Growing up in a barely middle class, puritan New England town, I often saw bullying brutality in and outside my home. Sarcasm ruled. If you had a feeling - any feeling - you made a joke or buried it. You shoveled snow or smoked a butt. You didn’t be a weakling and talk about it.

In high school we’d get high and dream of getting out of our town, of going into the world to leave a mark. I left the instant I could, but this wasn’t the norm. Living there was so embedded in our DNA that it was more fun to talk about leaving than actually do it. Some left for a year or two, but most came back. They wanted familiar. They wanted what they knew. They wanted their kids to go to the schools they went to. Familiar was easy. It felt safe.

What hit me repeatedly during this election is how many people don’t want change. They want what they know. Change is uncertainty. I think part of the reason Kamala Harris lost - next to the reality that America wasn’t going to vote for a female president - was because she represented change. Her opponent didn’t. His old school machismo and beliefs he repeatedly spouted had an effect that somehow - I don’t understand how - created safety. You knew exactly what you were getting.

I’ve never taken for granted what it means to be an American. Go to any country and locals who speak English know that English signifies class. It suggests someone is wealthy enough to be educated. To speak English is aspirational. Our clothes, movies, tv shows, books, art, all our products set a bar of desire. Currencies around the world find their value against the American dollar. It’s the strongest currency because it’s always been the most stable.

Even when we’re hated we’re still envied. Reluctantly admired. Mostly because Americans represent democracy and hope to countries who don’t have either. We were the country the world tethered dependence on as proof that justice prevails. But now we’re in new territory. Now we get to see what comes next.

I grew up in one of those towns that scorned immigrants. If you weren’t third generation you sucked. But the reality was that most of us were first gen. Second at most. My stepfather came to America when a cousin here sponsored him. They got him a job sweeping floors in a factory. My stepfather had an eighth grade education and didn’t speak English. Twenty-five years later he bought that factory. Many of his employees were immigrants. They had benefits, but he made sure they had a life insurance policy. To my stepfather, life insurance was magical. He had come here in steerage after his whole family was wiped out. Life insurance was safety, something you could get in America.

When I came to NYC all the delis in my neighborhood were run by Koreans. The parents stocked shelves and worked the registers all day and night. Their kids sat barely out of eye shot studying. I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for over thirty years and got to see their kids grow up. Many went to charter schools, then on to med school, or became engineers. One kid went to work for NASA.

NYC became the capital of the art world only because immigrants came here fleeing Hitler. Call culture elitist, but in war, early targets are museums. Kill a country by killing their culture. Destroy or steal their history. The value of culture gives a place a sense of place. It gives it meaning. Everyone loves their local museum whether they visit it or not. Through our art, movies, books, tv shows and music - a trillion dollar industry and more - think of the influence we cleave around the world. Ever hear a Russian rock band? Bring earplugs. The irony is, the creative world in America is Jewish, gay, straight, Black, white, trans, undefined and more. A gaggle of groups now under fire.

On a personal level, this last year has been brutal. It's been a micro version of the macro going on in America. For an entire year (and still ongoing), on almost a weekly basis I've had to deal with two bullies who are cruel and vicious. I’ll write more about it later, but they've turned out to be the most poorly wrapped gift. I have had to look at where and how I still give my power away because of fear. And this let me became so f*cking determined to never ever do that again. In turn, a lot of the fear has vanished. Faith over doubt. It always comes back to faith over doubt.

Wednesday night I did a zoom with a group of actor and writer friends and one said, “Do we simply let him take over?” She wasn’t suggesting violence. I think she was expressing what I’m feeling more than anything right now: Defiance. If I add the tone of hope to ‘what do we do now?’ and try to keep my heart from hardening, it’s a good question.

I've been seeing a ton of plays. LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and BURIED CHILD and ECLIPSED and THE FATHER and FOOL FOR LOVE. One of my favorites, even in that line-up was NOISES OFF. I laughed myself out of my chair.

I have a theater crew who I see most of the plays with. Two of our crew were in the reading I did in December. All of us usually go out before or after whatever we've just seen to hash it over. And then we gossip a little, then spend a few hours talking about whatever.

For the first time in all my years in New York, I feel like I finally have a creative community. As a visual artist I make studio visits and have studio visits, and I have one or two close painter friends who I speak with regularly. But the art world has always been more isolating. Maybe because it's not collaborative the way theater or TV or film is. Or maybe it's because I'm changing. Studying with Wynn has opened me up in ways I didn't know I was closed. Whatever it is, I love getting together with my crew once a week and rubbing noses.

The acting coach and all around extraordinary human being I studied with this spring, Wynn Handman, was recently interviewed for Theatre Talk. The interview appeared on Channel 13 and CUNY/TV last week, and in case you're curious about him or want to get a sense of him, you can see the interview here.

I teach screenwriting and TV writing through a program, I teach privately, I consult on projects and I'm in a writing group where most of the writers are working writers. It means that a lot of writers cross my path and what surprises me is how many don't finish projects. Some writers have made features and have gotten into Sundance and have producers attached and have written for existing series, and even some of these writers get stuck.

I get it. Desire has to turn into perseverance to sit in a chair, alone, day after day and finish something that, for a good amount of time, threatens to seep through your hands and disappear into the dirt. Bad habits are easy to slip into and the line between writing and not writing can creep up on you.

My habits are pretty good. I know my head f*cks, I know what draft I hit my stride in, I know my process. Recently, however, I finished writing a feature and for the first time ever found myself paralyzed when it came to getting it out into the world. The script is a modern fairy tale and the scope of it is bigger than what I've written in the past. I didn't have immediate contacts for it, but I didn't have contacts when I finished my first TV project either. After slowly and consistently knocking cold on TV doors, things started happening. With this new script, I kept seeing Sisyphis and his rock and couldn't move.

I decided to write to big producers, so called A-list, for advice on how I might try to package it. I was stunned when they wrote back. Each one told me I'm at the edge of breaking through, that it sounds like it's been going great, that it's only a matter of time before I get something into production with my name on it. It was so nice and affirming to hear, but my sense of being at sea didn't lift. When I create something I have a very clear vision for it, and then it hit me: I'm writing in a medium that isn't a writers medium. What am I doing?

That realization got me motivated. I researched, sent emails, talked to people, talked to more people, and now my feature is out there. I'm waiting on a producer, waiting on an agent, and I'm done waiting. I've started writing a play. Theatre is a writers medium.

With my writing group I bring in pages, cast them with whomever is there (actors come), give brief direction and we jump into a table read. Each week I see my shortcomings when it comes to directing actors, and I've been working on this. A close actor friend studies with Wynn Handman, a well-known NYC acting coach, and she recently told me that he'll sometimes take on a sit-in director to mentor in his classes. I contacted him, went in for an interview, and this week became his new sit-in director.

His classes are master classes and I recognized a few faces from TV and movies. I was awed by how good everyone is, and how diverse. The room is set up like a small theatre and each actor gets up and performs a scene, usually from a play, sometimes from audition material. I sit with Wynn and watch. He'll work with them as they do their scene and he'll occasionally whisper to me what he's thinking and why he's saying what he's saying. Actor after actor comes alive and it's fascinating and exciting and visceral. The last few months I've been tangled up and rudderless and I walked in to my first class scared shitless and shy. Seeing the risks this class takes has made fearlessness infectious. Being in that room is thrilling.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an artist he discovered named Henry Flynt. I never heard of the guy and looking around I found this invite from 1961 inviting people to hear music at Yoko Ono's house. The list of people performing is incredible, but what's more fascinating is how they all must have known each other. This is why I love technology: what museums used to do - show me 'x' across a room from 'y' in a way that lets me make associations - is now what the internet does. I can research almost anything and surf my way into far out ideas and connections. Granted, online content is still fueled by humans, but hopefully science is working hard to change that.