now because this song is on and the one after it will soon be on, and we are likely to repeat it again and maybe once more after that, i am going to be serious for a moment. i don't know how long it will last. the moment, not the seriousness. i'm always serious. you know what i mean.

if i forgot what i was going to say i will punch myself in my own face.

i know what i want to say, i just forgot how i was going to say it, or why.

i didn't realize that i'd actively stopped performing. i just thought i wasn't doing it anymore. i mean, maybe i realized it at the time, but that was four years ago. no, it was five. five this year. five years this may will be the last time i stepped on stage. may? i'll fact check when i'm done. (july.)

i just thought i've been without the opportunity. i stopped doing the show when i froze on stage. i flipped out. i couldn't move during an improv game that requires initiative and movement. it is a memory i remember but with less flavor and less color than that with which it happened. basically it is a memory i actively try to forget. failure. disappointment. fear. i didn't want to be up there in the first place. i remember leaving michele's apartment and forcing myself to go. buying a new shirt. pink and white, like a candy striper. i never saw any candy stripers in any of the hospital rooms so it is only my imagination that tells me they look like that. i was sitting in the car in front of the comedy club flipping coins biting lips thinking 'flight' thinking i should just leave and not say anything when someone came out to drag me in. no time for laughing. no one should clap. no one to tell me to break a leg.

my love was gone and my father was gone. and i was meant to make jokes. i made a lot of jokes. i laugh a lot when i'm nervous. get on stage and put on a show. i couldn't do it. so i flipped out, got off stage and cried a lot. then i went back to michele's and got stoned. i may have had a very telling tarot card reading that night. there's no way to know. those things didn't get recorded.

during the times i should be writing the most i never write at all. i never write at all. we can love forever and never pass away.

this is not a sad-about-dad entry. this is an entry about realizations.

i stopped performing on stage and shortly after the stage show fell through. then there was the radio show. i got involved with that. i don't really count it. i mostly just sat in the booth and laughed. laughing is my main talent. it is my defense mechanism and my greatest joy. i can make you feel bad with a laugh. i can make you feel grand. sometimes i see them as flutes and sometimes they are horns.

i just didn't realize i'd actively stopped performing, is what i mean. shocking that my dad's death would have that kind of effect on me. that is sarcasm. it makes total sense. he would shout at me before i left the house every friday night. if i didn't answer back with enough energy he would shout at me until i did. it's not a memory i work to hide but one i can't grasp at to keep it from disappearing because it is too hot to hold. sometimes they are flutes and sometimes they are horns. sometimes they are grand and sometimes they are cruel.

when i went to that audition last week for the part i didn't get (that's fine, i liked the director but had trouble looking him in the eye, i knew i wouldn't make it) i talked to my mother before i left. break a leg, she said.

and it all became so clear. all of it becomes so clear in breaths in gulps in gasps. it never stops becoming clear. there is always glass between us. the clearer it gets, the closer we come. i've made peace. finally. i haven't dealt with every little bit, every little guilt, every anger. it is hard to let go of your grievances when they are all that's left to hold on to. it's not as though i haven't accepted it. the last time i thought to call him i was cooking my first turkey. "what do i do about this disgusting turkey bit? i'll call dad." "no, they don't make those phones." "..honey get the ouija." "no i don't want to get turkey juice on it, you do it." oops, this is serious. no time for laughing.

it all becomes so clear and then it's so hard to adhere to. like anything. like life changes. come to terms and come to peace with the man in the moment, in that clear understanding of meditation, like the state i am in right now because that's really what this is and i can't believe it took me this long to recognize it. come to terms and come to peace with a man of such wild and brazen internal conflict and what effect that has on a child, on an adolescent, his own seed and under or without his influence.

i sat there in this state and i very clearly saw him. i thought a word i will not repeat here because i think it is only the closest word i could come up with because it isn't really that but it is something similar. i sat there, i saw him, it all became clear. i saw an egg, he was in it, but he was too big. too much energy. from too high a level squeezed into too small an egg. this created his conflict. his fatal flaws. his greatest struggle between light and dark. he made the choice. we all make the choice. where to go and who to be. he came back, for some reason, to teach some lesson by way of his unique and fucked up chemistry. maybe it's giving him too much credit. maybe it's just rationalizing the things i know but can never say. like the memory i forgot and never had a chance to remember. the one where my parents fought and he pulled a gun on us. i heard about it and i've tried to remember. i don't know why i should want to remember such a thing. i've matched it up with a memory of coming home after a long drive away and he was on the phone. i've matched that memory up with pounding on the garage door both my parents were behind. fighting. and probably with the darker harder to reach memory of being locked with my brother in a bedroom and both of us screaming. i forgot about that one until just now, in this state.

this is serious. we were little. there are memories, there things no one knows and there are things only i know. he was a fucked up irresponsible asshole. he was reckless. he gave his children drugs under the pretense of being able to watch them and keep them safe. this is the paradox i mean. this is the logic. he was backwards. he would dive into wrecked cars to pull out people he'd never met. he would give more than pocket change to homeless people. he spent money he could've used to straighten out the mortgage on a pool table and cocaine. he made the choice to stop taking the medicine that would have kept him alive. he slowly killed himself. i tried to make him see god and he used him as a scapegoat. he gave a lot to a lot of people and when they turned away from him or he pushed them away (matter of fact or point of view) he turned bitter. if he ever changed his mind it was too late. "do as i say, not as i do." everyone was always invited to the party. the house was always open. "hope for the best, expect the worst." he had our names tattooed on his back. he told stories over and over. especially near the end. it's why i hate to repeat myself. he taught me more than i like to remember about the magic. if i've got any magic at all, it's because it came to me through him. he was my biggest fan. conflicted, crooked brian.

i can't believe it's been that long since i stopped performing. or all those memories. this is serious. have i learned what i was meant to? is this the test? did i already pass the test and this is the next course? or did i fail? will i ever stop learning? there is no answer forthcoming. it is for me to decide. make peace and be at peace. life is the stage. improv your life.

[talk about magic, get magic. click random, get magic]