Decisions and Meeting the Moment by Dean Gloster

             This month I started an improv class at Pan Theater in Oakland. I used to do standup comedy and have always been intrigued by improv, which seemed way harder. The class is less terrifying than I expected, and way more fun.

            We do improv games and improv scenes on stage, and it’s extraordinary, getting to spend two hours on a weeknight just playing together with fifteen other brave adults.

 

            It’s also fiercely grounding in the immediate present: You respond to what the person on your right just said, or just did—not to where you wished the scene had headed. You react—fast—to where it just went, and then try to say or do something that gives someone else something to work from.

 

            You make an instant decision, based on what’s happening now.

            There are a lot of things writers can learn from improv, about collaboration (“yes, and…”), dialogue (don’t just ask questions or give yes-or-no answers; move the scene forward) inserting backstory (quickly) and character (inhabiting a distinct character.)

            But you can also learn things about trying to meet the moment.

            This month’s topic is decisions. Every day, we decide (or choose not to decide, embracing inertia instead) how we’re going to spend our finite time on this earth. And it is finite.

            That was brought home to me this week, when one of my classmates from our MFA program in writing for children and young adults, Kathryn Benson, died. She was young, a wonderful writer, kind, brilliant, organized, and a caretaker, who helped our whole class get through the program.

 

            Kathryn should have had more time. We should all have had the chance to read the books she would write. She was a bright light, and some of us were lucky to spend some time near her glow.

 

            Lately, I’ve decided I want to be more intentional about how I spend the remaining time I have: I was apprehensive about taking the improv class, but it’s something I’d wanted to do for a long time. And I don’t have forever to do it in the future. If not now, when?

 

            And, of course, in November as a country we have a huge decision to make. I’ve decided I’m going to do everything I can between now and election day to prevent our country from sliding into fascism and instead keep more of its best promises (as the 14^th Amendment to our Constitution provides) of equal protection of the laws.

            About ten years ago, I saw a terrific production of Italian playwright Dario Fo’s The Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Berkeley Rep.

            At one point in the production, after rattling off all the terrible injustices going on, wonderful comic actor Steven Epp said, to himself, “But what’re you going to do?” Then he turned to the audience, broke the fourth wall, and addressed us: “No. Really. What are you going to do, after you leave this theater tonight?” I still think about that.

            Two days ago, rambling before a “Believers’ Summit” in Palm Beach, Florida, Donald Trump urged conservative Christians to vote in the upcoming election, and explained (enthusiastically) that after that they'll never have to worry about ever voting anymore: “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…In four years, you won’t have to vote again.” 

            That was either the incoherent babbling of a 78-year-old convicted felon or a suggestion that if the Trump wins, we won’t get to have elections in the future. Or both. As of 9 a.m. Pacific Time yesterday, however, it wasn’t reported as front-page news by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, or mentioned at all by ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, BBC, Politico, or CNN as a call to end elections. The New York Times headline about it was instead that “[F]ormer President Trump honed his attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and called her a ‘bum’.” After getting savagely roasted about that online, the Times eventually—hours later—re-ran a different version of the story with the headline “Trump tells Christians ‘You won’t have to vote anymore’ if he wins.” And a few hours after that, CBS finally tweeted a couple of lines about it. (Thanks, guys.)  

            The Supreme Court isn’t going to save us. (Former Supreme Court law clerk here, who’s actually read the horrific immunity decision. Trust me on this.) The press isn’t going to save us. We’re the scrappy protagonists, friends: We’re going to have to save ourselves and our world.

            I wish things were otherwise, but that’s what they are, and we have to respond to meet the moment.

            So I’ll keep writing my stacks of postcards to get out the vote, and I’m sending money to candidates in expected close elections, and I’ll be volunteering to go door-to-door and drive voters to the polls in nearby Nevada. (I send postcards through a local group, but you can also get addresses and scripts for postcard drives from https://www.activateamerica.vote/postcards  )

            My friend Martha Brockenbrough let me know about a KidLit for Kamala strategy zoom, on August 11, 5:30 PT/8:30 ET. An announcement is here. 

 

           Good luck to us all. If it goes especially badly, perhaps next year I’ll get to blog fun tips on how to roast marshmallows when the Heritage foundation burns our books.

 

            To better days, and to working together to get us there.

Dean Gloster is a former stand-up comedian and a former law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court. His debut YA novel DESSERT FIRST is out from Merit Press/Simon Pulse. School Library Journal called it “a sweet, sorrowful, and simply divine debut novel that teens will be sinking their teeth into. This wonderful story…will be a hit with fans of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and Jesse Andrews's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.” His YA short story “Death’s Adopted Daughter” is in the anthology Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop from Autonomous Press, and his YA short story, “Proof of the Existence of Dog” is now out in the anthology Spoon Knife 7: Transitions. He is at work on two more YA novels, one in draft and the other in revision, and makes periodic anti-authoritarian limericks and other ramblings on the app formerly known as Twtter at @deangloster.