Our mother put us on stage when we were five. I’m still not sure whether she did so because we couldn’t afford a babysitter, and Dad was away, or whether she really wanted us to begin a Life on the Stage; regardless, it did make a huge impact on me at the time. Evan (my brother) and I played little Chinese children in a production of “Teahouse of the August Moon”, which to this day I know nothing about… all I remember is that we got to wear cool little “coolie” straw hats, and large robes, and chinese slippers. There was a live goat on stage, too, and it was part of our job to keep the goat from eating the set. Sometimes the goat got rambunctious, and tried to tear into the styrofoam “jeep” that my brother and I sat on most of the play.

It’s interesting to think that I was in no way conscious of the audience that filled the playhouse each night. As far as I was concerned, being on stage was just another fun place to be, and wasn’t that different than the playground at kindergarten, or the musty museum that my father worked in, or our large backyard that led into a cluster of trees. There were rules that you had to follow, just like any other place (don’t talk until it’s your “line”, don’t fidget too much). That might be why you are supposed to never work with children or animals in theatre. They steal the show because they’re not in character; they’re completely unfazed by the concept of creating a world on Stage, and watching this is charming.

Maybe children that grow up in a mortuary are completely comfortable with death, or at least dead people. Children of scientists don’t get spooked by bugs or snakes or other creepy things. Skydivers that dive with their kids raise children that aren’t afraid of heights? I jest. But it seems to me that children of actors aren’t prone to stage fright. I’ve never had it. I’ve certainly been nervous about being on stage before, I get butterflies every once and a while, usually when I feel unprepared for something I’m about to do, but never outright fear. The stage for me is the most comfortable place I can think of being. I’d rather stand in front of a crowd of ten thousand people than be in a room with four or five strangers.
My room mate is different. She can’t imagine anything less fun than to be singled out on stage, in front of a group of any size. She’s acting as stage manager for the Cabaret, and last night we went over the curtain call, when we figure out who takes a bow when and how. It was suggested that I bring out the crew that has been so instrumental in making this production a reality, and everyone agreed that this would be a great idea. But this morning my room mate admitted that she was absolutely not going to be a part of the “crew bow”. Stage fright.

In some ways I can’t even fathom someone being that uncomfortable with being on stage. But again, there are plenty of things that I hate doing, and mostly out of fear of them. Or at least intense discomfort. As I said, being in small groups of people I don’t know spooks me. If I’m not a center of attention, and therefore don’t have a “job” to be doing, I’m the guy in the corner at a party that is sitting by himself, looking really awkward and trying hard not to. If I spend too much time by myself, for whatever reason, this behavior gets worse. I’ll gradually become more and more anti-social until I finally come up with weeks worth of excuses to never leave the house. I’m a home-body, and prefer to be alone. I used to think (but still use the excuse) that the reason I never hang out in local bars here in Charleston is because I’ve spent most of my life playing in them, but I think that’s a lie. I just have a hard time being comfortable in most social situations.

Why? Who knows. I think that at some point I realized that the only place that really did make me feel at home was the stage. Anywhere else was an aspect of my “Clark Kent” alter-ego, and that was the way I could explain away my shyness and feelings of discomfort. I would always be better on stage. Able to leap tall buildings and all that.

This is a blessing and a curse, I know. A blessing because I have had and hopefully will continue to have the opportunity to entertain people for a living, and it just happens to be something I love with all my heart. That’s great, isn’t it? But a curse because it’s not typically a secure or lucrative way to live, being on stage. And sometimes, a curse because it’s so difficult: so personal, and difficult to escape, even in my ‘alter-ego’. When a rehersal goes badly I can’t go home at five and have a drink and forget about it. It does tend to crush me for a while. It does take an enormous amount of drive and determination and even a little bit of talent, qualities that every artist I’ve ever known questions about themselves, constantly. When I look into my future, sometimes, I wonder if I can do what my mother is doing, at her age. A full-time actress who has found a job that is extremely secure by theatre standards… and yet she still deals with the very real possibility that it could all go away by this time next year. It’s inspiring, and frustrating, at the same time.

I won’t lie. Sometimes I wish that Mom had taken Evan and me to her big corner office in a high-rise office building in a big city, where she was a successful lawyer, instead of the tiny community theatre where she was a successful actress. And I would have grown up loving old dusty law books and late hours studying the ins and outs of our government’s rules and regulations and then make a fortune by the time I’m 35 instead of loving the smell of an ancient theatre house and the late hours playing rock music and and barely paying rent. Sometimes I wish that it was easier to be Superman when I’m not on stage.

But mostly I feel pretty lucky to have a Home that is always there for me, in every town and city in the world, and hope that I always feel that way. And I can’t honestly say that if I ever have kids I won’t bring them on stage with me to “corral some goats” of their own.

I wasn’t sure as to whether or not I’d bother actually writing enough to warrant installing this Wordpress business into an old domain I had lying around (matthewbivins.com… fitting, isn’t it?), but after doing Ward’s site, and finding it all to be oh so easy, I went ahead and went for the gusto, the WordPress Proper, if you will. I’ve moved the few posts that I made to here, but the fun and interesting and even flattering comments have to stay there, because there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to import them. Please, commenters, don’t take it personally… just keep it up!

Anguished Death Dealer. Assertive Diagnostic Device. I’ve spent the last few years coming up with anything in the world to accronymize the letters A.D.D. Besides “attention deficit disorder”. Because over the course of the last few years, a little bit before being ADD became a fad, I have slowly but surely come to the realization that when doctors and concerned parents discuss ADD, and list symptoms of the “disorder”, I don’t know what they’re all abuzz about. I mean, doesn’t every human being have a problem with being distracted, especially in this day and age? Don’t they all have thoughts constantly racing through their brains, like speeding trains, and catching one of them takes a great deal of mental effort? Or, on the flip side, be able to focus so intently on a project that hours and hours slip by without your knowing it, and you realize at the end of your trance that you haven’t eaten, you haven’t even gone to the bathroom? Am I the only one that has piles and piles of projects that they’ve started and never finished, because there’s always a point where ‘the motivation stops’? Doesn’t everyone have the unconscious need to tap fingers, shake legs, and otherwise fidget constantly? Finish sentences, or incomplete? Isn’t it difficult for everyone to wake up in the morning, and feel utterly overwhelmed at the amount of things that need to be done in life, to the point of not even being able to get one single done in a day? And doesn’t that feeling, when it’s at its worst, lead to a constant and debilitating depression that sucks the very life out of Life?

Oh, it’s not all bad: there are times I’ve been so frustrated at my brother’s complete inablility to do more than one thing at a time… and secretly proud that I could. Thinking on my feet? Easy as pie, always has been. I’m rarely surprised. And can very easily roll with punches. Big life changes–the ones that involve a number of little changes–are more difficult to deal with, but ask me to completely shift my way of thinking to another, and I’m fine with that. Which makes me a great diplomat, a perfect “middle man”, and a very empathetic person to talk to. After all, when I say I understand, I really believe that I do, because it’s not difficult for me to put myself in your place; I can see most sides of any situation. I’m not saying I don’t have strong opinions (obviously), I do… I just don’t mind putting them aside for a second to listen to someone else.

These are apparently symptoms of ADD, which I know is a fairly fad-dy disorder (but not quite as much as “Restless Leg Syndrome”), but one that I think does exist, for the most part. It’s been a topic of conversation, and a concern for some, for a lot longer than PDAs, Wifi, laptops and cell phones have been. I remember the classmates I had that took Ritalin; the kids in school that were almost literally bouncing off the walls. And Elementary School was a long time ago, for me. I don’t remember people talking about “ADD”, necessarily, but I remember those kids. They bugged me, for the simple reason that they didn’t have the willpower to keep it together, and I could.

I wasn’t a hyperactive child, as my Mom likes to remind me whenever I talk to her about ADD. And I really wasn’t, compared to most. I haven’t changed much. In some situations I can be very frenetic and gregarious, which could probably be construed as hyperactive, but lots of times I’m fairly quiet. But I do feel that I could be more frenetic, more consistently, if I wanted to. I’ve just always been the type that doesn’t love to lose control. And that’s why I didn’t like the way my hyper classmates zipped and zapped around. I knew how they felt. But I knew that it was good for me to just keep it cool. Fewer people got hurt that way.

Mom also likes to point out that I got straight As in school, and didn’t seem to have any problems doing so. I’m not trying to paint a picture of my mother as a ignorant monster, by the way– she’d be mortified. I cannot imagine anyone better for the job of Matt’s Mom, then, and now, than Mary Lucy Bivins. Anything that she doesn’t know about my childhood would be things I actively kept from her. Like the days that I would sit alone and do the incredibly tedious homework and sob at the futility of it. And the genuine problem I had keeping still (I still sit on my hands to keep from jerking around like a puppet, sometimes) and staying focused on what teachers and classmates had to say (I imagine that a lot of kids like me got very good at filling in the blanks of fragmented information gathering). But I wasn’t a complainer, and also just figured that everyone was dealing with the same frustrations.

The specialists say that bright kids can easily get through school without ever being diagnosed with ADD. I guess, then, I’m just going to say it, outright: I’m pretty darn bright. But I think that it’s pretty easy, in fact, to live a lifestyle that is very pro-ADD (like, for example, being in a full-time rock band) and never ever think twice about it.

I certainly didn’t think about it until much later in life. When I started comparing myself to peers that seemed to be equipped with skills that I didn’t have: productive organizational skills, functional listening skills, and the ability to get up and get going, no matter how frakkin’ daunting the world seemed to be. Being on the road was fine. My job wasn’t easy, but it maximized my creative productivity: wake up, get in the van, arrive at the venue, play show, go to bed, start over. Or… wake up, go to the studio, write songs, record them, go to bed, start over. Constant change in surroundings, constant change in stimuli, constant change. That’s for me. It got hard when I actually had a long span of time at home. Strangely enough, paying bills wasn’t nearly as easy as playing the accordion. The more mundane jobs in my life just barely got done, if at all. Sometimes for lack of financial means, sometimes for no good reason except “I forgot… yes, for two years. Whoops!”

This was fine in my early 20s. You’re allowed some time to be a goof. But it started to concern me as I got older. And then it started to depress me. When Dad died, it got worse. I couldn’t focus on anything. As I have worked through the mourning process, I’ve found lots of things have gotten better, but not much has gotten easier. And I think when friends in the know alluded to me that I might be the posterboy for ADD, it was time for me to learn more about myself.

In fact, there’s one theory in particular, popularized by writer Thom Hartmann, author of Beyond ADD and Healing ADD, that I have gravitated towards in my attempt to understand what makes my brain function a little differently. A theory that what is going on in my brain isn’t really a disorder at all, but simply another way of thinking.

In every burgeoning society there is usually a group of farmers, and a group of hunters. The farmers were chosen at early childhood because it became obvious that these children were adapt at cultivating something, slowly. Patience was in their genetic makeup, in fact, and the little farming kids could focus well for long blocks of time. What they weren’t so good at was spontaneity, and less long-term problem solving.

If spontaneity was called for, the tribe called on the Hunters. It was also obvious at at a young age which children would be good hunters. They were the ones that constantly had to be moving. That got depressed when they had to wait on things. They were able to focus intently on a prey, some slab of bison burger-to-be, and if said prey got away, they’d just as easily be able to shift this focus to the next walking meal.

In these early tribal societies these two types of people–the Hunters and the Farmers–co-existed because one couldn’t survive without the other. But things have changed. Our society, for example, has evolved to a nearly all-Farming society. So to speak. We don’t usually grow our own food, but we do cultivate, rather than hunt. We make the money, slowly, in order to go and buy the food that has been grown or produced for us. We work eight hour days where we are expected to focus intently on work that is due sometime in the future, be it near or far. When we are not working, we are allowed to rest, by watching episodes of television shows that depict teenage vampire slayers… in other words, we might dream of hunting, but we’re no hunters. Except for once a year: the day after Thanksgiving, when all the Christmas sales start.

I think that this is fascinating. And it feels so right, to me. I’m not actually deficient in something; I’m just old-fashioned! My brain is a holdover to the Good Old Days, when a man with ADD would be the guy that everyone wanted to see, come dinnertime. Not like today, when I beg to the gods that I might get to somewhere I’m going on time, for once. I’d rather romanticize this little eccentricity of mine… and pretend that I’m dressed head-to-toe in skins, face blackened with charcoal and mud,
blood from my fresh kill clotting in the fur wrap on my shoulders… than hate myself for locking my keys in the car for the fifth time this month.

I’m getting used to this “new” way of thinking. New only in the sense that it’s a new thing for me to think about; that I am comfortable thinking about it this way. I have a prescription to use drugs, but I don’t really use them as much as I’d like to. I’m always trying to find new and better and more efficient ways to do things, sometimes to the detriment of getting things done, but at least I no longer feel like worthless and lazy at the end of the day if nothing does get done.

It took me a long time to post this little entry, for example. The tale of it became something that I stopped wanting to tell, midway thorough. I kept going back to this journal, seeing this post in my “drafts” folder, and closing the web browser. It’s laughable, but that’s OK, I think. Maybe an earlier Matt would just let the words go; I’m OK with just being late, as an Ardently Delayed Dude should be.

Gosh. Thanks for reading and responding, y’all. Recently I’ve had my face stuck in a computer monitor for hours on end; I go through periods where my only income is sitting at a computer, and during those periods it’s hard not to feel lonely. I have Cabaret rehearsals nearly every night, but days, and wee hours, are just me, working on my buddy Ward’s upcoming site (due next week!!) and what seems like a million other little things. So I appreciate knowing that there are a few other people out there gazing into their computer screens.

So why, do you ask, are you spending more time in front of a screen to write a post in this journal, Matt? Or is it just me, asking that? Well, you’re certainly right, and I should go outside, because I have to admit, it’s lovely in Charleston today. It is actually close to being Spring-like here in the Holy City, and that’s a rarity (usually Winter mistakenly hands the Seasonal Torch to Summer, leaving Spring dejected and hurt). So I should be frolicking or something.

I was just thinking that I don’t like the name of this journal. I want something clever and catchy. “Matt About Life” is lame, and just something I wrote down when I signed up for this blogging business. I think that there could be plenty of cliched plays on the word “Matt” that I could use, but I am coming up blank.

Any ideas?

Today I woke up to a knock at the door. Actually, I was awake, but not enough to know that it might be too early, or too Saturday, to have a visit from a friend. Sure enough, the couple at my bedroom door were strangers. I frowned, remembering that my neighborhood enjoyed a constant swarm of Jehova’s Witnesses, and Saturday mornings were the time they bit the most.

They were pleasant enough, my Witnesses. The wife, plump, and wearing her best blue dress and pearls, with a light application of make up and hair pulled back securely, was the first to speak. I believe that the opening line to me was something about Happiness–she was concerned about mine. Her husband was a small, stout man with a tweed blazer and blue slacks. My first thought when taking him in was that he had a great looking tie. I’d say that they were well into their 50s, and were so, so clean. Spotlessly clean.

I have to hand it to her… she gave me the Speech with a grace that I don’t usually expect from such visitors to my home. She was shaking, gently, like a leaf, so I could tell that she was nervous, but she was so genuine about what she was saying I found myself being impressed, despite myself.

I immediately put on a tight-lipped grimace that I know my father wore in similar situations. Not a rude face, but one that should convey “I’m here, listening to you, but just out of politeness, so you’d better watch yourself”. She made sure that we were introduced right off the bat. They asked my name, and whether or not I was a college student. I tend to lie to strangers that come to my door, and so I told that I was indeed in college. Studying… science. Biology. For some reason it feels so good in these situations to lie. I’m not malicious about it… it’s just a game that I play, sometimes. Maybe the lying helps me to get into a character, so I can then be stronger about saying “no” (or sometimes, “yes”) when they ask me to do things I do/don’t want to do. I don’t know.

I won’t go into what we talked about. Needless to say they preached joy, peace, enlightenment thru God’s love and the telltale signs of the end of the world was nigh. I patiently listened to everything the wife said. Encouraged, she continued long after her point was made, and long after she should have. At one point, even I wanted to stop her, and offer advice about this. I wanted to tell her that she would have been more effective if she had stopped at the part where Jesus’s blood was spilled so that we can all be saved, because God cares, and gave us a Ransom for our sin in the form of His Only Begotten Son… and not gone into the whole bit about how human beings were God’s chosen animal and the only reason that trees live longer than we do is because we’re sinners. What?? Because I started to space out, at that point, and think, “She’s not bad. But she could be more concise.”

She did very well at trying to bring me into the conversation. By asking me to recite the Lord’s Prayer with her, for example. And choosing passages from the Bible that I could read aloud. Of course, it was very cheeky of her, and I was pissed about it, but had to hand it to her: she had guts, and I admired that.

At some point, when she asked me to answer some questions about what I thought the state of the world was in, I started my own monologue. I told her that I actually am very happy. And that I owe this happiness to God, just as she does. That I feel like I have a fairly good relationship with God. Passionate. Personal. And I told them that I appreciated that they came to my door because they cared about me, and the salvation of the world, but I just did not agree with many things they said. Because I simply don’t agree that everything we need to know about life and living and love is found in the Bible. Certainly, a lot of it is in there… there’s a hell of a lot of common sense in that book… but it’s just a reference guide, to me, just as any other book could be. I told them that no, I don’t want to end suffering and death on this earth. That wouldn’t make sense at all. No one would learn a thing in a world where there wasn’t pain and struggle. I become who I am because of the hardships I’ve been through, and I look forward to the lessons I’ll learn in the future. That’s being human. And I don’t expect to not be human, any time soon.

And damnit, if they didn’t give me the same fucking blank stare that every fanatic gives me when I speak about something I believe, that doesn’t jive with what they do. That “This Does Not Compute” face. You can practically watch them process the fact that someone else has a different opinion from theirs, process it, and send it straight to the recycling bin (or the Trash, for some of us). I had my little speech, they quickly recovered from the blatant blasphemy, and continued droning on, without me.

I don’t know why I offered my opinion. You can get rid of those people faster if you don’t engage. But I was feeling frisky, and thought it would be nice to hear myself speak on a Saturday morning. I think that I sounded great. I have nothing against the couple; in fact, we parted on good terms. And I definitely don’t have anything against what they believe. They’re passionate about God, but their version of the story forces them to go door-to-door with it. It’s fine, by me. But what frustrates me about people that do that is the seeming lack of intelligence that goes along with strong, pure, faith.

Why does there usually have to be an either/or? I am always listening. I try to always be open. I feel strongly about what I believe, but I never completely close the door on what someone else believes. At the very least, I accept that in the end, we might disagree, but we’re basically, fundamentally, feeling similar things. It’s the language that is different. And some of these languages have far more strict rules of grammar than mine. But I understand. Why can’t my Jehova couple?

For God’s sake. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to stand on a stranger’s porch and imply that he’s going to Hell for not speaking German? I might never ever speak German. Or Japanese. French, or even Spanish. My English, even, compared to some, is fairly flawed. But it’s my English. It’s a dialect that I speak, of a language that many speak, which all humans that I know of require, to communicate. Maybe in terms of Religion, I don’t speak a language that others understand. To my Jehovas I might as well be grunting and clicking. But it’s my language, and I feel that I can express myself beautifully with it.

I’ve been wondering why I started this online journal. I used to write about specific things, like, being in a rock band. Well, maybe that’s all I have ever written about. And I’ve been wondering whether it makes any sense to keep writing things that people can read. I might not be good at it. I might not make sense. Maybe I’ll get bored. And maybe no one will read. But after this morning, I realized that it doesn’t matter. I can write if I want to, what I want to. Some posts might be good, and others, really terrible. But I guess I do feel a need, just like my morning visitors, to speak out about the things that I think about. They think that they’re appearing on my porch for a Higher Reason, but I think that as human beings, they were expressing themselves to learn more about themselves. In their Jehova’s Witness patois. I dig it. I may not be as pushy as they were, but I understand why they were there this morning. I promise not to try to make you see my way. But I think that I will, after all, express it.

Grunt. Grunt. Click.

Sometimes I love this place. Sometimes I itch to leave. It’s a real problem. Charleston is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. Still, after nearly eleven years of living here. Of course, if you take the time, as I have, to pull up the carpet a bit and see what is underneath, there is some disappointment. Obviously. That would happen anywhere.

I’m frustrated lately at the lack of Team Effort in this town. Perhaps that’s why Biv and I have started a Cabaret, in order to get people that we know to be artists to get together and be artists. Some of them have never done so, and that’s rewarding… but some of them are so involved in a million things that it’s hard to keep them in one place. We feel that we’re doing pretty good, but our first show hasn’t even happened yet, and we’re not sure whether anyone is coming.

I thought today that it might be a nice project to create a site where artists in Charleston could have a little place to go to find out about things that they might not be aware of. A very ajax-y, user-friendly myspac-ian environment that would cater to their desires. Hopefully the actors wouldn’t only sign up to learn about theatre events… the goal of the site would be to introduce all of it to everyone. I’m not sure whether it would work, and I certainly don’t know how to do it, right now. But it’s on my “someday/maybe” list, and pretty high up there.

Otherwise, I’ll have to leave. I’ll have to. I need to find a place here, or split, because not being on the road makes Charleston a dull place to live. And I don’t want that to happen.