Luke Ford

I am sobered by how difficult it is to get people to my show on emotional addiction called “Eroticized Rage“. About 15 people showed up, half were from my class. I’m sobered by how much work I have to do with my show. I want to create distinct scenes and make them come alive, not just narrate my story.
It’s weird doing a show about overcoming addiction while still coming from an addicted place.
I was taken aback that there was so little audience response to the things I was saying. They seemed stiff and uncomfortable. I saw them yawning and shifting in their chairs.
I want to make it more physical, to actually do the things I’m talking about. Experience the rage and my other emotions in the moment instead of coming across as disconnected. I want to create more individual scenes with distinct beginnings middles and ends so people feel they are there in the moment with me, with more details and less narration.
I want to act it out more, to try to embody other characters aside from my dad.
I want it to be a one-man play and less of a speech.

My previous shows.

I’m watching my show from last night and I’m struck by how I’m rushing my words. I’m rarely in the moment with what I am saying. I’m frightened and rushing. I wonder why I can’t slow down and experience what I’m saying, emotionally connect to it, receive the emotional feedback of my audience and relate to them? Instead I have this material to get out and it’s almost as though my audience is irrelevant to me. I hate it when speakers treat their audience like fodder but I might be doing this.

I still feel as tense as I did last night on stage. I think I’m daunted by all the work ahead (on myself, on my writing and on my performance).

I’ve never for a minute doubted that my parents loved me and were dedicated to doing right by me. That confidence allows me to do things like my play and my blogs. Us Fords have an unshakable sense in our own righteousness when expressed in our speech but it is accompanied by an underlying conviction of our utter worthlessness and undeservingness of love and our abject fear of strong emotions, human complication, and negotiating relationships.

I’ve never had conscious resentment against my parents. Yet I have this volcano of rage just under the surface of my consciousness that surely relates to my childhood. So I’m trying to untangle this in therapy, locate my feelings, and then I can move on to release them. Making categorical moral imperatives such as “You can’t blame your parents” sound great, but I’m not sure how useful they are if they lead you to ignore and push away your feelings (conscious or not) and to deny your reality of how other people’s decisions affected you, though getting stuck in resentment is a death sentence. Get clear and release is my goal.

I wish that five minutes into my show last night, I could’ve said, “This is harder than I thought. I want to tell a dirty joke right now and feel relief.”

YYY says: I am glad that I follow your blog, because it made it easier to follow the path your life has taken as laid out in the show. You may want to work in more expository and transitional parts to make your story more accessible. This is extremely difficult to do within the time limits of the one man play structure.

I don’t know if you watched Julia Sweeney’s “God said ha” play, but while she is able to paint a word picture of her parents that really subjects them to ridicule and how harmful much of what they taught her was, she also is able to convey deep fondness and compassion for them. I know from speaking with you, that at least at this stage of your life, you have fondness, respect, insight, understanding and gratitude toward your father and (step) mother, but that did not come across at any part of the play.

So there’s this woman whose dad is a rabbi. When she’s on her own, guys flock to her and flirt with her and hug her, but when her dad comes around, they’re suddenly very proper and then they bugger off. It reminds me that we all have a force field. When this rabbi comes around, people are suddenly very respectful. When I come around, people tell dirty jokes and ask how to get into certain industries.

I remember when I became Editor of my high school newspaper in 1983, and it bothered me when my friend Barry on the staff would rough house with me in the newspaper room. I wanted to be treated with more respect.

* You learn more when you regard people’s behavior as rational, purposeful and filled with meaning rather than dismissing them as ignorant and inept. People are usually doing the best they can. They’ve learned from reward and punishment over a lifetime. So if they’re acting strangely in your view, try to understand what they get out of it. Why am I so weird on FB and on my blogs and videos? Because I never learned to attach normally. This is my clumsy way of attaching to others.

* Washington DC – unless you have to be there for work, why would anyone live there? All the charm of a northern city with all the efficiency of a southern city. A sage asks me: David Stockman has a new book out. Is it good for the Jews? Also, is this article in the Washington Post, in which certain invidious comparison are made between Jew-run GW University and Jesuit-run Georgetown U (with far far fewer Jewish students than GW), good for the Jews? GW seems like a university for rich (largely New York) Jews who couldn’t make into the Ivy Leagues and for rich foreigners.

* Alexander Technique, Orthodox Judaism, working out, study etc can be such overwhelmingly hard work that you’re tempted to despair, but if you just show up to your lesson or to work or to the gym, and even if you just go through the motions, you’ll almost always get closer to where you want to go.

* My teacher keeps pushing me: Who are you talking to in your play? Who are you trying to connect to? Do you want to shock them? Push them away? I keep saying, I’m talking to my friend Joey Kurtzman.

* It’s easy to go your whole life in Orthodox Judaism and have no connection to God.

* What do high-achieving women get out of dating me? They get to shore up their self-esteem by dating the Great Underachiever. They can always look at my life and feel better about themselves. They can feel emotionally safe by having contempt for me.

* My daily mantra: I want to write what I want to write and I don’t care about the consequences.

* The goal for the second half of my life — change the trajectory from social disconnection to connection.

* Having someone cheat on you is like mourning a death. Who you saw yourselves as a couple is dead. (In Treatment)

* I get in trouble everywhere I go for saying hostile things. Whenever I can speak freely, I get in digs at others. It’s the socially acceptable expression of my eroticized rage.

* There’s almost nothing you can’t get away with so long as you talk like a gentleman.

* You learn more when you regard people’s behavior as rational, purposeful and filled with meaning rather than dismissing them as ignorant and inept. People are usually doing the best they can. They’ve learned from reward and punishment over a lifetime. So if they’re acting strangely in your view, try to understand what they get out of it. Why am I so weird on FB? Because I never learned to attach normally. This is my clumsy way of attaching to others.

* Does anyone else get depressed about the lack of change in the rest of your life from years of studying Alexander Technique? I have little body pain anymore. Everything I do easier. I’m less reactive. I’m more open. But that’s about it. I’m glad I studied the Technique and I feel privileged to teach it but if you have personality disorders etc, Alexander Technique ain’t gonna shift them much.

In 2003, I have this amazing first date. We meet for coffee. We talk for two hours. I buy us sandwiches. Then she gets in my serial killer van and we drive up the 1 to Malibu and walk hand in hand on the beach and then we sit on the rocks and I lean over and kiss her and she’s shocked but she likes it. Then, after two more dates, she calls me back and breaks up with me. She said our first date was amazing, but then this sarcastic mocking side of me came out on our next two dates and she can’t handle it. We went on to break up another five times over the next year until finally, I hurry her out of the restaurant so we can get to see BIG FISH on time and she had explicitly told me she wanted them to wrap up her dessert to go but I rushed her away before that could happen.

The worst thing I ever did to her, the most painful, was when she was sick at her parent’s home in Malibu and she needed some soup and crackers and she asked me to bring them to her. I asked her if there wasn’t someone else near by who could do that. I wanted to go to a party that night and I had writing to do all day. I’ve never been one to drive 20 miles to bring soup and crackers. I’m not big on making extravagant gestures with my time.