Authors Electric

I might still be trapped in a Groundhog Day loop as you read this post on February 3, but at least I will have gotten out a message. Lately, I keep rewriting the same passages over and over, only to find myself back at the beginning like a monk on an M.C. Escher staircase . My inamorata says I'm probably rushing the process. By her – and any other sane person's – reckoning, I've only been at this particular work for a few months, but I'm convinced it has been years, maybe eons. She reminds me that I've complained about being looped before. Maybe it's a nice way to tell me I'm loopy, but it kind of makes my point. “It happens with my paintings too,” she says. “You'll break through. You always do.” I'm not so sure. You never know what's going to work until it does. The late Harold Ramis who produced and directed Groundhog Day, was all over the place about how many years Phil Connors, the hapless cynical weatherman played by Bill M...

Back in the 80s, when Madonna was like a virgin, Michael Jackson thrilled, Milli Vanilli lip-synced and Ronald Reagan practiced plausible deniablity, I tested the murky bottom of clinical  depression. Everything seemed blacker than black. The view from my San Francisco apartment only cued me to its exorbitant rent and guilt about feeling sorry for myself in such splendid surroundings.  My shrink advised me do at least one positive thing each day, even if it were only to write one sentence. Frequently I couldn't even manage that. Oddly enough, however, I kept dragging myself to improv workshops twice a week, sometimes three. Madonna, 1987 I had signed up, paid my money. The classes, usually with eight or ten attendees – non-actors like myself – and a coach, took place at Fort Mason – a cluster of San Francisco Bay-side, concrete-block, World War II loading docks converted to a cultural center, with classrooms, small theaters and galleries. I would arrive at 7 pm., num...