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So my fellow readers, it is now a glorious 2010 and how are you doing? The new decade was ushered in with a traditional kiss which was silhouetted against a sky of fireworks and a horizon line of ocean. Champagne, dinner, groceries, and flurries; I watched as the world moved past me. People trying to shake off 2009 like a wet wool sweater.

I personally have been very thrilled with the past year. I saw my company double its business, I hired two new employees, I diversified my industry, and I networked like a pro. Looking ahead I am thrilled with the designs and positions I have secured for 2010. Going into the New Year I have already signed 8 gigs spanning musicals, rock, and opera.

I have also begun to dip my creative fingers into listening for new music. Over the past year I have been working on a professional connection to the music industry, and when I hear something I like I pass it on. Hopefully something strong can grow out of this relationship which could further my creative and design based process.

Closing up 2009 I invited one of my Grad School class mates to come up to Boston and work with me on the nutcracker. I had a really enjoyable experience and it was wonderful to see her again. We were able to catch up, share work stratagems, have harrowing driving experiences “thanks to me” and invent new cocktails for post work relaxation.

I have begun rock climbing, and all I can say is climbing a cliff is a lot different than climbing truss or a boom. My arms hurt so much, but thankfully my dignity is still secure as I am trying to take to the sport like a duck to water. I am thankful that Boston has so many rock wall options available to the public. It makes my new hobby accessible.

I have met a new interesting individual, a true neuroscientist, and I have been enjoying taking my time and getting to know this person. In the upcoming weeks I will mount Footloose, Spelling Bee, Barber of Seville, and RENT. There will also be a few rock gigs spattered amongst the shows.

I am really excited with the few months ahead, and will have to close this entry with that. I am finding myself pulled in many positive directions, and all of these forces are making it difficult to write at the moment. When I touch ground again I will get in contact with you.

As for tonight I am about to slap on my Aldo’s and rock over to the house of blues foundation room to do a mixer for Adam Ezra. Then I will be whisked off to his concert, and hopefully do a little networking. New York City is on the horizon, and I am looking forward to seeing all of my friends.

Peace Love and Jell-O

M

Snow begins to settle into our minds as the first white, wispy, wonders fall through the sky and collect on my door step. The clear, crispy, cadence, a “pit a pat” on the street gently reminds me to pull up my collar and to push my mittens on.

I recently took some time to reflect back on the past two years, and take my show bibles down from their dusty covered exile on the top shelf of the closet. With the rustling of ansi-e sized paper I look back at my designs, plots, and drafting’s. I am looking at my thought process, and hoping for inspiration to spark me into my next throws of creative passion.

I will be lighting my second band in the upcoming weeks, details to follow…

I am really excited to listen to this bands material, and seeing where we might be able to go together. I think I might pass the scenic charge onto a friend and see what his mind is able to come up with.

Things have begun to firm up with the cohabit-tator. Perhaps the seeds of a something are now rooting in the soil of cut up cardboard, rusty exacto blades, and carpet scraps. I have a hopeful body and mind as I move forward into the darkening days to come.  Esp. because i know I will get my life back shortly.  Now that schools have disbursed their fundage’s the cohabit-tator will be able to freely move around and firm up his life.  The experiment in generosity and kindness has not only been humbling and educational, but also enjoyable..  He will be flying back to his home, finding his graduate experience to be too much to handle… I honestly can symphatize with him…

So judging by the costume material I pulled, I might be being some drag queen or madam… “or maybe army theme?”  or perhaps traditional sexy vampire!

More to come soon!

Light

M

First of all, happy national coming out day to all of my GLBTQ friends out in the inter-verse, I do truly believe equality will find itself to America, and a day is dawning where we all can be free to have the same protections and allocations under the law. As a resident of the fine state of Massachusetts I already have seen this change happen. Every day we blaze a trail weather how we interact with a neighbor or a person on a bus, too taking cases of discrimination to the Supreme Court. Our actions are felt around the country. I have always been active in the GLBTQ community and I find its innovation, grace, and stamina to be un-daunting and inspiring. So I wanted to take this moment to not only recommit myself to all of my friends, and those whom I have yet to meet, but also to myself. I commit to seeing a world where hate has no place, and where segregation even from aspects of the law is abolished.

So tonight the frigid fingers of winter will drop a pristine white fluffy blanket of snow on top of Mt Washington in New Hampshire, and in Massachusetts the thermometer will dip down to a balmy 36 degrees, and I will pull my comforter up and over my head in order to soldier on. All the trees have begun to join the earlier prom goers of a few weeks ago, when I open my back door I am inundated with orange’s and yellow’s and green’s and red’s.

I have opened arsenic and old lace at the company, and I am feeling more accomplished than my last update left you hanging. I am evaluating and beginning to formulate a plan to stay residential in the Boston area for the next three to five years. Seeing where my connections and life can take me within this great city, as I have always known I am within stabbing distance of Chicago and NYC so really I have nothing to complain about. While working at the Company I ran into an actor who is going to try to help me out with taking a swing at the next level of my global plans. So in all honesty I need to remind myself that life is fluid, and things which are great can obviously turn bad, and things that seam hopeless can resurrect into the light.

Also cohabitation is still going well for those of you whom are interested. I have no complaints as a hybrid state of styles and concepts are beginning to manifest and swirl themselves around in the room. I feel that I am really able to sit in my stillness now and appreciate it which is a new found comfort. I have Halloween to look forward to. It will mark the date of my two best friends union. Honestly I have to say, how freaking fun is this going to be!!! I will be traversing 93, and route 3, with the cohabiter to pick up some costumes from a graciously giving costume house.

In true theatrical style, almost like miss Lady Gaga, we will be going in formal attire, with garment bags in the back seat, and then costume changing into the festivities outfits. Allowing the final moment to be quite surprising… I am yet to know the final theme but once I do be sure I will inform you all….

In closing I noticed in the past couple of days bee’s hovering around the fall flowers, and I thought to myself whilst I was feeling down. If these bee’s can comeback from the massive hive decolonization that plagued us last year, perhaps my life is not really in that bad of shape. So as I watched the little worker hover around I smiled and realized that I am going to be ok.

Well fall has gripped me, with a chill that is unmistakable. Smoking a clove lying out on my back porch looking at the veiled moonlight I feel more and more like Emily Dickenson, save I am not a shut in, and my lap top is my pen and papers. Still I feel somewhat as if I am locked away in a far off attic watching life move around me. The delicious darkness that is winter spreads its Eire blanket over me, and I am ready to open Arsenic and Old lace.

I am having I suppose a moment of weakness. I am very comfortable right now, but I wonder what is ahead of me. Where is my career going? I am thankful for the business I have, and yet, a voice inside me says, Michael what will you be doing in two years. Should I be moving, should I be looking harder, should I relax and travel with what I have?

Also I am pining, I suppose that is all I will say on that matter, but the waters of my life although from the outside appear peaceful and glass like are filled with rouge waves, and uncharted expanses.  I suppose tho, that this is the fun in life’s journey.  The unknowing, the uncertainties, the surprises, and the bouts of survey.

Truly in the end or in a week, I will be peaceful again, happy with the blessings with which I have.

Perhaps I need a week away from New England.

The lovely rainy time that is the change of guards from summer to winner. As the drizzle sets in I unloaded a truck with Erik and Joel. We moved the parts of the beast into the theatre. Hung 55 fixtures, cabled, colored, and wrung out the system in less than seven hours. So we did roughly a light every 7 minutes. My show has loaded into the black box, and I sit and wait to see if the actors will have as smooth a transition as I did. While programming the light console, I stopped to think about the interconnection of the micro processor. We designed a piece of technology which operates as one being, but cannot survive without the sum of its whole. In a way, my electrics team was like the semi conductors in that micro processor.

I also just finished reading Arsenic and Old lace which I will be working next week. The script is adorable, and brings forth a lot of humor which I did not formally give the 1940’s credit for possessing. I have decided to do my own electrics work at this theatre till the end of the quarter to foster a good rainy day fund. The thought does shake me slightly as doing my own electrical work is not my forte’.

I am pleased to say the co-habitation experiment is going well. I have recently discovered a small passion for cooking, and link it to the feeling I get as a designer. I feel that anyone who can create something in this society is like a modern day magician. So the gifts we have, be it singing, cooking, painting, or designing are special and inherently sacred.

I feel that my current life is very fostering of this energy, and I find myself barreling forward and It makes me laugh, as I dance home through the city streets at night with my mp3 player in my hand.

I have made it into my new apartment, along the way there were a lot of things I cast off just like the trees which are shaking the orange flecked plumage that once made them so tall and proud. Moving for me turned into a wonderful game of precious not precious, I was able to part with many items I had been carrying with me for years! Items, images, and thingamabobers strun across the floor, I felt briefly that I was drowning in my own collection of randomness.

Subsequently I have now arrived, a few blocks from the now quiet and dormant townhouse I sit in a cream colored room with my blue bed and full star curtain surround. Human compassion is such a wonderful thing. I have taken a friend in for the time being. We are learning to cohabitate and work around each other, both designing our own secret worlds.

I have been signed to do, Producers, Spelling Bee, and RENT; so im sure you can assume that I am THRILLED!!!!… I also recently thanks to my friend Adam, was able to design at the beautiful Wilbur theatre in boston. I Designed Yo LA Tengo, and it was an amazing experience. The rig was all pars, and I really enjoyed using the seachangers to create color effects…

So whats up next? Fall is in the air..

I will write to you soon when the muse moves me…

Untill then

Be GOOD

Michael

I am sitting on the BOLT bus which is a lighting designer’s emblem. A streak of lighting splash’s across the side of the red coach operated out of Dallas. You might be asking me where I am going, or where I have been. I am recently leaving Manhattan, after completing a two week stint on High School Musical II. I was in many ways a refuge in my own skin, a gypsy traversing the wilderness of the urban city. I stayed in Jersey with Erik, and West Village with Patrick, and LIC with Shari.

Now before I go into the generics of my daily life I need to take a moment to talk about my personal life. I would like to say that a few months ago Robert and I ended our relationship. It happened in a very controlled and calculated way. There was very little to discuss and we realized our lives where going in two different directions which no include each other anymore. That being said, I sing a song of forgetting, forgetting the way things where, and I instead choose to remember the way I was. Before, and what made me strong, what I have learned, and what I want to become.

I now look forward, I am booked through march 2010, I have doubled business in a year, and I am a resident designer for a few companies… Although it is not glamorous, I am ok with this. I sit outside an arbys waiting for my bus driver to eat and come back to drive me home.

I will be looking for a new apartment in the next two weeks, moving, and starting over…

LIFE IS GOOD,

~Mike

So clubs, wine, beer, brie, and a ha cha cha. Since we spoke last, bob and I toured the United States, we stopped in Florida, Vegas, San Francisco, san luis, Monterey, LA, NYC, and back to Boston. This was a double graduation, and engagement present made possible by his parents, south west airlines, and our own boot straps. We rented a snazzy car and got under way. It was in SAN FRAN, that I began to sit down with my opera materials, and conceptualize the magic flute. I also got contacted by the Company Theatre, and would later be signed to date for two shows.

We just keep spinning round round right round like a record. NYC allowed me some closure on my graduate experience; I interviewed at a few more schools, was warmly received, and warmly declined. We were able to get awesome tickets to SHREK the musical, and enjoyed the open doors of restaurant week.

Now my designs have gotten more complex, after seeking Shrek and talking with a good friend on Broadway I decided to try Vari Lites on for size. These Movers are bananas. They have vibrant colors, and good wash / spot capabilities, Which means they can practically do whatever I need them to do. I also loaded my opera with CXI’s to get fun color wash’s.

Now a note on touring… SPEED and SMILES… are the two s’s of success..

This is all my brain has for now… My writer brain is not well engaged… as spring comes I will be inspired to write more to you all… Until then hold tight to the idea of tulips rising from the earth like little colored fire birds.

So ding dong merrily not high, and I’m still gay-ly ringing. The holidays have truly descended upon and through us here. To say Florida turns is an understatement. We say in some families that life is like a soap opera, (like as the world turns for instance). So as I stated above we are going at 360rpm’s a min. down here. The rentals are ill with a flu, but the outlook is good. The sister is repainting her house, the outlook is good. Bob and I are scheduled to fly out jan 7^th, the outlook is long! I do have to say, I am thankful for coming down here and spending time with the family. Family always puts things into perspective, and it’s good to have love and warmth; especially when the warmth comes from the 80 degree weather.

Robert and I decided to get engaged, rings and all. Modest rings with a tension set diamond. They are tokens or statements of our choice to be with each other. My opera is fast approaching, and hesitantly I still await contract and footage to help inform my choices. In other news, I was contacted by a company in Boston, who is looking to hire me on for Godspell (can we say THRILLED!!!).

So what advice do I have for you when things get hairy, I guess I would say have a good exit strategy.

Robert and I have a vacation from our vacation. We will be flying out of Orlando early, and darting across the country to San Francisco. Then we will spend two weeks driving to LA, and then Fly to NYC to do interviews. (thanks to his parents as a graduation gift)

In a word we are

Thrilled!

Love light and licorice.

MIKE

Well, well, well.

I have arrived home safely from my duo Nutcracker’s. One was a design, and the other was over hire. Now I am listening to Mama Mia, and packing a suitcase ready to go to Orlando.

I am looking forward to 3 weeks of secluded family vacationing, and pre prep on the Opera. Now all I have to do is find spring and summer work!

Keep your ears to the ground, I will have a holiday post soon…