So I take the bag off my back and open it up for them. I say “In this here bag there is an endless supply of crazy ideas. Here, take one.” And they’ll reach into the bag and pull out a piece of paper that says “Bury the moon and sell tickets to jump over it.” Or something like that. Then they’ll say “Why that’s crazy!” And I’ll say “What else would you expect from a bag of crazy ideas?” And they’ll ask if they can keep it, the idea. And I’ll say “That’d be fine, for fifteen cents.”

This is how I make my living, which is a small living. It is like an ant living. And ants don’t live very long. So I will probably not live very long, with this living that I make.

It’s hard, sometimes, to try and relate to people, regarding the bag of ideas. People like to find a middle ground everywhere. Like if I spoke German and my native language was English, and you spoke English but your native language was German, we would probably try and speak French. It’s the most fair, really. Of course, on the language line between English and German, French is almost exclusively culinary. Like we could never talk about pigs, we could only talk about pork. Likewise cows and chicken. We would both get pretty hungry soon, and communication would have to cease. This is why I don’t speak to German people, as a rule.

But what I mean by relate, as far as the bag goes, is people want to think of it as a bag they’ve seen before. Which it most certainly is not, this bag. They want to think of it as being like the bag in Mary Poppins. But all that bag ever produced was a hat rack, a mirror, and 5-foot lamp. For all we know, that is all that that bag can produce. We choose to believe there is more in that bag. We choose this out of an amorous attraction to its owner, who is beautiful. It’s very difficult to remind people that the jury is still out, regarding the infinite nature of her bag. This is the inherent flaw in all films. You would think that enclosing something in the way that a movie does would make it easier to probe and understand, but it doesn’t. Because the thing which you enclose is begging for you, at all times, to think of it as something which escapes its enclosure. That is, when you see a child’s face, in a movie, that child’s face is saying “Imagine that I have been an infant. And then imagine that I was conceived. And then imagine that my parents were children. You must imagine, for the sake of my existence, everything down to the dinosaurs.” So this is why you need to believe that Mary Poppins’ bag exists outside of the film’s time frame. You can see how difficult it gets, immediately, when people try to relate to my bag of ideas.

This is when I try to split the scene, when people start relating. I say “Well, looks like I need to hit the wind.” And they’ll say “Where are you going now?” And I’ll say “Anywhere a man can still dream, a seed can still grow, and a hot dog still costs fifteen cents.” And they’ll say “Keep up with those crazy ideas, Gene.” And I’ll say “Thanks.” It is best to only correct people once, I’ve found.

Once, someone asked if they could purchase my bag of ideas. They offered me $500 and “Ten points on the back end.” People assume that if you deal in abstractions then you somehow understand them. I told them I would feel naked without my bag of ideas. But this was a lie. The truth is that I cannot sell this bag of ideas. It is like trying to sell your pronoun. Imagine selling someone your I. It simply cannot be done. It is assumed of you, forever, your I. It comes with the territory. “The best I can do,” I offered the man, “Is to sell you individual ideas for fifteen cents apiece.” He asked me if I took credit. I told him that sadly I did not. “I take exception, offense, and caution. Nothing else.”

When I was fifteen years old I tried to learn how to fly. It occurred to me that it is the same thing as learning how to yawn, or hiccup. It simply happens if it needs to. I only mention this because a child once asked me if my bag provided directions. I thought she might have meant To The Zoo, or To Greenland. I said “To where, child? Directions to where?” “Directions to fly,” She said. I reached into my bag and pulled out a piece of paper that said “3 Cups Flour, ¼ Cup Milk.” This is what happens when you ask bags for advice. “But those are directions for split-pea soup,” she said. Now of course I knew that this wasn’t true, but I decided to placate the senseless child. “Surely you would need to have split-peas in order to make split-pea soup,” I said. “No,” she scoffed then looked away. “There’s no such thing as a split-pea.” “Well,” I finally told her, she was getting on my nerves, “If you really want to fly it’s three blocks that way.”

Somebody once said “Hey Gene, how much does that bag weigh?” And I said “It only weighs fifteen pounds, and it counts as a carry on.” This was after I told him my name wasn’t Gene. If anyone ever thinks they know something about you then they’re never going to unknow it. It’s too hard that way. It’s also hard to explain how an endless supply of crazy ideas weighs exactly fifteen pounds. Weight, itself, is an enclosure, like film. “But there are two kinds of infinites,” I always say. This can be bogglesome at first. “What’s inside and what’s outside,” I say. And when you get to the difference, which is there when it rains, you’ll find that my bag has never once asked me to believe in dinosaurs.

Somewhere in the Atlantic between St. Thomas and Antigua, past the Anegada Passage and into the Caribbean Sea, Brady Matthews is lying on the sun-deck of the USS Baltimore, a defunct warship reconditioned for cruising. His body almost sizzles in the February sun.

Out this far the ocean is quiet, the waves with nothing to break against. The seagulls stayed back in Coral Bay, squawking at the fishermen throwing their chum and pecking at children with ice cream cones, hovering fierce in the Harbor. Any birds still in sight must be on a late migration or know of a reef nearby.

Miguel, a member of the cruise ship’s staff, comes wheeling out a cart of towels. The tan-line running diametrically across Brady’s side resembles a peach gummy ring with its thick white base. Miguel leans over to remind him to flip.

“Mr. Matthews,” he says, “You must flip, you’ll burn.”

But there’s no response from Brady.

Miguel looks around for any other passengers, but everyone’s down on one of the lower decks. Even the diehards on the USS Baltimore wait for noon to pass before they start tanning. The sun is angled directly above them, Miguel squints and blocks it from his eyes. Leaning closer, he can hear the man sizzle.

“Mr. Matthews,” he says.

Not getting a response, he kneels down and twists back the tanner’s black goggles. A shocking white tan-line is revealed underneath, framing the dead man’s lifeless, clouded eyes.

Tired of the same old mini-van? Who says driving has to be work? Introducing the all new Nissan Max-Terra, the world’s first self-driving, self-parking, self-pumping car. So you can be Your self, while it does the rest.

Mom, we’re out of toothpaste. Mom, we need more paper towels. Mom, I can’t find
my—

Peter, when you told me that you loved me on the love boat, did you mean it? Was it true? Did you really, really mean it?

Cotton candy, an absolute miracle, come and get your cotton candy… Watch it spin from nothingness and gather on this cone…

Darling it’s part of the love boat, you have to.

Seriously folks, you just plug it in and look what happens… A mind warping fusion of sugar and air… Quick, while the miracle lasts…

It’s just that when I said that I loved you, it was more than just the love boat. It was me.

Literal hair from the angels, folks… This is not a metaphor, it’s the only explanation… Cupid’s bouffant, yours in a cone…

Come on darling, let’s have some cotton candy. Which color would you like? Blue to match your eyes? Pink to match your cheeks?

That’s the way, Mack, buy the lady a cone… It’s all the same flavor: Sweet.

I’ll have blue then, please. To match my mood.

Blue to match the lady’s mood… Say, you’re not helping me sell any cones here…

Thanks very much. Now do you feel any better darling?

Genuine miracles never lose novelty… Step right up and have a cone…

Peter, why did you tell me you loved me?

Because it’s the love boat, darling, it’s what you do. We weren’t really dying on the Zipper but we screamed.

Well I want you to take me home. I’ve had enough not dying and not falling in love.

Say, don’t be that way. Let’s go get us some coney islands, whadayasay. A knee high and a coney island, how’s that sound?

Peter Paulson take me home this minute.

Aw heck. Alright, we’re back this way.  Say you know I’m sweet on ya, right?

Fresh plaque scraped from God’s sweet tooth, folks… It’s Sweet’s eternal flame…

Now comes the tricky part, when you realize this is a Jewel concert. She unfolds like a 5^th grader’s example of a lotus flower at her first ballet recital. The Chinese man is nowhere to be found. She has no microphone (Jewel) but as she starts singing it’s somehow already inside of your head. You wonder if it was there before she opened her mouth. You wonder what else is in there. You wonder who can unlock these sounds.

The lights coming through the dissected cage are now grated onto the audience like a stationary disco ball or maybe the screened pane of a confession booth. This is when the baby falls. You’re maybe 10 feet away from Jewel when you can make out the shape of a falling baby. It’s coming down pretty fast. You think to jump and save it, when you realize that it might be part of the show. This option freezes you. You let the baby fall. It is still unclear as to whether or not it was part of the show. Another baby falls, now, one row ahead of you. The absence of effort from the rest of the audience is enough to convince you that the falling babies are part of the show. Still, you wonder. These seem like real babies. Finally, one is coming down above you. You realize that this baby must be falling at minimum 100 feet. You feel embarrassed that it’s falling on you. You’d like to move. When it hits you feel its impact on your jaw.

Later, on the news, there are stories of babies falling from the balcony. Really only of one baby, though. It is unclear which baby this baby was. It is possible that 2/3rds of the falling babies were planned. The baby on the news broke his arm. I never thought this could happen to our baby, the father says.  He was always so quiet.

Soon your mother is pounding on your door.

“We need to shovel the roof,” She says.

“The roof? We need to shovel the roof?”

“It’ll cave,” She says. “The roof will cave. We need to shovel now.”

So just to recap: Outbuild, Outsmart, Outlast, Outwit, Outteach, Outsave, and Outwin. Now I’d like to open up the floor to anyone that has any questions.  Yes, you in the back.

Mr. President, does milk stop the steeping process?

Does milk stop the steeping process.

Like, if I pour milk into the tea right away, does the tea still steep to its fullest? I only ask this because the milk makes it all cloudy and sometimes the tea doesn’t reach that full red that means it’s steeped. Could the thickness of the milk be clogging the tea bag, or forming a mucilaginous screen?

That is a great question. It is a great question which demands answers. I am not going to let us sit here and not answer that question. It makes no sense. I propose that by 2017 we have not only developed a complete understanding of the steeping properties of milk, but that every child in America, be they poor, rich, black, white, latino, gay, or anything else, is given the chance to develop a full understanding of these concepts and apply them towards the future. Next question.

Mr. President, when you say win the future, do you imply that the future has an endpoint?

I believe that the future can be ours if we are able to once again grasp it.

Mr. President, once we’ve grasped said future, what is it that you propose we do with it?

We need to hide it under our shirts and run home with it, then keep it tucked safely under our beds at night.  If asked by other nations whether or not we tookthe future, we need to insist that the future is ours.

Mr. President, when shaking your hand, is it appropriate to give you daps?

This has been up for debate for some time. It is appropriate to give me daps if and only if you are not giving me daps due to any preconceived notions that you have regarding the color of my skin. I believe in the American family. I believe in brotherhood, and I believe in sisterhood. I believe that we should all shake hands as a family does. If your family gives daps, give me daps, because we are a family. If you’ve asked your Twitter assistant to train you how to give daps, then perhaps we should not give daps, but shake, as is customary in business.

Mr. President, aren’t “Outlast” and “Outwit” both epithets from Survivor?

We are survivors. The American people invented survivalism. Look at Davy Crockett. Look at 127 Hours. These are the building blocks of American History. We gave the world survivalism, as well as the technology and the jobs it created. Camp stoves. Tents. Laptops. Fire. All of these are the products of American industry. We are industrious. We do big things. We’re little guys that do big things.

So we’re like an underdog.

Exactly. We’re like an underdog with the greatest military spending by nearly 700 percent. We are the underdog that has taken over the world and totally ripped it to shreds. Why? Because we do big things. Big is good. Big is important. Big is what things become. And we became the greatest nation on earth because we did big things. And we will proceed to do big things. Within the next two weeks I will have brought to the senate a bill which proposes that by 2035 we will have done 10,000 big things.

Mr. President, have you ever found it strange that both the vice president and speaker of the house are staring at the back of your skull throughout the entire speech?

Yes, I have considered this. Though because this is a televised broadcast and reproduced as a two-dimensional image, the appearance of the two of them watching me talk gives the illusion that they can see me. This illusion should not be considered. This illusion should not be discussed. This illusion is the basis of our operation. The swinging cameras, the crouching photographers, these are not to be discussed. We are here for the American people, who can only be with us tonight via broadcast. We must all act as though this makes sense, that this is real, that there are no cameras, there are no lights, we are not in makeup, and that this rhetoric has not been printed, stapled, and handed out in advance. When addressing the nation within the boxed context of media, we must never address the shape of the box or how we fit inside it.  I will say goodnight, and may God Bless America.

When you say “can’t stop the beat” do you mean that like “impossible to stop the beat” or like “personally, I can’t stop the beat”?  Because I could stop this beat one handed.

I could stop it indefinitely or I could stop it for only like a second, which would time-out everyone at the party so that I could walk around with them frozen in place, like Zack Morris in one of those weird and suddenly abstract moments of Saved By The Bell. I could stop the beat and then rearrange everyone so that when I unstopped the beat they’d all be talking to different people without having noticed the transition and it would basically change their lives forever. They wouldn’t realize how much it had skewed their senses of object-permanence until like 20 years from now when they’ll have finally figured out what had been terrifying them at the midpoint of every conversation — that muted possibility that everything might change, right then — and once they finally track down a support group they’ll find that the only one in existence has the exact same attendance as this party and they’ll feel this weird nostalgic super-rush but still not be sure of what’s happening.

I could stop it so hard that the looks on everyone’s faces would leave visual imprints on the atmosphere in front of them so that later we could walk around and still see the moment that the beat stopped hovering in the air. We could sell tickets to the beat-stopped room so that others could experience what frozen time looks like from behind glass cases and velvet ropes and signs that prohibit photography. We could reserve certain imprints for children to pose behind in a cross-dimensional version of those wooden figures with cut-out faces that you find at theme parks and boardwalks, only this time it would be their faces being masked by the frozen lineaments of everyone at this party. Scientists could study the atmosphere and discover new elements of carbon that are similar to those draw-and-peel sketchpads that would erase your drawing when you separated the plastic from the silver, with this being the first example of the image not erasing when peeled.

I could stop this beat so fast that it would never even know it had existed. If any other beat tried to ask it for advice on how to not get stopped then it wouldn’t even be able to warn them about me because it wouldn’t even know that it had once been a beat that I’d stopped. It would be like asking a rock how to get to Alaska. Then I’d be hiding behind the stopped beat, waiting for other beats to show up so that I could jump out and stop them too, until I’d finally collected a whole village of stopped beats that would wander around dazed and distant and really freak out any other beats that might end up stuck there overnight because their train broke down and needed parts from a city that’s 100 miles away. I would be the mayor and marshal of a stopped-beat ghost town, if I wanted to stop this beat.

I could stop this beat with such precision that it would explode into an infinite number of smaller beats that when examined under a microscope would prove to have the exact same properties of the original beat that I’d stopped, only this time nano-microscopically smaller and infinite in number.

Then I’d show you my dance moves.

I know that’s my mother’s cell phone but I’m still too scared to answer it.  I mean, I know it’s her cell phone.  I’m fucking 100% positive that it’s her cell phone ringing.  It is her cell phone ringing.  But still, that ringtone is just so scary.  It’s too scary.  It’s the scariest thing in the world.

It’s like this Andy Griffith kind of airy whistling that sounds like some old fisherman’s about to strangle me from behind.  Like I can see his tackle hatted shadow against the wall as he closes in.  Like there’s nothing you can do once you hear that song… that’s it.  He’s got you.  Fucking Harry Stranglefish has bagged another victim.  That’s what it sounds like, everytime it rings.

The added problem is that it’s 11:30 at night.  My mom goes to bed at maybe ten.  Nobody calls her past ten.  No one even calls her past nine.  She’s a mom.  So that means this is probably some sort of emergency, right now.  Right downstairs.  There’s an emergency happening right now.  Somebody’s calling to say “This is an emergency.”  Somebody’s in the hospital.  Someone’s in an ambulance right now and the paramedic’s trying to reach my mother but he’s not going to get through because I’m too scared to go down those stairs and face that music getting louder and louder.  It’s already so loud, the whistling.  It’s coming all the way up the stairs.

Not to mention the stairs are scary enough.  This being the only part of the house that has this wallpaper.  This ancient blood red oriental pattern of intersecting masks, these weird paisly cat faces that have eyes and ears and then new eyes in the ears that make the old eyes look like noses if you look at them that way.  The holes in the ears that become eyes.  And the mouths, smiling. And then the staircase itself, in a boxed U formation, one short flight with tight corners.  Nearly black carved handles on the corners of each bannister, shaped like the head of a buddha that’s looking away.  Or like a Where’s Waldo that’s looking away.  Just like a plain oval head with a three-tiered crown/beanie that gets smaller with every tier.  And then the giant window that’s overlooking it all, the only window in the house with an iron facade, a complex steelwork of two brambled eyes, one atop the other.  Then the hanging memory of a body stuffed with leaves, noosed and dangling from the top bannister every halloween, growing up.  With an Albert Einstein mask drooping over its sunken chest.  Swinging, slowly, sometimes.

I know that’s what he looks like, Harry Stranglefish.  The same pocky rubber mask of skin with a dented nose and dark, empty slits for eyes.  Somehow kind of walking in those stuffed denim overalls, dragging his footless feet.  Two giant gardening gloved hands that come up slowly.  His face slightly shadowed by a dusty tackle hat.  That tinny airy whistle coming out of his lips.  I heard him.

One of my favorite things about being home is that you can always find something anywhere.  For instance a six pack of diet coke in the bathroom.  Just for instance.  Another example might be The Greatest Show On Earth in the linen cabinet, if you’re more into examples than instances.

Never an absent coke in the six pack, either.  It’s not like someone’s abluting and downing a diet coke at the same time.  Not in this house.  Diet coke has just somehow developed a permanent residency in all accessible areas.  But never incomplete in any way.  Always full quantities of DC within arm’s reach.  It’s like there’s really just one sixer that’s bugs bunnying his way into the room before you get there, every time.  Always the same room temperature and always reassuring, like “Hey man, worst case scenario: you got me.”  I don’t drink diet coke, but it’s nice knowing.

VHS circus dramas hiding under towels is way too obscure for me to even try and decipher.  When and how I’ll ever need a copy of The Greatest Show On Earth, be it en route to the beach or bathroom, is totally beyond me.  The concept itself comes fully loaded with equally baffling how’d-it-get-theres and how-will-it-leaves that you just need to assume that it somehow expanded out from nothingness and will forever remain a constant of the linen cabinet.

It’s these mysteries of survival that find you in every room… snowboards that somehow predate snowboarding, half empty jars of unlabeled spices piled in a corner behind the washing machine.  What are these things? Will I need them?  What freakishly abstract monster will they someday ward off?

This is where home is.  Underneath a blizzard and in between a surplus of random misfit objects that are somehow reassuring, like whatever the hell kind of insane problems you might run into there’s probably a great room to head for.

In November of 2010, pendant-garde stage director Kazuo Mujitsu introduced Sarah, the world’s first anthropomorphic robot designed to perform live melodrama. The goal was to smash the communication barrier between director and actor, enabling Mujitsu to finely hone the actor’s performance without the hindrance of language or ego. These are his notes.

Of all the difficulties we experienced in the construction of Sarah, I was surprised to find that our greatest conflict lied in choosing the color of her hair. After a week’s worth of battles, all of which too trivial to detail, we finally settled on auburn. (Finally! I cannot begin to express the mirth that I’ve found in that simple little adverb: Finally.)

The humans (as we jokingly call the actors) have taken well to the robot. When asked to describe what her skin feels like — we’ve had a bit of a dance between pronouns here, and finally settled on her/she, a decision which, I’m not proud to admit, was tastelessly celebrated with chocolate bars — Allison, our stage manager, said that she didn’t quite feel like another person, but more like that weird and distant feeling you get from touching your own foot when it’s asleep. Michael, my assistant, has since dubbed her The Phantom Limb of the Opera.

After the first night of rehearsals we noticed that the robot actress was affecting our actors much more than we’d expected. The humans, it turned out, started acting more and more robotic.

Sarah was only programmed to give one performance — the perfect performance — so the actors had to consistently deliver their lines with the same tone and inflections that would at once respond to her emotions as well as prompt them. This quickly became routine, forcing the humans into a very automatic and eventually lifeless performance; all of their emotions were lost in replication. (It seems, now, that one perfect apple can also spoil the bunch.)

With all of the humans acting robotic, the audience found it difficult to separate the actors from the robot, apart from what one viewer later described as a kind of emptiness that could be located in all of the humans. This emptiness had a jarring effect against the odd sense of wonder in watching a computer learn to dance.  It was as if they weren’t watching actors but glasses of water, only one of which half full and the rest half empty.

(A brief parenthetical here, regarding these developments. It would seem, from my standpoint, that the results of a perfectly performed robot influencing its surrounding performers to a state of clockwork would be more or less a dream come true. That is, the performances that are required to justify Sarah’s perfect performance must be, inherently, perfect. That would imply that only one robot is actually necessary, though it must play the lead, in order to achieve the effects of an entirely automated cast. Kind of like perfection on auto-pilot. The only fault that I’ve been able to determine in this logic — which must be false, given the results from our audience — is that human perfection has proven to be in itself an imperfection, one of being human, while robotic perfection has no paradoxical nature, but raw, objective purpose. Imperfection, it seems, is really some sort of virus that’s only transmittable through human beings.)

After replacing the rest of the cast with robots, however, our results with the audience had still not improved. This I found nearly impossible to comprehend. The robot ensemble’s timing was impeccable, their blocking geometric, everything was precisely how I envisioned it, but the audience could not sit through it. The level of noise in their murmurs kept rising once they noticed that it wasn’t affecting the robots. They ended up treating the play like it was some kind of Disneyland attraction, not as theatre. They became unruly. By the midpoint of the second act they had completely drowned out the robots. It became clear to me what the problem had been all along.

The robot audience, I believe, is working wonders. An audience that is loud, or fidgety, or in any way disapproving is very hard for a director to work with. It really affects his play’s reception. Programming the audience to react exactly how I originally envisioned them to react has solved most of, if not all of, my difficulties as a director.

Of course, the nature of a robot audience prohibits any of us from actually observing the performance or its reception, so we had to develop a team of robot critics to properly review the performance. (In accordance, of course, with how I originally envisioned the play to be received.) After opening night, the reviews came in positive. As one robot even wrote, “Great.”

It’s a shame that no one will ever get to see the robot show. But the truth, I think, that its foundation was built on, is beautiful and perfect unseen.

To: Past
Subject: Best Buy

Dear Past,

Today I watched a baby—while still in its infancy—wield some sort of bulbous sword in front of a plasma screen while a Playstation studied and learned its behavior.

All the best,
Future

—

To: Future
CC: Present
Subject: RE: Best Buy

Future – Holy shit! What could that possibly mean? I’m CC’ing this to Present for a laugh
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—

To: Past
CC: Future
Subject: RE: Best Buy

Real busy guys

Present
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—

To: Past
Subject: Present

Yeah, that’s why I didn’t send it to him. He doesn’t know how to relax. I’ve got this Eckhart Tolle book that I want him to read but it still hasn’t been written yet.

Anyway,
Future

—

To: Future
Subject: RE: Present

Represent!

Yeah, he needs something for sure. Who’s Eckhart Tolle?
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—

To: Past
Subject: RE: Present

Haha nice…. Yeah he’s this German dude, writes about power and self motivation. Probably not around yet.
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—

To: Future
Subject: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

Yeah, not yet…

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—

To: Past
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

I’ll read it later.

Hey I gotta get back, the LHC’s almost ready and I want to see if it works.
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—

To: Future
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

Trust me, it works.
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—

To: Past
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

Yeah? How do you know?
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To: Future
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

You’ll see.
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—

To: Past
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

Alright, peace.
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—

To: Future
Subject: RE: FWD: German Army Invades Poland

later
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