On the Street

THREE HOMELESS PEOPLE
Christmas bells are ringing
Christmas bells are ringing
Christmas bells are ringing -
Out of town
Santa Fe

SQUEEGEEMAN
Honest living man!

HOMELESS PERSON
Evening, officers

MARK
Smile for Ted Koppel, Officer Martin!

HOMELESS PERSON
And a Merry Christmas to your family

POLICE OFFICERS
Right!

BLANKET PERSON
Who the fuck do you think you are?
I don't need no goddamn help
From some bleeding heart cameraman
My life's not for you to
Make a name for yourself on

ANGEL
Easy sugar, easy
He was just trying to -

BLANKET PERSON
Just trying to use me to kill his guilt
It's not hat kind of movie honey,
Let's go - this lot is full of
Motherfucking artists
Het artist
You gotta dollar?
Huh. I thought not
~*~"On the Street" RENT

There's no good way to do that song, so I stuck the whole thing on there. Oh well. One more song totally taken care of, I guess.

I would like to begin today's post with a quote - something I found extremely wise and quite interesting. Let's see what you can make of it. I read to you from "The Time of Your Life - A Comedy in Three Acts" by William Saroyan.
JOE: ...I'm a student. I study all things. All. All. And when my study reveals something of beauty in a place or in a person where by all rights only ugliness or death should be revealed, then I know how full of goodness life is. And that's a good thing to know. That's a truth I shall always seek to verify.
It's most eloquent, and I find it rather practical to think about, for any teenage perspective. Of my friends, at least 80% of them tend to have a negative outlook on life, or on most of life. Until recently, I would have been part of that. (I'll get to that in a moment.) Now this guy Joe here, he's living in San Fransisco in 1939. And the people he's around, they don't have a lot of money. Joe, he's got some money. Don't really know why, beacause he's a loafer who never does anything, but he's got money. And he's quite benevolent, if not a little off-kelter abour spending it. The point is though, that even though he's living in the throes of WW II and what surrounds him is depression, he finds a way to push away the shade and allow the sun to shine so the flowers may grow. So perhaps at first glance the world Joe lives in is a shithole that no one would wish upon any man. Such as people say no amount of money would ever get them to relive their teen years. Well Joe found beauty in his world by studying it. Perhaps all we need to do is look a little more closely at just what is going on around us.

So there's my soap-box speech for the day. Although I suppose I should explain what I said about being a part of negativity until recently. I'm not going to talk about the negative paryt. There's nothing to say there. But what leaves people wondering is why I am not nearly as depressed as I used to be. Well I'll give you a plain and simple answe which, strange as it might sound after it is said, is the truth. I saw Rent.

In case I forgot to say (I know I never did get the synopsis up here, but anyway.), RENT has several characters in it who have AIDS. The whole theme of the play is celebrating life in the face of death. And Angel (*tear*), who has the most advanced AIDS, is turning every day into a party, not thinking about dying, and being completely and utterly happy with who (s)he is. (S)he has am amazing loving spirit, and as I watched the play and everyone in it, I thought, 'What the hell am I doing? Why am I so fucking depressed all the time, and not just taking care of myself and not worrying about anything else?' I figured out that even though I may seem really self-centered on the outside, inside I don't spend enough time thinking about myself because I'm always trying to solve other people's problems. So when I got back home, I started doing yoga. I did a LOT of writing. I listened to even more music than I used to. I stayed up late some nights, just to think. I watched what I was eating and taking in to my body. And I'm still doing all that, and I've been feeling better, I think. The other thing I realized is that I would love to be on Broadway. I used to always think I would do movies and that would be my thing; that I wouldn't like live performing as much. But then I thought about how much fun I had with "Go Ask Alice" and what a great experience it was to meet Jai after the show, and I decided. I want to do Broadway. I want to connect with people on a level that you can't connect on in movies. Something about being live just changes everything. And meeting fans afterwards... there's nothing more gratifying. I mean, not that I had "fans" at my play, but all the people who came up to me and told me what a great job I did... people I didn't even know! Some people who were there just to see the show, who weren't related to anyone in the cast. And I was just blown away. People I did know were amazed... I scared some people (because of the ending). So I decided I wanted to do Broadway. That's extremely physically demanding though. Therefore I immediately began to care more for myself. And I still am, and I'm happy with me. And I'm making myself, and a place for myself, and that being the central matter.

But in case all that sounded too lifetime movie for you, and I was being a little too self-congraulatory and a bit indulgent, let me just point out that I am going on a 5K AIDS walk on Saturday with the GSA. There's a damn good cause. And I'm glad I'm going.

Wow. This is a long post. And it's long because there is a lot of writing, not because I had to hit enter a bunch of times when posting songs. So I'll let you all drink this in and post my poem sparately.