A Sturdy Sense About Gossamer Feelings

TRIGGER WARNING: I talk about deaths I’ve witnessed, including the death of Steve Edeiken on September 24, 1983. I’m putting this here because Steve Edeiken wasn’t a celebrity, but he’s still remembered by a community of artists, and his family. If any of them stumble upon this, I don’t want to hurt them. I know that Trigger Warnings are often a punchline in our culture, but this isn’t a punchline. PTSD is real, and it’s painful, and not enough people seem to realize it.

I’ll tell you a secret. When I was 9, three things happened to me that shaped me into the person I am.

I stopped celebrating my birthday.

I saw someone die in front of me.

I discovered comedy.

I didn’t realize all of these happened to me at the same age until this summer. Each event lived in their own space in my mind, each one was something I dealt with separately. It wasn’t until this summer that I realized these three things all happened in the same year of my life. Memory is funny that way, you can see things so sharply, even see the dates, but you can stare at them and never see the connection, as childhood washes into itself.

I’m sharing this because I’m hoping that someone reads it, and it helps them.

I stopped enjoying my birthday in 1983. I started avoiding celebrating it that year. When I was in high school, it was sort of a joke. People would ask me when my birthday was, and I would make a dumb joke or change the subject. It was like a game.

I had an older sister who I didn’t know well but who I really liked. The few times I spent with her, I really liked her, because she was sweet and strange, and that felt familiar. Where I grew up, I felt really strange all the time. I didn’t look like anyone around me. My mom was different. The kids let you know all the time how different you were. I liked quiet things, and superheroes, and those aren’t strange, but somehow me liking those things were strange because I was strange. I talked about big, strange things.

My sister, the few times I saw her, also talked about big, strange things. I have a simple memory of her, of us finding a seagull and burying it on the beach, making a small grave with sticks, of flying a kite together. It’s the last memory I have of her.

My birthday is July 7th. She died on July 8th, 1983.

We went to the funeral in Idaho the week after my birthday, me and my dad and my brothers. My mom and my Grandpa stayed home. My Grandpa, my dad’s father, was divorced from my Grandma. This was all really confusing, but they didn’t like being around each other. I think this was really hard on my dad. All of my grandparents had nicknames, except for the Korean grandparents because they had died; my grandmother died in the Korean War, my grandfather Chong died in his old age, probably from alcoholism. I knew bits and pieces of this, as we travelled to see my Idaho Grandma. Theoretically I was a lucky kid because I had six grandparents, which meant a lot of love and presents. I tried to think of it that way, because I knew I only had four grandparents and only one of them seemed to like me very much.

Usually when we went to Idaho to see Idaho Grandma it was fun, because we were visiting Grandma and my step-Grandpa, and seeing strange places in the country, and seeing family we never got to see. This visit ended that feeling for everyone, I think.

Family reunions based around a funeral are pretty awful. All of these people knew her so well, and they were so sad, and I didn’t know how to fix any of it. I learned a lot about what happened, formed my own opinions on it, talked with my grandma about it. My grandma asked me to be strong, and I kept my feelings and opinions inside.

My sister fell to her death, and died at the bottom of a cliff.

In case my family finds this, I don’t want to delve too much into what me and my grandma talked about. She asked me to keep it between us, because she felt the same way. She asked me to be strong. People kept asking me why I didn’t cry. When my grandma asked me to keep a secret, and be strong, she wasn’t trying to hurt me. It took me a 7 years before I let all of the feeling inside me about it out. I was at a summer camp, in room full of strangers, at a young leadership conference. I started talking about my sister. Someone cried. I felt upset, and wanted to run from the room. This room full of kind teenagers, the opposite of what every movie and instinct says teens are supposed to be like, cried with me, let me cry, hugged me, wouldn’t let me run from my feelings. I finally got that grief out, shared the secret, let it go. It took me years to straighten out those feelings. It took me another 6 years before I really got to a sense of normal. But there was a hole, still.

To this day, I still don’t like celebrating my birthday, because the day after still feels too sad to me.

July 8, 1983. Goodbye.

In August, back in Long Beach, the Kite Festival was going on. We’d come back from the funeral and life was back to business as usual. I felt sad all the time, but resisted it. I sang Mister Rogers songs to myself. I’d started doing this when I was 7, I’d wake up and sing, “It’s such a good feeling,” to myself every morning. I still do this. I sang that song to myself, quietly, like a mantra. I took deep breaths a lot. It felt nice to breathe, and walk. I waffled between being afraid of everything around me, to being afraid of nothing. I liked being alive. I thought about my sister falling all the time. Looking up at things scared me. When I saw Kites I’d think about her.

1983 was a big year for this Kite Festival, because there was a team from Edmonds Community College that was trying to fly the World’s Largest Kite and get into the Guinness Book of World Records. There were all of these Kite people, sweet and strange and devoted to their love of their obscure art, kite flying.

I met this Kite designer named Steve Edeiken, who had all of these crazy designs and made stunt kites and stuff. I thought of spending time with my sister flying a kite, and thought she really would have liked him, because she was strange, and sweet, and eccentric, at least in my mind’s eye, and these people were the same way. I liked them immediately. Flying kites in the air brought back this nice memory of my sister who died the day after my birthday. I wished inside that my sister could’ve met these strange, sweet, eccentric kite people.

I don’t know his name, but one of Steve Edeiken’s friends was a strange man in a top hat, tails, a white tank top, black shorts and boots. In my mind, Mr. Top Hat was the epitome of eccentric kite people. The truth is, anyone devoted to an art is eccentric in some beautiful way, as is the community of which they’re a part. The New York Improv community, the kind, beautiful, ridiculous weird one I get to be in now, reminds me of this joyous feeling. The people I meet who love Improv remind me of those folks so much. I imagined Mr. Top Hat making my sister laugh, and I’d smile, looking up at the kites.

The winds in August weren’t right for the World’s Largest Kite, so the record attempt was postponed until September. The kite was so big, and so powerful, that dump trucks had to be secured to it.

I was on the beach with other people on September 24, 1983. The dump trucks holding the World’s Largest Kite were vibrating in the wind. There were people everywhere holding onto ropes, trying to control the kite, all of those sweet, strange kite people. I saw Steve Edeiken, holding the ropes. It looked like the kind of ropes people use to play tug of war. They launched the kite.

Steve Edeiken went straight up into the air, upside down, his leg caught in the ropes as the kite went up. Everyone was screaming.

I stared at him in the sky, struggling to free himself. My imagination went wild. I thought he would flip himself up, grab the rope, and slide down to safety. I thought my sister would fly from heaven and catch him. It never crossed my mind that he could die. He struggled for a few minutes, and freed himself. He held onto the rope. And then he couldn’t hang on anymore and he fell.

Steve Edeiken hit the ground about 10–15 feet in front of me. There was a lot of blood. I saw it, a puff of red air. There was so much screaming. The dump trucks were rattling. The kite was flapping, like a dragon. He was twitching. I knew what it meant, that he was dead, that his nervous system was firing in a frenzy because his body was in pain, but there was no longer a brain alive to control the body. I was a smart kid, I read a lot. I wish I didn’t know any of it, because I wanted to wish he was still alive, but I was afraid to make anymore wishes. I imagined my sister falling to the bottom of a canyon. I remembered my promise. I didn’t know what to do.

My brain went into a strange narcissistic head dive the moment he died. I thought that I’d killed him, because of that secret thought that my sister might have liked him, and my wish that she could meet him.

My kid logic was that I’d made a wish, but just like the stories, the wish came true in a bad way. The stories all said you shouldn’t make wishes, and I’d made a wish, and someone was dead. I felt guilty and sad and sick, and selfish for wishing my sister could’ve met these kite people. That’s all ridiculous, because, life doesn’t work that way. Wishes are just gossamer hopes. We all have the power to make changes, everything we do matters, but that weird guilt was misplaced. It was trauma, unresolved.

His friends, all those sweet and strange people, ran to him. They picked him up, carried him to an ambulance. Mr. Top Hat rushed right past me, and I saw Steve Edeiken’s face. He was dead, and there was no doubt about it. If his family finds this, if his daughter finds this, I’m sorry if this memory hurts you. It hurts me when I think about it, but I don’t want you to hurt from this. Maybe I should’ve kept this all to myself.

I walked home after this. I tried to talk to my family about it, but they were too sad. I kept it to myself. I tried to talk to kids about it. They didn’t understand. My birthday was the start of the summer, and it felt sad. The summer ended with the death of someone I knew, and my narcissistic kid brain was convinced it was my fault.

September 24, 1983. Goodbye.

After that summer, school started. I was back at Long Beach Elementary School. I was trying to be normal. I was already so weird. I looked weird. I was fat. I ate weird food sometimes. I didn’t like sports. I decided to try and like sports. Maybe I wouldn’t be so weird. I tried football. I tried basketball. I tried running. The cool kids were great at sports. I could kick soccer balls far. I could really slam a kickball sometimes. But I was slow. I could never catch. I just wanted to be normal for a change, and not think about infinity, or wishes, or sisters, or eccentric artists, or anything. I just kept singing my songs when I woke up, reminding myself, “It’s such a good feeling, to know you’re alive …” I liked being alive. I still like being alive. Nine year old me and current me have that in common. That’s good.

Nothing looked the same anymore at 9. I felt like there was two people inside. There’s me, the happy-go-lucky person, that’s the real me. There’s me, the person pretending to feel certain ways about some things so I could fit in. The happy-go-lucky person looked at dying, at life, as this thing that could happen to anyone, so it was important to enjoy things, and be happy, and let yourself feel that joy. My grief and sadness were in there, too. There was the other me that could connect with normal people, or was trying to, who’d pretend that playground fights and gossip mattered, that teachers were uncool, that coolness mattered. That suit felt normal, and I didn’t feel so strange when I wore it, living where I lived.

At nine, my real self saw episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I didn’t understand what I was watching, except that it was very silly, and very funny. I hadn’t had a full, loud, honest belly laugh, from that real person, until I saw John Cleese in a British Explorer’s outfit, getting his face slapped by tiny fish wielded by Michael Palin. The Fish Slapping Dance got imprinted in my mind as the epitome of comedy. I loved the Muppets, still do, and thought they were funny. But there was something different about this, paradoxically wilder, and stranger, and a bit more free.

Bill Cosby is a pretty awful person because of all the abuse he’s handed out. Nine year old me doesn’t know this, and can just watch “Bill Cosby, Himself,” and both recognize and be baffled by the strange family situations he’s describing.

That movie was was filled with humor I could filter through this other ‘normal’ self I wore around to interact with other kids and adults. I could wear the normal suit, and feel normal, if I channeled Bill Cosby’s routines through it. Even if I couldn’t laugh around my parents, I could laugh on my own. I felt like me. I noticed other kids would laugh at things I’d say, they’d laugh too. They were happy, I was happy. We laughed together. Nine years old was the first and last time I’d steal someone else’s material.

1983. Goodbye. 1984. Goodbye. Nine years old. Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye.

It’s 2011, and I’d been living in New York City for 7 years by this point. I’d seen Improv comedy, stand-up, sketch comedy, I’d been to every theater you could imagine. I went to so many open mic nights to tell stories, honing that into something I liked to do, even if the art is esoteric. I’m wearing my normal suit, still, but I take it off at night in basements, and random studios, in bars, in all kinds of places. I talk about the strange, absurd things that have happened. I’m in a club, and started a story, “I saw someone die in a terrible kite accident.” The audience laughed. I smiled, but inside, I realized that my rhythms, the way I spoked, it makes everything sound like a bit. I smile, and let the audience laugh at the absurdity of a man being killed by a kite, then swerve into a story about the time someone mistook me for Kevin Smith and I realized I was too fat.

A few days later, I’m going to my day job, and I’m wearing my normal suit. I was on the subway in New York. I was pretending, I could feel myself pretending, about how annoying it was to change trains at 14th St station somedays. I got off the train.

A woman, lost, smiled at me. I smiled at her. She jumped, and the train hit her. The driver got off the train and screamed. I hadn’t heard that sound since I was 9.

I started reciting bits from Bill Cosby, Himself back to myself. I gave testimony to the police. It’s all a blur. All the color and sounds in that subway station, they were the same as the color and sounds at 9, on the beach. I heard the announcer say, “trains are delayed due to a sick passenger.” I’m convinced this code can just mean what it means, or that it can mean, “Someone’s dead.”

This is where things get even stranger. I’m reciting Bill Cosby, Himself, to myself. I get on the train, to go to work. I get off at 34th Street station, because I can’t be on the train. I’ve made a bad choice. Before I realize what’s happening, another person, a man, jumps in front of a train. He’s dead. The police are called. I’m dizzy. I can feel my heart pounding. The police recognize me. I’m not crying. I’m dazed. Someone’s squeezing my arm. I ask about the man’s family. The woman’s family. The police don’t know. How could they know? I apologize to them. They say it’s okay. I don’t remember who I’m talking with. I just walk to work. Someone in my office is complaining about a meeting. I say, “I saw two people die today on the subway.” I walked away. I’m singing, “It such a good feeling,” to myself. I wasn’t trying to shut them down. I’m shutting down.

I went to work, and sat, then started typing until I could find the fish dance video. I smiled. I decided that life is too short to wear a fiction suit. I decide to take it off. I wonder about my sanity. I worried for a few moments that embracing the happiest part of myself in the face of death and grief and the fleeting nature of life is the act of a crazy person.

I decided if that behavior was crazy, I’d rather be crazy.

It’s 2013. I’ve stopped doing open mic nights, and just wrote movies for a while. I spent time trying to teach myself how to do animation, and failed hard at it. I didn’t like what I was writing. I didn’t like what I was doing. I got sick, and ended up in a hospital bed over Christmas. It’s a really nasty bout of ulcerative colitis. It was Christmas, and I decided I wanted to be alone, and didn’t tell anyone. I checked myself into the hospital. I laid in bed, and went over my life. What did I love? What was I good at? What did I want to do? I thought about me at age 7, learning the words to, “It’s such a good feeling.” I thought about silly voices, puppets, fish dances, relatable comedy. I thought about how Monty Python is racist, and sexist, so I don’t want to do that. I thought about how Bill Cosby, all those rumors about him, could they be true, that he’s hurting those women? I know I don’t want to do that. I want to help some kid who was like me.

It’s 2014. I study puppets and music. I learn. I made a video for my friend’s birthday that people in Seattle love. I sang a duet with a puppet in it, and made it all in one take. It’s “The Rainbow Connection” and people laughed and cried. I made a pilot, and it’s terrible. I have the passion, but not the skill.

It’s 2015. I study more about making puppets and music. I started writing other material. I started going to parks and busking for people. I decided to build a YouTube channel. I have help, but I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s a good version of this, where you’re just trying to feel your way through what you’re doing. The bad version of this is when a lack of skill gets in your way, and you can’t find the path to get better.

It’s 2016. It’s been months since I’ve made a YouTube video. I take classes with YouTube people to learn how to do better. It’s all about marketing, and finding a niche. I wanted to help entertain kids with puppets, feelings and more. I’m not around people with the same goals.

I wrote the first draft of a book about emotions. I looked for people with similar goals. It’s been two years since I’ve worn my normal suit. I didn’t notice, because I’m happy playing music, and entertaining kids in the park. I spent months trying to sign up for a sketch writing class at the Upright Citizens Brigade. I cheated, and hacked together some software to sign up for a class for me, and I get in. I also managed to find an open class at the Magnet Theater, and took sketch writing there, too. Donald Trump becomes President. I kept working on puppets. By the end of the year, I’m a great puppet maker, I’m a good musician, I’m a good singer, I’ve made a music video for a band and I shot a pilot that goes nowhere, and got paid $500 for each job. I realized I’d fallen in love with Sketch Comedy.

It’s 2017. I’m in love with the Magnet Theater, and I enjoy classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. I enjoy classes everywhere. I get to be in improv shows. I get to write sketch comedy. I fail so much, and I love it all. I failed my auditions for sketch teams at the Upright Citizens Brigade and the Magnet Theater. I’m in love with Rick Guzman’s ‘Spooky Doings’ and get to pull all of my storytelling skills into telling spooky stories and doing improv with fantastically fun folks in the basement of the Triple Crown once a month.

It’s 2018. I studied improv. I learned so much. I find my writer’s gears for sketch comedy. It’s started to dawn on me this year that I’ve gained a lot of skill in a few years, and have found my voice and ways to practice these strange arts. I looked in a mirror, and realized I’d lost a lot of hair and gained a lot of weight. For a moment, it dawned on me, I looked like Mr. Top Hat, the eccentric member of that Kite Community I saw in 1983. The next week, I failed at making a sketch team, then two days later I learned that there was a slot on Gary from HR. I said yes right away. Gary from HR is literally my favorite sketch team in all of New York City, and I don’t know how I got so lucky.

It’s September 23rd, 2018. I missed my musical improv class at the UCB, but I have another musical improv class at the Magnet Theater coming up this week. I get to practice and rehearse a Spokane improv form with one of the improv teams I’m lucky enough to be on. I got to do so much improv this last week, and I feel lucky these guys have asked me to be on their team. I’m so much older than everyone else.

Tomorrow it’ll be September 24th, 2018. And all I’m thinking about are the amazing performers at the Magnet, in the comedy scene here, at all the schools, so many people who love to laugh and help people laugh, all the delightful people who love each other, who are good being eccentric weirdos, and how I get to be my real self all the time now and be weird with them, too.

I wrote this all down, and am hopeful that tomorrow, I can remember kites, and subways, and my sister, and kite masters, and comedy, and people who gave up on their lives, and hold onto that simple idea that it is, indeed, such a good feeling to know you’re alive. That I can remember it all, and still laugh. I’ve discovered there’s so many kinds of comedy, and that my kind of comedy is all about connection, and community, and finding the real feelings inside of the most absurd situations.

For the first time in decades, I feel an abundance of joy and love. All I want to do is share it with as many people as I can, and hope it helps someone else when I do.

It’s 2011. It’s 2012. It’s 1983. It’s 2013. It’s 1983. It’s 2018. Goodbye.

I love you!

See you tomorrow at the shows.

A Sturdy Sense About Gossamer Feelings

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