Me? I'm Full Of Impotent Rage.

Last night's rehearsal for SOTR was pretty interesting. David and Steve told everyone the background of why they wrote the play, where some of the themes come from, that sort of thing. Then it turned into an interesting discussion about violence and history and America and fight-or-flight and nature and change and - well, hopefully, if we all do our jobs right, people will be having conversations like that in the lobby, on the car ride home, the next day at work...
The whole thing is one of those sticky issues...the more you get into it the more layers you uncover and the deeper you are...
And, at some point, we were talking about guns....gun laws, responsibility, power.....real 'red in tooth and claw' type stuff...and it occurred to me...I'm not the kind of person who ever needs to own a gun, a weapon. I'm just the kind of high strung/tightly wound person who would make some sort of costly mistake. Luckily for myself and everyone else...guns freak me out. A lot. I've never held a real one, never shot one. Don't want to.

But.

But...there's part of my brain that knows that holding one, shooting one...would feel a person up with a sense of power, of control. Could give me that feeling.

This is my take on the play: Most of us, in this day and age, spend our lives as cogs....we do what we do and it doesn't really matter...except, most of us are under the delusion that we ARE DESTINED FOR GREAT THINGS....WE ARE DIFFERENT...SPECIAL...NOT LIKE THEM...this is, maybe, the American Myth, the cult of celebrity...call it whatever...everybody, on some level, feels like they're unique (maybe not understood in their own time - but still special)...then, every once in a while, a situation comes along that shows us the harsh reality...YOU ARE A COG...now, if you're lucky (or maybe, at least RICH, WHITE, STRAIGHT, and MALE) you won't get too many of these wake up calls during your life...but some people aren't so lucky...some people are given pretty brutal slaps-to-the-face...SHEEP...COG...DISPOSABLE...and some people aren't meant for such revelations...and so, some people, full of the American Myth (I'M IMPORTANT, I MATTER) can easily find a form of power, of veto, of expression, of control, of revision...through the use of violence. The editorial in the form of a U-Haul. Here's what I think about how I've been treated, how my people have been treated. Here it is, writ LARGE. Now, you'll have to see, now you'll have to hear...now you'll have to pay attention.

I'm not a cog.

You can't treat me this way.

This isn't how it's suppose to be.