My First Time

(first, a short poem)

We all,
Fuck, sin, break the rules,
For the first time,
Some of us,
Decide, direct, delay,
Anew, again, antecedent…
More than once,
The moment of -
Breathing, eating, sleeping,
For the first time,
We all,
Get born, get live, get dead,
Ut finalis,
Look, see, love, think, know, feel, touch, step, gain, lose, understand -
This cannot be avoided,
For the first time.

© 2010, Jameson Freeman

So…

I will be acting in the play My First Time. The show opens in Washington, D.C. on November 4th. It is an off-Broadway play – still playing in New York – that is based on the blog, http://www.myfirsttime.com, which invited people of any and all backgrounds, beliefs, ages, etc., to anonymously share their first time experience… in writing. The play, which is in the vein of The Vagina Monologues (in the way that it is not so much dialogue, but recounting of the actual or adapted experiences of real people. There are four actors – two men and two women – who sit on stage for ninety minutes sharing situations – both cute and embarrassing, moralistic and disturbing. The audience is also involved during the performance.

I am honored to be a part of this play. One that has captured the interest of people in dozens of countries around the world since 2007 when it first premiered at the New World Stage theater in Manhattan. It is the first time that it’s been put on in the nation’s capital, and it’s my first professional stage production since I was a kid.

 

poster for "My First Time" launch event

 

(On a side note: I don’t really get the words in the quotes… like how do they flow together? I mean, I guess it kind of makes sense. The director agrees with me, so I don’t feel like an asshole saying this – but marvelous poster nonetheless. Tim Coburn is marvelous.)

Crafty Bastards

Yesterday, my baby sister came into the city and I took her to an art fair in Adams Morgan called ‘Crafty Bastards’. I like art fairs in general (and I’m not even communist, hippie, or a Pagan) – whether or not you see anything you want to buy, it’s just nice to see and meet creative people who have a venue to show off and sell their work.

My sister Jessica with Jay

Among other things, we ran into Jay McCarroll from Project Runway’s debut season. My sister is a big fan and I bought her one of his dresses. It was dolce.

There’s a Lizard on the Ceiling

Sometimes we get surprised,

Lizard on the ceiling: close up of the mysterious, ceiling-dwelling lizard

By a lizard on the ceiling;

Humor can’t be lost,

In the search for meaning;

Inspiration may be forced,

Sadness may be fraud,

Truth may be obscured…

And the world may need some healing;

When there has been forgotten,

The chance -

To look at sky,

To look at trees,

To look at others,

To notice the lizard on the ceiling…

It laughs back at us, with us;

Life has a funny way,

Of letting us in,

On secret jokes of Nature, yet -

We make our own puns,

We know our own nature,

We are our very own -

Lizard on the ceiling,

The best thing about living,

Is the surprise of waking up;

Sometimes we get surprised,

By a lizard on the ceiling…

It’s not supposed to be there,

But there it is, and -

That’s the meaning, of -

Trying to answer the asking,

Of your being;

Sometimes we get surprised,

By a lizard on the ceiling.

© 2010, Jameson Freeman

(And, yes – there was actually a lizard… on my ceiling.)

My friend staring at a tiny reptile above the bed... this is what happens when you leave the doors open all night, I guess.

Clouds over the Caribbean

I love this shot. It's of storm clouds gathering over the Caribbean Sea. I found it while going through some pictures from my last trip Mexico.