Who I am

(As a writer).

I am fascinated with the unpredictability and randomness of life.

I am aware that where we begin is only by a ridiculous combination of chance and coincidence.  What we do with these blueprints (our genes, our life), is then mixed up by another ridiculous combination of chance and coincidence.

We can work hard and never succeed.  We can screw up over and over again and become huge successes.  The world isn’t always fair.

I’m also fascinated by consciousness – like many I’ve experienced waking up from a dream over and over again to find that I’m still not awake.  Our perceptions of an event are never absolutely complete (they simply can’t be – we will never be able to see inside the minds of other people involved in the experience).

If tomorrow’s events will inevitably be decided by today’s actions, everything we do today is important while nothing we do today matters.

I’m not striving for perfection like Tolstoy; I don’t believe it exists.  Or else everything is perfection, including every spectacularly flawed moment.

I’m not bored by bourgeois life like Chekhov.  I do think we forget how good we have it most of the time, but we have our challenges in this society at the same time (America, specifically Miami, 2015).

I’m not searching for God like Dostoyevsky.  I believe he’s here all the time.  But that doesn’t stop the inequities, the injustice or the uncertainties of life.

I enjoy Dickens’ Christmas Carol because it plays with the “what was,” “what is” and what “could still be.”

I enjoy books like Grendel and Wicked because they play with the “other” person’s (usually the disenfranchised person’s) point of view.

I adore the Harry Potter series because the books, characters and story evolve from a supposed good vs. evil plotline to show that it’s never quite as simple as that.  They also show that motivations that originally appear to be hate-driven may, in reality, be out of love.

I’m developing The Theater Door to be similar: to play with “what was” in history, “what is” in the students’ lives and “how everything we do” affects what comes tomorrow.