Profligacy in the successive safeties of employment isn’t a necessity for reiki, but it doesn’t hurt, unlike reiki itself, which is extremely painful and apparently “not recommended” for roosters and hens. I’m forced to navigate a world filled with artificial manmade products, situations, and medical aides and hardly anyone even bothers to “recommend” anything to the birds, just the people. Well fuck the people, I’m back in my dojo. The set has been buzzing, they’re already shooting seven days a week, 16 hours a day, but I’m not in any more scenes for another six weeks. So I’m back in my dojo, out on the backlot. We’ll be here quite a while. My Sensei’s currently out of the country and inaccessible by letter or video message. It was true what the late Michael Madsen said in 2016: Quentin’s kind of a recluse.
But so am I. When I’m in my dojo, I’m not to be spoken to, nor of, until I’ve emerged, ready to take in and incorporate the outside world into my fragile consciousness. I’m precious, I’m weary, I can sleep for a few hours. But these kinds of trips aren’t befitting an actor of my stature, so I’m relegating them to my private journal (this column). I’ve already memorized the script front to back, and I’m having a hard time staying focused on the set while scenes are being shot in which I’m not included. Is there any worse torture for an actor than to sit around and wait to play your part? There’s nothing to do: you’re too tense to eat or read, unable to nap, too focused to concentrate on anything other than the reality that soon you will go on; it’s probably harder in the theater where you really live with a role, and, once the show is up, a role you live fully every night. Film is so manicured and slow, it’s really more like watching a building get built than anything else.
(And I say all of this as an actor.)
In the dojo, I practice ritual habits, activities, and wisdom from the sacred tribe: I eat, I sleep, I do my beams (rooster wing exercise, 12 feet of vertical clearance required). I don’t merely eat Oreos, I unwrap them and place them on a banquet days in advance so that every meal feels catered, and even when I’m alone and “on break,” I’m waited on, served. Benny likes his sushi, too: I prefer tempura shrimp with avocado to smoked salmon, but I’m beginning to become curious about sole. One time in the commissary, I asked for negri but the waitress misheard me and thought I was ordering a Negiri at 10:30 in the morning. Apparently, this is allowed on a Netflix set. I refused, because I don’t drink when I’m working, nor do I accept incorrect orders at restaurants (this last point is extremely important to me).
I’ve been watching television while installed in my dojo. I do my poses, go over my lines, think about what I’m going to say to My Sensei and The Director when the time comes again, and then I think about calling my cousin Rooster and his stupid wife Monica, and then I dip into the Sargasso Sea for a little weed and reality TV. I don’t watch anything contemporary though, just stuff from an old TiVo that “kicked the bucket” at the Quibbits barn around 2011. Right now I’m watching Jersey Shore, and it’s amazing how many situations “The Situation” gets himself into. Snooki is incredibly irritating, a braying ham who thinks she’s Elizabeth Taylor. Some who’ve worked in the movie business for years may say that the previous sentence is redundant, but I happen to love Taylor, “monkey nipples” or not. I even have affection for Richard Burton, who surely would’ve had me for dinner as soon as he would’ve challenged me to a sonnet quoting contest (he beat RFK once).
These are stars, people you know from the movies and the television. Just because it’s a one-way relationship, doesn’t make it any less real than our “actual” friendships and family connections. Reese Witherspoon means something to me; so does Mark Ruffalo. I used to follow the rivalry between Jean Simmons and Audrey Hepburn because I loved both of them and wanted desperately for them to stop fighting; but there were only so many roles for women who looked like that. I wish I could return to a time when James Cagney was a household name, when Lillian Gish was the most famous woman in America, when Billy Wilder was just getting started making masterpieces. We live through the times as much as the times live through us. Life is a carnival, a spectacle, parade, and it’s one thing we can do to manage the spirit and keep the mojo juices flowing and restore order to the outside world.
Deep in my dojo, I’m thinking deep thoughts. A book’s emerging. Could it be a novel, a screenplay, a collection of essays, fiction and non-fiction? For the first time all year, I’m thinking my own thoughts, and I’m born again.
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