Luke Ford

Last night was the last class in a six month program to create a solo show.

LIST THE FEARS AND DOUBTS THAT KEEP ARISING:

* I have a hard time getting as excited about describing the good things I’m doing as opposed to recounting the nasty things I did. When I talk about sex, I light up. When I talk about my sobriety, I drone. There’s just a depression and sadness about me when I’m not acting out.
* I’m struggling turning my show into a series of distinct scenes. I find it easier to tell what happened rather than to show what happened.
* I fear droning. I fear monotony. I fear not having enough action and song and dance to keep things interesting.
* I fear no one will show up.

LIST WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT MY CREATIVE PROCESS

* I’m learning to connect from the stage to my audience.
* I’m learning the importance of making my story come alive. There needs to be action and reaction, dramatic movement, change, rising tension.
* I’m learning how hard this is.
* I refuse to use class to rehearse my play. I always want to break new ground. I don’t like hearing people do the same thing over and over. I don’t want to subject anyone to that.
* I’ve learned the relief of setting aside my play for weeks at a time.
* I’ve learned the power of vulnerability, how it sucks people in and connects you.
* Analysis is a powerful lure for me but it takes me out of the present moment.
* I hate to listen to anyone lecture me (unless they’re a member of the few I’ve selected for this).
* How hard it is for me to keep up sustained eye contact with my audience. I keep wanting to look away.
* It’s difficult for me to be on stage and performing and to simultaneously come up with new material.

LIST MY TRIUMPHS

* I performed my play Feb. 3 despite adverse circumstances.
* I love the feel of connecting with my audience. I love it when everyone is listening and interested in what I’m saying. I love showing sides of myself that people haven’t seen before, that they don’t realize existed.
* I loved going on a couple of podcasts to talk about my play. It helped me to clarify what it is about.
* I love it when people have questions for me about what I’ve said.

WHAT I WANT MY AUDIENCE TO FEEL AFTER MY SHOW

* That they learned something useful. That they were moved and provoked to re-examine some of their comfortable ways of thinking that don’t serve them. That they looked at some of their relationships with new insight.
* That it made them want to try psycho-therapy and/or 12-step work.
* That they want to tell other people about my show and to take me to dinner and invite me to cool parties and to fly me around the world and to give me a cool job/TV show/magazine column/book deal.
* That they want to be friends. That they feel a connection to me.

WHAT DO I WANT TO FEEL WHEN I TAKE MY BOW?

* That I did my best. I want to feel satisfied and exhilarated.

* My moral bank account is stuck in a Cypriot Holding Company and I can’t make the withdrawals I need.

* My deepest fear is that I am not competent at life, that I am not up to its routine challenges. I sense from women I’ve known well that their deepest fear is that they are not worthy of love.

* I am meeting a lot of lawyers whose wives berate them for not working hard enough. One bloke won’t send his wife a link during the work day to an article she’d like for fear she’ll reprimand him for slacking off. I don’t want this. I want my wife to pay the bills and I’ll berate her for slacking off.

* I’m not just a wallet that women can insert themselves into at whim.

* I am embarrassed to have written so much crap but was encouraged to hear today that it read like a “maze.”

* At work, I’m asked by a bloke: “You got any picks for my March madness bracket?”
I lean back in my chair, put my hand behind my head, arch my back and say, “Yeah, I took some pics for you last night.”
“I can’t get a straight guy out of you,” said the lawyer, “can’t get a straight answer either.”

* I hear a bellowing from my boss’s office.
I walk in and inquire, “What’s troubling you, sir?”
“You!” he roars.

* David Choe was a terrific challenge Tuesday night. As the podcast host, he’s alternately brutally honest and just plain brutal, but he gave me waters and all the coconut juice I could drink and he ordered me a town car home and so I felt like a big shot at the end of the night and couldn’t sleep.

* I get fleeting strength from the likes, comments and Klout of my FB. What’s the psychological term for this kind of propping up? I also get strength from being adored. Is this primarily histrionic PD or narcissistic PD or borrowed functioning?

* What are the most important realizations I’ve had about women over the course of my life? Please list them out in chronological order. It’s for my new book.

* We’re in a trade war with China and bras need to be our first line of defense. (West Wing Season 5. Ep. 15)

* 3yo girl to middle aged folks: I feel sorry for you, you’ll be dead soon.

* Whenever I hear my fellow Jews complaining (88% of my waking hours), and I feel like I can get away with it, I say, “This is how the Holocaust got started.” Today I said that after complaints about an un-repaired tear in the carpet.

* I can’t imagine respecting anyone who likes Justin Timberlake’s music. And I love pop music.

* Boss: “Is it hot in here?”
Luke: “Do you want me to change into something a little more comfortable?”
Boss: “Yeah. A noose.”

* Told my boss, “There is no limit to how happy God wants you to be.”

He says, “Then why did He send you to me?”

* I’ve got my haircuts down to twice a year. It seems like a waste of money to have more. Now I’m ready for Passover.

* Has there ever been a man who said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

* I’m a doting nurturing boyfriend when I’m not in the grip of my eroticized rage.

* My girlfriends typically want to emasculate me. Makes it hard for me to sleep.

* At what point in a relationship does a couple exchange FB/email passwords?

* When I was on lithium, I smelt metallic. Now I just smell like Old Spice spilt on an ancient Torah scroll.

* With every status update, I forfeit a potential wife. My perceptions are too keen for comfort.

* Someone just walked in with his walky talky on and I felt myself looking forward to dressing him down and saying, “I’m trying to run a law office here.” If you’re looking forward to giving admonition, you shouldn’t, and so I didn’t, even though the guilty party is probably in this country illegally.

* Who stands to gain in your family if you mess up your life?

* I know too many religious people whose only interest in you is if you will adopt their religion. I loathe people like this.

* I had such rage against girls in middle school and high school because they would always be asking me, “Do you have any gum?” And they would never offer to pay. They would just suck me dry of my gum and other goodies. Also, when girls would get mad at me, they’d punch me but I was never allowed to hit them back. This still boils me up. How come women/rabbis can beat me but I can’t beat ’em back? I need to call my sponsor.

* My buddy asks: “What do you really get from the Jews?”
Luke: “Aggravation.”
Buddy: “You’re an anti-Semite who just wants to get close to the target.”

* Luke wants to feel as excited about the good things he’s dedicated to as the selfish exploitative bad things that lured him in the past.

* When girls are hot, they have the world at their feet. Then they hit the wall (some hit at 17, most by 25) and I feel such joy when they can no longer skate by on their looks. All these women who rejected me have hit the wall and never married.

Here’s what I remember from childhood:

* He’s a fine Christian gentleman but he doesn’t read enough.
* Be sure your sins will find you out.
* You might only learn through pain.
* I don’t give a cracker for this world.
* This will hurt me more than it will hurt you.