So it isn't news anymore, and it doesn't qualify as ephemera anymore, either. Still, how cool is this? To summarize: an entire mythology has sprung up among homeless children in Miami, which merges Catholicism, Santeria, and basic childhood boogiemen like Bloody Mary with the ills and dangers of street life. The basis of the mythology is that God has fled Heaven after an attack from demons. In his absence, the angels are fighting a war and it is up to humanity to fight with them by finding the moral path. What amazes me about the article, more than anything else, really, is the weight that it places on the children, and the strength they seem to find despite or because of that weight. Also, the fact that it doesn't promise a good afterlife if you live a good life. The most the children hope for is to get to join the angels in their fight. It's a gorgeous article and a gorgeous mythology, genuinely frightening and real.

Thanksgiving was a blast. I spent it at the shore with my father and that side of the family. And my grandmother, who, though she is getting older and older, looks genuinely pretty good and was fairly engaging once you made eye-contact with her and spoke at the requisite volume for her to hear you. The hardest part about going home is always getting family to understand just how real and good what I've been doing out here is. None of them have ever seen a Tantalus show, and our shows don't really translate well into short descriptions (Well, you see, it's about the final battle in Norse mythology, in which Loki and Odin fight to the death, and Odin knows he's going to die but does nothing to stop it. But it's also a game, and the game is the battle, and the audience is going to be part of the game. But no...seriously...it's going to be really cool), so whenever I go home and start talking about what I'm doing with Tantalus, my parents kind of fade off. It's frustrating.

The same is true of my writing. Whenever I start to tell my mother about anything that has happened with my writing, I get, "You know, your old friend Lee David published an article in Such and Such magazine." And I realize she means well by saying, essentially, "Why don't you write something the complete opposite of your writing style?" but I find myself just wishing for some vindication. Which, I suspect, won't come for a while. Not because I don't think I'll be published. Just because I think I won't be published anywhere she's heard of.

Moral of this story is, I think, no matter how supportive your parents are, they're still people and have failings, just like you do. I think that's the moral, anyway. The other moral could be buck up, write, act, and create theatre for yourself and nobody else; and quit your whining. It could be a lot worse. That's probably closer to the moral.

Anyway, I'm off. Going to drink some water and talk to my friend Bonnie about the cruise she and her girlfriend are going on.