“Two Knees”, or Not Two Knees

How do you deal with Truly Fucked Up Shit?

How do you keep from crying?

I have found that people, largely, try to ignore it.

Music is a good way to cope, I think. Melancholy melodies or just some impassioned vocals.

Laughter is key too. 

Not only the emotional release from the act itself. But humor offers powerful context. Tragedy, truly grotesque crimes of human atrocity, is like looking into the sun. It’s too much. It’s physically painful and literally damaging. So in order to really look at the sun, you have to project its image. You reflect it, in order to actually engage with it at all. 

That’s humor.

Such is the way with “Between Two Knees,” a black-humored satire of Native history and American violence. The evolving work from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Yale Repertory Theatre now finds its way to Seattle Rep and the McCarter Theatre Center at Princeton. Written by “The 1491s”, the Youtube-based indigenous comedy troupe has most recently found success with their FX show “Reservation Dogs.” The show, created by troupe member Sterlin Harjo and beloved Kiwi goofball Taika Waititi, has garnered much deserved attention on a perspective long overdue in American Media– ideas and themes very familiar to me growing up in New Mexico.

“Between Two Knees”, however, is quite a bit more madcap. After a blisteringly silly introduction, we settle into the core of the show: an exploration of one family’s lineage through about a century of American history.

An infant boy found with his dying mother at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Christened Isaiah, he is then raised in one of the many tortuous “Indian Schools” created for native assimilation. He escapes with Irma, a young woman also interned there, and they light up America as a fiery pair like a revolutionary Bonnie and Cylde. Their children go on to fight in the various American wars of the 20th century and all dramatic threads come together at the 1973 stand-off with the FBI at the very same site of Wounded Knee. 

The show plays with realism, but also history. While the family centering the play’s events is fictional, the historical horrors are certainly not. Though the text will occasionally claim things like its characters were instrumental in forming the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

Any gag is utilized here. Mostly visual, always silly, with a particular taste for Looney Tunes-esque signage. A healthy amount of the absurdity mocks the white lens of native peoples (the repeated audio sting of an eagle cry in the distance is never not funny). The set itself, designed by Regina Garcia, echoes this, the caricatures of sports mascots held onto far too long by wealthy franchises long into the 21th century. 

One thing is definitely for certain. White People are cringe.

Some gags are just gags. “These things don’t get any easier”, says one ensemble member prepping to talk about death, then hands someone a Rubix Cube. Not only that, but the prop has a payoff in the final scene for some reason– a sort of “Chekhov’s Rubix Cube”. 

The pacing of the gags is relentless, too, all with a largely filmic sensibility, like mimicking slow-motion effects. Any opportunity for a dance break and musical number are taken. Hundreds of technical cues scoot the ensemble through countless costume changes and characters. Sure, our two young heroes are having their histories and identities erased by Catholic clergy tormenting and abusing them. But now they’re fighting a horde of nun ninjas (“nunjas” for the initiated) while the cackling priest (ensemble member Rachel Crowl) sprouts monstrous tentacles as the production design references both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, respectively. 

For a show interested in discussing and dissecting American atrocity and genocide, it’s pretty fun.

While the family itself is the dramatic throughline for the show, it’s the MC, Larry, (played by Justin Gauthier) who connects the disparate bits together. As a narrator, he propels events and provides an array of detached commentary, but also just jokey jokes.

Only MC Larry really sticks to his part alone. The entire ensemble, even major parts like our core couple, Isaiah and Irma, (played by Dererk Garza and Shyla Lefner, then later by Wotko Long and Jennifer Bobiwash) is doing double, triple, quadruple plus duty.

I found myself most strongly drawn to the fully dramatic moments simple in their presentation: an extended silence between two actors onstage was all the more compelling when the rest of the show rushed along to deliver the next gag. The lights cut out for the breathtaking vocal finale, breaking the brittle tension with raw and stunning emotion.

The conclusion of “Between Two Knees” is impactful, sudden, and powerful– both visually and narratively invoking the Ghost Dance.

It is also, thankfully, very funny.

I don’t want to spoil the ending. But the escapist fantasy of it is pretty bleak. It’s silly and absurd. Even more as our reality is not.

That’s the edge of satire. It’s a gut punch of certainty that matters to real people. 

Personally, I like the reminders. I like that land acknowledgments are slowly and suddenly everywhere. 

Do you think about it? Do you think about it every day? That the land under our feet was stolen, its people murdered, marched, conquered, and massacred. That so many live their lives today in innocence and ignorance. This is land we were born into. 

Decolonization isn’t just a buzzword. And the suffering of today reverberates from the past and far into the future. The scope of damage, and the work needed to enact change and healing, is on the scale of Seven Generations into our future. 

This pain is not so ancient. And is not forgotten.

So don’t forget to laugh, either.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

“Between Two Knees”

By The 1491s

Directed by Eric Ting

—

McCarter Theatre Center’s Matthews Theater

91 University Place, Princeton, NJ

Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm

Runs through February 12

$25 – 60 General Admission

For More Information:

609-258-2787 or visit https://tickets.mccarter.org/

—

Seattle Repertory’s Bagley Wright Theatre

155 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA 

Preview Performances run March 3-7 

Friday – Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 pm

$20—$75 General Admission

March 8 Opening Night

Wednesday – Sunday at 7:30 pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm

Wednesday, March 22, at 2 pm

ASL/Audio Description, Saturday, March 25, 2 pm

Runs through March 26

$23 – 96 General Admission

For More Information:

206-443-2222 or visit https://www.seattlerep.org/

NaNoWriMo: The Golem Road

 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure-dome decree:
    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
    Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

1325. One hundred years ago, the first golem was given to the west. A body of cedar, a rough gem of green jade shorn with dao, Truth. It was the first golem given to humanity by the Elemental Dragon of Wood untold ages ago. Golems were made, fought, and lived. 

Mansa Musa from Timbuktu
  Learn’ed Kornic schools
  Round the cedar branch
  With beasts of golden mass
  Breathed “Truth” in Life.

And the West came back.

The Alexandria night was alive. It was the final evening of the fortnight festival. The air was cooling but laughter and music and shouts filled the air. Wine spilled over cups, dances were spontaneous and enmass. Performancers of any sort crammed into any corner they could establish. Huge puppets sulked high over the heads of the crowd dangling blue and purple limbs. Jugglers threw fire much to the screaming amusement of thronged children.

Solomon cared little for it.

Solomon had a sharpened body of obsidian and leather. His pointed head harsh and unforgiving.

“You promised me we were going to have a fight,” he growled.

    So twice five miles of fertile ground
    With walls and towers were girdled round:
    And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
    Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
    And here were forests ancient as the hills,
    Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 

 

Here I Am At Last

I made it.

Maybe I should back up a bit. Usually when people talk about “making it,” it’s in the metaphysical sense. It means success, in the most abstract sense. It’s driven by capitalism, each person’s life reduced to bars reached and boxes checked and things to own for the expressed purpose of passive bragging. The grass is green, you want the four car garage and the cars to go in it. A boat. Symbols. Symbols of having “made it.”

But that’s not what I mean. I mean. Well. That I made it.

This is what I see every morning now. Ten steps from my front door. It took odysseys upon odysseys to get here. I still can’t totally believe it.

I don’t know how I feel. Still exhausted mostly. 2000+ miles in a 16 foot truck across blizzards and rain and the Midwest.

Relief, I think. Relief.

I was living in the desert. Metaphorical, literal. I wanted out. I needed out. I’d tried before, over the space of different years. My health or the health of people I loved pulled me back. Ultimately, it was the highly fantastical notion of a full and complete Bachelor’s Degree meaning and mattering. But I did that. And found love. Life-changing, cosmos-shattering love. So that feels like a win. But always with a why.

Why. Why was I still there. What was I doing. How was I going to get what I want. Be what I wanted.

And so here I am. No city on earth had more media, attention, opinions, all focused on this one place, it’s history, it’s meaning. Everyone’s got things. Everyone’s got thoughts. And they’re all pretty intimidating.

Where am I going with this. I really don’t know. I just don’t feel good today.

It comes in waves. My feeling of hope or positivity or peace. I am spinning and sad. How do I focus. I don’t know. I love. I wait. I sit. But I want to create. I want to be something. Make things. I’m just intimidated.

I’m not comfortable being intimidated. It’s not really my natural state. But in a vacuum, you get all sorts of crazy ideas. Lots of people live here. Normal people, any kind of person. I have my little haven secluded on the far end of the island and I love it. Sleepy, comfortable, Circles within circles. Spectacular, really. Unthinkable.

I like thinking. I like making things. I like things about making things and how things are made. The cowardice and fear only goes so far. It’s about tricking yourself. Tricking your brain into vaulting over those self-imposed barriers. Fear and circling in on yourself. I am happy, I just don’t know it yet. Make some things. Get happy. Live a life. Make your body hurt a little. Keep going. It’s okay. Live. I will live and be okay.

Welcome to New York City.

An Old Fashioned Love Nerd

[Thanks and apologies to Paul Williams]
[The following is to enjoyed/read/sang to the tune of the immortal original]

I’m just an old fashioned love nerd
Roleplaying at the table
And wrapped around the dice is the
Sound of someone promising
They’ll never blow a roll
You swear you’ve heard it before
As the DM slowly rambles on and on
No need to give ’em slack
Cause the session’s gone really long

Just an old fashioned love nerd
Coming down in six part APs
I’m just an old fashioned love nerd
Oh, I’m sure we’ll play some RPGS

To weave our dreams into
Each rp sess each evening
When the lights are low
To underscore our dice affair
With dungeon crawls and shouting
When we get to roll
You’ll swear you’ve played this game before
As we slowly ramble on and on
No need in bringing dead PCs back
Just make a new one to be

Just an old fashioned love nerd
Coming out with indie RPGs
I’m just an old fashioned love nerd
We have a open slot in our party

Just an old fashioned love nerd
Playing roles I always love to be
I’m just an old fashioned love nerd
Oh, I’m sure we’ll play some good ol’ RPGs

RP Talk (Episode 1) Talkin Toon RPGs

Graham Gentz and Sean Simpson discuss Toons in the WWII, cosmological truths, and murder mysteries of godlike animators. 

Shoot from the Hip, Aim for the Heart

There’s nothing scary about writing.

Only there is. And I’ve been suffering under it’s weight for some time. My own stupid, stubborn, self-inflicted weight. It’s not the writing. It’s the failure. Or the idea of failure. That you’re gonna sit down, maybe bang out a few hundred words and they just stare back at you, haunting and ugly and bad. Bad. Just… the worst words.

I really hated my creative writing courses during my undergrad. They never filled me with confidence or inspiration. My classmates didn’t seem like my peers. Either too young or too sloppy or too anything. I always stood out as cutting in my commentary. Never cruel, but confident and constructive. I always tried to think Big Picture and dissect each piece to its fundamental elements while comparing and illuminating each.

I think the last day, when all the graduates went out drinking with the head of the creative writing department, it summarized my outward relationships perfectly. One of my classmates sloshing his beer remarked aloud, “Whenever Graham talks about your story, everything he says– it’s always so right. But like. Do you have to say it?”

I’m not a dick. I’m not. I have deep compassion and sensitivity towards everyone. I’d say, over the years, I’ve learned to listen more than to talk. And I remember what people say, especially when they tell me things about their lives. Apparently, this is uncommon. Seems normal to me. I’ve taught myself under much difficulty the invaluable skill of Shutting The Fuck Up. If that’s not an achievement, I don’t know what is.

I’ve been gone. I’ve been away for a while. I’ve been chained to my past, reliving my mistakes and humiliations. I’ve been paralyzed by a present I hated. And I could not see my future. Life looked bleak and predatory, and existentially the dehumanization of capitalism left me defeated and hopeless.

But then I went to Gen Con for the first time.

Good god, why did no one tell me. I know it was supposed to be fun and nerdy. But no one described the nirvana. No one ever told me I would be overwhelmed by endorphins at every turn and feel so completely alive again. I couldn’t possibly write about it all here in this post. But I listened to seminars, I marveled at board games, I played roleplaying games, I made amazing friends,  I played in a goddamn megagame, I met Jason MORNINGstar. Even walked 40 miles.

But people saw me there. When I was there, people noticed. I was shiny. It was purpose, it was meaning. It was a future. And it felt amazing.

So don’t be scared. Do it to it. Shoot from the hip, aim for the heart. Keep writing. Everyday. Write what you WANT TO WRITE. Fuel your passion. Feed that creativity. You feel it. You trust it. You know it.

Ready? Let’s go.

 

“So what do you do?”

What do we all want? Purpose, right? Meaning. I feel I got freedom when I did not deserve it. Get a job so you can have an income. For many people, money is the purpose. Or what you can do with it– things, status. Maybe travel. People are lawyers or real estate agents or go career military. They go to graduate school and get engineering degrees and doctors. I see a lot of people become teachers by default. It seems a difficult life– little pay, long hours, high stress, no respect.

People, adults, seem to become things. They are metamorphosed into their careers. A student becomes journalist, an actor, an anything. I’ve watched the odd social transition from college parties to “adult” parties.

College parties are defined by booze, largely– exhibits of excess and hedonism. You have loud music and shouting, most people you don’t know, drinking games, the members there are looking for release and testing limits.

“Adult” parties, at the most basic level, people actually bring food. It’s quieter, more social. There’s people uncomfortably making smalltalk. There’s alcohol, certainly, but it’s not the kind of consumption steeped in ritual and maximizing the shear amounts one can take before breaking. In adult parties, people get drunk more subtly, and if they do reach a level of sloppy, it’s something whispered and giggled about later and not in the open.

It’s at these adult parties where I am now asked this odd new question:

“So what do you do?”

I know what it means. And I know why the question exists. It reminds me a bit of Taylor Mali’s slam poem, “What Teachers Make.” I still mostly find slam poetry annoying since they seem to be delivered with identical candace. But I like the reevaluating of words and the meaning of making, and well as it being a rousing anthem for teachers, like a three minute “Dead Poet Society.”

What do I do?

Well, you mean what is my career. How do I make money. What have I been transformed into. What am I?

“Oh, I’m a…at… .”

“Oh, alright. Cool.”

I suppose it’s not an offensive question. It is not strange to me because I don’t know how to answer? What job do I have that defines me as a person and my place in society? What title have I achieved?

“I used to be a theater reviewer.”
“I studied Creative Writing and Astrophysics.”
“I’ve been tutoring and working on the big education project.”
“I act. I’ve directed before. I have an eye and instinct for visuals.”
“I’m musical. I have timing and rhythm and a good ear. I sing alright. But I don’t play any instruments.”
“I love boardgames. I’m excellent at teaching and communicating.”
“My tabletop roleplaying games are the best there are.”
“I’m a writer. But I haven’t really been paid to do it yet. So it doesn’t count. But I’m really, really good with story and character.”
“Do? Nothing, really. I’m depressed most days and struggle existentially with what to really do with my future. I feel I lack purpose.”

“…oh.”

I think mostly I’ve learned I don’t like the system. I don’t like capitalism and I don’t like rat races. I don’t like being in a little box and I don’t like being told what to do. But I need to eat and I need to pay rent. I’ll get a purpose. And then maybe take it from there.

The Truth about Board Gaming

So board games have entered into a “golden age.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed. Perhaps one of your friends has insisted to play “Settlers of Catan,” “Cards against Humanity,” or something even odder.

Seem strange, right? In the age of smartphones and apps and Facebook games riddled with predatory microtransactions, cardboard and dice are somehow blooming.

But maybe that’s it. Maybe some romantic notion of anti-technology, a mighty blowback against the very everyday institutions that divide, as much as they unite, us people.

Well, no. It’s a nice thought. But that’s not quite it.

My family played a fair amount of games together as a family. My older brother always beat me at strategy games, like Stratego or Chess, being four full years my senior. I started Magic: the Gathering when I was seven, but my brother was the only person to play against and I lost constantly. My family owned the standard “roll and move” games, like Monopoly and Life, as well as Careers. My father was fond of Risk, but play of it was uncommon. More so were the many games of Racko or Chronology Jr. My mother loved Aggregation, though a family joke was generated that she cheated do to her prodigious ability to roll the all-powerful 6’s. We also had Quinto, a very enjoyable Scrabble-but-with-numbers. On our many family camping trips, we’d play Zilch.

In middle school, I discovered D&D and began my lifelong obsession with pen and paper story and gaming. I kept playing Magic as a minor distraction and felt somewhat vindicated from my years against my brother by never losing at the hands of my peers. When I got to college, I encountered more “gamey” board games, like Axis and Allies or Risk 2210 A.D. I was always excited to take part, but more as an intellectual competition against my friends and less for any deep enjoyment of the game.

There is one type of video gaming I have enjoyed more than any other: it’s called “couch co-op,” which is to say sitting in the same room as your friends and then either competing against them or teaming up to progress through the game. It seems odd to me now to need to specify this, but when I was young, internet multiplayer was immensely rare. Now it’s a household staple. And while the possibilities of MMOs and online teamplay initially excited and fascinated me, they’ve long grown banal. I never gloated and strutted so haughtily or howled in bloody defeat and screamed for revenge as loudly as I did when I was gripping a sweaty controller side-by-side with the people I loved.

But I can tell you now, I am thoroughly consumed by board gaming. It has utterly eclipsed my interest in video games, which usually sat as second to pen and paper as my nerdy preoccupations.

So how? Why?

Well. It was the internet.

Wil Wheaton’s Youtube show Tabletop, reviews by Quintin Smith and Paul Dean of Shut Up & Sit Down, and the Dice Tower of Tom Vasel suddenly exploded across my browser in recent years as I watched slack-jawed in utter disbelief. Passion for the industry, love for ideas and systems, and the ingenuity of the physical objects that were board games dominated seemingly everything. There was no question at all. This was magicial in a way I had never realized. Why didn’t I know it was this goddamned incredible?

Board gaming has long simply been a very niche industry. Printings from the gaming companies that produced them were physically limited. People could only purchase these games from small, specialized shops. There was little migration from other hobbies. The only advertising for them were the goofy TV commercials largely indistinguishable from ones selling children’s cereal.

But the fuel for this veritable forest fire comes in two forms: information and access, two things the internets happens to do better than any tool in human history.

“Internet!” you can shout at practically any reflective surface in your house. “Tell what the good board games are.” Only to follow up with a: “Internet! Get me those board games!” And in a flash, they’re at your front stoop. What could be easier?

These days I have a little over 50 board games stacked up in my linen closet. They’re all shapes and sizes and genres. I rabidly research them all before purchase. Some retail for around $100, so you gotta be careful. I’ve only spent as much as $60 once or twice. And the only ones I really regret buying are some on the cheaper end.

I’ve always been something of a “nerd evangelist.” I’ll rave about media in the form of music, movies, TV, anime, video games, novels, or comic books I love and convince other people to experience it to: Neil Gaiman, Deltron 3030, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, etc. Now I’m part of board gaming, and looking to spread the passion of their magic there, too (Top Five? Probably Cosmic Encounter, Tales of Arabian Nights, Descent: Journeys in the Dark [Second Edition], Pandemic, and Love Letter).

My name is Graham Gentz. And I goddamn love board games. If you just humor me a little bit, I’ll even teach you some of them. And I promise, at the very least, you won’t be bored in the slightest.

After all, there’s a golden age out there.

 

Just Start It

You ever wanna just write and you don’t write? You sit and stare at a computer screen, or let tab after tab multiply at the head of your browser. I really think the “Open in a new tab” option is the worst and best, and then worst again, thing that’s ever happened to internet browsing and procrastination everywhere.

Thank good shit for deadlines.

I loved Hunter S as a kid when I first discovered this literary, counterculture rebel. The 1990’s were a hard and confusing for me a kid, hating popular culture in every form. Bad sitcoms, terrible movies, and boy bands. Fucking god, what was with boy bands.

But when I found Hunter at an age when I was too young to really understand him, his ferocious staccato word choice had such teeth and venom. His ideas about truth in fiction and 1st person narrative spat in the face of everything I understood. And I stood up and screamed for more.

As a man, too, he seemed a figure alone. He hated rules and deadlines and most constraints. But I think for me, the constant pressure of a hard two hours to get 700 of the best words I had made them that much better. You couldn’t agonize or self-edit internally. You’d drown in your own spittle first. And not school deadlines. Turning some buzzingly lettered essay before 11:59pm was never satisfying. Maybe in retrospect, you would peek back at the wordy monster vomited up by desperate synapses when you got to see whatever arbitrary grade it received. Maybe then you could take a little random pride in how it “wasn’t too bad, all things considered.”

No, it was the pressure of professional writing and its tantalizing publication that got me there. I feel my overall experience was a bit hampered by largely writing theater criticism or reviews or whatever the most appropriate terms are. Sure, I got to write the odd column or be more creative in certain pieces. Mostly I feel like I got Albuquerque theater people to dislike me real good, with maybe a few who I liked what I was doing.

But sometimes you get stuck, right? Creatively bankrupt is a bit harsh, but I feel a pretty common experience is sitting and staring at a blank paper or canvas or screen. I had to teach myself not to do that. And I did this by learning to start, even if I didn’t know where I’d finish or where the next step would be. That, my friends, is what editing is for. Once you have the pieces, you can pass them around, really making the connections you want. And knowing that you’re at the top of hill, staring down in fear at the precipitous slope below, is where the battle can only begin. Knowing you really can start running and that gravity won’t make you crash immediately on your face is as freeing as anything else. You CAN make it. You have it in you. Once you get the pace thought by thought, you start coasting– comfortably, even. Inertia is the most powerful creative force you can possibly have.

But if you don’t start, you’ll be at the tippy, static top, staring at a blinking cursor.