Limited Perspective

He rises from beneath the room on an elevator platform. I look at my watch. It’s exactly 8pm. Wayne commences singing his hits. Danke Schoen and all the rest. A big part of the show is the love going back and forth between Wayne and the crowd. Wayne is wending his way amongst the people, making eye contact and singing directly to their faces. They love it. I love it.  How could you not love it? This is the Stardust hotel and casino. I think this is my first time in Vegas. It’s wild. We’re in a room in one of the older towers, dozens of floors up. I realize I forgot contact lens solution. Luckily, from my high vantage point, I spot a Walgreen’s across the street. Half an hour later I get there after an elevator ride, winding through a maze of about eight game rooms, past the lobby, eight more game rooms and out into the parking lot, which is about a quarter mile wide, and finally to the street, Las Vegas Boulevard, where I press the “walk” button. And wait. And wait. Then it’s jus...

On the bus, I always like to sit in the back. That’s where everything happens. If I’m in the furthest seat, all the way back in the corner, it’s also warm, a good place to keep an eye on the action, or to sleep to the vibrations of the engine. I was in the back of the 358 one day, or maybe the 194, one of those old Metro routes that you might find anyone and everyone riding. Somewhere though Pioneer Square or downtown, there were a couple of just about to fall down on their luck, or maybe just bouncing back up guys talking religion. They were discussing miracles, out loud for all to hear. I had studied religion all twelve years of Catholic school. In college, I studied philosophy. My ears are always ready for a metaphysical debate. The first guy insisted the miracles as described in the bible had absolutely happened. The second guy wasn’t buying it. Suppose there had been all of that water into wine, summoning of plagues, curing of illness, and raising of the dead back in those days, h...

Thirty-some years ago I added up my college credits and found I was three short of graduation. I looked through the catalog of summer courses and found Introduction to Theater Arts. I took it.   The final project was a monologue. Somehow I selected one from La Turista by Sam Shepard. It starts with a character bounding from a hotel bathroom saying, “Well, I feel like a new man after all that. I think I finally flushed that old amoeba right down the old drain.” I was nervous as hell. I hid behind a pretense of smoking a cigarette.  It was a bust.   Flash forward to Saturday, Saint Patrick’s Day, 2018  I was doing the final project of my acting class at Freehold: a scene from Sam Shepard’s True West, which I did with a partner.  It was meant to be a real performance and students invited friends to come be our audience. The instructor called “lights up” and my partner and I flowed across the stage.  It was effortless and wonderful.   It didn’t n...

I bought this cookie sheet twenty years ago. It was non-stick. The water used to fly right off it. To dry it, all I had to do was turn and gently wave it.  Boom. Done. I remember making cookies on it. They never stuck. The thing was true to its name.  Not anymore. Stuff sticks to it and I scrub it off. It didn’t look like this either. It was shiny metal, the color of a fancy laptop. It did not transform in a day. It became what it is now slowly over the decades.  Having had it all this time though, I can still see what it was at the beginning.  It still serves its function perfectly. It requires extra clean-up and it looks its age but other than that it’s no different. It’s still really the same.  People are like this now to me. I can look at a middle-aged person, like me, and project backwards to when they were younger. I can look at a young person and have a good idea of how they will look when they get to be my age. I’ve observed myself and people in my life ...

Another brief item where I write about writing  Here is a good, quick article on writing. In the second-to-last section, Charles Yu tells a story about the best writing advice he has been given. It involves him overhearing his wife, Michelle telling their kids to stop making so much noise because in the next room, "Daddy is working on his book." And they did quiet down. He takes the lesson to be that he is lucky to be a writer and he had better stop being a "dum-dum" and finish his book so he can get out of his room and spend time with his family, who clearly love him so much. I think, in that moment, he saw himself in their eyes. He is a writer. What he is doing is important. It's a big deal and he's good at it. The world -- or at least his publisher -- wants to hear his story. So, he concludes, stop seeing yourself as a dum-dum and step into other people's estimation; see yourself as they see you.

I’m taking a screenwriting class right now. The coaching is to just write. I am at a point in development of my screenplay where I have been going from writing, to reading screenplays, to watching movies, to writing things that have nothing to do with my screenplay but are just writing, just to work the muscles. This is one of those. I saw something recently that said people are losing whole categories of friendships. The pandemic has cut people off from casual acquaintances, including co-workers, spouses of co-workers, people you see every once in a while after church when they serve the donuts and coffee, your children’s classmate’s parents, the crew that ends up at the sports bar on Seahawks Sunday, people you bump into at the theater – and on and on. This is alarming. It’s also harder to keep connected to people who were closer. It’s hard to maintain the same intensity of interaction with friends you never see. The co-workers you relied on for more than chit-chat about TV shows are...

Here is the script for a play that was just produced by Dacha Theatre company for its Dacha 'Round the Clock 24-hour play festival.  Bright & Early A play By Patrick Hogan   206-214-7736 (mobile) patrickhogan2000@comcast.net   This version prepared for DACHA ‘ROUND THE CLOCK January 23, 2021   Characters EMILY RACHAEL BAILEY SKYLAR A HORSE EMILY’S GRANDFATHER   Time Bright and early this morning   Place Nearby Synopsis EMILY is torn when SKYLAR shows back up. Her friends ride with her on her journey to the bottom and back again. She learns a valuable lesson on the way. NOTE The actor playing EMILY can determine the gender and pronouns of SKYLAR Scene One EMILY’s place.  A clock can be seen, reading 7:45 am. EMILY awakes, bright and early in the morning. She opens curtains, makes coffee or tea, morning routine things. Then her phone rings. We hear only her own side of the conversation. The mor...