A Little Thing Like Breakfast With David Cale Makes Living In New York City Worthwhile

Last week I had breakfast with David Cale. We run into each other from time to time here in the East Village. We always say "Let's get together" and then we always get busy and let it slide. But finally we did it. We met at Cafe Mogador on St. Mark's Place. I ordered eggs over easy. David had the Foul Madamas.

I've known David for (gasp) twenty years. I was but a youth when I met him. He was already a star in the performance art world. I saw him in his one-person show The Redthroats at Second Stage and I've been smitten ever since. David is a true artist. The kind of performer who blends humor and poetry with the ease and grace of a figure skater. He's performed at major theaters across the country and been featured on Bette Midler's Mondo Beyondo on HBO. He's also won one OBIE and two Bessie Awards.

Currently David is making a recording of his hit musical show Floyd and Clea Under The Western Sky. He was so excited to have the opportunity to make this recording with some of the best musicians in the country. I can't wait to hear it. The show opened at the Long Wharf Theatre and played to acclaim in New York at Playwrights Horizons. But the story of how the show came into being is what really fascinated me. It all came about because David fell in love with a character he was playing in a film.

The film is The Slaughter Rule starring David Morse and Ryan Gosling.

New York Times flim critic Stephen Holden said: "To the smaller role of Gideon's old friend Studebaker, a local country singer who lurches around in an alcoholic daze wearing a stocking cap and a miner's lamp, the New York performance artist David Cale brings a heart-tugging vulnerability. Tough, plaintive country music, beautifully chosen and performed and mostly of the vintage honky-tonk and swing variety, plays a large role in the movie. Of all the human activities, it is the only reliable balm, alcohol being a portal to violence."

David couldn't let him go. Thus was born Floyd and Clea.

I sat enthralled listening to David tell me the story of creating this character. It's so brave to take a character that is so far from oneself - Cale is British and couldn't be further from a drunken mid-westerner - and continue to explore it as a musical no less. He truly goes out on a limb. This is what makes him a great artist.

We sat for nearly two hours over breakfast. We ordered another cappuccino. Our conversation wandered over personal terrain, a mutual friend we shared concern for. He told me about working with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper in the recent Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. David was not at all certain he would get along with Mr. Cumming, also British and enormously talented. But the two became fast friends. David spoke with great admiration of Cumming, saying he "loves his way of being in the world". Well, that's the way I feel about David Cale. I love his way of being in the world. His sparkling intelligence, his gentle demeanor, the way he can tell a story and make you feel you're the only one in the world worth talking to...this is why I live in New York. Because some days I get to spend with heroes. Some days there breakfast with David Cale.

Osho on Acting

Osho on Acting

The great spiritual guru Osho has touched many lives. I keep a copy of his book The Inner Journey next to my bed. Last night I read this, and I thought of the acting process:

"When someone digs a well, he first takes out the soil and stones and then water seeps in from the sides of the well and fills it. The water was already there, it did not need to be brought from anywhere else. Only some stones and layers of soil needed to be removed. There were some hindrances, some obstacles: once they were removed the water appeared. It was not necessary to bring water to the well, it was already there - just some hindrances had to be removed."

Thus it is in acting. We don't "put on a character" we "let one emerge". The work is always clearer when we leave the realm of the thinking. As a famous acting teacher once said, "Get out of the way, it's none of your business."

Peace.
Wayne

Keep Going

"...that which the ego is most afraid to resemble, is often composed of the images of the violated (castrated) body, the ethnic out-group, and the exploited minority." Erik H. Erikson

The theater is a place for outcasts. Its a breeding ground for non-conformity. To search for evidence of consciousness in the human species is to be a tremendous optimist. To dedicate oneself to a permanent state of transience is an attempt to live only in the present. Rehearsal is seemingly anathema to the art of being in the moment. But rehearsal teaches us only the ritual motions of the proceedings, the structure of the game. The playing is the practice. Breathing through the fear we open ourselves to criticism and to the scarier possibility of self-revelation. We fear our own incompetence. We sense our own spiritual impotence. We circle our flaws in black magic marker and hang them on the sidewalk for all to see. In doing so we add one more voice to the soundtrack of evolution. We raise the bar one notch. We carry tradition into the present and create the trajectory for future expression. We tell our stories so we can know ourselves. As we normalize our outlandishness we create a safer world for the ones who otherwise wouldn't fit in. Keep going.

W.