Tonight was the opening night of the play Decay. Good crowd. Relatively good performances from all of us. Very exciting backstage. Totally dark except for a red light or two. For an hour before we go backstage to start the performance everyone kind of jumps around the room, paces, mumbles incoherently, makes funny sounds to themselves, practices their lines over and over again, puts on their makeup, stares at themselves in the mirror reciting their lines or talking themselves up. fun. Backstage everyone just paces till it's their turn to go on stage. Back and forth we pace throughout the first half of the play, trying not to bum into each other. Funny. Everyone goes from smiles to this intense look. Very different than putting on a rock concert, where everyone just kind of drinks and smokes and stands around and then maybe you let out a few screams and yells and then on you go up. actors are very intense. I have started to look at it like the difference between art and craft.

When you go up on stage to play a rock concert, at least for original music, it is like this spiritual artistic experience. Are you focused? I don't think so. It's more like you are lost at sea. In space. You are at one with the music and the audience and you are just part of the whole thing. Just flowing in the art of it. you have no lines to remember. Yea you have all these lyrics to remember but this isn't conscious. You already know them subconsciously. They are just a part of you. so you're not thinking about them. you're not thinking at all. you're just trying to play as well as you can and get into the art of it as much as you can, to capture some kind of impalpable, intangible, ecstasy for you and the crowd through your interpretation of the songs. And every night that interpretation can be totally different. The four of you may play each song totally different than you did the night before. you may stick within the same general guidelines or play roughly the same chords, but that's about it. the way you play, and the notes you play and the notes you sing and your phrasing and everything really is totally different. That's the fun of it. that's the rush. That's why we do it. that's why people go to live shows. To see and hear that experimentation.

Whereas with what I have noticed with acting, at least in live theatre, is that memorizing your lines is of the utmost importance. They don't want you to go up there and wing it. or experiment with your lines. You can experiment with phrasing a little, but you can’t just go up there and try something new for the art of it, like say with a guitar solo, where there might not be one note you play tonight that was the same as you played last night. who the hell plays a guitar solo or a drum fill the same way every night? but with acting each cast member is totally dependent on the others for them to get their lines right on, because your line triggers their next line so if you fuck it up they don't know where you are or where they are. They are still waiting to hear that line so they can come in. And there are a lot of lines to memorize. And even when you think you have them memorized they still fade from your brain right when you least expect it. so you have to be really focused. Just dead on focused in every moment when you are on that stage and I am not used to that.

When we are on stage with the band we leave a lot of room open for improv. There are a lot of sections of songs that are deliberately left open. Nothing written there as far as time goes. We may know that this guy’s going to solo for anywhere between half a minute and two minutes and that's it. or that Fishy is going to vamp on the end vocals for maybe a minute or two or three and during that time everyone is just free to play whatever they want to. And then when he turns around to face the drummer then we are going to end the song. But in acting, no way. there's this whole thing about keeping the pace of it tight. It is a new concept for me. it's funny because the Piano Man in our band is always trying to get us to pay more attention to that.

After the show we went out to eat, drank some wine. Good times.  

Current Spin: Carmen Consoli, Confuso e Felice.