Entry One
On our way to Sundance…up to our ankles in Utah…in gas station food mart type joint your reporter is mentally goosed by piped in music…corporate country singer gargling “its where I first met Jesus…” but I can’t concentrate on the music…too taken am I by the other-worldly buzz of this “establishment”…don’t get me wrong, for I’ve passed through many a lily white room where I was the sole black curtain…. from Orange County to Macon County, Connecticut to Munich and beyond…. but these blondes are bleached with a vengeance…had I encountered another Negro therein how could I have possibly greeted her except by uttering “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Entry Two
Sundance is breath taking – and not just because of the altitude…I feel like anything is possible up here... I feel dizzy with joy…actually I just feel dizzy…but it’s cool…I’m gonna get three weeks away from the daily stresses, strains and distractions of my dubious urban environment: the traffic, the sleaze, and the nightmarishly affordable Chinese take-out …I’m going to focus on what’s important…the art, the craft, the catering…I just might end up making a genuine contribution to society, to the culture and to all the people I owe money to… I can already feel the magic working… I feel like I’m ready to create… I feel like anything’s possible…with the exception of finding a barber who’d know what to do with my hair…could it be the amazing mountain view that’s filling me with this hearty All-American sense of optimism…or the fact that there’s a Ben and Jerry’s within phlegm spitting distance?…turns out it has a terribly limited selection…but hey, we’re roughing it up here on the mountain, remember? – we’ll just have to do without.

Entry Three
At orientation they want you to talk about your work in front of the whole Lab – some 60 or so folks i.e. invited actors, directors, playwrights and various lookie-loos and such. First Redford gives a greeting to all in attendance. While he addresses the crowd I’m thinking “Dude, run for President. I’ll write you a killer campaign song.” I got up there and told the crowd that in the world I come from it is the height of dorkiness to talk about what you are working on if it ain’t finished. I then gave a reader’s digest version of what the play was about and got the hell off stage.

Entry Four
The different labs (composers, film, theater) come in at various times of year like herds of some confused, script clutching, species of animal whose natural characteristics include hiking and trying desperately to get drunk off 3.2 beer.

Entry Five
…we’re in a nice big house where everyone from the “Passing Strange” crew gets to stay…like The Beatles in “Help” …I have a big room. There’s a table in there. I think it’s supposed to be my “writing table.” It’s both nice and a little intimidating. For if there were no table therein I could really get into the drama of “where am I going to write?” But because the table is already there it ends up looking like a dare. “Go on, Mr. Literate Singer/Songwriter. Go write yer big fucking musical.”

Entry Six
There are some large-ass Dream-Catchers around this motherfucker.

Entry Seven
Maybe theater folk and other artists are used to such retreats but in rock and roll nobody invites you to a joint like this – unless it’s somebody from your record company who brings you there while charging it all to your band’s account. Without telling you.

Entry Eight
These dream catchers are freaking me out. I mean they are so large it seems like they started off rear view mirror size and then began sucking the blood of visiting playwrights until they swelled like ticks to the size of television sets. Yeah that’s it, some Native American tribal revenge thing. Maybe the Sci-Fi channel will dig the script. “Blood Sucking Dream Catchers from Sundance” has a nice rhythm to it. Maybe a co-production with the Sundance Channel?

Entry Nine
It’s just ridiculously beautiful here. At least once a day you think, “Wow, I could live here.” Then you remember its Utah.

Entry Ten
The running river stream thing that winds and grinds through the entire stretch of the place is loud as fuck…nature’s white noise…you’d really look like an asshole if you complained about it.

Entry Eleven
Our rehearsal space is right next to the hopelessly idyllic river running stream thing… complete with fish (Trout? Piranha?) I think they should stock it with sharks just to remind we artists of the world we’re about to return to... Rodewald and I get a great laugh out of the uber-beauty of this rehearsal spot. How the fuck are we supposed to concentrate? Can somebody please place a piss soaked crackhead outside the door of my rehearsal room so I’ll feel more at home? I can’t work under these conditions.

Entry Twelve
Last night I got drunk and complained about the loud as fuck running river. Partly cuz I really enjoy playing up the “big city boy out of his element in nature” schtick. I like doing it cuz it’s a complete and utterly accurate portrayal of who I am. I’ll go into most any urban situation without fear. But I’m scared shitless of nature and I enjoy being scared of it. I love knowing that there’s something out there that can eat me alive and that has never seen Funny Girl. Something out there that doesn’t complain about Charlie Rose’s annoying interviewing habits. Something that doesn’t buy tons of books about Islam in order to find out “Why They Hate Us.”

But what I love most is that IT is out there and yet IT doesn’t know how to open closed doors. I also love the fact that some of the same people who will go on the nuttiest hike into god-knows-what kinda wilderness would never go into certain sections of Brooklyn with me – even by cab. Lions and tigers and bears and, oh my, angry minorities.

Entry Thirteen
The joint we are staying in is really fun…spacious living room with cable – thank you…mountain home surrounded by nature…at night one hears all manner of wicked sounds...I brought along a tape of random car alarms going off and transvestite hookers arguing with their pimps to lull me to sleep... at around 3:30 am a pack of raccoons come to the patio window and look in at me while I’m writing…they look so cute…and yet all I can see when I look at those sweet little critters is a huge needle being shot directly into my navel… “So what happened, Dr. Rabies Specialist?” “Well, the singer-songwriter turned playwright started petting the raccoon when suddenly…”

Entry Fourteen
The smartest thing I heard at Sundance was from an Englishman who is reported to have said, “The English like looking at nature but unlike the Americans we have no urge to interact with it.” Where’s my stone and chisel?

Entry Fifteen
When I got to hear the words I’d written spoken by actors for the first time it was a big relief. I didn’t know if my idiosyncratically paced dialogue, much of it written for my one-man show, was gonna work when people who were not me started saying it. I laughed at all my jokes. And right after I’d laugh I’d think “This must make me look terribly egotistical and unbelievably stupid.” So I asked Rodewald if it made me look terribly egotistical and unbelievably stupid. And she said, “It doesn’t make you look terribly egotistical.”

Entry Sixteen
I’m sitting in the truck in a Provo parking lot. Searching for a station to listen to. To my utter fucking amazement I happen upon a program playing musicals! Immediately I think “Ethel Mormon.”

Entry Seventeen
Theater folk are nicer on the outside than rock people, but no less tough. The average musician couldn’t handle the kind of hustling and constant rejection that actors have to deal with daily. Even homeless street musicians think they are as cool as Dylan. I find it cool and funny that the guy in tights singing “sissified” show-tunes actually has way thicker skin than the average leather jacketed, tattooed rock n roll “tough guy.” I know tons of musicians who’ve quit the bizz in a heartbeat when it started to look like actual work, struggle, sacrifice and hair extensions might be involved. Actors know this from the start. A lot of pop musicians (rappers, rockers, etc) look at music as a short path to some sort of fantasy lifestyle. It’s as true of my generation (Hard Day’s Night) as it is of today’s (MTV Cribs/ghetto fab syndrome). Personally, I just want enough fame to get to the point where I can do a commercial for Eddie Bauer. A home in the hills is one thing but a good multi-compartmental bag is forever.

Entry Eighteen
The actors clap after the first read thru: how nice! These folks have such good manners. I told them no band members of mine clapped after I’d shown them Rehab or Black Men Ski for the first time. My band’s general response when shown a new song of mine is “where are we eating?”

Entry Nineteen
Theater should do for adults what rap and rock and roll does for teenagers. If that sounds like the first sentence of a manifesto, it is. It is also, however, the last sentence of a manifesto.

Entry Twenty
I’m deeply inspired by all the actors in our group. They are consistently blowing my mind. But I keep waiting for them to get up and scream, “What is this shit?”

Entry Twenty-One
These 9am rehearsals are not rock and roll.

Entry Twenty-Two
After years of being the bandleader, it’s hard to describe how luxurious and awe-inspiring it is to have someone as brilliant as Annie running this circus. She’s had to tell me a number of times to be patient when I’d be wanting to see or hear a certain thing and then magically that thing I wanted to see or hear would appear. So I starting telling her I wanted to see other Ben and Jerry’s flavors at the severely limited Ben and Jerry’s store at Sundance.

Entry Twenty-Three
Did a hike with Rodewald. Couldn’t relax. I’d heard someone saw a bear. It didn’t matter if it was in another county…or even another state. That was all I needed to hear: a bear was seen at some point, somewhere, this year. Could’ve even been a Gentle Ben re-run, fuck it, I don’t care. It doesn’t take much to scare me when it comes to wild animals. I spent the whole hike visualizing me running downhill stoned on the biggest adrenaline rush of my life cursing the Sierra Club. I couldn’t decide whether I’d be so terrified that I’d be screaming aloud or whether I’d be so focused on running that it’d be more like an elongated athletic grunt.

Entry Twenty-Four
Rodewald’s music for the Mom’s song is turning out to be “the tune” of the first act. Like “Watering Hole” it’s got an easy going, wistful melody that sticks in your head and stands in wonderful contrast to the kind of stuff I write. Her melodies sound to me like something a person might sing quietly to himself or herself while walking down the street. It’s a less mannered sounding approach than mine and her collaboration is going to be key in establishing different musical personalities for the characters.

Entry Twenty-Five
…watching Annie do her thing…Rodewald and Charlie as “pit orchestra”…observing daily the artistry actors bring to the table… experiencing the amazing level of commitment on the part of our stage managers… I can only compare it to what I already know: we’re building a big song...one big enough to walk into, yell at the top of your lungs in, big enough to dance around in. We can even throw a wine glass at the wall.

Phase 2 of the diary will include stuff about some of the amazing folks I met at the Lab. I just want to check with them first to make sure they’re cool with being written about on this site.

/stew