Mask Malfunction

Hey mother, I want to major
in drama.
Archaeology is not as new to me as it used to be,
which is filled with a bit of irony, considering archaeology
isn't exactly new to anyone.

It will still always be a love of mine, a fallback option, the pipe dream
that I'll follow if the plumber can't keep the acting one from leaking.
I was not really on stage at an early age and you could say my dramatic fate was sealed
late in that I did not realize it fully until february of 2009, but there's still time.

Plenty of success comes from people who switch gears mid-life,
and I'm not in a crisis, this is just becoming more and more obvious by the day.

Hey mother, I want to major
in humanity.
No not humanities, I want to major in that feeling that you can only
get by pretending to be someone else on stage,
the incredible universal empathy that presents itself in the theater
that can make mary magdalene look like a monster
or heinrich himmler look like a hero:
i'm not saying that theater justifies evil,
evil is not an act to be justified,
but there is nothing wrong with empathy for your fellow man,
if we can understand where eachother comes from,
we can help eachother out of the holes we dig ourselves,
we can be on even, solid ground and look into the sky and laugh.

Hey mother, I want to major
in hope.
No, not Obama's brand, not quite Harvey Milk's either,
but that feeling that you get when you finally understand what
makes your parents act the way the do,
that feeling that helps you connect with someone else,
it's on the way to love,
but it's not quite there.

And I know I may have been tricking you into thinking I'd become an academic,
an archaeologist, but I wasn't wearing a mask, I just hadn't seen how much fun
it could be to wear a costume on stage.

It won't be easy, it won't be comfortable, and it
very often won't be fun,
but acting helps you understand humanity,
and if we learn to understand it then we can start to help it.