by Don Hall

Roy looked down from the cliffs at the man drawing in the sand. The picture that started to emerge startled him. It was an extraordinary face, not realistically rendered, but seemingly viewed from many angles at once. In fact, it looked much like a Picasso.

As soon as the thought entered his mind, his heart stopped. He lifted his binoculars to his eyes, which he then felt compelled to rub. The man on the beach was Picasso.

Roy's pulse raced. He walked this route every day, and he knew that very soon the tide would sweep in and wash away a genuine Picasso original. Somehow, he had to try and save it. But how?

Trying to hold back the sea was futile. Nor was there any way to take a cast of the sand, even if he had had the time he was actually so short of. Perhaps he could run back home for his camera. But that would at best preserve a record of the work, not the picture itself. And if he did try this, by the time he got back, the image would probably have been erased by the ocean. Perhaps then he should simply enjoy this private view as long as it lasted. As he stood watching, he didn't know whether to smile or cry.

Source: "In a Season of Calm Weather" by Ray Bradbury

I've spent the past year working from home in the second year of a pandemic. I'm certainly not complaining—this reality has been far better in a host of ways from working the swing shift in an Off-Strip casino during a pandemic—and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had this year in semi-isolation while still earning the bread necessary to pay my rent.

One of the concomitant results of this day-to-day connection to humanity through mostly digital means is that I often have time to drop down rabbit holes of nostalgia and wonder, finding points in my (almost) 56 years which I regret (blessedly few) and of which I still stand in awe.

So many of the things I've been a part of in my life can be described as in the same universe as the Picasso on the beach. So much of the theater I was a part of creating in Chicago fits. Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue both in 1996 at The Annoyance Theater on Clark across the street from the Metro and in 2012 at A Red Orchid Theatre just a walk from Second City. Let There Be Light! in New York City reviewed well enough to be featured on the NYT Arts section cover. The cast of Postmortem recreating the life of a person listed in the Chicago Tribune obituary column.

If I look for them, there are photos of moments from these shows, reviews clipped and saved, but the events themselves, hundreds of performances over years of making theater, are all washed away in the tides of time. They remain as memories and, at least in my case, those memories are mostly good.

Less washed away are the stories I'ver recorded, the podcasts I've produced and uploaded. Although they are still just etched in digital sand, they are easier to revisit and laugh about.

When I was nine years old, my Grandpa Jay bought me a tape recorder. For those of a certain age, we remember these boxy devices. Mine came with a crummy little microphone that plugged into the front. I loved it. I recorded all sorts of nonsense. The primary focus for the gadget, however, became man-on-the-street interviews with Grandpa Jay as he'd get a little liquored up and go into character: Jay Bowen, the Smartest Man in the World, the Poorest Man in the World, the Best Looking Man in the World, the Strongest, etc.

We recorded these bizarre, hysterical interviews all summer.

A few years later, Grandpa Jay died of multiple heart attacks at the age of fifty-eight. A year later, the tapes with those interviews, masterpieces in their own right, were destroyed by a Stretch Armstrong toy popping an armpit and oozing resin all over the tapes. At the time, I recall, it didn't have much affect on my selfish, stupid fourteen year old brain but later, I realized what had been lost. It is one of the few regrets I have today that I don't have those recordings anymore.

As soon as I started recording and editing podcasts (beginning with the stalled but still listenable Peculiar Journeys) I decided I needed to get both my mom and dad telling stories. I bought my pops a microphone and he recorded a couple of stories but stopped because without an audience, he felt goofy telling stories to a computer. So, whenever I go home to Kansas, I try to find a way to cage them in and get some stories.

Two of my favorites were for the Literate ApeCast. Ordinarily David Himmel and I host but once in a while I ask Dana to do something fun on her own for the podcast. Last June, she interviewed my mom; this Christmas she interviewed my dad. These are, in my mind, masterpieces but etched in something not quite sand and not quite concrete.

I believe that the true meaning of living is to create. To paint, perform, write, tell stories, make furniture—create. So much of our creations are washed away into the sea of time or stuffed into a giant room full of other discarded creation but the effect of creation on the soul is immeasurable.