THIS IS THE FIRST POST
I’M IN A TOWN CALLED NORMAL.
THE SECOND POST:
THE PROLOGUE WAS IN NORMAL. AND THE ROAD TRIP GETS UNDER WAY.
LINK: https://mydreamdreamtour.com/2018/11/04/the-prologue-was-in-normal-and-the-road-trip-got-under-way/
Izaak Walton:
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.
In a fortune cookie the day I arrived in the US:
Your creativity will lead to wonderful achievements.
Something I’ve been repeating for 20 years.
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
Just read online:
Please overuse your intelligence. It is sexy as fuck.
OUR DREAM-DREAM TOUR
A ROAD TRIP AROUND AMERICAPERFORMING AND WRITING
2018-2019
ONE
I’M IN A TOWN CALLED NORMAL.
I’m in a town called Normal.
I’m in a restaurant called Zen.
It’s October 2018.I am on a road trip, visiting parts of America I never expected to see.
The world is in a strange state.
And I’m in a state that’s strange, to me. Illinois.
Many more states.
And many more stories stories to come.
[Normal. And its neighbouring town Bloomington, Illinois]
I’m on a journey through America, a paid road trip.
A theatrical tour.
And the first leg of the journey:
White Plains, New York. Bloomington-Normal, Indiana. West Lafayette, Indiana. Notre Dame, South Bend, Illinois. Saginaw, Michigan. Big Rapids, Michigan. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Galloway, New Jersey. Rahway, New Jersey. Storrs, Connecticut. Decorah, Iowa. Paducah, Kentucky. Whitewater, Michigan. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Batavia, Illinois. Terre Haute, Indiana. Henderson, Kentucky. Collegeville, Minnesota. Pinedale, Wyoming. Lakewood, Colorado. Hays, Kansas. Manhattan, Kansas. Hampton, Virginia. Manassas, Virginia. Fairfax, Virginia.
Out of all of this. More to come during the SECOND LEG OF THE TOUR.
As the tour proceeds,, among the roles I’m playing is a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom the Weaver.
And as I go, stories I shall weave.Connections I shall make – including the strong connection between Weaving and Computing.
There’ll be hardly any actor-ish stuff here.
I hope I’ll be ranging wider and delving deeper.Perhaps unusual for some actors – some people – we have known.
I happened to be in America 2 years ago just after the Presidential elections of November 2016. That was the last time I was here.
At that time everyone I met was in shock.To be sure there was jubilation then too.
But I didn’t and don’t know that many people who were jubilant.
The people I knew were clutching at straws.
Trump will be impeached, they said, he won’t last, he didn’t want this, he’ll be found out, as if to say, it’ll all be over by Christmas.
I hope that I am not risking too much by writing what I write, though I feel impelled to write it.
How dangerous is it now – and how dangerous will it become – to write what one feels and what one thinks?
From the very beginning many perceptive people were determined:
We must not allow the things this man might do to go unnoticed and unremarked. We must fight every inch of the way.
We mustn’t Normalize this.
NORMALIZINGI started writing this – four weeks ago – in a town called Normal.
In a restaurant called Zen.
I’m on a road trip in the United States.
It’s October 2018.
I’ve been here during the Kavanaugh Hearings.
And I’m here during the build-up to the mid-term elections.
Last week a café in New Jersey a man said something very simple and obvious to me.
Donald Trump is like a mirror for us.Donald Trump represents all that we know about a wide range of human foibles and flaws.
Toxic as his flaws may be, we have seen such behaviour before, among family members, school-friends, work colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances, users of social media and anyone else you might care to mention.
It’s a lot worse than merely sad.
And needless to say we’ve been used to milder blends of this kind of thing.
With Trump we’ve moved to the hard stuff.
And the truth is not everyone does see past the bullshit.
And it is also true that so far nobody knows how to combat the bullshit.
So far nobody is winning the debate against Trump.
Still it’s worth having a little look at the techniques,
Could anyone miss them?
Millions and millions can, so it seems.
Attributed to Goebbels:
The cleverest trick:
Accuse the other side of that of which you are guilty.
Accuse the other side of that of which you are guilty.
THE BULLY CLAIMS TO BE THE VICTIM
The person accused of criminal behaviour calls his opponent ‘Crooked.’
The crowd chants Lock her up.
‘We are interested in the rule of law.
Our opponents are interested in the rule of the mob.’
Says the demagogue.
To a baying mob.
The man accused of dealing treasonously with a foreign power accuses his opponent of dealing unlawfully with a foreign power.
The Faker puts out Fake News.
And blames others for putting out Fake News.
The Liar accuses others of Lyin’.
The man accused of harassing women – and worse – accuses entire nations of harbouring rapists.
This is not proven, but if the man does take the drugs that practised users are sure he takes, then accusing whole nations of drug use is at best ironic.The man who may be canny but who has decided intellectual limitations talks of other people as being low-IQ individuals.GODWIN’S LAW
Mike Godwin says that he introduced his law in 1990 merely as an ‘experiment in memetics.’
American attorney and author Mike Godwin
GODWIN’S LAW
Be that as it may, Godwin’s law – or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies – originally stated that:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.
That is to say, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, or to Nazis or Fascists.
Well, it is true that online or otherwise, when a reduction ad Hitlerum occurs.
A discussion or thread does tend to dribble away, descend in quality or even shut down.It is also true that comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis can be hyperbolic.
Still, there are also times when the similarities are there and the comparisons are entirely appropriate.
Godwin himself has written:
I wrote about using Nazi comparisons in The Washington Post well before it was believed the election would turn out as it did, and that certain factions in American culture would feel empowered by it. What I wrote was, if you’re reading history before a comparison to Hitler, I’m for that.
And In August 2017, after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Godwin Tweeted:
By all means compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I’m with you.
You wait for ages and then four Godwins come along at once.
The other play I am doing here in the US is Frankenstein.
By Mary Shelley. Née Godwin.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Godwin
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Godwin, (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer and travel writer –
we love them.
Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus when she was 18.
The first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818.
She was 20.
Mary Shelley’s name first appeared on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Mary’s parents were of course Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin
One online site suggests that Mary Wollstonecraft was besties with Voltaire.which isn’t quite true, although she was friendly with the philosophers and activists of her day, including Thomas Paine.
Why would Tom Paine think of all this?
Years ago I used this verbal exchange in a show:
Benjamin Franklin: Any country where liberty is there is my home.
Tom Paine: Any country where liberty is not there is my home.
Tom Paine
Mary Wolestonecraft herself has been spoken of as an important Enlightenment thinker.
She was in France shortly after the Revolution.
And on the 26th of December 1792, Wollstonecraft actually saw the former king, Louis XVI, being taken to be tried.
She witnessed the king as a prisoner in a wagon and it ‘made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney coach going to meet death …’
Louis XVI
As well as a fine history of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a conduct book and a children’s book, as well as A Vindication of the Rights of Women. (1792).
Still, it took some time for her writings to receive as much attention as her personal relationships, which were thought to be unconventional for the time.
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin fell for each other intellectually as well as physically. Their relationship began in 1897.
Mary became pregnant.
She already had an illegitimate daughter.
She decided to marry the prospective father of her next child, perhaps partly as a gesture towards propriety.
Godwin and Wollstonecraft moved into properties 20 doors from each other, often communicating by letter.
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
On the 30th of August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley.
The delivery seemed to have gone well, but the placenta had broken apart during the birth and became infected.
Puerperal (Childbed) fever took hold of her.
After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of septicemia on 10 September 1897.
Mary Wollstonecraft had run a school and had written a book about The Education of Daughters.
Mary Shelley
But Mary Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, was brought up by her father Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist.
He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good.
The right action is understood entirely in terms of consequences produced. The Classical Utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, identified the good with pleasure.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
They hoped to bring about ‘the greatest amount of good for the greatest number’. This has also been expressed as ‘The greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The brilliant Mary was being educated in Scotland when the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley first became acquainted with the Godwin family.
Shelley was Godwin’s student and protegé.
Shelley’s money was useful to Godwin.
Godwin’s philosophical and political ideas were useful and inspiring to Shelley.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The brilliant Mary Godwin was being educated in Scotland when Shelley first became acquainted with the Godwin family.
When she returned, Shelley fell madly in love with her.
He repeatedly threatened to commit suicide if she did not return his affections.
As if in imitation of a hero of one of Godwin’s novels Shelley ran away to Switzerland with Mary, then 16.
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Shelley had abandoned his wife, Harriet, who was by then – July 1814 -pregnant with their son Charles (November 1814 – 1826).
Harriet’s suicide letter: 
Extract from Harriet’s letter: When you read this letr. I shall be no more an inhabitant of this miserable world. do not regret the loss of one who could never be anything but a source of vexation & misery to you all belonging to me. .. My dear Bysshe … if you had never left me I might have lived but as it is, I freely forgive you & may you enjoy that happiness which you have deprived me of… so shall my spirit find rest & forgiveness. God bless you all is the last prayer of the unfortunate Harriet S—
After six weeks abroad, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, homesick and destitute, returned to England.
William Godwin was furious.
Godwin refused to see Percy and Mary, though he still demanded Shelley’s money, to be given to him under another name, to avoid any scandal.
JackKlaffDoubleDreamTour 