last night i had a dream about ryan gosling and the circus.
ryan gosling, as you all know by know, is a former mouseketeer, and has starred in several late night guilty pleasures i've been hooked on from time to time, mainly one called YOUNG HERCULES.
mr. gosling is on the verge of being the toast of the town. mark hamil my words. he has been reeling out these fabulous sundance films and building a real career for the past few years and is about to take the world by a giant, mouse-eared surprise.
he is also, coincedentally, a mormon.
i've had a crush on only one famous mormon in my life, and no, it wasn't donny osmond. although he certainly is the only famous mormon i knew about for a long long time. him and orson scott card, nebula winning writer, and he was just too weird.
of course it was aaron eckheart, male muse of neil labutte, also mormon, who i worship as a playwright, that i crushed on. but for a different reason. eckheart's done this crazy thing...nurse betty, the core, your friends and neighbors, in the company of men, possession...all with his "g's" firmly in place, which means to you lay folk, an active mormon. sounds like an impossible feat to me, living in hollywood and sustaining your lifestyle. but i guess tom cruise has done it for years with scientology. you just gotta admire a guy that doesn't compromise his beliefs, no matter what success comes his way.
i dunno what the thing is. jewish people brag about who's jewish in hollywood, so maybe its the same kind of thing here. i'm just always so surprised to find these mormons out there representing.
i was at hollywood video the other day and saw the movie "charlie" which is based on a novel by jack weyland. jayc and i have the distinction of performing charlie at ricks college, under the absent minded direction of none other than jack weyland. he also wrote a screenplay for us and took us out to dinner a few times. the "importance of being a mormon artist" was a topic that came up more than once. boy was i idealistic.
years have come and gone and i have buried the idea of the mormon artist, and MORMON ART altogether. i pretty much think its an oxymoron.
in my single "day" i went out with this red-headed mormon artist named jon. he had dropped out of ricks but was still hanging around in the spori building. he drew jesus hands a lot. he drew me also, which was why i think i went out with him. one of our "dates" was a drive to a rest stop in sugar city where he tried to give me a footrub. i never saw him again. he was just too liberal.
its so funny to think about the old erica.
and more funny still that it was the pursuit of "REAL" ART that popped the nice bubble i was living in. that opened me up to a world of pain, and misery. and angry creativity. it has fueled my blank pages ever since.
i suppose jayc was right all those years ago when he said "happy poets don't exist." or something to that effect. and i've been writing a lot of poetry lately.
anyway, none of this has to do with ryan gosling and the circus, but really, what does?
