Magicians Do Not Exist and Comedy is No Laughing Matter

Magicians Do Not Exist
and
Comedy is No Laughing Matter

Last night, I went with my friend Alison to see L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist) at the Los Feliz 3 movie theater. This was made by the people who did "The Triplets of Belleville." I LOVE this particular aesthetic, and so I was so excited when Alison said she'd go see the film with me.

It was a rainy night here in the city of Angels. I love when it rains in LA, the city takes on, for me, a more cautious, thoughtful tone. No one knows how to drive in the rain or get wet, it seems, and so the poetry rises up from the streets as the lights shine down upon the pools of water where once there were potholes and cracks from an ever churning city of transience.

Vermont and the Los Feliz neighborhood is an area of town I LOVE when it rains because it becomes like New York, or like Uptown in my hometown city of Minneapolis: artsy, urban in a strange bohemian sophistique, almost literary.

We got there so early (Alison's influence, trust me, not mine!! LOL) and bought our tickets. They wouldn't let us hang inside the theater so we walked across to Fred 62 for a cappucino and cup of coffee, (me and Alison, respectively). There was a CUTE guy sitting at the other end of the counter eating soup. He looked like an ex-boyfriend of mine and I just quietly checked in for a moment to make sure it wasn't him. I don't think it was, but he certainly was listening to everything Alison and I were saying. Isn't it interesting how that amends your speech? Like, I knew he was listening and I continued my conversation with A and yet I sort of amended my own speech- why? I didn't even know this person and would probably never see him again, but he reminded me of someone that I know and so....

Well.

We walked back to catch our movie and entered the sweet little theater on the left. I love this little movie theater where they have a curtain they pull up and down like the gathers of a petticoat. The cute guy from Fred 62 was sitting just in front of me. I sat in the one strange aisle that darts across the entire theater (almost) in the middle and therefore sat in the very best seat in the house, halfway back (there are only about 20 rows) and smack dab in the center.

As the film began, a family consisting of about 6 children ran in, shouting "Maman! Maman!" They couldn't decide if they would sit way up front or way in back, and after testing all the seats decided upon way in front.

"COMEDY IS NO LAUGHING MATTER."

My acting coach, Candace, is the daughter of one of the American Comedic geniuses, Phil Silvers. He coined that phrase, and the more I work with her and study with her, the more deeply I see the truth of that statement. Now, first of all, I am a comedic actress, and I am performing a one woman comedic cabaret about my love life. I decided to do this because whenever I tell people about my dating experiences and love life, they laugh and laugh and laugh! The more painful the experience for me, the more deeply people laugh and must think I'm kidding. In all honesty, I'm funniest when I am not trying but am merely being my sensitive little melancholy self. yes, I do have a very positive attitude, but it is a muscle i have developed and continue to develop to overcome my shyness, my nerdiness, my awkwardness, my sorrow. It's like running, for me. I don't actually like it until after I have done it, but I know what it does for me, and so I keep, well, trying, anyway.


So I recall once watching "The Pink Panther" at the Aero in Santa Monica with Alison and our mutual friend Chris. Everyone howled and HOWLED at Peter Sellers and his antics, but all I could see was how desperately he longed to hold his wife, make love to her, have her return his love in truth and reality instead of in presentation and lies and fakeness, and the pain of that caused him to cover with oafishness. I saw that CLEARLY. I suggested it to someone after the fact and they said, "No! He's just being funny." But I saw it.

A TRIBUTE TO JACQUES TATI

The film, L'Illusionniste,is based on a screenplay that the French actor and comedic great, Jacques Tati, wrote, apparently intending it to be a love letter from father to daughter.The film becomes increasingly self-referential (as it should), even featuring a live action sequence from "Mon Oncle." Wonderful. I love that sort of thing, and, one thing I believe about animators (having once dated one for a few years) is that they LOVE to hide more and more and more and more secrets and references and homages in everything they do. I bet I could see this film time and time again and just begin to see the world of the filmmakers.

Now.

About L'ILLUSIONNISTE.

This film would have broken my heart
if it weren't already broken.
Me heart, yes, it has been
Broken open-
but broken.

Thank god because the piercing sadness
set against the whimsy and beauty of the film-

a series of stunning moments (potentially family-phagic rabbit stew, useless clowns committing suicide, alcoholic ventriloquists left rotting in alley-ways after devoting their lives to a dying art)-

I watched the film and instead of slinking slowly into my usual Piscean wallow over the sorrow and pain that the world of the losing live in,
I looked instead for the life and the recovery and the forward movement,
so as to not render the lives of the dying pointless,
but meaningful.

In the tale, the magician and the performers of his era- vaudeville performers, acrobats, ventriloquists, clowns- are being replaced by pop singers and rock bands and TVs and Radios (it is set in the 1950s and 60s in France and Scotland......) He is forced to find work performing in remote villages for small crowds and in one small village in Scotland, he meets a simple village girl who is dazed by his magic. He knows they are mere sleight of hand tricks, but she begins to believe that he can magically create anything and make all her dreams come true. So, without asking, she follows him to Edinburgh and he runs himself into the ground continuing to try and create magic for her as her desires grow more and more worldly. At the same time, she is blossoming into womanhood and is beginning to notice young men her own age. Of course.....

Her innocence dooms the Illusionist, wounds him at the heart, when her actions seem to run right over his tenderness. At the same time, I began to see how her unknowing, pigheaded demands for more things, more, more..... actually save him from the fate of so many of his fellow performers of the dying ilk. While his peers are drinking themselves to death, he is having to reinvent himself and move with the energy of the world instead of insist that it should be different than it is.

Of course, eventually, she grows into a woman, and naturally, falls in love with a young man who can give her the next portion of her life.

And so, the magician has nothing left to give her, but his truth.

SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER











He leaves her, in secret, and leaves Edinburgh, to return to Paris (one assumes), having renounced all tools of his trade- his top hat, his scarves, and even setting his rabbit free- and leaves her with the last of his cash and a cookbook and some trinkets and a note that says, simply,

"Magicians Do Not Exist."



Neither do we, do we?
No, not really.

I suppose magicians do exist, but only in the moment of the act of committing magic.

I am only a singer when I am singing.

I am only a human being, when I am being.

Eventually, my body will die, and my ashes scattered, and those who remember me, will keep their idea of me and the energy of Erin alive, until eventually, they no longer need it..... and I was just some long forgotten memory of an energy that once lived, and loved, and blogged, and drank coffee, and got teary-eyed over aging vaudeville performers as I sat in a dark theater one night as the rain beat hard against the brick and mortar of a town built on fault lines, disrupted by earthquakes, over a planet filled with lava, circling some ball of fire in the sky, twisting and turning and spinning throughout some idea I might have and energy may carry of a universe of countless countless stars falling like my tears.

And even the legends, eventually, die out.

And although I am sad that the Magician ceased to exist as a magician-

For I do not believe him, that MAGICIANS DO NOT EXIST

For right now, right now, right here, right now,

I EXIST


I AM
I CRIED
I AM
SAID I.

But only in the moment.
Only in the moment.


The beauty- deep deep beauty-

is that he did not hold on to his idea of


I AM.




Rather than take it personally,
(as he watched his friend the ventriloquist take it personally, whither and die without his dummy, drunk on the street, forgotten, eventually, even by the Illusionist himself....)
instead, he
lets life continue
tells the truth
and takes the journey to some next step in his life.

As he rides the train, and still remembers his habits- contemplating performing a small bit of magic so as to charm a child, but then deciding not to-
there is a continuing glimpse at the beauty
of the sun rise and set over a lush earth, alive with movement,
and he settles into himself, heartbroken, but having lived.

And through the city and over the hills,
the wind sweeps away the debris.

Let it sweep away your pain, and your tears, and let the sun find you fresh and full of life, no matter who or where or what you are in this moment.

Beyond the Roots

Beyond the Roots

I gratefully attended a killer event last night. The music was. Yes. My favorite FAVORITE was Chaka Khan. Whatta voice.

I also had the pleasure of observing both self and others in the Hollywood setting.

I love my city of angels, and I love my Hollywood, but damn. We can be full of shit.

So this morning when I awakened (late) (and finally, thanks to Liz for calling me to get my sleepy head roused from bed!) I was writing morning pages about it and it turned into this song:

Parading, and masquerading,
as a guru and an angel
but you ain't got no-
no you ain't got no-
peace in your heart.

Flying and multoplying
all over this girl
oozing honey
But you got flies babe
in your stream of words
you pour down on me.

I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...

Oh, oh, oh....

Hiding and colliding
the tears you keep just
behind your snake eyes
you're made of so much
more than your words
and yet you pay the game

But I don't buy it
So I while I tried it
I need a man who opens up his heart
Wide as the sky
For that man
I would try
anything-

But you don't really know what I mean....

I don't see everything either
But I see you're a wheeler dealer
And I got big compassion
For whatever
led you
to become
the jive talker
you are today
it's okay...
I love you!
Just in my way.

Hey...

It's okay.

Oh, oh, oh....

UNDER THE DOGHOUSE

http://underthedoghouse.com/?p=135

New blogs will be coming soon. I've been busy writing a one woman show, singing, working with my acting and vocal coaches here in Los Angeles, getting ready for album 2, and today I shot for this fun new web series, UNDER THE DOGHOUSE! Check out their website HERE:

http://underthedoghouse.com/?p=135

Check out this video from my recent video shoot!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1695003727816&bcode=DAXnl

Check out this video from my recent video shoot!

JAZZ: a few sketches

JAZZ:
a few sketches

Jazz # 1

Steeped in tradition
curved boatneck behind
a large dark womanly groan
with every slide he
attempts to hide and
shield his heart’s light
from an un-understanding
gaggle of tasteless cadets
and yet his intellect and pride
severs not his light
for his stream of joy (from
the music,
like
his sweat)
is
blessed
with the
essence of
one
whose
love
is
greater
than his pain.

















Jazz # 2

…see, they always
look to the left
;
except for a few folks (I’d say fellahs but
I
know at least three ladies who’d ob-
ject)

look in
w
a
r
d

and the groove of the
thing is his
(H
E
R) thing
is the thing is the thing of the

swing.


Even if it don’t got that _________.
Even if it ain’t got that ________.
We can still


___________.

You
listen
ing?










Jazz # 3

the ones I loved the best were the ones who
knew the inner circle of the
blood of life
is covered by and
permeated through
and in and out is the
joy of life

and


ooooh we oooh.
the high priestess calls is
SOUL
and

oooooooooooh weee oooh weee oooh

the Sultan calls it
(whatever he damn well pleases.
He’s the SULTAN.)

I call it divine
and
You call it sublime.

Whatever.


There ain’t no wrong notes in jazz.

Eleven Moments

Eleven Moments
by Erin Muir

Monday, 10:15 pm

I walked in my front door, exhausted from a long day of massage. I’ve picked up some extra hours with various mobile spas because, well, because I’ve been broke. Like (negative) -$27.55 in my bank account for four days broke. I’m hoping it helps me lose weight and get leaner muscle tone. (p.s. Just in case. Mom, I’m fine. Just for a few days there I was waiting on a check… see below.)

Anyway, lo and behold, lucky me, there was a check I’d been waiting for. You know, the kind of check that they “say” is coming on the 10th but somehow never arrives until the 13th or 14th? (“But we mailed it on the 7th. Huh. How could that have happened?” I don’t know but I had the SAME thing happen with my car payment! Strange. I’m suuuure I mailed it in time… hmmm…..)

I had a phone call to return to a night owl friend living in New York City and so I decided to talk and walk to the ATM two blocks from my house. It’s on a major urban thoroughfare between two busy restaurants, so for those of you who know about my mugging a year and a half ago, or two years ago, or whenever that was, please don’t get mad. I felt very safe. There were a LOT of people around and only a few of them wore ski masks. JUST KIDDING. It was fine.

When I got to the ATM and went to deposit the check, the ATM informed me that “Funds associated with this check may be held and will not be made available until December 23rd, 2010.”

“That’s ten days away!” I said out loud.

“What?” said my friend on the phone, who was in the middle of telling me a story.

“Oh, nothing, just my bank,” I said.

“Oh,” she responded, and went on with her story. I decided NOT to deposit the check and return to the bank the next morning at 9:00 am to find out what was the scoop. Could I deposit the check AND make my car payment in a timely manner? If not I would find an alternative plan.

Tuesday, Wee Hours

I was dreaming… I dreamed first about a guy I briefly dated coming with me to witness an event during my childhood. The event was at my Grandmother’s house on her lake property. I was about 4. My old flame took me “here now as an adult” into the dream and held my hand, as we watched the even together, and smiled at me and said, “It’s okay.”

Then I dreamed that I had bought this property and was throwing a party there and all these different friends from all different parts of my life came. The old flame was there, and he was playing hide and seek with me the entire time, although it took me a few times of “finding” him to realize that’s what we were doing.

Then I dreamed about my ex boyfriend Mike. I dreamed that he wanted to pay for my voice lessons. He wrote a check out to my voice teacher for $40. I looked at it and thought, “that’s not enough for even half an hour,” but I didn’t say anything.

Then I dreamed of an event that actually occurred again in my real life. Once Mike and I had owned a Cadillac, yes, that famous old Caddy I love to talk about. It was just so pretty and so… big. It was a 1990 Fleetwood and it was all black with tinted windows. His cousin, who owned it before us, had put a Charm of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, so that it hung from the rear view mirror. One morning Mike and I had to go run errands. We got in the car and I was in the driver’s seat. I looked at that charm and I suddenly knew something bad was going to happen. I asked him to drive and he got pissed off because he had to make business calls and why did HE. ALWAYS. HAVE. TO. BE. THE. ONE. TO. DRIVE. Okay, fine. Anyway, we were running our errands and the day just kept growing grayer and grayer, it was probably November or so in Minnesota, a very gray time. At one point I turned from the parking lot of a store at the end of the block (The Loon Grocery on Lyndale and 25th) and took a right heading toward downtown- there was no traffic going in our direction- and then I got into the left hand turn lane and there was oncoming traffic close enough I figured I would wait and not go, and I put on my turn signal, and suddenly, from behind us, our of nowhere, a car careened and swerved to miss us, swerved to miss oncoming traffic but passed right in front of it, and drove right into a tree, the tree slicing the car down the middle. Why they veered left instead of right? A mystery. After that, Mike drove.

Well I dreamed of that near miss…

Tuesday, 8:15 am

I woke up thinking of that St. Christopher charm.

Tuesday, 9:03 am

Shit! I wanted to be at the bank by 9:00 am and I wanted to walk because I like walking and I was supposed to drive over the hill to Fryman Canyon later to meet a friend for a hike at 10:30 and if I walked now I would be too late. Well, maybe not, but I thought, I know me, if I walk I will dilly dally at Trader Joe’s and Starbucks on the way home and it wall get all last minute-y.

So, feeling very silly about it all but determined, I got in my car and drove the two blocks to my bank.

Tuesday, 9:13 am

I was depositing my check, which went through just fine, and the lady, Halin, was saying that sometimes ATMs just do that stuff, announcing that funds will be held, and who knows why. Okay. Suddenly, it grew quiet (in my head) and this high pitched ringing resounded. Then I heard a groan, the kind of deep down under the earth groan you only hear when it is very quiet. I moved my hands to my ears and I heard that loud screeeeeeech, the kind where a car is burning rubber so hot and digging soooo deep into the tar that it is reversing gravity ever so slightly, and then that loud CRASH BANG SMASH SHATTER of a car

DRIVING RIGHT THROUGH THE FRONT GLASS DOORS OF THE BANK.

An Audi drove right into the front entrance of my bank. It appeared to have hit the very tail back of a white truck. A bank employee had been walking in and she was NOT hit but she passed out from the fear and shock of it all. The cops happened to be in traffic right behind the guy, who appeared to be sober and sane but, of course, upset.

A shiver and I was clear.

I walked over to look. We were now all locked in the bank by the Audi, all the bank employees instantly set to pulling the dangling door off its hinges so customer could come and go.

I finished my deposit.

I shimmied between the door frame and the Audi. I tiptoed around the shattered glass and the cops and the guy and walked around the accident into the street (although the lady cop grimaced at me, she did not stop me) and proceeded to my car.

I drove home.

I updated my facebook status.

I went for my hike.

Tuesday, 12:07 pm

Coming back over Laurel Canyon after my hike, I saw a homeless person eating a cupcake, mouth full of frosting, standing on the side of the street. He or she, I couldn’t tell, held a sign. “Homeless. Hungry.” Those are very popular these days. He/ she had chosen the crowd favorite cardboard box with black sharpie design. I reached in my purse, grabbed a dollar, rolled down my window and handed it over.

He looked more like a man, but his or her voice was VERY feminine.

“Thank you,” she said, frosting falling out of her mouth, “Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. God Bless You.” She waved.

I smiled. “God bless you, too,” I said.

Tuesday, 12:11 pm

Crossing AGAIN the intersection at Crescent Heights and Sunset, turning east onto Sunset from Crescent this time, I saw a lady who appeared to be in her 70s wearing evergreen sweatpants, an evergreen sweatshirt, a Christmas red scarf, a necklace made of jingle bells, and reindeer ears. A guy waiting for the bus noticed her, too.

“Happy Holidays,” he said. She didn’t notice him, or was ignoring him.

“Happy Holidays,” he said, louder. Now it appeared she was ignoring him for SURE. Or she was deaf.

“Hey! Lady! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!” He shouted. He shook his head as she ignored him and walked away. Then he noticed me watching. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. He shook his head again. He looked away from me and back at traffic, disgusted.

Tuesday, 12:29 pm

I stood in front of the Will and Ariel Durant Public Library. They opened at 12:30 and a group of us stood waiting for them to let us in…

I looked in the reflection through the glass window doors as I heard two men behind me begin speaking to each other.

“And I told him, I told him, I says, baby, we are done. We are breaking up. You are not allowed to sleep in bed with me anymore. If you want to stay here that’s fine but you had better stay on the sofa.” So said the gorgeous Latino fellow wearing a black vest, grey shirt, over the should man purse.

“Yes, you told him,” said an African man with an accent that sounded Senegalese, wearing a green leather jacket. Very ‘Coming to America.’ “But you must have the faith of a mustard seed.”

“Faith is fine, I have faith,” said the other man. “But I need a drink! Where’s the alcohol?”

Tuesday, 1:08 pm

I was running late for my acting class. I had packed too many errands into too short an amount of time. I hate when I do that. I turned from Formosa on to Willoughby, my secret shortcut through West Hollywood, only to face road construction and be redirected into an alley way. As I joined the long path of cars crossing from the alley over Waring Avenue to get on to La Brea, I realized we were in a traffic jam, as all the cars were waiting for something to clear from the road. I craned my neck out the window to see what it was:

A swarm of toddlers had completely stopped all traffic. There were about 20 of them, dressed in their little outfits, wandering around, looking at the great big world around them. Look at the big truck! Oooh!

I have been in traffic jams caused by cars, and cows, and construction.

This was new.

Eventually, their teacher came running out with a little straggler in her arms. She looked like she had had to chase after this one. I wondered why they weren’t on child leashes, you know, those extendy-bands in bright fluorescent colors that connect wrist to wrist, as she ushered them across the street like a mother duck. I would say hen except it was nothing like a Mother Hen and everything like a Mother Duck.

Tuesday, 1:17 pm

I finally turned onto Highland, making my way to my acting class. As I approached Santa Monica Blvd, I looked up and saw a billboard. It featured a picture of Swami Kriyananda and Yogananda Parmahansa, as if the photo had been taking recently (instead of photoshopped, as Yogananda left the planet quite some time ago) of the two of them standing together, looking slightly toward one another and slightly out toward us. I knew who they were because the producer of my record and I used to go to Self Realization center together before recording, and of course, I have read “Autobiography of a Yogi” in India.

The sign read:

The Purpose Of Life Is Bliss.

Still Life With Vintage

*note: the formatting through blogspot is incorrect. Proper formatting HERE:
http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=61906934941#!/note.php?note_id=468701569091


Still Life With Vintage

A girl tweaks in the early sun
Busy thoroughfare
Urban playground

A golden frame upon the wall,
Baroque Mouldings

Ceaseless Traffic
A sea of frogs

Green with golden flecks
And a pink design along the hemline,
Vintage Cocktail Dress, circa 1954,
Displayed within

The tweaker swears and
Sputters,
Runs in and out of traffic,
Arms waving face red and raving
Foam at the mouth

I fancy this a modern
Bohemian Styling, mid-century yet
An eclectic blend of
My intellect and my taste

A dangerous man in a red pickup truck
Slows down, turns round the corner,
Drives by once again

I have encouraged my designer
To hang all paintings in
Such a manner
So that the light glints the frame… just so…

56 Degrees
Tweaker girl wears a string bikini top
And dark blue sweat pants
No shoes and blonde hair breaking off

The walls are cream and the
Flooring Parquet

The truck driver shouts an obscenity
Then opens the passenger door

Quiet grace inhabits
Every corner of this apartment

She gets in the truck




Ignorant armies

Ol' 55 - Ol' 90

As I pulled off the freeway this morning I saw a man with a sign: "Homeless. Hungry." So I gave him my $1 and as I handed it to him, I said, "Here you go, brother. Good luck." He said, "Thanks. It's embarrasin' standin' out here." "No it isn't," I said, "we're all in this together." As I drove away one of my favorite songs came on, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKd4yLVARkQ
, and I thought about what I just said and I wanted to go back and take him to yoga with me and give him a hundred bucks, which is the last of what's left in all my bank accounts, but I couldn't because, well, because.... well I just didn't. So I came home to post all my honest red-...faced lack of humanity here, and listened to Tom Waits tell a story about this song and let it inspire me to be here anyway. I had an old caddie once. It was a black 1990 Fleetwood and it had tinted windows and people were always shocked to see this tiny white girl jump out of it when I went anywhere. I got it because my ex boyfriend's cousin needed bail money and I needed a car. And so this song reminds me of so many things, most of all my humanity. And here I am. And I still believe we're all in this together and I still love you. All of you. Me too.

Ol' 55 - Ol' 90