Question what you're told

A little something for the people who watch Fox News.

A Self Portrait

This is a Self Portrait I did a few years ago, called Light and Dark. I took the picture of myself with a digital camera, and then altered it in Photoshop.

Theological Thoughts...

Here's some of my thoughts on the transmigration of the soul.

Let's take, as a given (for the sake of argument), the existence of a soul or spirit. Perhaps it is a multidimensional energy field, or perhaps it is the Ruach Elohim, the breath of God.

I've always liked the story in Genesis about how God blew on the clay, and animated it with his breath, and it became us.

In Hebrew, it's Ruach Elohim, the breath of God. The Ruach is the animating principle. It's the little piece of God in each of our souls. When Jesus says that God is in our hearts, it is this that he is speaking of.

I believe that this is the same thing as Chi, or Kundalini, or the Collective Unconscious of Jung. It is the invisible threads that connect us all to the Source of all.

Our souls connect us to all the other souls and to God.

Our energy, our life force, our souls. I saw my Grandma die a year and a half ago, and when I saw her dead body, there was something missing. SHE wasn't present anymore, it was only a shell. The final breath is when we give our souls, our Ruach, back up to the universe.

From God we come, from the Universal Lungs, and back out there we return.

I believe in a kind of reincarnation, but not what the Hindus preach.

If you look at the actual matter that makes up your body, the atoms, the molecules, the electons -- those bits of matter have made up many different people over the years.

Every 7 years we have totally different cells in our bodies. We are constantly in a state of flux.

The universe recycles. That's what the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy is all about.

And if our matter has been many different people, and sometimes air, and sometimes part of the ocean, and sometimes plants, and sometimes different animals - why not our souls?

Perhaps the reason so many people can past life regress into Napoleon, or whoever, is that each of them has a tiny piece of the original.

I may be breathing in the same molecules of air as Cleopatra, but maybe, somewhere in my being, I am also made up of some of the same ETERNAL parts as well.

I believe that we come from the Universal Consciousness, and it is to that which we return.

God, and the collectivity that exists beyond life is like a giant pool of water, our souls are like drops of the water, and when it is time for us to be born, we fall like rain into our new material bodies.

When we die, our souls return into the universal sea of souls. Our spiritual molecules mix with the others.

We will continue on forever, but not as a single coherent thing. The rest of the universe, when observed, just doesn't show that that's how things are. They transmute, and join and unjoin different bodies constantly.

Non-Violence in Palestine

The only way the violence between Israel and Palestine is going to stop is for the Palestinians to emulate Ghandi or Martin Luther King, and just take it. If they were dying on international TV from being run over by tanks, and were never suicide bombing civilians, the world wouldn't stand for it anymore, the Israelis would lose the stomach for killing and the U.S. couldn't possibly keep supporting the Israelis' violence unilaterally. It would become like South Africa where finally even the U.S. government couldn't support them anymore.

As long as there are suicide bombers, it's all too personal, and it can only make the violence spiral higher and higher.

Day Three

So, this is the third day of my new blog.

I'm in love with the most wonderful girl, an actress (I swore off actresses years ago, but it actually is going really well this time), and it's great to be working with her on this play. We're producing it together and all our free time is spent trying to get everything together. We signed up with Equity, so it'll be a union show, but now we're having difficulties with the agent of the playwright. He doesn't want us to be able to advertise the show, so it's just going to be extra difficult, I guess. Oh well. Just one more challenge to overcome.

I may post some of my art on here, I'll have to see what I have easily available.

Anyway, thanks for checking out my blog.

POETRY: Walking

I'd go for a walk if I could
but it's just too bright outside
and the cars all speed by
and are likely to strike me
and the air's too dirty
and someone's dog might bite me
or some bum might mug me
or I might pick up some fatal disease
or get skin cancer from the sun
or maybe I'd fall down and embarass myself
and everyone would stop what they're doing
and point
and laugh at me
and make me feel like a little child.
So, instead of all of that,
I sit here,
where it's safe
inside
protected from all of that
and instead of walking
I pace.

POETRY: My Old Pal Uncle Joey

So I’m sitting there, just sitting there at my desk when the phone rings.
Ring! Ring!
And so I pick it up, you know, to see who’s on the other end.
Hello?
And guess who it is?
Who?
My old pal Uncle Joey.
The pervert? That child molester guy?
Yep, the same.
So, Danny, how you doing now?
Uh, who’s this?
You know, your old pal Uncle Joey.
So, I’m thinking, what the hell’s this about, I mean, I thought he was in jail.
I thought you was in jail.
Well, I was, but they let me off for good behavior.
The fucks.
That’s what I’m thinking.
Oh.
So, I’m in town, I thought I’d look you up.
Look, Uncle Joey, I mean…
We can be friends, can’t we? I mean, that was a long time ago.
Uncle Joey…
All of this bringing up all these bad memories…
I’m sure.
…you used to make me suck your cock on the swingset.
Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that.
I’m getting mad now.
That’s supposed to make me feel better?
Well, I’m all reformed now. I just wanted to see how you turned out.
How I turned out…
I’m about to lose my shit.
…what the fuck, Uncle Joey, how I turned out!
Hey, you don’t need to yell, son.
I’m not your goddamn son, you fuck!
Look, I told you I was sorry.
I hope you fucking rot and die.
Then what?
Well, I hung up the phone.
(beat)
Pretty fucked up, man.

POETRY: Hollywood, A Love Poem

Hollywood
A Love Poem

Or

A sort of poetical essay on living in the City of the Angels, with observations on the flora and fauna to be found therein

by
David Tarleton


Imagine, if you will,
A City of Dreams,
A City of Dreamers,
City of the self-deluded
And the half-mad.

16 lane superhighways criss-cross
the desert landscape,
immobile in my car,
the traffic backed up all the way to Downey
from an overturned tanker,
polluting the dust this time, not the air
with the poison fumes
I breathe in all day,
Like the creative breath,
the ruach
Of some demented demiurge.

City of Angels
City of Dream
City of Falsehood
City of Pain
I love you
I hate you
I resent you
I covet you

Angelyne’s 40 foot tall breasts hang pendulously overhead, like some kind of perverted Paleolithic Earth Mother, smothering us all in her silicone mammaries, her face disfigured beyond human recognition, like the lost white member of the Jackson clan, on billboards across the cityscape, paid for with favors and a millionaire sugar daddy.

Better still than Dennis Woodruff, with his “make My movie” and his Paper mache heads, living out in a trailer park on the edge of town, dreaming the good dream, if only…

If only…

If only someone would discover me
If only they’d make my screenplay, hire me, cast me, give me my big break,
Once I do my one big thing
It’s easy street

Maybe I just need to become a scientologist.

But no one else will make the move for you
You can’t wait for someone else to discover you
Materialize your own dreams

That’s the Big Lie that Hollywood sells you, the big lie of overnight success,
An overnight success that takes 15 years of peddling your ass on streetcorners and,
Being fake polite to everyone you think can help your career,
As your nose moves beyond brown into ultraviolet
And your soul slowly darkens,
From the compromises
And the lies
And the rejection.

Becoming famous won’t suddenly make those people who rejected you love you.
If the cool kids, or that girl who made fun of you in the 7th grade, or your dad finally decide that you don’t suck anymore,
Who gives a shit?
It still doesn’t fill that empty place inside of you.

It’s naïve to think that
the American Dream, Hollywood-style,
Will suddenly replace the missing elements in you.

Success and happiness are not synonyms
Although, sometimes, one can lead to the other

The objective shouldn’t be to become rich and famous,
It should be to wake up happy every morning.

It’s easy to sell ourselves short,
And whore ourselves out for a crust of bread
When there are other bakeries
Hollywood isn’t the only baker in town,
It’s just got the sexiest billboards

I imagine standing on the roof of my car, screaming out at the people entering through the front gates at Paramount:
“Rise up, rise up against the machine that seduces you into being a cog in a globalized multinational media conglomerated machine that spews out infotainment designed to lull you into a trance so they can program you to buy their crap
Fight for the art of what you do, not just the commerce.”
But if I did that, I think they’d probably lock me up as un-American.

A thousand thousand meet and greets
Midnight parties in the Hollywood Hills, with wannabe movie starlets in the hottub, clad only in their naked ambition
For this is the Holy Land, the Mecca for the tragically dispossessed,
Who desperately need to prove their self-worth
By seeing their pictures up in checkout lines.

But it’s easy when thinking of the seduction of fame
To forget about selling your soul to get there
And to forget about the stalker, uninvited, in your living room, munching on Doritos, claiming, to the police, to be your fiancé.

Am I bitter? No, not bitter. Wise, perhaps. Wise enough now, wisdom hard earned, wise enough to sniff out the liars, the hypocrites, the penny ante hustlers more interested in being a big shot than in making anything of value. Cynical, yes, but it’s this city that’s made me so.

Am I cynical? Perhaps. But I still haven’t left,
Like a junkie who just needs that one more fix,
Or the gambler who plays just one more hand
To get his car out of hock.

I’m still here
Even though sometimes I think about leaving,
But something always keeps me here,
Fixated on a dream.
A dream that I know I will reach
Because I know I’m good enough
And I’m better than those other bums,
But I guess that’s what those other bums think, too,
So we all work,
And we wait,
And we hope
And we desire
And it might just happen.
I mean, heck, Dennis Woodruff finally did make his movie.
I saw it.
It sucked.

FICTION: The Story of Bob and Mathilda

Once upon a time there lived, in a tiny little cave by the edge of the sea, an old hermit named Bob, who loved an old wizardress who lived further down the shore named Mathilda.

Now Bob had loved Mathilda secretly in his heart for many years, but had never had the courage to tell her of his love for her. As far as he knew, she just thought him another long haired weirdo living at the beach.

But, secretly, Mathilda had had a crush on Bob since, oh, before you were born, and had always wanted him to be the first to make a move, but he never had.

So Bob sat in his cave, wishing humanity would pay him more respect, and Mathilda brewed and ensorcelled in her cave, hoping to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and while both of them were always exceeding polite to each other, neither one of them ever made the first move.

Until one day, May the 31st, I believe it was, of that faithful year when February had 30 days and pigs were seen on the wing, that a Stranger wandered through the sandy beach, and settled himself in a grass shack equidistant between Bob and Mathilda’s homes in the monstrous cliff faces.

The Stranger gathered up an armful of faggots that he gathered down by the ocean, and, digging a small hole outside his shack, proceeded to build himself a fire. First he put the faggots in the pit, and then, rubbing some sticks together like magic, he produced a flame from the heat of their friction. Taking the now smoldering branch, he lit the faggots, and proceeded to add on larger pieces of wood. Soon, he had a huge blaze going, blotting out the sky with its brilliance. The flickers of firelight danced on the cliff walls, and on the Stranger’s upturned face.

Mathilda was the first one to see the great fire that the Stranger made. She would normally never do something to draw attention to herself like make a bonfire, and at first, she thought to herself “Who does he think he is, to make such a bonfire out in public?” But then she saw how warm and inviting it was, and finally got the courage to go out and warm herself by the bonfire.

She approached tentatively. “Hello, stranger”

“Hello there,” replied the Stranger, “I didn’t know I had neighbors.”

“Well, you do.”

“Please, warm yourself by my fire.” She did. “I’m Abacus, a wandering mathematician.”

“Mathilda, I’m a sorceress.”

“A pleasure, Mathilda.”

Just at that moment, in his own cave, Bob happened to glance out his door, and noticed the fire, and the stranger, and Mathilda. And he got enraged, and jealous. “Why’s she talking to that stranger who had the presumption to light a fire out in front of MY cave? Why, I’ve known her for years, and we’ve never talked. Why, I oughta go down there and teach that guy a thing or two.”

And so, emboldened by his jealous anger, Bob went out from his cave, and made his way down the beach to where the Stranger and Mathilda were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.

“Excuse me,” said Bob as he approached the hut and the fire, and the two, ”but I couldn’t help but notice your fire here.”

“Yes,” said the Stranger, “please, come here and enjoy it. It’s for the good of all. I’m Abacus,” he said, extending his hand.

Bob left his hands where they were: tucked into his armpits.

“Where are you from?” Bob asked.

“If you come over here and enjoy the hospitality of my fire, maybe I’ll tell you a little,” replied Abacus.

Bob finally begrudgingly took Abacus’ hand, and settled in next to the fire. There was a certain twinkle in Mathilda’s eyes while she watched all of this unfold.

“Well,” began the stranger, “it’s a long story, and one I’ve not often told.”

“Oh, please do tell us,” pleaded Mathilda.

Bob just looked over at her. ‘She never asked me to tell her anything,’ he thought to himself resentfully.

So Abacus told his story, and it lasted many days in the telling, and the whole time Bob and Mathilda sat, enraptured by the tale, and they slowly moved nearer each other, until they clutched each other during the frightening parts, and laughed together during the funny ones. They began to make eye contact between each other, and began to feel comfortable together.
“…and so, I ended up here, on this beach. I thought this part of the world was deserted, to tell you the truth. But I’m glad I ran into you guys, you seem like decent folk.,” finished up Abacus.

“Wow,” said Bob.

“That was some story,” said Mathilda.

The stranger just looked at both of them with an odd gleam in his eye, and a slight smile upon his lip.

“Just look at the two of you.”

They did. They noticed they had their arms around each other. Embarrassed, they dropped their arms.

“Now you’ve stopped. And you’ll probably just go back to the way it was, too. Both of you afraid to leave your caves and meet each other, even though you probably have more in common with each other than anyone else.”

Bob and Mathilda just looked at each other.

“Sometimes you have to leave the cave. Behold!”

And with that, the sun rose beautiful, over the water, all red and orange and yellow. You couldn’t tell where the sky began and the ocean ended.

Bob looked over at Mathilda, and saw the orange glow of morning lighting her face with an ethereal glow. “Mathilda,” he began.

Mathilda looked at him, and saw his beard, and his rags, but a deep intelligence and sensitivity in his eyes, and felt something in her heart that she had never felt before. “Yes?” she replied.

“I’ve always loved you. Since the beginning. I… I just never had the courage to tell you.”

She blushed, reached down, and touched his hand.

“Me neither,” she replied.

Slowly, the two of them moved together, awkwardly, and kissed. It lasted for a long while.

When they finally looked up, the Stranger was nowhere to be seen. The grass hut, neither.

Many years later, I heard that that stretch of beach had a whole bunch of little hermits and wizardresses running along it, all living in the caves there, but I never saw the place then, and that’s only a rumor so far as I know.

Day Two of the Great Experiment

Hello there, again.

I was a radio DJ during college for 3 years, for the AM campus station. I remember playing a lot of David Bowie.

But when I would talk out, over the air, it kind of felt like this. It's my own message in a bottle, and you faithful readers are the recipients.

I'm working on this documentary now, as a freelance film editor. I use Final Cut Pro, and I have my own system at home (it's at the center of a whole digital studio I have, with 3 monitors, multiple computers, midi keyboard, multiple A/D converters of various kinds).

The doc is about the fact that babies are conscious and remember everything, and all the things we do to them, even before birth and at birth, have serious psychological consequences.

I compose a lot of music in my free time, and I think my singing voice has been getting better. I've written probably 40 or so songs, but I still don't quite have the right ones for my first album yet. Maybe 8 or 9 so far, though, that I think are particularly good.

I think it's important to be honestly critical with yourself about your own work. Not everything one produces is gold. And the things I make that are less good, I usually don't inflict upon the world.

But when I can open myself up. When I can connect to the cosmic unconsciousness, to the land where dreams are born, to the place underneath my brain where the ideas come from, then I feel awesome.

I find I can access it more and more.

Sometimes I'll look at something I made later and not remember producing it.

Othertimes I can recall every painful moment.

Or the joy of being finished and seeing it in the theatres, or on TV, or at a festival, or just knowing that some other person besides myself gets to see this thing that I've made.

But mostly it's jobs that I'm hired on to, where I'm a journeyman, that get big exposure. I produced and edited a series of TV specials for Sony Pictures, to be seen in China and Taiwan. I mean, the TV audience in China is over a billion people. More people are going to see it there than here, but it's still weird to make things in a foreign language.

I might post some music I've been working on here, if people are interested.

The Frightening Truth

Everyone should read this Scary Article just in case you thought we WEREN'T fighting a really scary right wing conspiracy run by people perverting the message of Jesus to justify their greed and evil.

Bush and his people are on the same side as these people.

Starting Out...

...is the hardest thing to do.

I am an artist, a film maker, a musician, a philosopher, a theologian, a poet.

I'm currently finishing up an album of original music, which I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, directing a play that's going up in North Hollywood in a couple of months, finishing editing a feature length documentary about babies, about to start on a TV show pilot for the Sci-Fi channel that I would be a producer on if it gets picked up, finishing up a feature-length screenplay that I've been working on for the last 3 1/2 years, and starting up a new romantic relationship with a beautiful actress that I've been best friends with for years, and whom I'm directing in the play.

Plus, I've got friggin' jury duty next week.

So, in all my free time (and you know, I don't really like multitasking... hmmm...), I figure I'll try to get my thoughts down here, to share with you good people out there.

I got my MFA in film directing from the University of Southern California, and my graduate thesis film got some attention. It played on the Sci Fi Channel, came out on DVD, did well on the festival circuit.

I got a feature deal out of it that I eventually dropped out of when I finally realized that the producer who hired me was never going to come up with the money. I'd been writing a screenplay and scouting locations, etc. for 9 months, without a cent.

Now I freelance as a producer, editor, and director.

I am a kind of new breed of film maker, I can do all of it. I write, direct, produce, edit, shoot, do special effects, and now, for the first time with the doc I'm working on right now, compose the music.

I don't have Robert Rodriguez sized budgets, and I've been doing a lot of documentary lately, but I like doing it all. With the digital technology, if I wanted, I could make an entire feature length film without leaving my house. If it was just me, it would take me years, but in a J.R.R. Tolkein kind of way, I appreciate that. That's pretty new as a reality. The computer allows me total control, which just didn't use to be possible. Much more than the average viewer is even aware of.

I don't know that I work all that fast, because I feel that, as an artist, once you've put the work out into the world, it's going to have a life of its own, and it better be the best you can make it.

Perfectionism is its own reward. Shakespeare and Mozart weren't sloppy.

That doesn't mean that I don't try to work spontaneously. All my best work comes from a totally intuitive place. Sometimes I like to create music or write fiction stories from an almost trance state, where the ideas coming out come more directly from my subconscious, without as much conscious intervention.

It's hard to do that within collaborative processes. It's mainly only in the quiet moments, when I can shut out the noise and the distractions of outside, and be able to go inside, and listen to what the muse has to say.

That's the only way I can find the truth. I understand what Salvador Dali meant when he talked about his working technique. Without trying to emulate him, I think I have a working method which is similar. It's about being without thought, allowing the mind to wander, respecting the reverie, the daydream. Programming the subconscious to come up with the ideas I can encorporate in the work.

Sometimes it's enough just to let my mind wander into some kind of interesting wave form.

But I'm going to try my best to keep it interesting on here for you good people.

Thanks for coming!