The interview of my life

In light of my birthday, and since Ryan is busy rendering video from the Youth Club film we just shot—all of the sudden wisdom that crashed into me on the hour of my birth, March 3, 2010 like a squirt of Spring-like green food coloring into clear water, those lessons immediately learned in that historical moment about the order of life and the universe that comes with being a year older and demand to be uncaged like a rabid, cornered Chuck Norris—I have no choice but to interview myself. Meet question and answer:

Question: Where were you on March 3rd, 2009?

Answer: I was finishing up the final few weeks of my internship with Presidential Classroom in DC, living in the Georgetown University Conference Center Hotel, with my students all around, and there wasn’t really much snow in DC. I used to go running in it, if you can believe it. I was living with Ben and Corey and cycling among three beds—a proper bed, a pull-out, and a cot—though we fibbed to the girls that we forsook the smaller beds in order to sleep side-by-side on the bigger ones. I think maybe we got one of them to believe it… maybe. Anyway, one can really chart this year by the kinds of beds I’ve slept on.

How so?

Well, like I began doing that, then there were no jobs, so I moved to the attic of DNCCO’s—that’s Dixcy, Nolan, Colby, Colin, and Oakley—house and slept on a palate. I babysat and washed up and occasionally hefted whatever Nolan wanted me to heft. Housesitting for them was weird, though, since Oakley (the dog) would hear the alarm go off at 4 AM, roll over from where he was with his back to me and lick me straight up the face. It’s the kind of kiss I imagine my wife will be giving me someday, half asleep in the morning, but Oakley was cool and I don’t think he meant to be awkward; I mean, he’s a dog and walks around with no clothes on, totally unashamed.

Anyway, when my time was up with DNCCO, I moved—still at Starbucks—to sleep on a pull-out chair in Dr. Hyland’s living room because she and her husband consider it their mission to provide affordable, in-beltway housing to bound-for-grad-school folks like me. It was still very much a living room, with white cloths over all the couches and no door except for an oriental-like dressing screen. She used to come in all the time and offer me Korean food—she was Korean, by the way—and I had some great roommates, though I was always asleep when cool things were going on; a fie upon the morning shift and it’s infringement on social life!

I can’t count the beds I’ve slept in hereabouts in Europe, but I’ve overlooked Spanish mountains with a new momma pig five feet away, stayed in an English manor house (without serfs), you know, all sorts of things. I think my favorite was memory foam. Yeah, definitely. I don’t usually sleep well on comfy beds, but memory foam is ambrosia.

Are you any closer to sharing a matrimonial bed with someone? Finding a future Mrs. Darragh, I mean?

What if she hyphenated? I think hyphenation would be cool. Or not. I already have my name. I guess it’ll depend on how much she likes her last name. See, my mom hyphenated and I always respected that. If it’s like “Smith” or “Gertrudestein” then she may totally want to change it, but if it’s like “Wolfsbane” or something, I think that deserves to be kept.

Let’s put it a different way. Are you playing a gentleman caller to any young ladies?

Oh yeah, sorry. Not in the plan, but I got the chance to love someone reciprocally this year and that was nice.

Moving on to jobs, what do you think now that you’re a year wiser?

I still don’t like spending eight hours of every day doing something that I don’t want to do. I have no qualms about having a job, I just want to do something I enjoy doing.

But isn’t that just a reality of the working world?

Maybe. Have you ever seen a sea cucumber mad?

You mean when it turns itself inside out?

Yes, that’s right. I am a sea cucumber, and when I get into one of these jobs where I sit on my butt or do uninteresting stuff, it’s as if my backside gets sucked through my face, telling whatever is bothering me to go away in the strongest body language possible.

That’s awfully graphic.

I don’t think so. It’s science.

Whatever. What do you want to do, then?

Film, working with people, touching people’s lives, calling us all on a personal level to right the injustices of the world, logistics—which is a kind of math I like—all of it, and at the same time. All of it involves people, so all of it involves ministry, ethics, film plots, and poetry. That’s just how it goes.

Are you a poet too, then? I haven’t heard you mention it before.

Yeah, but nobody really knows about it other than when I randomly sit down like in Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford the other day over the W.H. Auden stone and jot down a series of thoughts. Literature elites and girls aren’t swayed by unfinished poetry.

Tell me about writing in the new year.

Twenty-three was a great year for writing. All of my success, really, came during that year—after the Florida Times Union dangled my op-ed piece for months and finally dropped it, I published my first article with the aid of a wonderful editor on the blog of the United Nations University—which was awesome!—and “Married and Ravenous” finally saw its direly needed rewrites and premiere after three years of nothin’. Now, it’s like moving on from an old, good relationship. I’ll always have that play with me, but I can both finally move on and finally know these years were not ill-spent, after focusing on it and not other things. Then I became a blogger.

And have you learned anything in particular as a blogger?

Yeah, that’s it’s really arrogant and self-devouring to interview yourself as a type of narrative.

You think so? Didn’t Stephen Colbert do that on TV?

My point exactly.

Well, what about your birthday in general? Free reign. What’s that they say in old school rap? “Spit it”?

It’s been a great year, and I can’t praise enough the meeting of Rachel, Andy, Tawny, and traveling Europe with Ryan and our awesomeness together on two continents. All of these things are almost better—nay, definitely better—than the prospect of seeing dinosaurs for real in the flesh.

Excuse me, what’s with dinosaurs? They seem to feature prominently in your writing, as well as dragons. Why is that?

Well, dragons are just pyromaniacal dinosaurs with awesome, scaly wings. Can you picture a stegosaurus with flames coming out of its herbivorous nostrils? I think there will probably be one in Heaven beside the live AC/DC concert with the original lead singer. But really, it’s been a great year. I’m on the eve of a watershed moment in my life—which is to say, from my early twenties, the decisions that affect the rest of my days, my career, my fam, etc.—and for the first time in my life I look forward to having a place of my own and a few year steadiness where I can study and tell stories and host friends (I haven’t been able to do that since January 2009), and hopefully make a positive impact on somebody; oh, and I’d like to play lacrosse and knock people over with sticks, but not like hockey because I’m really bad at ice skating.

Do you have any regrets?

They aren’t much good to me, regrets. I could say that I regret turning down a ride from the Production Coordinator on the one film job I got in DC, opting instead to act macho and cycle fife miles home in the rain, not realizing until I was halfway down the Maryland hills that I’d missed my chance to chat with him, create the bond that convinces him of my character and makes him want to hire me for future gigs. So I missed that, and didn’t get another film job the whole time, but if I’d gotten that chance, this future would be different, and I love where I am, I’ve just learned.

No, really, I just miss my friends strewn about the country and world. Kevin and my brother are overdue for a visit, and if there’s one un-ideological thing I want to do this year it’s to afford a ticket to come visit them. That and add abs to my daily pushup routine.

Recently I heard that you didn’t get into Emerson College for film school. Do you regret that?

Never. I poured into that ap and didn’t get it. Big deal. I have no desire for Emerson to be consumed by any monsters and I refuse to regret it. Beware of a fortuitous moment: walking around Oxford yesterday, I felt an almost overwhelming desire to be back in religious scholarship, making a difference in students’ lives, asking tough questions, the liveliness of a university that spans many departments. I can make my films in a divinity school. I must. It’s who I am. It’s just harder that way… requiring me to acquire everything on my own instead of having cameras, lighting equipment, and editing facilities at the ready, not to mention trained and ready crew. But most of my scripts-in-progress are for want of experience div school provides—like the daily workings of a hospital chaplain for my existential piece about hope in a DC hospital on Christmas Eve—and Duke, which was supposed to bin my application months ago after my deferral was up, has offered me a scholarship it only offers to four people a year. And Lauren Winner—whose work has sparked another one of my screenplays, this one about family ties and burial customs during Sherman’s march in the Civil War (I swear most of my film ideas are uplifting)—is a professor there, and she is awesome.

So are you going to Duke?

I don’t know. What do you think?

I don’t know. Now that you ask that, earlier in this interview you mentioned being self-devouring. How do you see that?

Well, you’re me. You can pretend you’re not, but you’re that investigative side that tries to be strong for everyone and say I’ve got it all figured out, but you’re the entrée, man. I’m cathartic and spun-around and that is how life is and it’s nibbling at your security. Mystery is more prudent at this juncture, man, so throw off your professionalism and dive into the pool that’s been sitting outside of your house for so long and has made you so curious you can’t take it.

You’re mad at the world.

No, I just rage against the machine. Heck, this is the year of Kiefer Sutherland. I have as many years as hours in a day. I see the circular holes that culture tries to fit us in and look at all of us and see a bunch of square pegs. I see the impermeable political talking points getting punched through by the hard rain of reality. I see the much sought-after money as illusory when compared to the wealth of our portfolio of friends, talents, families, taken-care-of bodies, and a spirituality that seeks to heal the wounds of the world. What is culture but the furthering of thoughts of those before us; and yet how few of us take charge of the fact that God has given you a sphere of influence? It is your family! It is your work and friends and the passerby on the street! For me, I will make films that defy convention. I will write poems that will make people either touched or mad, hoping not to be in the in between. I will nurture my relationships, I will pray, I will serve, I will challenge and protest, I will touch, I will taste, I will love, I will give. I am not your monkey, world; I am not your monkey at all.