Border Frontier

I heard a haunting song on the radio yesterday. William S. Burroughs pushed his pleasing, prickly drone through the speakers while a random, slow-tempo beat and jazzy noise played underneath. "The road to the western lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world. For it is a journey beyond death, beyond the basic God-standard of fear and danger. It is the most heavily guarded road in the world. For it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts; immortality." It sounded like a song about LA. But then, everything sounds like a song about LA to me at this point - even commercial jingles. It is, quite literally, the border between land and sea, and less literally the border between desires fulfilled and not. The search for immortality, both physical and historical, is a strong, palpable drive for many of the denizens of this city by the sea.
So, I'm not here for even two weeks before I head north to see a short play of mine produced at my friend's theater. So much for getting settled, but I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity. My play was in a line up of short plays presented under the name Summerplay. Summerplay was at one time presented annually in Denver at The Changing Scene and I'm thrilled that the tradition has continued at The Changing Scene Northwest in Bremerton, Washington. It's an amazing integration of new work and new, as well as accomplished, actors and directors. Even though I cringed a bit at the mistakes in my writing, I had a wonderful time at the show. Two other Denver playwrights were represented in the line up and I was entertained and humbled by their work. My play takes place in space (see picture above), which is in many ways similar to Los Angeles. Bremerton is beautiful, as are all the little port towns that occupy the nooks and crannies that surround Puget Sound. The area would be a wonderful place to retire and I made a mental note of this for future reference. While in Bremerton I got a call from my agent saying that I had an audition on the following Monday. My first audition in LA! Naturally, my return flight to LA was for the following Tuesday. So, I changed my flight and my agent faxed me the audition information. They were looking for a Dennis Leary-type only more approachable. Okay, well, I've got the approachable thing down and I'm blond. Can I smoke at the audition? Can I curse? What cologne does Dennis Leary wear? As I ponder these questions I go over the script and prepare. My friend suggests that we take the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle on our way to the airport. We do and it's a beautiful ride. There's nothing like approaching a looming skyline by boat. It felt like we were entering the Emerald City. The flight was uneventful - we even arrived 5 minutes early. I was nervous, but excited and the 2 1/2 hours I had before the audition would leave me just enough time to stop by the place I'm staying, change into "business attire", pick up a head shot, and get on the highway before rush hour hell. Wah-wah-whaaaa. Normally for a trip like this I would take a carry on and forgo checking any baggage. But with the new restrictions on tubes and bottles, I found I had to check a bag. What? Me, travel without hair-goo and favorite lotion? Please. Picking up my bag at SeaTac had been simple and quick, so I assumed I would have roughly the same experience on my return flight to LAX. But, no. All but one of the baggage carousels for the airline I'd flown on were broken and the baggage for all their flights was being routed to the working carousel. Judging by the crowd gathered in frustration around that one carousel, they were a few flights behind. I could have made arrangements with the airline to come and pick up my bag later, but the keys to my car were in that bag. So I had to wait. I mentally went through the list of things I had to do before audition and proceeding to cross everything off until only "drive to audition" remained. Okay, I was wearing jeans, but had a pair of wrinkled up cords my bag I could change into. I could just leave from the airport and head to the audition, if necessary. Well, after 90 minutes of waiting and desperate phone call to my agent my bag came sliding down the carousel shoot. I grabbed it and ran, running my lines on the shuttle ride to my car (lotta lines for this audition, a whole 60 second spot of rapid fire salesmanship). The car. Suffice it to say, the rush hour traffic on the 405 lives up to its reputation. After another frantic call to my agent, 45 minutes of stop/start California freeway love, and countless consultations of my Thomas Street Guide, I arrive at the audition location 15 minutes late. Luckily, they were still reading people when I got to the office. The casting director was very nice and listened to my airport story with believable interest, then let me rehearse a few times, and even let me give it another go after I blazed through my first attempt like a Icabod Crane on speed. "Sure. You're the last one. Why not?" Did I mention that we had to write backwards on a window? My second go round went a little better and my backwards writing was pretty good, if do say so myself. But, alas, no word on the casting front. Nonetheless, it feels pretty good to have my first LA audition under my belt.
Yesterday a white cloud descended upon the taller buildings of coastal Santa Monica. The air was cool and the mist snaking around the upper floors of the office buildings and hotels lent a mystical mood to the day. It didn't rain, but the cloud stayed put for most of the afternoon and then lifted in time for the sunset. Twenty days and counting. Back to Denver in a week. I've traveled more this year than I have collectively in the past five. Things in motion tend to stay in motion...except on the freeway.