And now: I get to talk about ME!

Answers to Lauralu's Questions!

1. you’ve received numerous recognitions for “i hate this” - in your heart of hearts, which one do you secretly find most flattering?

Flattering? That's tough. Flatter: To please or gratify the vanity of: “What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering” (George Bernard Shaw). Cleveland Scene qualified their "Best Actor" nod by noting 2003 was "a year with surpisingly few stellar performances by male actors." In calling the show one of the "Top Ten of 2003" the Plain Dealer credited it for being "never soupy or exploitative" - true, but icky to read. And the New York Times said I have "the somber, cavernous face of an old man."

Like how I denigrate myself while simultaneously taking the opportunity to detail all these honors? Shaw may well have said, "What really flatters Dave is Dave."

The most flattering was probably the Poets & Writers Event last year. My work was featured in the company of many of Cleveland's great writers, and in that way I was recognized as one of them. I don't believe I am actually anywhere near as good a writer of any of them, but I can't deny it's a good feeling.

Having said all that, I have to acknowledge how uncomfortable I feel being "flattered" by the attention, the success this show has achieved. Generally, I have taken each award or special notice as a chance to further promote the show - to get more performances, to take it to more audiences. Kind criticsm feels good, to be sure, but that's never been why I do this show, which I am sure you all know and understand.

A large number of people stayed to speak with me following that last gig at MetroHealth. What they said to me made me feel the best way I can about performing this show again and again. And that's not appealing to my vanity. That's knowing I did something good for someone else, that it was worth it, and letting people know they aren't alone in their grief.

And I get to talk about Calvin.

2. which of your birthday compatriots would you rather be: mick jagger or george bernard shaw? do tell.

Would I rather be? I'd rather be Jagger because he's Mick Frigging Jagger, because in spite of any artistic pretentions I might have, being blindingly rich and violating Marianne Faithful with Mars bar trumps pretty much everything. I'd even apologize for doing that cover version of "Dancing in the Streets" with David Bowie (though I would not apologize for doing Bowie.)

Okay, seriously, I'd rather be Shaw. As a playwright who can't seem to write more than two plays, however, I will never be as profilic as Shaw. On the other hand, I do not have a pathological fear of the female sex organ, so I have that over him. I wish I wrote letters to the editor, I admire his music criticism, I share his view of spiritualism and politics ... maybe that just means I am more like him than Jagger.

And there's that cool quote about flattery.

There's finally something to be said for longevity. The man died at the age of ninety - when he fell from a ladder while fixing his house. But then, isn't Mick celebrating his eightieth with this tour?

3. you’ve created/acted in/seen more theater than most of the rest of us. if you were to recommend one show i should see if i ever had the chance (besides yours, which i’d like to see again), what would it be?

My first impulse is to say Hamlet, because it's the best play ever written, and the one open to the most interpretation. If you can't see it onstage, see Gibson's version, see Branagh's version, find the video of Richard Burton performing it, see the one with Ethan Hawke in it, watch Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Strange Brew."

But that's not it. The play you should see, this or any weekend you happen to be in Chicago, is Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (an attempt to perform 30 plays in sixty minutes) by the Neo Futurists. I first saw that show in 1991, on the drive home from an aborted attempt to live in Los Angeles (think of it as a three-day walk-of-shame, that drive) and the show literally changed my life.

Apart from being a tremednously exciting experience, and always very funny, TML dares to respect the intelligence of its audience and offer up insightful, original, and politically and emotionally charged material every single week (since 1988.). And unlike so many other movements of its kind, they never fail to make the audience feel like they are part of the joke.

Their philosophy of presenting the actor as themself, with a minimum of artifice and a maximum of honesty, has found its way into pretty much everything I have done since - including, and especially IHT, which, you might notice, is also an attempt to perform thirty plays in sixty minutes.

4. if we were going to take a cross-country trip tomorrow, what route should we take to see the best of ordinary america? what would the must-stop stops be?

"Ordinary America" is everywhere, only rarely any of us see it. When I was 20 I spent spring break driving to see a dying grandfather (the other one - he only lived to be 94) and an estranged girlfriend, both of whom lived in Florida at the time. I took Interstates the entire journey, which I regret to this day. Everything looks the same from an Interstate, the way it does from any of the chain restaurants I ate at on that trip.

Eating alone in a Denny's. How depressing is that? And to think I had only just read William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. I read it, I didn't get it.

Take the two-laners, whenever it is practical, and sometimes when it is not. I would not have visited Twain's gravesite last year if we had not, and we never would have seen the Mummies of the Insane.

And if there is a law we live by when taking long road trips, even when on the Interstate, it is absolutely no chain restaurants. This is not simply some anti-corporate decision - but if you just drive five minutes or less past the clutch of familiar national restaurants, gas stations and hotels, you will more than likely find the city that it grew up next to, and they will have a main street and on that main street there will be a local establishment that has been there for decades where all the locals eat, and you know, it is a very good chance the food and atmosphere is much more enjoyable there. And you will learn something about somewhere you didn't know existed.

Now, as to your original question, I will be downright dull and suggest the original Route 66, or as much of it as still exists. Starting in Chicago, it goes to St. Louis, down to Missouri - Oklahoma City looks oh, so pretty - you’ll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona (don’t forget Wynonna) Kingman, Barstow, blah blah blah.

Seriously, however, two-laning it through the Midwest, and then down through the desert for several days is some Real America I'd like to check out.

5. you take your music pretty seriously. is there a frustrated musician in there?

To think I have never joined a band. Sometimes I think my life is The Truman Show and everything is going to happen to me just once, you know, to keep the ratings. Sure, I've been reviewed in the New York Times, and had a role as a featured extra on a national sit-com. I've also been divorced and lost a child.

But no, there isn't part of me that has ever even seriously fantisized about being a musician.

I am a frustrated club kid. I fantasize about smoking cigarettes, taking E and Viagara, going to clubs and dancing and screwing until daylight.

Just so you know who you're dealing with. In these fantasies, I am also gay.

Not On the Road

We love road trips. Ten years ago this summer Toni and I took off on our first great drive. The destination was my brother's place in St. Paul, but this was the first time the journey itself was the experience.

Above: "The Mikado" a giant, coin-operated music machine.
Below: The Infinity Room, a cantilevered glass room that extends 156 feet above Wyoming Valley - it scared me.

We stopped in to see Ben and Pam in Chicago for a weekend - the weekend before the famous heatwave that killed 500 people there - and continued onto Milwaukee, Madison and (as the temperature rose) finally Spring Green, WI where we took in not only Taliesin, but also the House on the Rock where we not only realized our deep and hitherto unspoken adoration for kitsch, but Toni developed mild heatstroke.

I can't freaking believe that was a decade ago.

If we did not have a newborn, we still would be prevented from making even a brief excursion this summer, as I have secured a job acting, yay oh me. I have been taking in the plans of others, trying to suggest great places to go next year, or even in the middle of the winter when I have a big break.

The summer of 2000 was supposed to be our last big road trip "before we have kids." That first kid never came, and we have already discovered that we can drive long distances with Zelda (we went to Maine and back - on two-laners) without any of us going crazy.

Our first stop in 2000 was Cave City to see Mammoth Caves. Toni made a special effort to find unusual places to stay, and so our first night out was spent in a cement "tee pee" at Wigwam Village #2. A relic from the old Route 66, the places was owned (at the time) by, ironically or not, a Native American named John Ivan (isn't that redundant?)

The ring of small, cone-shaped buildings - each one is a single unit, some for two, some family-sized - surrounds a grassy impression with a humble playground set. We sat on the bench situated outside our room, made friends with a very pregnant and friendly dog, and watched other people's kids run like hell all over the little playground.

And that was six years ago.

This weekend This American Life rebroadcast their Notes On Camp show, from 1998. The closing music is that fin de siecle, one-hit wonder "Mmmm-Bop" by, you know, that band. Won't that make you feel old.

So, in order to imagine I am on the road, while in actuality I am polishing swords (for my job at GLTF) or running laundry (also for GLTF) I have been checking out some of my favorite road-oriented episodes of TAL:

Road Trip! Self-explanatory.
Conventions Perhaps the first TAL episode I ever heard.
Welcome to America Because I love New York.

Ironically, while I am spending time creating this elaborate entry, I really should be working on a travel piece for Cleve Mag. Maybe I should get to that. Have a lovely Fourth of July weekend, yo.

What's On David's iPod?

Winners
7 Seconds of Love
(See the video!)

So here it is, the image you have all been waiting for. This is how I broke my heel, and took myself out of the "running", so to speak. It's a promotion from Great Lakes Theater Fest., Cleveland Opera and Ohio Ballet. The ballerina is superimposed, I am not, that man is really fat.

Yes, I am dressed like Shakespeare. That's Mr. Shakespeare to you.

But I did try running today. Gently. Very, very gently. I was dressed like a normal person.

Ohio Excellence in Journalism

Sponsored by the Press Club of Cleveland
Friday, June 17, 2005

Radio: Use of Sound
First Place: Around Noon: The Naked Truth: Spencer Tunick in Cleveland
David Hansen, Toni K. Thayer, Dave DeOreo, WCPN 90.3 FM
"A visual story told well with on the scene audio recording. You felt that you were with David and Toni experiencing their feelings and emotion."

The question was: Do you take a four-week old baby to an awards banquet attended by everyone in the Ohio media establishment? The answer is, of course, yes. Orson was extremely well-behaved (unlike, say, the staff of Cleveland Scene) and when he finally did lose patience near the end, it helped that emcee Jack Hourigan had already met him and assured everyone he is a beautiful baby with great parents.

Thank, Jack. Hope I pronounced your name right.

If you have never heard our Tunick audio diary, you can still find it here. You can also find that link on my own Spencer Tunick Page, which, for some odd reason, gets more hits than any other page on my site.

Sanctuary

(Be sure to read all the way through for some big news.)

Is it Thursday? I woke up a week ago today feeling first as though I had stomach poisoning, and then realized I had a flu bug. Since Zelda had been writhing in unhappiness the week before with some nasty virus, our schedules had been entirely boofed. Then I spent all day last Thursday sweating and in pain.

Friday I felt much better, only now it was Toni's turn. Our trip to Athens to introduce Orson to her family had to be put off another day.

We did get out on Saturday morning, our first long car trip for four, and everyone was in good spirits. I hope this is a trend.

My in-laws place in Athens has long been a sanctuary for me, really dating back to late 1994 when they took me in, no questions asked, even though the situations surrounding the origins of mine and Toni's relationship were ... awkward. Yes, let's say awkward and leave it there.

The Wolfs have an old farm house, which dates back to the Civil War (or at least the very core of the building does) which has a decor you would expect from old hippies/bikers. It's cozy and funky and I've always felt welcome there.

It has been disappointing of late that I have been stressed out the past few times we have visited. In September, at Toni's grandfather Calvin's memorial service, our diaper bag was swiped, in which we had placed wallets, sunglasses, a digital camera. At the holidays, Toni was ill and we had to stay a day or so longer than planned - and I had nothing to read. I was a cranky boy.

Toni's mom, Connie, is probably (okay, not probably) the person closest to us in our grief over Calvin's death. She has shown this in a remarkable number of ways over the years. Bringing our bags in on Saturday, I noticed a special arrangment under the staircase.

There was a mirror, and the little rocking chair - perfect for tiny butts like Zelda's and before hers Toni's and Connie's - and a little altar. A clock. An otter. And Grandfather Calvin's ashes.

What a sweet, sweet little arrangement. Thank you, Con. We love you so much.

This trip was very, very relaxing. And I read an entire book, Forever by Pete Hamill (not to be confused with the one by Judy Blume.) Many, I have just be eating books this year. I think I am trying to intimidate myself into writing something. In fact, I know that's what I am doing.

I really enjoyed this book. Weird, I don't want to say anything about it at all, because I don't want anyone else to know what happens in it the way I did. I heard about it when it came out and finally got around to reading it. I was driven to complete it in a short period of time the way I rarely am, probably because knowing (in a way) how it ends, or more precisely, when it ends, filled everything that came before with a poignancy (there's that word) that would have otherwise been missing.

Hmn. That's a reason to tell people what happens in the book. I am perplexed.

But, unlike, say, That Davinci Book, Hamill's novel is filled with interesting characters, and a story that is compelling and a message that I respond to. "More life," as they say.

And it is a novel that doesn't make me despise all things Irish, which is truly a feat.

What is up with Alanis Morrisette releasing a tenth anniversary, acoustic version of Ragged Little Pill? Can you think of a more pathetic admission of defeat?

Anyhow,it was a lovely, extended weekend. Zelda got to run around naked pretty much 24/7, and everyone got to meet the newbie. There's about a million things I need to cover at work before summer camp starts on Monday, and no one in the house is sick, in what feels like a very long time.

Oh, and here's the big news: I HATE THIS will be featured as part of the 2006 Perinatal Bereavement Conference, October 12 - 15, 2006 in Chicago, IL. I first heard there was such a thing shortly after performing the staged reading in Aug., 2002. It is bi-annual, and I biffed the chance to be in the 2004 conference in Las Vegas. It's very exciting to finally have this opportunity.

And Chicago? I love Chicago!

Psalms 23

Anne Bancroft's death prompted me to read the origial NY Times review of The Elephant Man. I have long thought of this movie as one of my favorite films ever, but what surprised me what how reading a movie review of it brought up a flush of emotion.

The most amusing part of Vincent Canby's review is this passage: The Elephant Man ... is the first major commercial film to be directed by Mr. Lynch, whose only previous feature is Eraserhead, a cult movie I've not seen but which, apparently, is also about an outsider.

Yes. Aren't they all.

It was also shocking to remember that this was Lynch's first commercial release. Though I have enjoyed subsequent work of his, it also makes me scratch my head and wonder what happened.

I am glad I had the opportunity to perform the part of John Merrick in the play version (which is an entirely different beast than the film) back in 1992 at Willoughby Fine Arts. My first real chance to act after graduating from college, and luckily it was in an out-of-the-way venue that was devoid of media scrutiny. Just theater patrons who were stunned to see something other than Annie.

The story of John Merrick, used or abused as a metaphor, is the perfect tale for for a Christian society. Just because you are a physical monstrosity, abandoned by your family, hated by society, beaten, laughed at, screamed at, brought to a state of entire degeneration, with faith and hope you can still find peace, grace and forgiveness.

It helps if someone with lots of money takes care of you. And you die young before you can really become bitter. But that's just being cynical.

Having said that, there is something about this story, about this man, which just makes me freeze, just stop and contemplate. How horrible. How wonderful. Yes, I aspire to be like that. To be able to forgive anything. To be entirely selfless. To be able to find that kind of peace. That faith. That hope. That God.

Calvin's Playlist

For the discerning IHT fan.

Composer extraordinaire Dennis Yurich and I have been working together since the first Vampyres gig back in 1997. I didn't know him except to have seen his band Queue Up play, and was a little nervous about telling him what I wanted. There were two songs requiring original music, I wrote the lyrics and he was to write the music.

In theater, as in a lot of art forms, you have to be very careful about flat-out telling someone what you want something to be like. "Say it like this ..." is considered the worst form of direction. It is usually the form my own direction takes, but I never said I was actor-friendly.

So I was talking around the "feeling" I wanted the first song, COME, to sound like. I wanted it to be, uh, dark ... edgy, uhm ...

"Is there any particular artist you want it to sound like?" Dennis asked, a very patient man.

"Oh," I said. "Yeah. Nine Inch Nails."

"Any particular song?"

I hesitated.

"Closer?" I said, weakly.

"Okay."

Dennis is really cool.

When the time came to compose the music for IHT, I gave Dennis a CD with everything I had going on in my head. These are songs that just made sense at the time, some that have associations that pre-date Calvin's birth, and some that don't. Seeing as I have a lot of free-time today, looking after a two year-old with a stomach flu, I thought I would share.

Purchases made through available links to amazon.com will benefit me.

Calvin's Theme (free mp3 download!)

Dennis created a short tune that is repeated a few times throughout the show, first as a distorted "voice" - to me it sounds like Calvin singing through one of the many machines Toni was hooked up to while in the hospital. The same melody is presented on guitar for moments like his memorial, and the closing, "curtain-call" music.

Hospital Themes

For all themes taking place in the hospital, I wanted electronic music. Something suggesting a fast heartbeat.

1. Everything In Its Right Place Radiohead Kid A
2. Idioteque Radiohead Kid A
3. Blame Everything But the Girl Temperamental
4. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box Radiohead Amnesiac

Released in 2000, I listened to Kid A a lot when driving back and forth from Tri-C during Bad Epitaph's production of Cloud 9. That was when Toni was first pregnant.

"Blame" is included for obvious reasons. Temperamental was released in 1999.

During fringenyc 2001 there was a coffee house in Harris' neighborhood (it was a DT-UT; Harris' old apartment was UT) I visited every morning. It seemed like all they played were Radiohead albums, all of them. The Amnesiac track was also on a mix that a co-worker played for me in New Knoxville that fall - a CD that featured the King Britt remix found below.

Kid A is also my chosen pre-show music for when IHT is performed in theaters.

Brazilian Guitar Themes

5. August Day Song Bebel Gilberto Tanto Tempo
6. August Day Song (King Britt remix) Bebel Gilberto Tanto Tempo Remixes
7. Fragile Sting Nothing Like the Sun
8. Fragilidad Sting Nada Como el Sol ...


There is a song ... it won't be included here ... I make reference to it in the scene "the Dream" ... and the very first time I heard it, in April, 2001, i just split wide open. It so entirely captured my imaginary summer of 2001, the summer I was going to have with my first-born child, the one I had not allowed myself to daydream of, and yet, it was captured there. I have listened to that song only 12 times since.

The closest thing to this theme that I could bear sharing with anyone is the King Britt remix of Bebel Gilberto's "August Day Song." I was washing dishes on a night in December, 2001 at the aforementioned housing in West Central Ohio, listening to this mix CD, and was caught entirely off-guard by the tune, I knew it but couldn't remember what it was. Toni had actually gotten me the original Tanto Tempo disc when it was released in 2000 but I hadn't listened to it that much at the time.

The Sting tracks were played at the memorial in late May. I like the Portuguese version because sometimes it's good not to hear certain things in English.

Those 70s Themes

9. Three Is a Magic Number Bob Dorough Schoolhouse Rock
10. Lonely Boy Andrew Gold What's Wrong With This Picture
11. Cat's In The Cradle Harry Chapin Verities and Balderdash


Yes, ha ha, funny. Thoughtless hold-music from a certain baby food company. A joke done much better on The Simpsons. Theses ditties in particular were chosen because of their resonance with someone who may have been a small boy between the years of 1974 and 1976.

For more piercing insight on the songs themselves, visit the IHT glossary.

Music for Crying Out Loud

12. Gymnopedie No 1/Var.1 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
13. Gymnopedie No 1/Var.3 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
14. Gnossienne No 6 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
15. Tales from the Far Side Bill Frisell Bill Frisell Quartet
16. Gutaris Breeze (6000km To Amsterdam) John Beltram Late Night Beats: the Post-Club Sound of Britain


Discovered in a shower around 4 am in late 1998 (yes, I heard it on NPR) the Loussier themes were among those that carried me through that bizarre depression I had in early 1999. Odd, that, because 1999 was one of the most successful years of my life. The other pieces are also discoveries I made that year.

The Frisell track figured heavily on the Last Words episode of This American Life, which remains my favorite episode ever. I strongly recommend anyone to check it out - you can still listen to it free with Real Audio.

The Jacques Loussier album was used as pre-show music for the original staged reading at Dobama in August, 2002. Though no more depressing than listening to Kid A before a show (how many people hear the pre-show music, think "uh-oh" and leave?) the Satie themes are too ... I don't know, they suggest something a bit too Hallmark. I wanted a sense of unease to hit people as they came in, not the sense they were about to see a staged performance of something from the Lifetime network.

And Finally...

17. Happy Families XTC She's Having a Baby

Have you got Miss Carriage? She's the girl who wants a baby that she cannot find. Strange, the ones who want to win the race are usually the ones who fall behind.

Complete lyrics. A British card game for kids. Sometimes you don't even care what the lyrics of certain songs mean ... until they start making sense.

Henrik Mayer Hansen
May 24, 1904 - May 28, 2005

photo: Huntington Beach, Bay Village. June, 1972

Only fitting that Henrik (my brother) should give me the news. I was trying to get a call through this morning while my folks were notifying him. And so he called me.

We talked. I talked to Dad. It's always the same with us; the question, "How are you doing?" is inevitably met with the response, "oh, I'm fine," and then a prolonged recitation on what is currently happening, and not what we feel.

"Oh, I'm fine, we just got back from church and later some people are coming over, we're hoping to get outside while it's still sunny ..." And so on.

Actually, Henrik and I made metatextual references to the fact that we were aware we were doing exactly that, and then did a respectably decent job of actually adressing some real emotions. The word "guilt" was used a lot. Then we talked about movies.

I do not know what I am feeling, honestly. I keep remembering he died last night and then I remember that I don't feel as strongly about that as I guess I think I should. How much can you grieve for a man whose death you had been waiting for - not the way you wait for a present, but more the way you wait for an impending rainstorm - I mean, let's face it, he was 101 years old.

I got to tell him he had a new great-grandson, and that was wonderful. He even got to see pictures and Mom read him a letter I had written for his birthday. And he had that birthday. It was so nice seeing him last year when he turned 100. Every year, fewer visitors. Fewer and fewer people alive who knew you ever lived.

A lifespan should be so much longer than your own life. Since birth (1935) my mother has been called Tertia - the third - by her parents, her brothers, their families and so by my cousins and their kids, and now by Zelda. That Zelda calls her this gives my mother happiness because when she is gone someone will still be remembering her, using that name, for a long time.

What's amusing, I guess is that the only people who don't call her that is her husband or her sons. For the longest time I thought Tertia was simply short for Virginia, which I wouldn't call her, anyway.

There will be grief, even if it is mild. I was surprised by the sadness I felt, the vacancy, the first time I returned to Athens and Toni's grandfather Calvin wasn't there. I knew the last time we visited Grandfather Henrik that it would, in all likelihood, be the final time. Will I ever have occasion to see St. Petersburg, Florida again? That same little apartment that my grandfather (and before that, he and Grandmother Helen, together) lived in for almost thirty years?

And why the hell is it that places fill me with greater melancholy than people do?

Now where am I? I am at the end of so many things. The school year is over. The son is born. The grandfather is dead. I do not know what I will do this summer, there are no road trips, no performances, my heel is broken and I cannot run, and on top of all this, I have no clear indication by my employer as to exactly what I am going to be doing for them during the next three months.

I am in a place of great stillness. Perhaps I should be enjoying this.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone.

Mork Calling Brian, Come in Brian

For being the first person to make a Mork & Mindy reference to my son - Brian gets the "Big Cheese" award.

Shut Up, Hippy

From: The Believer
Sunday New York Times Magazine, May 22, 2005

(An article on Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the passage in question details his and his wife's decisions at the time of the death of one of his children - emphasis mine.)

"The childbirth in 1996 was a source of terrible heartbreak -- the couple were told by doctors early in the pregnancy that the baby Karen was carrying had a fatal defect and would survive only for a short time outside the womb. According to Karen Santorum's book, 'Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum,' she later developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant. After resisting at first, she allowed doctors to give her the drug Pitocin to speed the birth. Gabriel lived just two hours.

"What happened after the death is a kind of snapshot of a cultural divide. Some would find it discomforting, strange, even ghoulish -- others brave and deeply spiritual. Rick and Karen Santorum would not let the morgue take the corpse of their newborn; they slept that night in the hospital with their lifeless baby between them. The next day, they took him home. 'Your siblings could not have been more excited about you!' Karen writes in the book, which takes the form of letters to Gabriel, mostly while he is in utero. 'Elizabeth and Johnny held you with so much love and tenderness. Elizabeth proudly announced to everyone as she cuddled you, This is my baby brother, Gabriel; he is an angel. '"

You tell me whether or not the author in question is in the ghoulish vs. spiritual camp - his suggestion that this illustrates the "cultural divide" facing us today should be evidence enough. And so he plays into the devil's hands.

I couldn't disagree with Senator Santorum more. There is a special place in his Hell for people like him, it is the Eighth Circle, the one reserved for hypocrites. He represents the worst in American piety. His extremist stands against the rights of homosexuals and women are an abomination against all that is kind and good.

And yet the writer of this piece plays the same game as people like Santorum and his ilk. Anyone who agrees with Santorum's views would take this as an example of another elite East Coast liberal journalist's denigration of the so-called "culture of life." It also goes to bolster said liberal elite's accusations that the conservative right, in fact, embraces a "culture of death" - and sleeps with its "lifeless" "corpse" if we may be so gratuitous.

Apparently the writer was ignorant of the fact that parents are often encouraged to spend the night with their dead children (can't you just see the fist fight that occured when the Senator "would not let let the morgue take" their child) nor the entire movement that goes along with sharing the new child with the rest of the family. Anyone who knows me knows not calling my parents over to see Calvin is one of the great regrets of my life.

No, Rick Santorum is a sanctimonious, bigoted, right-wing a****** with ridiculous taste in clothes. But anyone who challenges his rights as the father of a dead child can go screw themselves.

(For fun, however, please visit spreadingsantorum.com)

Back to "The Future"

ring out the bells again
like we did when spring began
wake me up when september ends

Apparently Green Day is a big hit in Britain. That doesn't surprise me.

Against unbelieveable odds, the performance at MetroHealth went off today with out (much of) a hitch. To say I slept-walked through it wouldn't be fair to me or the audience, but with roughly fifteen hours of sleep spread out over four nights, it is fair to say I was dreaming or channeling a fair part of it. It felt odd at first - a lot of them do - and just kept rolling as we went along.

Technically, it was a drag. Kelly did the best she could with a sound situation that was tossed at her at the last minute, and it didn't help there was no front lighting at all. I was like this shadow through most of the perf. Tom would have had a hissy.

But the audience was game, one of the largest I've performed to. I was promised something like two hundred plus but I wonder if it hit that, there were enough vacant seats - this was the last event in a two day conference on coping with grief, and I wasn't surprised a lot of participants might opt to get out into the sunshine on what was a beautiful day.

But the reaction from those present was very strong, and I was deeply moved by the folks who came up after to talk to me. This tale is so many people's tale, it's heartbreaking. It's also why I do it.

There was a couple there who we knew from our second Bradley session, the one for Zelda. It was odd, way back then (late 2002, early 2003) our being the couple in the class who had lost their previous child - and talked about it. Seemed out of place, like talking about vomit in a cooking class. We thought these folks were lovely, though, the husband in particular was always there with a funny comment when the class got awkward.

Their girl, Emma, died shortly after birth. We tried reaching out to them at the time, and they appreciated it, but I guess they had other ways to deal with their loss, and that's all right. I was so happy to see them there today - and with their 10-month son Cole.

Laura & Justin were there, they took the day off to come. I am glad they got to see it, too - though if it were almost anyone else I might have suggested they didn't, I usually warn off folks whose grief is so raw just because, I don't know, I am afraid of hurting them with it. Justin looked visibly shaken (I know you're reading this, I hope you don't mind my saying so.) But I meant it when I said I went in there today thinking "I'm exhausted, I could skate through this, but I am doing this today just for you."

I was getting seriously choked up today in places, especially delivering the Memorial Day scene. That doesn't usually happen, in spite of the subject matter, I am too technical (distant?) a performer to get any true emotions involved. I prefer to act.

And then there was The Future. Man, it's crazy. Way back when, in 2002 when I was first drafting this, I was trying to write, more or less, a scene for every month from 03/01 - 03/02. That time frame, of course, includes 9/11. And in Writers' Group most everyone was behind what became the scene called The Future except for Bohan. He was frank in telling me he thought making an allusion to the WTC was a bit jarring, and yanked him out of the narrative. I was writing an intimate story, and I had exited it into the outside world. I think that was my point, but I also didn't want to "jar" anyone out of the play.

I stuck with it. And what's funny is how while other little bits of the show become dated (F.A.O. Schwartz is closed, Six Flags isn't around anymore) that one scene becomes more and more poignant as the years add up.

"I miss the 90s." Funnier in 2005 than 2002. "I miss the Democratic Party." More of a groaner now than ever. And when I state "The anticipation of the 21st century was so much sweeter than what is has offered," - today, for the first time ever, I could hear actual murmurings of assent from the audience. Now that was jarring - to me. And that's when you know an audience is right there with you.

I have a yearing to rest now. In the time since Monday I feel I have lived the past five years in five days. Good night.

What's On David's iPod?
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Green Day
American Idiot
(Yes, it's true. Green Day made me cry.)

From: Overheard In New York
Black dude: Yo, you shoulda seen this baby. It was like 42 inches long.
Spanish chick: Yo, no way. That's like almost 2 feet.
--Q train

Thanks, everybody. We've gotten a lot of awesome and supportive emails. I'd describe the birthing in detail, only that's really Toni's job and I shouldn't take that away from her ... at least not online.

Just another gratuitously adorable photo.

He's such a chunk, our golden bear. I figured it out today, I think he looks like my dad, he's got my dad's head, and, I think, his eyes. That may just because he's got swollen, just-been-born head.

My brother Henrik is 41 today - happy birthday, man, they're my two of my favorite albums from 2004, I hope you like them.

Spoke with my great-grandfather Henrik yesterday afternoon. That was hard. He turns 101 on Tuesday (uh, no, that's not a typo - his birthday really is on Tuesday) and he was trying so hard for me to understand him.

"Uhm, what was that Grandfather? Did you, uh ... we love you, too, was that ... uh. We love you. What? What? How is Toni? I think you just said - uh, she's fine."

I think he knows he has a new great-grandson. I think so. I hope so. I don't know.

I came to understand him most in the past four years. I finally felt we had something in common, and that we had something to talk about.

He and Grandma Helen lost three kids before adopting my father and my uncle. Two died before they were born, and one lived for an hour. When I used to hear tales about life back in tha' day, and how lots of children died in childbirth, I just thought, you know, that's what it was like back then. No big deal.

I love hearing stories about how people didn't used to get very attached to their children back then - not the way people do today - because they didn't know if they were going to live or not.

Isn't that just the biggest load of horseshit you've ever heard?

Toni & Orson come home tomorrow. I think one more day and Zelda would fricking explode. I have almost recovered myself, I am still a little weak and my voice is very tired. And I have a show tomorrow! Jesus. Wish me luck.

A New Beginning ... and a Peculiar Ending

Orson Aurelius Thayer-Hansen, born May 18, 2005.

My wife Toni is a force of nature to be reckoned with. In the past two days it's like she gave birth twice - once naturally, going into the hospital on Monday evening with very strong and close contractions which had petered away to nothing with exhaustion and disappointment by noon. Then after a few hours of drug-induced rest, she struggled with the effects of Pitocin - but without the assistance of an epidural - to give birth to a monstrous boy, 10 lbs. 3 oz. She was literally one more push away from an emergency C-section when the boy was born, just after midnight.

He is big. He is strong (his heartbeat never wavered during the exhausting ordeal) and he lives.

You can see where I am going with this. I will attempt to be interesting.

Looking at Ellen, our midwife, yesterday, I was struck with a memory I had not thought of, well, since it happened. We were interviewing midwives before we got pregnant, in mid-2000. Like a lot of people, we wanted to time our first child (who we imagined would be our only child) with all of our other projects. Ellen moved from this office to a different one shortly after Calvin was conceived and so I have a fuzzy memory of the place. It was on Chagrin.

And who was I then? 32 years old, the artistic director of a no-profit (sic) theater company and erstwhile webmaster (that's so new economy!) And I knew nothing. This is what struck me last night, the night at the end of that journey - Ellen has led us through three child births in the past five years. And that day in her office, how much less of a million things did I know? How many experiences, sure, but simply, how many words? How many drugs? How many diagnoses? How many rooms? How many nurses, midwives, doctors, chaplains, and bereaved parents? How many dead children?

Orson was born in room 15 of MacDonald Women's Hospital, Second floor. Zelda was born in 16. And Calvin in 17. A trifecta.

I hadn't been in room 17 since we left it, late in the evening, just after The West Wing (it was a repeat - part one of the episode "Manchester") on Wednesday, March 21, 2001. I walked past it several times when we were expecting Zelda, it's not on a main corridor, it's tucked away, around a corner, but I could always see the doorway as I passed. Just the doorway, nothing inside.

Yes, I went in yesterday. No, this morning, probably around one-thirty, as I was fetching post-partem ice water. After Orson was safely among us. I told Toni about it. "I don't recommend it," I said. She had thought of it as well, and wouldn't dare go in, anyway.

It's the same. Maybe the drapes had changed, and the computer. Everything was in its same place. The bed. The tee vee. The incubator. The wallpaper. And a big, "country-style" rocking chair, set against the wall overlooking the atrium. Away from the bed.

It happened here. We saw him here, held him here, and nowhere else. I wrote a play. This is where it takes place. Even the bits that don't take place in the this room, take place in this room.

I left after a few seconds. Not a happy place. I know countless people have healthy, living children in this room. Their memories of this room exist in a different dimension from the one normal humans live in.

We also had a visit with Carrie - Nurse Angel. When we had Zelda two years ago, she walked past me in the hall and I couldn't say hi. I was shy. Then I saw her this time, as I was helping a contracting Toni down the hall. Again, couldn't say anything. Probably because what needed to be said, couldn't be said in the hall, passing by.

"Oh hi, maybe you remember me, we had a stillbirth in 2001 and you were our first nurse, the one who was responsible for laying out all of the decisions we needed to make, and your candor and compassion, though disorienting at the time, were so perfect, so exactly what we needed, that we have remembered you ever since, and you have even served as a model for the way we now speak with people about their grief, and, uh, I immortalized you in a play about the experience and have impersonated you on-stage in Cleveland, Minneapolis and New York City and have a gig this Friday at MetroHealth."

We made sure we invited her to sit with us yesterday, and she did. We hadn't spoken to her since then, either, it's been four years. How often do you get to share with someone you know only briefly, fleetingly, about the incalculable impact they had on your life with one act of kindness, compassion and respect?

I may never step onto "Mac 2" ever again. I know its layout very well, at least the bits birthing fathers get to see. And yet, that's it. Its geometry, its architecture, its corridors, its furniture, its cast of characters, get relegated to that vault in my mind reserved for my old elementary school, my first house, Cindy's uncle's house off West 25th street. I may never see them again.

My family reads these things? I thought the Internet was private!

A friend went into the Clinic this weekend with full-blown preeclampsia. She was bearing twins - 7 1/2 month twin boys.

Gabriel is 1.2 lbs. Xavier is 2.5 lbs. "They fit in your hand." They are well-formed and apparently all right. And so is she. I am glad someone was paying attention.

My next gig is in five days. What are the chances a performance about the birth of my first son will be cancelled by the birth of my second son? What is that, some kind of sibling rivalry thing?

When we lost Calvin, I did not miss God. I did not need God. We did well on our own without Him. And if He had been there, I only would have blamed Him. I was better off without Him.

When my friends are in trouble, that's when I get stuck. When I cannot help them, and I cannot pray ... what do I do?

"Pitocin is the most abused drug in the world today."

Let the Baby decide: The Case against Inducing Labor - use of the drug Pitocin is questioned
Mothering, March-April, 2001

"Pitocin can cause increased pain, fetal distress, neonatal jaundice, and retained placenta; and recent research suggests that exposure to Pitocin may be a factor in causing autism."

Split Focus

I have terrible allergies. I feel as if my head is stuffed with ... stuff.

The big, annual GLTF benefit was Saturday night. I was, you guessed, dressed as Shakespeare for the event, and helped tear-down until a little after midnight. I can't remember the last time I was in the streets of Cleveland that late ... okay, I can, it's when Ali and I had that late date for the Cleve Mag piece I wrote on my so-called nightlife. And that was well over a year ago.

And I have a two year-old and a heavily pregnant wife, so I was down at two and up again at six-thirty. Still haven't recovered from that, and I no doubt won't.

We are in the waiting time, when everyone asks "So? News?" And you just smile and say the usual things.

No, they aren't usual things. Some people I can be frank with. I had the rare opportunity to have an extended, off-air conversation with Dee today. In addition to having a surprising discourse about September 11 (I have set aside that dumb DaVinci book in favor of 102 Minutes) she remarked how calm I appeared in the face of imminent birth. Dee knows the story, and I had no problem telling her that, seeing as how our first son died, we spend a lot more time just focusing on the task at hand and don't bother with the jitters. Or much humor about childbirth, really. At least, not that really obvious kind of humor - you know, all the jokes Bill Cosby told that were so funny ... when he told them. The first time.

I want Morphine, ha ha ha.

So, oh yeah, the due date was yesterday. We are Day +1 and counting. Zelda was two weeks overdue - and they were not fun weeks.

And. As if this were not all enough, I have another performance of I Hate This in 11 days at MetroHealth. Kelly and I will tech the show next Wednesday ... and I just got word that the two performances I have slated for October may be in the same space as this one. That's very helpful. And we are working on a gig in Akron for around the same time. I will get the dates up when they are finalized.

So, uh. Hell. What am I supposed to do next? The dishes? I can't even see straight.

Busted

My first set of X-rays did not reveal any broken bones - because I had a microscopin compression fracture of my heel. X-rays yesterday revealed them - this is bad because it means, yes, I broke my heel, but good because the X-ray showed that's all it was, nothing any more serious, and displayed how well my heel has already begun to heal (hey - a homonym.)

None of this has improved my mood. The doctor said I should not resume training for six weeks. I asked whether he meant six weeks from the impact, or six weeks from now.

He said, "Yes."

So I have no less than three more weeks without running. I will miss two races this month. This just totally BLOWS - it's not enough that I am challenging myself to run a fricking marathon, as if that weren't a steep enough hill for someone like me, but no, I have to give myself an injury (don't ask please, please God do not ask how) and doubt whether or not I can bring myself back up to speed without re-injuring myself.

Share Atlanta

A friend who just moved down south sent me this link, I need to remember to get it onto my I HATE THIS links page.

This Is My Job

Found something neat at work the other day - a disk of photographs from the week I spent at Midview High last year. They had taken their time to get it to me, but better now than never.

photo: "A little water clears us of this deed." (Check out the handprint on my head!)

Wow. I couldn't have asked for a better find. In a school year that had its ups and downs, this was probably the best week I and my partner Alicia had together. At first I wasn't looking forward to it - we were teaching four residencies, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet and The Crucible, to maybe six different classes.

As it turned out, that was great, everything was fresh in every class, and I remember liking the students a lot. The Caesar class, in particular, was a trip. This was where they put the Juggaloos. A very exciting number of assassins in that class.

Another fun thing about the photos is what a snappy dresser I was that week.

For three years that was my job, and now I "supervise" and help train people to do the same job. It's funny, on the outside it all seems so chaotic, doing the work itself I felt much more in control. Still, it's the best job I've ever had, and probably ever will have. I am still intensely grateful for that. And that's another thing I owe Calvin.