Untitled, or, The Spark of Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe is happy to be here. 

That's the impression I get as I'm sitting in the bucket seats of BU's Tsai Performance Center on Comm Ave. Dafoe has come clomping out from backstage with Dean Harvey Young, the College of Fine Arts' newest dean, and he's smiling.

The whole auditorium is abuzz to see and hear the actor who donated his archives to BU's Howard Gotlieb Archival Center. Dafoe is here tonight to be in conversation with Dean Harvey as part of the Friends Speaker Series.

I'm abuzz too. I'm here to listen to, and be in the same room as, the man who has startled and delighted me throughout the years with not only the work choices he's made, but the way he has brought the roles to life.

“When you’re hanging on to who you think you are, it can block you, and prevent you from living life.”

I first saw Dafoe when he played Paul Smecker, an eloquent, outside-the-box FBI agent-turned-vigilante in one of my top five movies of all time, The Boondock Saints. Dafoe knocked me flat with his strange inhabitation of Agent Smecker. He was strange, he was unpredictable, he was real. It was unlike anything I'd seen before from an actor. Throughout the years, he's popped up in other movies, and always arrested and surprised me with his spark--The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Spider-Man and others.

Tonight, Dafoe looks like Wolverine with his wild hair and cut cheekbones and jawline.

The talk begins.

Dean Harvey peppers Dafoe with questions about where he's come from--Wisconsin (though Dafoe is quick to point out his mother's from Dorchester and his father attended Harvard Med School)--and how he got his start in acting (highlighting his involvement in community theatre and the Wooster Group in New York). The conversation is light and easy, and they invite questions from the crowd. On life and his craft, Dafoe offers wisdom like drops of rain: 

• [On the process of acting] Invest in the finding out. Cleanse yourself of expectations.
• [When acting] My ambition is to be like an animal--natural, graceful.
• [On working with first-time actors in the Florida Project:] It was fun to be around people who didn't have a shtick.
• [On how he finds happiness:] I find happiness disappearing into a certain role. [I find happiness] when I'm not there anymore and I lose myself.
• When you're hanging on to who you think you are, it can block you, and prevent you from living life.

Dafoe's desire to explore human fallibility, our human-ness, what we're made of--this vibrates. He puts it that he wants to "shine the light on what the truth is". His energy, his humility, his presence, his way--I find myself thinking of it all days later, and nodding as I wait for the green line train.

on clowns

The other day I went to look for my colleague Melissa. When I turned the corner of her cube, instead of Melissa, I found this:  

I can't really adequately describe the terror I felt at that moment I saw this. I don't think it's often you're looking for one person and, not only have they been moved from their cube, it's been newly tenanted by an incarnation of your worst nightmare. In the moment I saw it, I felt a full spectrum of emotion. I would have stood there forever if Laura hadn't piped up that "it was way cooler before the balloon deflated and we had to tape it to the wall." I bet it was.  

I never did find Melissa. I'm wondering if the pumpkin had something to do with it.  

cray for surf

I'm crazy for surfing. 

My friend and I discovered we both wanted to become surfers while we were bouldering in Everett in April. Now we've surfed ten times in Massachusetts and we're planning to surf through the winter.  

People think we're crazy. Our coworkers, our family, our friends. 

"You can surf in New England?" they ask.  

Yep, we say, and we refuse to admit there's anything odd about it. There really isn't, actually--once you're a surfer, you look at a puddle and you wonder if you can surf it.  Here in Mass, we have a whole coast to play with.  

It's not like we're in Montana. And now that I'm crazy for surf and I watch every movie, YouTube and web clip about surfing ever, I've discovered you CAN surf in Montana. River surfing. But I'm really more of a coastal surfer right now. 

My husband thinks I'm crazy. I walk around quoting a .99 cent Trader Joe's card I gave him last year: Nothing else matters when surf's up! I holler it out then I throw out my hands and wiggle my hips like I'm on a board.   

He thinks it's a phase, like the flower farm I was going to start (which I still plan on starting someday!) but I tell him, "It's not a phase, it's a lifestyle."