Thank you, everyone who replied to the last post!

I think the overarching sense was of how much *right* there is in FBC, of the pride that people take in the show, and of the fantastic group we have now (also see jdub0014‘s post!). There were also a number of good articulations of issues that different people have noticed.

I’m going to try to write a summary of these thoughts (good, bad, proud, uneasy, mine, and not-mine (appropriately attributed)) and bring it to the directors. I hope other people talk to them too.

I’m continuing to exchange emails and reply, so feel free to add more thoughts as you have them.

There was a fantastic discussion at the Rocky party about the state of the cast. The vocal consensus was this:

There’s an undercurrent of over-professionalism at the show. In small but definite ways, the drive for professionalism stifles some of the fun of the show and makes working at it a chore. Because the show isn’t as much fun, it isn’t as good, and the audience has noticed. Both directors, theater 3, and Acid’s absence were blamed for these problems.

It’s so tough to disentangle real harmful effects from nostalgia. So, tell me: do you agree? Have we gained the world and lost our soul (or raised the bar and broken our backs)? The drive for screen accuracy can push us to do better, but if it drives out jokes and connecting with the audience– if our performance just duplicates the film– do we want it? The cast members used to work up the audience waiting outside before the show. Does anyone do that now? We have such a great group, and we can fix these problems, but maybe not without big changes.

Feel free to post anonymously or email me separately.

There was such a bad reaction to Jim that I’m going to go with James instead. I won’t stop anyone from using Jimmy, but I’m going to change what I call myself. There are endless silly pros and cons and more exciting options, but hey, it’s just a name.

I’ve been thinking about youth.

I’m in awe of a friend of mine. She has a husband, a career, a house, a dog; she’s had a history of excellence in Rocky and been a leader of the community since before I joined. She approaches life as a vibrant adult, grounded but still growing. So I’ve always looked to her as a role model. And she’s a year younger than me.

Some part of me still conceives of myself as a student, a youth, a troublemaker without a cause and without the wherewithal to be a true rebel. When I teach or organize or lead, it’s with a tongue in cheek chic of a boy among boys. I have the experience and understanding to do more. And the capacity to take the endless responsibility and the responsibility to do it to my full capacity.

But there’s plenty of time to be old. I never want to stop adventuring with life. I love my younger friends as peers, and I think rightly so: I’m always being impressed by their initiative, maturity, and experience. I don’t want to give up my million playtime projects or get a job with a title that pretends to define me. I don’t want to settle, or even settle in.

The brochure for life doesn’t advertise any good packages for this. I want the best of both youth and adulthood. I’m supposed to be getting a pet (if not a child), a car (if not a house), start drinking beer regularly, stop getting too excited. But I don’t want to be a tree: I’m a pond plant, growing deep roots while still living in a totally fluid world.

And it’s not just me. The brochure we got was out of date when we were born. We need a new paradigm. A phase in life that acknowledges how changeable things are in the era of the internet, where people discover new interests, communities, careers, selves every five years.

I’m writing up a description of who I am when I’m at my best, in my zone, getting the most out of the incredible life I’ve already built and discovered around me. I want that to be James. Maybe it’s time to re-read King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.

Thoughts? Is it a bore to read my inner musings? I know others are in similar situations: has anyone else found such a paradigm?

yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes

I want try going by Jim. I love the name Jimmy; it laughs at itself. But it crosses a line of social convention that I’m always struggling with: we are shaped, both in other people’s eyes and our own, by the labels we use. That nickname is a bit of playful eccentricity I use for myself, but it paints me in a childish hue. Anyhow, I want to bow to convention and see if it hurts my back or, as is possible, makes it stronger.

It’s an experiment in some shifting thoughts I’m working through. I’m not going to write the core of those thoughts (mostly because I don’t know what the core is), but here’s a snapshot of one facet.

I’m a creature of ambiguity. If there’s a line somewhere, I’ll try my best to tightrope it. One reflection of this is how I try to do everything at once– or rather, everything, in parallel. My full todo list is about 400 items long, and fuzzily scheduled halfway through next year. Every day I work on a dozen independent projects, fully expecting that I won’t finish most of them for years, if ever. And I try to maintain several prospective romantic interests, even when that’s an obstacle in getting into any woman’s pants or heart. It’s helping me learn to flirt better and I’m getting to know so many incredible women. I’m frustrated that it makes me talk big and act small, but it’s fun playing with those insecurities.

And I love living this way; I wouldn’t want life to be any different. But all these balancing acts make me awfully ineffective. Which is another piece I’m okay with… mostly. All together, I take it too far. I had a great idea for a music creator the other day– it could revolutionize electronic music, but I’ll never have time to work on it.

I need a sidekick. Not the little electronic ones– I need a person to tag along with me like the guy who follows Cramer around and records all his projects. There we’d be at the south pole, and he’d say, “Holy samosas, Jimmy! It would take a miracle to stop this iceshelf from caving into the ocean.” “Wait Robin,” I’d say dramatically, “I have an idea– get me a keyboard and a bit of straw.” Now hiring. Compensation based on experience. And you get to help me build a bat cave.

I’m still reeling from the Media Lab dishwasher that destroys your dishes and molds new ones each day out of the clay. But future shock continues apace.

The New York Times is reporting that 3-D printers (Sci-fi geeks read mono-material synthesizers) are going to be available for $1000 in four years. Need a new back on your remote control? An action figure for your child? A fractal centerpiece for your dinner party? Just print it.

Soon printing plans will be freely available on the web, public libraries will have printers available for anyone to use (until everyone has one– they only cost $300 to make), and invention will be a normal daily activity. And intellectual property as a tool of the Man will break under the strain.

The time to act is now. In a world where you can do anything, what do you want to be?

Every Wednesday I walk away from Rocky preshow meeting with a silly smile on my face.

Saturday, I did Monologue (RHPS virgin hazing)! I was dizzyingly nervous the day before, but as it got closer and closer to the time, I just got less nervous. And then I was there, and my talking-to-crowds-auto-pilot took over. I had fun and I think it was good. I was told that I need to be louder; if anyone else has comments on things to improve next time, I’d love to hear them.

The after-party was at my place. It felt disconnected, like the groupings of people never found their groove. And I was in an odd mood; in my mind, I kept seeing people fall into their weaknesses instead of becoming their strengths. It was fun and all, but it seemed to reflect a shallowness of recent parties at a time when deep connections are blossoming at Rocky. Does anyone else feel this?

I know some people would just avoid parties for this, but I’m a creature of community, and it makes me want to fix things. Maybe we need new party games? The power of the party game is to drive us to give up our pretenses, manifest our desires, and reveal ourselves to each other.

Also that night, I opened my disposable-party-stuff cabinet… and a twig nest and a very surprised black bird started falling out. So I quickly shut it and pretended nothing happened. I was worried that I might have hurt the bird, but I’ve since heard lots of activity up there. This morning, I was rummaged in the cabinet underneath, and this little “Hey, I’m trying to sleep here!” peep answered me.

Yesterday, when a friend was hanging out in my room while I was away, a black cat jumped through the window, gave her a frightened look, and hopped back out. And I have a small infestation of moth-like locusts, and I can’t find their breeding grounds. My apartment is being taken over by wildlife omens.

I’m usually a part-time environmentalist, but I’m starting to think that environmental concerns are direct symptoms or driving factors of every worldwide problem. However, too many discussions of these issues end the same way: people say “China and India” like they’re pronouncing a death sentence on the world. China and India are clawing into our standard of consumption with a combined 8 times population of the United States. They say that as China and India flex their growing muscles, any meager progress America takes to clean up will become irrelevant.

I couldn’t disagree more.

China and India are following *our* path to wealth. And it has been a miserable path, and built on old technology, moldy ideas, and without the hard-won understandings of how we affect our world. Today, with thoughtful policies and better technology, we can all win, and the natural world with us. If we forge a new path, they will follow.

But incremental progress won’t cut it. We need to kick a few bad habits, but our lives will be better without them. Like all addictions, the American mode of consumption, exploitation, and war is overdetermined and self-reinforcing. Nothing can be blamed for the way things work, and no single policy change will fix things: everything works the way it does because of how everything else in American society works.

The solution is to fix our paradigms, and the first step is to believe that there is a solution. Here are the pieces I think need to be thrown out of our worldview:

1. Consumptionism. As much as consumption and war do wonders for the economy, drive innovation, form our choose-any-product conception of freedom, we don’t want them. Consumerism and consumption don’t make life better. The god of economic growth busies himself with expanding wealth gaps and exploiting people and the environment– we want a zero-growth economy. Innovative progress is largely a waste; in food, where it affects us most, it has been an outright disaster. The biggest exception is progress in the essentially non-consumptive area of communication.

2. Corporation. Corporation is a weed strangling society for its own senseless benefit. Of all the ways that human beings can organize themselves for collective enterprises, the publicly traded corporation may be the worst because it disconnects the enterprise from its reason for existence. Businesses exist because they make money, and because of the role corporations have our entire society is directed toward that humanless aim. The maximum planning timespan of corporations is 20 years, and this willful shortsightedness is destroying our planet.

These two social creations help form every aspect of our lives, mainly (I claim) to our detriment. If we could convince everyone to just *stop* doing them, after a little confusion, we would be a happier world.

We’re closer to being able to do that today than ever. We largely know how to solve the world’s problems, and more answers are formed every day. Download the beautifully composed Rough Guide to a Better World. Buy WorldChanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century the work of the WorldChanging blog group. And there are zillions of other blogs, magazines, mailing lists, and action groups built around each issue. For a system-wide approach, find a copy of the 3000 page Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.

Plus, with the power of the internet, these ideas are spreading faster than ever. Any day, the right new conception of the world will come along, take fire, and we’ll wonder what took us so long… but not unless we’re all looking for it, and believing it when it stares us in the face.

C. came over this evening to work on a project. While she’s here, the door bell rings, and I answer it to see my good friend, A. She came, I find out, for her first date with my apartment mate. They leave.

An hour later, there’s a flash as something whizzes by and bangs on the ground near me. My thoughts: “What was that? Where did that come from? What *was* that? Hey, that was K. hiding behind the door!” As I’m picking up the chocolate they threw to distract me, in come three friends, J., K., and L., from the *back* of my apartment. They proceed to write a card for me, and disappear back the way they came– through my bedroom window. Now, hours later, I still can’t believe it. They broke into my apartment to give me chocolate. God I love my friends.

Another hour passes and C. leaves and I go over to visit J., K., and L. for a half hour. On the way back, I see that someone has left fast food trash in my recycling bin, so I bring it around to empty it in the trash bins. And I look up and see the shadows of two people (A. and my apartment mate) making out on my living room couch. Knowing them, I’d ruin everything if I came in. Before today, I’d never been in that situation, and before today, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do, but now it’s obvious. I go around back, and sneak in through my window.

d_day‘s 101 Goals in 1001 Days inspired me to write my own list. Tell me if you’re interested in being involved in/assisting with any of them!

101 Goals