Goodbye - Drama Monologue

G O O D B Y E

By: Paul William Fassett

The last thing we said was goodbye and this is how things end. With that word so final, so bitter, so acute. Goodbye. Now all we see of each other are snapshot memories, text messages, pictures on facebook but none of it is real.

None of it. Not even our memories.

If I pursue, you'll pull away. You needed this space, this vast empty desert between us that births no life, no plants, no wild things. We're left with sweet untruths. Memories that never happened. Loves that never blossomed. One single night that was supposed to be so much more but never reached it's climax and now we crave it again. To see things through. To claw at each other like hungry flesh craving animals. 

We want to relive the real thing so we can remember what it was really like instead of just romanticizing it.

But goodbye is final. Goodbye is... Farewell. How do you close the distance created by such a word?

Analyzing Monologues and Tips On Performing

I am going to do a different kind of monologue today. This monologue is going to explain my thought process when I write a scene as well as my thought process when I coach an actor to perform it for an audience. 

Let's take a look at a dramatic monologue:

Oh but you are so perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean, you know what they say about glass houses right?

You sit there every day, judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...

What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!

Look. Will you do me a favor? Go out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell. Maybe you’ll get a tan.

What do you say? Will you come?

My thoughts on an effective monologue and an effective performance are kind of one in the same. In order to understand a monologue you must understand the audience and how they will react to a given written word once performed.

I think a common mistake by actors is they see a given monologue and they believe that it is one note. I see good actors give an otherwise boring yet thoroughly convincing performance simply because they do not understand that they are not performing for the camera, but instead, the audience. They do not understand the emotional arc and how to manipulate their audience both physically and emotionally.

Now I know what you may be saying. "No shit Sherlock." You say that, yet you may be thinking this is simpler than it is. "Just act good." Please, it's not that simple.

A monologue is supposed to have an emotional arc, whether that arc be a build up to a fall, or a frantic roller-coaster of emotion with many dips and many highs and devastating lows.

Let's walk through an example real quick:

Anger:

Oh but you are so perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up. 

Anger is a powerful emotion. It has impact on you, the person you are angry with, as well as the people around you who are not even involved in the conversation. Ask yourself what happens when you yell at someone. What do they do? 

Most back away, reel back. Especially if you catch them off guard. So if you are in the audience, or behind a desk at a casting, and someone makes you reel back, surprised, that's powerful. You make them take notice. You shake them out of the mundane, day to day, one millionth: "I'm so sad, daddy why don't you like me." Monologues they hear every day. 

I'm not going to be so bold as to say they don't see anger but when you can command their attention the whole way through by taking them on an emotional journey, then you have done your job. The next stop on the journey is the calming stage. You are coming down off your anger now, because you realize you aren't mad at him. You feel bad for him, but there is still some anger there and you can't just let go of it totally.

Calming:

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean, you know what they say about glass houses right?

You sit there every day, judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...

What happens when you whisper? When you speak low. People come forward, they lean in so they can hear what you have to say. You have their attention now only because you started off so explosively. Let's rate our anger on a scale of 1-10. A 1 is slightly irritated. A ten is spitting mad, your face red and crumpled. In the beginning you are at about an 8, a 9 if you are brave but by the time you get to calming, you have slowly brought your anger down to a five. When you get to the end of the calming state, you should be somewhere along the lines of a 3 to a 1.

In transit between these feelings should be a moment of silence. A moment of reflection for your character. Time to think about what you are going to say. 

What this moment really is, is time for you to gather your emotion for the next scene. Whether you use the Meisner technique, or you pull your emotions from an event or person in your past, this is your moment to gather it.

Surprise anger:

What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!

So now that our audience is leaning in to hear what we have to say, we hit them in the face with a 6 maybe a 7 if you can get there on the anger scale again. Once again you have them reeling back emotionally from the onslaught you are hitting them with. Once again, you are slowly bringing all of this anger down to the moment of emotional bareness. Here is the finale. 

So while you are working your way through the anger scale, tears should be being brought forth. In order to do this, your anger must be about something real. Something or someone from your life that you can associate to this. Once the tears start coming , let them flow. Do not try to control it. Sob if you have to. Many people try to control the emotion. Do not. Allow the emotion to control you.

Your goal is emotional bareness.

Sincerity:

I get sad watching you. Sitting there, watching the world pass by in fucking… 

Emotion has you chocked up, tripping over your words. Look for elipses. They are either lapses in the characters train of thought, or they are tripping themselves up.

Sound bites, on the news, while the real world is out there happening every day without you. All this time. All this pain. Just avoiding life.

This is the moment of sincerity of emotion. You have about 10 seconds max to transition from anger, to sadness. Preferably with tears. Sadness is equal to anger in a lot of ways. Anger is an expression of hopelessness at times. The hopelessness in this case of watching someone you love waste away. Wasting the potential of life because they feel they are incapable of doing anything worthwhile.

Every point in this scene should be emphasized. Pauses used to gather thoughts and emotions should be inserted to increase the tension. When you pause between thoughts, what does the audience do? They listen, they lean in. They wait, impatient, for the next word. Use that impatience to increase the tension. The question that this peice asks of the viewer is: Will the characters come to understand and accept each other for their flaws... Well, will they? That depends on you. Depends on how you chose to play the next part.

So, for sake of argument, let's say that while you are angry, the sadness should show through. The voice should be calling out in anger, but the face should show the despair you feel over feeling helpless.

What is the audience doing? If we have taken them on this roller-coaster ride, they should be right there with us, wanting to share in our sadness.

At the end of this scene we have a moment to think once again. To wipe our tears, maybe even laugh at ourselves. Look at the mess we've mad of ourselves. We haven't cried like this since we were kids. You take a deep breath and look at the man, wasting away and say:

Hopeful:

Look. Will you do me a favor? Go out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell. Maybe you’ll get a tan.

What do you say? Will you come?

You have just taken your audience on a journey. Led them through a story that has an end. A complete three act within just a snippet of time. They still have questions. What did the father say? Did they go for their walk? Did they come to understand each other?

These questions are good, it shows they were paying attention.

So what is essential to a good performance? A knowledge of how the audience will react when confronted by a particular sound, volume, or emotional cue. How do you sharpen this knowledge?

That will be a topic for next time.

I hope you enjoyed this entry and that this helped open your mind a little.

The Erosion Of A Man - Drama Monologue

T H E   E R O S I O N   O F   A   M A N

BY Paul William Fassett

You call me weak. Maybe you're right. You all think there's something wrong with me. You always have. Maybe you're right. Even as a kid. Let me finish. Even when I was little. 

I said let me finish!

You fucking people... You women wear men down. Chip away at us like a river through a fucking canyon and it's not enough that I'm worn away to dust, you keep taking and taking and you make it look like it's my duty to give. 

It started with mom. She did a number on me. That evil bitch of a teacher I had when I was in fourth grade. You remember her? Mom swallowed every stupid thing that woman said about me. She said that she thought I was disabled. She meant retarded. Mom came home and told you three and that was my new nickname. Retard.

Laugh. Go ahead and laugh. It's funny. I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. I always second guessed myself. Looked to you and Mom for approval and here I am, still begging for it.

I'm glad she died and don't give me that: "She's your mother." bullshit. An asshole is an asshole, regardless of title.

Remember my Kung Fu teacher? The one with the toupee? Mom made me take a martial art because she was tired of me getting picked on. You remember how you used to fuck with me Sherry? You remember how you would pretend to be sparring with me when I would get home, slap box me and shit. Knock me fucking silly. Embarrass me.

Well we were at the dojo and everyone had left so me and Sifu worked together on my forms because I had a belt test coming. Mom called and asked: "You ready to go?" I thought for a minute. Do I want to go home? Because Sherry is going to start beating on me, Mom is going to lecture me about reading more and the rest of you are just going to gouge away, so I said fuck it. I'll stay.

We worked on my forms, and he stepped down on my thigh so I would get deeper into a horse stance and when I couldn't get any lower he would grab the muscle and say: "Flex." but he didn't need to tell me to flex because I was already tense. Everytime he'd grab me my body would seize up. Soon I relaxed and he relaxed and when he asked me to pull my pants down so he could look at my legs, I didn't think anything of it. When he asked me to take off my underwear, I knew something was wrong but he was strong and I was weak so I didn't disobey. I kept thinking: "Stop thinking so much. This is some kind of test, just go with it."

Before I knew it I was lying on my stomach, trying not to cry, clinching my teeth, imagining I was somewhere warm, that the stabs of pain were an ocean wave washing over my back, that my tears were just spray from the ocean bubbles popping on my face. I learned that night that if you concentrate hard enough you can create pressure in your ears and the world sounds like the ocean, so I concentrated and his grunts went into a tunnel and it was like I was being tossed around inside a wave, unable to breath, suffocating, every tiny breath of air making me more aware of the pain.

I passed out at some point and I just remember being in the car, a gentle reminder and a hand on my knee telling me that no one could know what happened. I bled. I bled for days and you made fun of me for being in the bathroom so long. Said I was jerking off. You had no idea because you never looked! You never asked. You didn't care...

All the guys in my class used to joke about Sifu. They knew what he used to do to other kids. They thought it was funny. Something to joke about in the locker room. I read in the newspaper they arrested him recently and I cried. I cried for an hour, sitting on the floor, clutching the paper, all the while feeling guilty for feeling like that. Because who was I to cry? I let him do it! 

Some kid spoke out, against all of his better instincts, against all his fears of ridicule and now the bastard is in jail.

I keep thinking to myself, why didn't I tell you, tell mom? If I told someone, they would have stopped him. Put him away. I let him get away with it, so all those kids he raped, I helped him get away with it by being silent. I was complicit.

You helped him too, by eroding me to an emotional nub, you are just as guilty as I am.

The Camping Trip - Villain Monologue

T H E   C A M P I N G   T R I P

BY: Paul William Fassett 

Yeah, my wife gets around. She gotten around to just about every house on the block. That's why I don't sleep with her anymore. It would be like raw dogging it with a prostitute. Don't know what kinds of exotic STDs you could get from that thing. As if it weren't bad enough my kids tore that thing up coming out of her, now I got every guy with half a hard on wearing her out like hobo with a dumpster coat. Don't look so surprised Brad. Everyone knows my wife has been sleeping around. The neighborhood knows it. I know it. You know it...

I can tell by the look on your face you're angry. I would be angry to if someone was bad mouthing my girlfriend.

Now you look confused. Well, allow me to clear things up for you, Brad. You have been fucking my wife.

You think that I didn't know? You thought this camping trip was your idea? You thought we would come out here, act like best pals, and you would break the news to me gently? You might have even prepared yourself for a little fist fight. We would wrestle around, hit each other a couple times and at the end we would hug it out. Best friends forever, bros before hoes!

Sit the fuck down!

I'm the one with the axe, Brad. So listen.

Did you think I was just going to let you run away with my wife, live in my house, raise my kids! And I wouldn't do anything about it! I thought you knew me Brad. Hah! I thought we were close.

Don't run away Brad. You're just making this hard on yourself!

Penicunt - Comedy Monologue

P E N I C U N T

By: Paul William Fassett

Penis... Let the word swirl around in your head like mouth wash, then spit it out.

What a sterile sounding word, right? I prefer cock! 

Wait, that came out wrong. I mean it's a word with a little punch is all. You can almost imagine your dick with a feather mohawk and a beak clawing the eyes out of some other cock. It's a masculine word. That's the problem with society today. People are becoming walking pussies by words that are supposed to describe their fun bits. Even words like cunt. You think cock has punch, try calling someone a cunt. That's like a hard right hook to the jaw. Words create visuals, especially the ones people are afraid of. When I hear cunt, I think of a huge pot hole in the street filled with oily water, surrounded by dead birds.

Pussy though... Now that's a word I can get behind. Like a fluffy cloud floating in a big blue sky, all alone, made yellow and orange by a low hanging sun.

When I think of vagina, though, I don't imagine a warm wet playground like I would like... No. I think of some obscure village in Romania that raises sheep whose number one export are wool pelvic wigs. It's sterile, too clinical a word to be sexy.

Don't believe me? Then let me prove it. Close your eyes for just a moment and imagine this. Your girlfriend is laying on her back, naked, ready to... Receive you... She pulls you closer and whispers into your ear: “I want you to insert your penis into my vagina.”

I think it's safe to assume you would be a half mast sailboat floudering in the water hoping for a wind to take you far far away. So the point is, political correctness is great and all, but leave my genitals alone, unless you plan on knocking them around a bit.

Just don't call it a fucking penis.

Null Object Pattern - Dark Villain Monologue

This is a snippet from a story I am working on called Null Object Pattern. Works as a sort of weird monologue and should hold a casting directors attention.

N U L L   O B J E C T   P A T T E R N

BY: Paul William Fassett

You don't matter. I wouldn't shed a tear for you no more than I would shed a tear for the millions that died in the Holocaust. Now I don't deny it was a tragedy, I'm not a complete monster. There's just no emotional attachment there. I didn't know anyone that died there so how could I weep? 

After all, people cry more for dead pets than they do the deaths of people they never met.

Just yesterday I was coming home from work and through my windshield I could see a bunny, or a rabbit, (hard to tell the difference). It was white, with pools of blood gathering at its matted fur. It must have gotten hit by a car maybe, I don't know. It was limping, bloodied, up to the curb dragging an injured leg behind it. 

The curb was too high for it to climb but it tried nonetheless. Over and over again. Failing each time. Smacking up against the curb flatly, then falling back until it finally just laid there, breathing heavily, ready to accept death. 

But death never seemed to come... 

It just kept on breathing, and breathing, and blinking, and breathing, and breathing. Blink, expand, contract, expand, contract, blink... 

I watched unable to move, unable to think of what I could do, aside from watch and feel sadness for the pitiful little thing. His blinking became slower, his breathing shallow, until its body shuddered with a coughing fit. Slowly its chest rose, and deflated. Mouth dropped open, eyes stared ceaselessly at me, as if pleading. Pleading for help, or comfort, as if I should run from my car, cradle its head and shout up to the dark sky: 

“No! Not this one! You can't have him!”

I didn't posses the power to do anything, and it didn't matter... It was a dead thing, and didn't matter...

Hope - Drama Monologue

As per a request from yesterday's blog entry.

H O P E

BY: Paul William Fassett

We were standing at the train station, waiting, hoping we could get out of the city. Honduras was a war zone. Gangs fighting for their own stretch of land that was never theirs to begin with. We were like chattel to them to be bought and sold and slaughtered. We had been there for weeks waiting for a chance to board but we never got on a train. There were much more desperate people willing to fight harder for what they wanted. We knew that if we did not get out that night, the gangs would be back to collect their daily tribute and we would be coming up short. Our daughter was only twelve at the time.

To the Mara, however, she was old enough.

We waited at the boarding platform and were the first to enter when the doors opened but a line had formed that snaked around the building and off into the thicket of palm trees and fronds behind us. We were quickly overtaken by a flood of people and soon we found ourselves washed out, our little girl, Lupe in tow behind us. So many people, all of them pushing against one another, jockeying for position at the front of what had become a wall of flesh.

There was no hope. We were so far behind and the people in front of us were young and full of strength and anger and determination and our bodies were old and worked and tired. Resigned as we were to our fate we still decided to wait out the turbulence as people pushed passed us and shook the crowd like a mighty wave but suddenly the sea of bodies parted and a hush fell over the crowd. A middle aged couple, fair haired and pale skinned were escorted by armed guards as a path opened to the train.

The two of them were massive compared to the crowd. Round bellies, apprehensive faces drawn long from the despairing faces of the thicket of dark skinned stick figures. We were a group of skeletons watching the living pass by. Something dropped from his pockets in front of Lupe and before I could grab her, she was off running for the couple. Armed guards spun on her pointing their rifles at the child. My wife was not far behind her, holding her, putting out her hand begging.

The man spoke with a heavy accent and helped lower the men's rifles with a gentle hand. “Vat is it little girl?”

Lupe extended her hand and in her palm was a gold watch attached to a silver chain. He took it gently from her hand as I came to stand behind her. I apologized profusely, looking down at my feet all the while. The German's were probably diplomats on vacation, I thought. Why they would chose a place like this, however, was beyond me.

He knelt down and said: “Sank you. Ziss vas my father's and my father's before him. It is dear to me.” He was silent for a moment and his mind seemed to be elsewhere. “Vat is your name?”

Lupe, she replied. He stood and turned to his wife and exchanged hushed words. She nodded.

“How vould you like to ride in a train Lupe?”

The words hit me like a brick and buckled my knees. My wife cried and our daughter's excitement was so child-like and innocent. She had no idea the implications of his action. The price of a ticket may not have seemed like much to him but as we drew closer to the train cab and we looked up to the roof to see families riding on the top with only blankets to shield them from the cold and the rain, we knew. Knew that his simple act of kindness gave hope to a family that was hopeless.

Simple Things - Comedy Monologue

S I M P L E   T H I N G S

BY Paul William Fassett 

I was watching. Watching them. They look like people. Move like people. Talk like people. I guess that makes them people but regardless of the outer shell, they just don't seem right. Their heads buried into a shiny black device, poking at their tiny screens with their fingers like they are piloting the Starship Enterprise through an asteroid belt.


Were we meant to be like this?


I mean, can't you imagine a time when people did things? Big things... Like... I don't know... Built shit? We live in a time where we can fly to other states, even across the oceans to get to other countries, and someone had to make that thing. The plane. Someone invented that. I mean when you consider that someone invented a flying vehicle, it's like, well what have you done lately right?


Computer chip? Fuck you! Can it fly?


Ipad? Fuck you! Can I seat a hundred people on it and shuttle them like a heavenly chariot across the ocean to a land where they don't speak my language? Uhhh noooooo. Try again.


Cell phone? Again, fuck you! Sure you might be able to facebook your friends while you take a shit but you aren't taking a shit while thirty-thousand feet in the air now are you? Nope! I thought not.


I don't know. Just seems like people just don't do anything anymore. I mean, I know we discovered the human genome and all but seriously... Where is my personal teleporter? Seventies Sci-fi told me we would be flying in a hover car right now. What did we get instead? Angry Birds.


People have become such simple things.

I Am Sorry - Drama Monologue

Day 2 and I am posting up a drama monologue. I hope you guys like it and as always, feel free to use it for auditions with the caveat that you must tell us how it went.

I   A M   S O R R Y

BY   Paul William Fassett

There is a vicious little monster eating my insides and the doctors say I got about a month to live. In doctor speak that can mean anywhere between a day and two years but I can feel it coming. I know it's not gonna be long before I'm staring up at the ceiling with morphine pumping into my body, looking at my wife's face one last time before the days disappear and I become nothing. 

There's something that I need to tell you first and I know we haven't spoken in years but it's important that I tell someone. You, my daughter, are the child of a madman.

I could never enjoy the time we spent with each other because I was so afraid. I was always looking for a reflection of myself in your face but it never showed and I am grateful for that but I am sorry that it took so long to say this. I am sorry.

I am sorry for every missed birthday these last five years. I am sorry for every time I called you something awful. I'm sorry for every Christmas card I ever threw away and I'm sorry for every time you cried and I didn't hug you until you stopped. I'm sorry I could not accept you for who you were and whoever you chose to be with. I'm sorry for the night you came over to see me, in the rain, and tried to make things right.

I'm sorry that I slammed the door in your face.

I'm sorry that it took me until my deathbed to realize what a bastard I've been and I am sorry that this letter will not reach you in time for any of this to matter. I just wanted you to know that you were always perfect just the way you were and I was the one with all the flaws.

I'm sorry that I was disappointed in you. I was disappointed in myself and every small failure on your part was a way for me to make myself feel better. A way, through you, to make my life not seem so bad.

I've spent the last three years of my life, sitting, waiting for something, while on the inside I was dying. All I needed was to write this letter.

I'm sorry I did not do it sooner.

With love,

Your father.

Fucking Horrible - Comedy Monolgue

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. This will be a place for me to post my many MANY monologues which I create on a daily basis. You may use them for auditions as much as you want, the only rule (if you can call it a rule) is that you have to tell us how the audition went in the comment section below.

Without further delay, I bring to you: 

F U C K I N G   H O R R I B L E

BY   Paul William Fassett

 

I have one singular love in this world and it is a simple love. It's the one thing that gets me up in the morning. That love is, you ask?

The squeegee. Yes. I love to clean my car windows.

It's the one thing that keeps me going is knowing, that no matter what happens in my life, at least I know how to get a streak free shine on my windows. See I have this special technique. I go up and down, with the spongy part. Then I go side to side with the squeegee. I never leave a single streak.

So that's why I attacked that homeless man.

He was standing there on the corner, yelling at something imaginary floating in the air around him, when he saw me. At a dead stop. The red light at Vermont and Hollywood. The one that takes forever to change... That's when I saw it. The bottle of blue stuff. Soap streak in liquid form. I wasn't going to let him take away one of the last joys I had in life so I scrambled to get my windows down. My hands out, waving, practically screaming: “No thank you!”

He kept on coming and was already half-way through the intersection when I got out of the car. I stood in front of him but he actually tried to go around me to get to my windows. That's when I pushed him. That's also when I noticed he was an old man.

So yes. I pushed down a crazy old homeless man. To be fair though, tensions were high. I had a change of heart when I saw him laying there. Might have had something to do with him screaming: “I'm trying to clean his windows! Asshole!”

That's when I noticed the car sitting next to me at the light. Hasidic guy. He was wearing one of those crazy top hats and the spiral spaghetti hair. Anyway he looked straight on down the road. Had a white knuckle grip on the steering-wheel. When the light went green he took off like a lightning bolt.

I put a hand out to help the old man up but he slapped it away and got up on his own. Called me every kind of fucker name he could think of. Like mother-fucker, cock-sucker, crazy mother-fucker. Even some colourful variations I can't quite remember. He pushed me and then told me to go: “Fuck my mother.” And given all the accusations of mother fondling before, it sounded like he was giving me a command, so I punched him.

Yes. I know. I punched an old homeless man.

I'm fucking horrible...

Rickard Through the Veil: Frogs

Rickard Through The Veil

Frogs

Sometimes people will ask me: “What do you like to do?” And maybe I will say: “I like to be outdoors.” or “I'm kind of a club rat.” But it's a lie, worse yet, a fabrication.

I like to stay inside, with the doors locked up, the windows latched tightly, and music playing loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to disturb others. Most importantly of all, I like to be left alone. I don't like the company of others. I find it to be very much like a man in a straight jacket. Your arms are confined to mere shrugging motions, and the only thoughts allowed into your head are plans of escape. I experience every symptom of loneliness, yet I am not alone.

But I should explain, you see...

I was floating chest up in a pool of cold water. I remember asking why it was always cold? When you slice your wrists, are you so worried about the temperature? Then I thought about hot water, how good it would have felt right then, curling over my ankles with spirals of warmth. Then I thought about the cut. I thought about the rub burns from Jiu Jitsu, how after they soak in warm water, how badly they burnt. I couldn't imagine an open wound. But I could rest assured in the knowledge that I was in cold water, not because of an informed decision, or because I researched it. I did it because of a decision that a Hollywood producer made during the production of an art film I saw when I should have been enrolled in college.

I always think about how embarrassing it would be if you failed a suicide attempt. People would feel obligated to come and see you, and spend actual time looking into your face with nothing but caring thoughts because that's what brings us together. Crisis. Someone almost biting the big one, catching a wave to the undertow, the big goodbye, salutations, farewell, and goodnight.

But I wanted to be alone. That was the difference. I concentrated on the song playing in the living room. I put it on repeat, so the neighbors would complain. I didn't want to rot away in a pool of muddy corpse sludge. I wanted to have a nice looking corpse. One that people would say, man, what a handsome guy. He had everything to live for. Sob, manly hug, turn, and wipe eye with instep of thumb for maximum coverage.

I had nothing to live for. I had a job. A job is no reason to live. It's a reason to die. The water was turning to merlot around me, and I could hear old Layne crowing:

“Why's it have to be thissa way?

“Beeeeee thissa wayaaaayayyyyyyyy?”

And at that moment, when my eyes went black, I saw my first birthday. I didn't retain the memory so young, so in effect, it never happened, but somehow, just then, I saw it. It was as if I had stored it away somewhere, just forgotten where I put it.

So there it was, playing out in front of me like an old reel to reel projector playing on the wall of my skull. The color of the eighties, and the innocence of being too young to understand the crushing burden I have thrust upon my parents just by being born. This was one of the few innocent moments in my life, and it was gorgeous. Everyone was smiling. Relatives I hadn't seen since that day were there. They hired a clown. A clown! This was a celebration of all the good things you bring. You bring life, the potential of life, and the sorrow of loss, but you don't stay that way, and suddenly... I didn't want to die. I wanted to live.

I wanted to change my life forever and turn over a new leaf. If I lived through this, I would never take another day for granted. I would be the life of every party, the one everyone wants to know. Of course it was already too late for that, because the room was already black, and I had passed beyond some veil which covered me in shadow. All the light in the room was getting further away from me, receding back to a vanishing point in a black rippling fog. After a few moments the walls started to shake, and before I could react the water was pulled from the tub, and became part of the singularity forming at the base of the bathroom. The world was fluxing, and I felt my head, my body, then my legs being pulled into a tiny ball of light. The light grew brighter, and brighter, until I could not see my feet, then my waist, then my hands, and it was finally like falling face first into snow, but keeping your eyes open.

And then we exploded.

America: Stockton California

An example of the deteriorating cities of America. Stockton was one of the first cities in California to officially declare bankruptcy, but this city's decline was well in the making quite some time ago. I went to Stockton with eyes full of diamonds, and well wishes. I was sent there to film a fight which would air at a later date on HBO. I was excited because not only had I not seen a fight in a while, but I also hadn't been behind a broadcast camera in an even longer time. When I arrived at the hotel, I was greeted by an electrically sealed door at the entrance to the lobby. Now, I'm not that well versed, but I have never seen this done before. When I asked the person at the courtesy desk if there was anything interesting close by that I could photograph at night I was told: “That's not a good idea. It gets pretty bad at night.” Not exactly a glowing endorsement. In fact I learned that the only places open in this city at night were the strip clubs.

So I waited until the morning came, and rose early with the sun to get some pictures when I came across the most peculiar thing. A giant radio tower, some 50 feet tall, tension wires and all, right next to two houses, and surrounded by apartment buildings. A lady saw me taking pictures, and asked me if I worked for the city. We exchanged words, and I learned that she had been finding dead birds next to the tower, and her mother was admitted to the hospital for migraines. She said the tower was put in when the city went tits up. Seems like Stockton's new gold rush is a land grab.

The thing I noticed in my walk about, was the lack of a police presence, and just how quiet the city was. Then I stumbled across the court house. It was empty. No one going in or out of the thing. It showed all the signs of neglect without the obvious boarding of windows. I later found out that among other things, the city had to let go of it's police force, and with it, it's courts, and in cases of dire emergency, they call in officers from other cities. The only security presence I found were rent-a-cops, and even they seem disinterested.

I had the distasteful pleasure of accompanying one of the photographers of this job to one of the aforementioned strip bars, in the guise of looking for a ring card girl. The humanity of these places. The desperation evident in every single eye on stage. The sheer business like attitude of some, I couldn't get out of that place quick enough. (Not a terribly big fan of these places as it is) If this was evidence of where the place had gone, and where it will soon be, Stockton in a few years will be a sink hole.
The silence, and darkness in the recesses of a place forgotten. Stockton is an interesting case study in the decline of the American city, and if it is any indication of what's to come, I pray for the future of Los Angeles.