Jordan Beswick, C.S.A.

Well maybe not a suitcase…small carry on bag actually.  I travel light.  VERY light.  I always take just what I need.  Always make sure I have access to a washer and dryer.  Do laundry every few days.  This way I can take enough clothes for 5 days and stretch them out over the course of four to six weeks depending on the length of my stay.  I’m phobic about checking bags.   Last time I checked a bag was 1989.  Makes my life in transit SO much simpler in all respects but one.  I’m always dealt with like a potential terrorist. Airline officials can’t for the life of them imagine how it’s possible for me to be abroad for that length of time and have what I need in my small bag.  It’s got to be explosives, I’ve got to be planning a suicide attack, or at the very least creating a disturbance of some sort.  So I have nice chats with the plastic gloved security officers who pat me down and rummage through my bag prior to boarding.  Even though both my bag and body have been thoroughly screened before getting anywhere near the gate.  Thankfully I’m a patient man, and genuinely grateful for any and all procedures meant to make travel safer.  And to be perfectly honest it reminds me of just how many people in this world find themselves unfairly scrutinized because of clothing, ethnicity, beliefs, persuasions, etc.  I mean, why shouldn’t I be singled out?  Why wouldn’t I be profiled?  Shoot, we’re all profiled people.  Profiling is just another way of saying “labeling” or “categorizing”.   Our favorite international pastime.  Which profiled people receive the more intensive, intrusive, aggressive forms of scrutiny depends on who is perceived as the greatest potential threat at any given moment.  But the pendulum swings.  Far too slowly for some, far too quickly for others.  But it does swing.  Yes indeedy.  When I’m being profiled, singled out, pulled out of line, dealt with like the threat I probably am to somebody somewhere in the world, it’s interesting to watch the eyes of the ones who haven’t been.  Some reflect sympathy, some relief, some fear, some scorn.  I remain calm, the picture of tranquility.  Smiling.  Respectful.  I always thank the officer who has just performed his/her duty, and am 99% of the time thanked as well.  And yet…I vividly recall an incident several years back…an old woman screaming as she and her husband were ushered to the additional security area.  Her husband in his quiet, stately manner trying unsuccessfully to soothe her.  In her behavior I sensed a woman with a history.  A history filled with check points.  Of profiled people who never made it to their desired destinations.  Remanded into a custody they’d never escape.  Her wild eyes reflected burning.  She, was burning.  A veritable fire, raging.  To her there was absolutely nothing “random” about this selection process.  The energy in the holding area was palpable.  I’m surprised someone didn’t scream, “Kill the bitch!”  Because that’s what people wanted.  Her silenced.  Silence.  In her life…in far too many of our lives…silence has in fact equaled death…so she refused.  Fuck the person just doing his job.  Fuck everybody standing around, watching, grateful not to be her.  She would NOT go gently…they would have to take her kicking and screaming.  Civil liberties.  Freedom.  Security.  Liberty and justice for all.  Sir…madam…would you please step this way?

The French version of my play, OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL DONUTS (translation by Tatiana Gousseff), will be presented at the Lucernaire theatre (http://www.lucernaire.fr) in Paris, directed by moi, starring Natasha Mashkevich!  Opening night is March 6, 2013!!!!  I’m so excited!!!  I’ll keep you posted!!!!

Friday, February 13th, I was just about to go outside to tell my oldest son and his buddy that it was time to go to wrestling practice, my other son was on the couch playing on his iPod, when all of a sudden the left side of my chest tightened and started to hurt. Badly. So I got all the boys in the car and as I was driving the pain increased significantly. There was no question in my brain that as soon as I dropped the boys off at practice, I was going to drive directly to the ER. We got to their school, the boys got out, I watched them get safely into the wrestling room, and we took off. I said to my youngest, “Sweetheart, daddy’s chest is hurting really bad so we’re going to the hospital. Call your mom and let her know.” So he immediately placed the call then placed his free hand on my chest, holding it there till we arrived at the hospital. I enter the ER and explain that I’m experiencing horrifying chest pains. They give me an EKG…normal. They take my blood pressure…normal. So they make me sit in the lobby and wait for a room to become available. Finally one did, so blood was drawn, and an x ray was taken of my chest. The x ray showed what could be a low grade pneumonia. But it was inconclusive. Thankfully the doctor who spoke with me briefly didn’t wait for the results of my blood work, which also ultimately came back normal! Her intuition had kicked in and she decided to follow her instincts and order a cat scan. Well…next thing I know an admitting nurse is entering the room asking if I have a living will, a designated power of attorney, etc. Hello! The doctor returned and told me she was glad she went ahead with the cat scan because my lungs were filled with blood clots and a very sizable one was in my pulmonary artery. She said I was one lucky man. That in situations like this she tells people you live or you die…there’s no in between. And they would do everything in their power to keep me alive! BUT there were no guarantees. We’d have to take it one step at a time. So I was admitted to the hospital and immediately started on blood thinners, etc.

As I was lying there in the ER thinking it was very possible I could die, I was surprisingly calm, peaceful. I love my life. I have absolutely no regrets. And I’m enormously grateful for the gift that is my life. So I thought, if this is really it, at least I’m heading out an exceedingly happy, grateful man.

But I lived and believe me, I’m ecstatic I did.

And as so often happens in my life, the experience raised my consciousness level enormously!!!!! Made me aware of the need to take far better care of myself physically! I spent years, literal decades, successfully working on my mental and emotional health, while continuing to abuse and neglect my body! I’m notorious for not getting up and moving around frequently on long flights, or stopping the car and getting out and walking every few hours on long road trips, I don’t drink enough water, keep myself hydrated, I starve myself during the day when I’m away working only to stuff my gullet with fatty foods at night, and the alcohol! The fact that my body didn’t mutiny sooner is friggin’ miraculous!!!! But mutiny it finally did and the message it sent was extremely loud and crystal clear! Start taking care of me or die!!!!

So…it’s time to put my remaining suicidal tendencies to rest. Once and for all. I have two extraordinary sons who I want to see grow up and create lives for themselves that they love as much as I love mine. I’m intent on doing that. For myself and for them.

Here’s to a whole (grain) new way of living!!!!!!  Merci, danke, thank you!!!!!!!

Yes, I made it home from my latest European excursion in one very safe, deliriously happy piece!  And dove headlong into SHOPPING!!!!!  I hate shopping.  With a passion.  I grab a cart and wander along aisles debating.  Ultimately selecting gifts that make people squeal but…next year I think I’m going to donate all the money I would have spent on gifts and give everyone a card telling them that their gift was a gift to a much needier person.  Don’t know why I didn’t do that this year or all the previous ones.  Oh well…that will be my New Year resolution!  One I can easily keep!!!!  God knows the ones pertaining to diet I’ve made year after year have found themselves consistently under assorted buses!

Back to my European exploits!  Paris once again was an absolute delight.  10 dedicated actors, all of whom achieved exquisitely beautiful things in the four short weeks we spent together.  Each and every one committed themselves to working their tails off and boy did they.  I’m telling you, the things we all experience in the course of a workshop!!!!  The intensity of it.  But thank God we LAUGH so much!!!!!  I mean, come on!  If acting isn’t fun, if it doesn’t give us extreme pleasure, then it’s HELL!!!!!  And I’m sorry but I don’t agree with all the insane gurus out there who seem to need to make people believe that if they’re not tortured then they’re never going to be artists!  You know what I say to all those method mind fuck Masters?!  Go fuck YOURSELVES!!!!!!

HAPPINESS, HARMONY…LOVE, LOVE, LOVE…and a hell of a lot of RESPECT…makes an actor…healthy, wealthy and oh so wise!!!!  Creates the possibility…the PROBABILITY…of a beautiful career AND life!!!!!  Mon Dieu!!!!!!  What a concept!!!!!!  How can actors RELAX…take that much needed DEEP BREATH…if they’re suffering personally to that extent?  Short answer…they CAN’T!!!!!  Too many people are out there making fortunes TERRORIZING people.  Paralyzing them when they’re supposed to be helping liberate them.  My workshops are flooded with actors desperate to rediscover the joy of acting.  Remember why they fell in love with it.  Heal the severe damage done to them by all of their past sadists, oh I’m sorry, teachers, coaches, directors…and freely express themselves creatively again!!!!!  And you know what?  The vast majority of them are now flourishing!  Instead of committing suicide, they’re working VERY successfully!!!!  Winning awards.  And, go figure, experiencing tremendous joy doing it.  Not to mention earning the love and respect of their colleagues.

When I was a young actor…a millennium or two ago…I told a friend, also an actor, that I despised auditions!  Thinking of course that he would heartily agree.  Well, the shithead shocked me by responding with, “I love auditions!”  He proceeded to say that, for him, auditions were nothing more than another opportunity to do what he loves.  Namely act.  That he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what the folks he was auditioning for thought!  He went to every audition purely to do what he loved, and did just that.  So each and every audition was pure pleasure for him.  And you know what?  He booked A LOT!!!!!!!!

I learned so much from people like him!

Yes.  September 11.  It’s the day after the 10th anniversary.  Thank God!  Of course I remember that day.  I had just finished making travel arrangements for my four year old son and myself when the airline ticketing agent said, “That’s strange. I was just told that a plane crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center.”  We ended the call and I turned on the television to see the smoking tower and within moments watched in horror as the second plane flew into the side of the other one.  There was absolutely no question in my mind.  I knew we were under attack.  I knew we were at war.  I didn’t know with who at that moment but I knew it was war.  I remember running outside and down to the river…I was staying in Hoboken at a friend’s apartment…I’d just completed casting…Signs….with Doug Aibel…and was in the midst of directing one of my closest friends…Jacob Battat…in a production of…Orphans.  Now come on!  Signs and Orphans?  From the banks of the river I watched the towers collapse.  And people, unless it’s for the purpose of production, I don’t cry.  Not publicly.  But when I saw the first tower fall…I wept.  Easily imagining all the people inside that building.  And then I hoped beyond hope that as many people as possible would escape the second building before the inevitable.

I am a great lover of people.  I think human beings are the work of a creative genius.  I love each and every one.  Of course there are some human beings who make it more challenging for me to love them…but love them I do.  The idea of people suffering causes me great suffering.  I think it’s one of the reasons acting has always been a kind of balm for me.  Acting for me is a very healing experience.  It brings me closer to others.  To the myriad of others I share this extraordinary world with.

That’s why yesterday I chose to spend the day working.  Because for me…save for the time I spend with my children (who were VERY close by)…acting affords me the opportunity to spend my time consciously choosing to explore and connect with every aspect of humanity.  The much larger picture.  The great HUGE world we live in.  Reminds me that it is in fact…a small world after all.

Nobody anywhere in the world deserves to experience what was experienced on September 11, 2001.  Absolutely no one anywhere in the world.  And yet things like that happen almost everyday somewhere in the world.  Why?  I haven’t a clue.  But I do know this.  We…each and every one of us…need to spend at least a little time thinking of others.  Imagining what it must be like.  If we can’t walk in their moccasins at least we can imagine what it must be like to walk in them…and by doing so…understand more and judge less.  Condemn less.  Love more and thus hate less.  And find within ourselves what I believe God in His infinite wisdom created in us.  Compassion.

I love kids.  Honestly.  They’re the best.  They don’t come truer.  You always know where you stand with them.  If they love you, they love you.  If they don’t…well…you feel it.  Big time.  Can’t always tell from their facial expressions because mom or dad may have told them to lie…to keep up appearances…so as not to hurt feelings…reflect badly…but dammit!  Respect the kid’s feelings!!!!  If the kid doesn’t want to kiss aunt or uncle so and so, grandma or grandpa, friend of the family…don’t force them.  If they don’t want a career in acting…PLEASE…DON’T FORCE THEM!

I remember one casting session in particular…little girl…probably 8 or 9 years old…I think it was for “Cradle Will Rock”…and the poor, frightened, child could hardly speak let alone deliver her lines.  Every time she flubbed she’d apologize profusely and I’d tell her she was doing fine, just to relax and not worry so much.  After about 9 attempts she said, smiling but in a quivering voice, “Please don’t tell my mommy.”

Recently I asked a friend who works in a hospital nursery if there are times when she fears allowing a newborn to be taken home by its parents and she said, “All the time.”  Boy, could I relate.

I just wrote and directed a short film starring kids.  All of whom are wonderful.  All of whom clearly have the desire.  It began when my two sons expressed an interest in acting.  Thankfully I’m in the position that I can, if not help them professionally, at least help them become more knowledgeable of the job.  So I called Anne Greene of Talent One in Raleigh, NC, and asked her if she’d organize a kids acting workshop for me, which she did.  I’ve very happily been conducting weekend intensive acting workshops out of her offices for years now.  Suffice to say that the kids workshop was a success and my sons learned AND had a great time with all the other kids!  In fact they ended up with two best friends because of it.  When we got home after wrapping up they grabbed an ipod and asked the magic 8 ball app if they were going to make a film with the kids from the workshop and the stupid thing said, “Yes.”  They then ecstatically relayed the answer to me and I, not wanting to rain on anyone’s parade, said, “Well.”  As luck would have it when I returned to Raleigh the following weekend to conduct an adult workshop Anne asked what I thought about making a short film with all the kids.  You can easily imagine my surprise.  And relief.   And excitement.  Then…it hit me…a family friendly film!  Something with kids.  For kids.  Not for adults with kids.  But kids.  Which translates into…not adult.  And I’m not saying dumb it down…but…I mean…I’m an adult.  Capital A D U L T!  And this is for K I D S!!!!!  No bad language, no overt sexuality, no double or triple or quadruple entendres meant to fly over their little heads and amuse the ADULTS.

Could I do it?  Make a film that doesn’t go straight to the gutter and still interest me?  Well…only one way to find out.  And you know what?  I think I did.  May not be everyone’s cup of cocoa but I’m proud of it.  You can watch it on Vimeo at - http://www.vimeo.com/28120251

Whether I was entirely successful or not doesn’t matter, what does is that the kids were fantastic.  Each and every one a genuine pleasure to work with.

Kids.  They inspire the **** out of me.

Just back from 2 and a half weeks in the gorgeous California sunshine.  No where near as hazy as it’s been in the past.  Glorious time with family and friends.  Reunion in Fullerton with folks who’d been my nearest and dearest decades ago.  Many of whom I’d only recently reconnected with.  But as often happens in cases like this…it was as if time hadn’t passed at all.  And yet we all knew to what extent it had.  Exquisitely beautiful group of people.  Enjoyed working on a script polish with my friend Obie Scott Wade for a kids animated episodic he created that’s being prepped to launch SOON.  If you don’t know his incredibly original stuff check out his website - www.obieco.com - I’ve got my fingers crossed that his new venture finds a wide and enthusiastic audience.

Ah, Los Angeles.  God how I wanted to get the hell out of there when I was growing up!  I was born right off the Hollywood freeway.  Queen of Angels hospital.  Hasn’t been that in eons.  It became a major base of operations for Scientology.  Oh well.  Nothing stays the same.  I remember my heartbreak when Turner bought MGM and changed its name, and Mann bought Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and changed its name…it’s been about the almighty buck forever…history be damned…ego is all.  Super power…super success…super sized!!!!  And you know what?  Good for them.  It ain’t the name of my game but who says it’s all got to be about me?

I actually remember telling people after I’d successfully fled East that being born and raised in Southern California was like living in an assisted living community.  A well manicured one anyway.  The grounds well tended, the staff friendly…always smiling, “Have a nice day”…sun shining almost the entirety of each and every year…Disneyland off season!  Assisted living?  More like assisted dying.  California was like the geographic equivalent of the portrait of Dorian Gray.  Who knows…it may very well be.  But what place isn’t…to greater and lesser degrees?

One of the things some of us realize as we get older is that so much of the shit we think about people, places and things has nothing to do with them…it’s all projected bullshit from within.  I wasn’t happy so L.A. became associated with my unhappiness.  So now…thankfully…I love going home.

I might even move back.  But not today.

While working on Lanford Wilson’s “The Moonshot Tape” an idea came to mind for an original piece I’d been kicking around about my aunt.  My father’s sister.  Probably because many of the issues dealt with by Diane in Moonshot were the same my aunt Edna had endured.  Mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.  But what inspired me to explore Edna’s story is that where Diane emerged bitter, self-destructive, cynical, vengeful, and in her own way, abusive, Edna chose the path of forgiveness.  Not self-righteous or sanctimonious…just good old fashion…better to put love and respect out there into the world than contribute even that much more negativity.  And she did…she forgave everyone who trespassed against her.  And believe me, there were many and their trespasses against her would be considered unforgivable by most.

After almost being killed by her husband for the umpteenth time, she packed up her boys, got a lawyer, sued for divorce and got a small donut shop in the settlement.  She became the donut lady.  Working tirelessly, around the clock, even engaging her sons in the enterprise, and making a sufficient success of the place to support her family.  And through it all she maintained her humanity.  Chose to laugh in the face of adversity.  She didn’t bitch about her shitty life, she didn’t write books, or make movies, or paint pictures, she didn’t have time.  She had to work to support her three sons.  No time for lofty goals, pursuing dreams, aspirations.  And she certainly didn’t have the money to pay expensive therapy bills!  Her therapy was WORK!  And her sons.  And God.

She doesn’t know exactly when she started taking in other people’s children…but before she knew it she was supporting some 29 kids.  The numbers would increase and decrease over the years depending on the need.  No matter what her economic situation she’d never turn a child away.  She committed herself to taking responsibility, and providing, for neglected and abused kids.  And she never asked for a dime from anyone to help support them.  She made sure each and every child in her care knew his/her value, worth…knew he/she was loved and respected.  That each and everyone of them were winners, not the losers they’d been made to believe they were.

Exploring the life of this modern day heroine, this woman of tremendous substance gave me hope…that no matter what personal, political, economic, chaotic, situation exists at any given moment…what domestic or international crises…that in this extraordinary world of OURS…heroes walk among us.  Not the superheroes depicted on screen or in comic books…but real live, flesh and blood heroes who are out there every day healing the wounded masses.  Simply because there’s a need.  Human beings need love, need respect, need to know they’re worthy of life on this planet, in this universe…every single one of us…and the Edna’s of the world have committed themselves to making sure we all remember that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…they’re not perfect these heroes.  But who gives a flying f**k?  Anyone who sacrifices so much to care for so many…come on.  Forgiveness people.  Wasn’t that ultimately the lesson?  Forgive them, Father.  It took the son to illuminate that.  Something the Father missed entirely.  So clear and yet so clearly unseen by God.  Thank you, Jesus.  Forgive, forgive, forgive.  Which takes love.  Love, love, love, people.  Does in fact make the world go round.  And people like Edna inspire the crap out of me.   Because her story illuminates the extent to which love really can sustain a person even in the face of overwhelming odds and heal all wounds.

Thank you, Edna.