almost exactly like working with the president of Afghanistan

sam here.

while reading Dan’s post about hot afghanis and his work with the president of afghanistan, i couldn’t help but remark upon the parallels between his work with asian leaders and dignitaries, and my own work surfing craigslist for potential employers between visits to gold’s gym to catch up on the news and spend an hour and a half keeping my Unemployment Panic at bay by sweating a lot.

i bet Dan sweats while working with hot afghani security guards and all those sexy heads of state.

aside from remarking on how totally alike Dan’s life and my life are right now, i also have had an interesting past week and a half participating in this annual asian american arts festival in san francisco. the festival’s called APAture: a window on the art of asian pacific americans, and is produced by sf-based APA arts org Kearny Street Workshop (KSW); this year, in fact, is the 10th year that KSW has produced the APAture festival. i was actually on staff at this org for several years, and just transitioned off of staff in June (leading to my current unemployed state, in fact), but i still serve on the board, and was also one of seven featured artists in the festival this year (organizers participating as artists is part of the general philosophy, so don’t give me no shite over any perceived conflict of interest; it’s all understood and discussed, etcetc). so after spending a summer in new york (with Dan, without whose daily presence i am now much bereft) producing and performing a solo play as part of the NY international fringe festival, i returned to SF with the crushing pressure to do something totally awesome and amazing for APAture – even though it wasn’t on most people’s radars. it didn’t matter that it didn’t matter to anyone else; it mattered to me. made me lose sleep. gave me a reason for being. an excuse to delay actually finding a job; it gave me a purpose. i devoted hours and hours of every day cramming to write something new, something amazing, something never-seen-before, for a single 45-minute performance on wednesday, september 24th…a performance for which i would be paid only a (much appreciated) pittance. but this whole APAture performance took on a significance of its own; i had to do well, or i’d fail at everything, even if no one came; this performance somehow represented everything – my past, my present, my future potential…

and i was convinced it would go badly. the days before i couldn’t believe i’d written something so sloppy, that i was planning on performing something so raw, so unrehearsed, so nebulous in nature – i kept restructuring the structure, re-writing the characters, re-writing the scenes, up until the performance…and NO ONE CARED. but i cared. so, whatever.

anyway, as it turned out, it went over well. i even youtubed it (although i bet Dan hasn’t watched it yet, because he’s “working” in “another country” with “heads of state”. whatever, ‘ho).

and i realized soon after how little it meant to most people. but to me it was something of an amazing moment – and i don’t usually use the word “amazing” to describe an experience unless i’m mocking something, somehow; but this time i’m not mocking it.

i guess what i am saying is: this moment, even though it was expressed in a very public space with an actual audience, actually operated more as an incredibly intimate epiphany moment for me.

no one would ever know.

that’s all for now, in my tiny narrow self-absorbed environment.

and back to dan and his global tour of Shit That Matters.

p.s. i’m totally beating Dan at having more links in my posts.

p.p.s. currently reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. it’s a fucking horrifying and fascinating and incredible read so far. more on that later.