Thou'rt invited, worthy friend, to a performance of theatre most subtle and rare. The great poets of old would hardly dare to — but hark, dost thou hear't? 'Tis the stately tolling of yonder bell, announcing the arrival of our URL!

Leo's Requiem: Tickets

Link! Here! Click! Wow!

Details: May 3rd and 4th, Lenfest Centre for the Arts. Free tickets. Uptown. Part of a festival of new works. Written by Darius M. Buckley, directed by Brennan M. Urbi, and I think a pretty M. good show.

Brief synopsis: Set during the present and during the halcyon days of Detroit's municipal bankruptcy, Leo's Requiem tells the story of Josiah Drake, a young conductor with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Haunted by a musical partnership from his youth, Josiah must confront the past and reconnect with his art, or be lost forever in a fog of memory and pain! My character, Conor, helps. It's touching and real and one from the heart.

A brief discursion prompted by a common response to the subject of my return to social media

When I hear from my cherished newsletter readers, I tend to get a pretty positive response. It's nice! I bring this up not to brag (okay, maybe a little), but by way of comparison. See, when I hear from the Instagram users among that uniformly beautiful, intelligent, and talented group, my return to the platform prompts something like the following: "Welcome [back] to the cult!"

This is obviously a joke. Still, my feeling is there's something true here. It acknowledges a now-shared experience of doing a thing long after the promise has faded from whatever joy or curiosity or community made it desirable in the first place; because what're you gonna do, leave? All your friends are here and they're not leaving! Now buy a camera strap made from climbing rope and date some Christian singles.

Let me tell you, coming onto a platform where that's the mood is very different from joining during the good times. I would know. I was there.

What's so interesting to me about the use of the word "cult" here is that cultists don't say cult, right. It seems a very knowing and very modern kind of irony to actually deploy the word within the welcome: signalling an awareness of the trap as a precondition to participating in it. I think there's a subtle hope hiding in this irony, that it could serve as a kind of defence — certainly not against being trapped, since here we all are, but maybe against despairing of entrapment. Like, if we can identify a bad situation so clearly, and have a little laugh about it, doesn't that remove some of its power over us?

No.

Anyway...

My moustache has finally landed me a role as a cop. It's for a short film. I'm going to try and have the guy be on his phone the whole time; that feels like a well-observed acting choice if there ever was one.

Also, btw, hire me to take some pictures! If you want. I shoot shows, I shoot portraits, I take nice images and have quick turnaround on edits. Portfolio on my site, as always.

With love,

Carl