by Rainn Wilson
Again, one of those pinhole moments that is tattooed into my memory. There was a pause, then she cocked her head, looked at me, and positively beamed. Dramatically—think Dame Maggie Smith—she said, “Oh, yes! I absolutely think you could do it. But you must study hard and work even harder! Apprentice yourself to the craft and you must go to college and travel the world. And study many different subjects like English and history, and you must read constantly! But I think you’d make a terrific actor, you’re very talented indeed!”
Again, I was glowing with the glow of a thousand glowing moons as I left her office, crackling with possibility.
Here was a thing that I seemed to do pretty well and that made people laugh and girls like me AND I might get to do it as a career???!!!
Without her kind words and encouragement, I probably would not be an actor today. Had she said something to the effect of “Well, I can’t say, it’s a terribly difficult path and maybe you’ll make it and maybe you won’t. . . . It’s awfully tough to make it as an actor and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll fail,” I might have become an English professor or a radio DJ or a bassoon instructor. Not that there’s ANYTHING wrong with those professions, mind you. Some of my favorite people are professors and DJs. Bassoon instructors, not so much.
Teachers can make such a profound impact on our lives and should be honored as heroes, I believe. They’re working for so little money, under such difficult circumstances, usually for the love of the service to the children. Many of us owe who we are to certain teachers who appeared at just the right time, in the right place, and had just the right words to say to propel us on our journey.
(ACTIVITY ALERT: Take this opportunity, partway through this ridiculous book, to reach out to a teacher who made an impact on you and THANK THEM. You’ll be so glad you did. And so will they!)
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There was another teacher who had a profound effect on me during those fertile years—Ms. Raissa Landor, my English and Great Books teacher.
I had always gotten As at Shorecrest, while doing most of my homework the night before in about half an hour. New Trier, not so much.
I wrote my first paper in junior-year English class, on The Scarlet Letter, the night before, just as I always had in Seattle, and Ms. Landor, she of the screechy sandpaper voice and fright-wig hair, handed it back to me with a big fat scarlet D on it.
I’d never gotten a D before. Not even a C. I was stunned and held the paper in front of me with horror, like I had just been served with a subpoena or the results of a paternity test.
She said something to the effect of “I know you’re new, but this just isn’t gonna cut it here.”
After class, Ms. Landor generously and patiently gave me some introductory instructions on the basics of how to write an essay, and I realized with a grotesque sinking feeling that I had no idea what it was to write something vaguely academic, that my Seattle education to that point had been pretty much a sham, and that I would need to start all over again with the whole “learning” thing. I think I swallowed hard (like an actual clichéd gulp) and came to a cold, hard understanding that I would need to really step it up here in John Hughes Land in order to get by.
I did ultimately step it up, so much so that Ms. Landor recommended I move into the top-level English class for the rest of the year. I adored quirky, brilliant Ms. Landor so much that I signed up for her senior-year cult.
Great Books was a yearlong English elective that should be in place in every school in America. All you did was read from the great works of literature and philosophy and debate the ideas behind them with your classmates. You were graded on the cohesion of your thoughts, your participation, and your grasp of the material. THERE WERE NO ESSAYS!
We read from Plato and the Bible and Rousseau and Kant and Nietzsche and Freud and Victor Hugo and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon and many other writers I can’t remember.
She exactingly instructed us on how to seek out the questions the authors were exploring in their works and how to fill the margins of our great books with notes and comments and thoughts in order to extract some possible answers. Great authors are constantly posing questions through their work, enormous philosophical, moral, ethical, and spiritual dilemmas with life-affecting reverberations.
Ms. Landor spoke with great zeal about Life’s Big Questions (sound familiar, SoulPancake fans?) and the ancient human discussion that began in the caves and continued through ancient Greece and Rome all the way through to the cafés of Europe and the coffee shops of Greenwich Village.
You know, all the biggies: Is there a God? Do we have free will? Do we have a purpose? Is there such a thing as true love or a soul mate? What makes a civilization flourish? Is there an absolute morality or do we create our own? Are we noble beings or animals in our essence?
You get the idea.
She told us once that if we could prove or disprove the existence of God she would give us an A. So future academicians Jay Greene and Randy Kamian tried to do just that. They got As but were unable to really settle the whole God question.
So much of the seeds of my later project SoulPancake would be sown in that dynamic, fascinating, yearlong mind cult that was like a front-row seat at the feet of Socrates on the steps of the Acropolis. Thanks, Ms. Landor and your outlandish hair!
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New Trier gave me an incredible hyperjump into my artistic and intellectual life, and there were so many experiences I had there that I’ll be forever grateful for. Like RADIO! I got my own radio show as a DJ on the school station, WNTH, and that was one of the most incredible events of my young life. To get to play the songs I obsessed over for a listening audience of sometimes literally DOZENS of people! My show was called Uncle Rainn’s Story Hour, and I would often read Dr. Seuss books on the air and have friends bring puppets to be puppet guest DJs.
And ROCK AND ROLL! I was in my first and last rock band. We had one gig in a church basement. We auditioned for the Battle of the Bands and didn’t get in. Which was hard to do, let me tell you. The band was called Collected Moss (get it? A rolling stone collects no . . .) and we were atrocious. We were like rock and roll threw up in a mall and a bad guitarist slipped in it and did a solo on his back for nobody while Muzak was still playing. I was the lead singer, and I sounded like Lou Reed with a hint of Tom Brokaw. The band did not share my affinity for the music I liked. They liked classic rock and especially (gags) the Grateful Dead. So this was our preposterous set list that reflected our various tastes (guess which songs I picked):
“Suffragette City,” David Bowie
“Fire on the Mountain,” the Grateful Dead
“Mystery Dance,” Elvis Costello
“Magic Carpet Ride,” Steppenwolf
“Blister in the Sun,” Violent Femmes
“Behind Blue Eyes,” the Who
“Should I Stay or Should I Go,” the Clash
“Sympathy for the Devil,” the Rolling Stones
“Dancing with Myself,” Generation X
And, finally, an ode to Cream, featuring a long, plodding instrumental bluesy jam with tons of guitar, drum, and bass solos.
We broke up after a month.
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And, finally, the focal point of my youthful existence, the swirling white nexus of heat and light at the center of my adolescent galaxy: girls. I had several meaningful relationships with some truly lovely and brilliant young women at New Trier. I experienced the miraculous ups and downs of romantic love. Mostly the downs. The dumping and being dumped. The pain and passion of youthful infatuation. You know, like in Jersey Shore; Beverly Hills, 90210; and Shakespeare. When I was in the hormone-fueled despair of heartbreak, I often used to sleep in my closet in a pile of dirty clothes. Out of isolation and self-pity, my shag-carpeted closet with the mirrored sliders was my adolescent loser womb. This was perhaps my strongest memory a
t age seventeen. Me, racked with despondency at having been dumped, lying in a pile of stinky T-shirts, gazing at the dappled popcorn-foam ceiling, thinking of whatever girl had left me bereft and forlorn.
But my New Trier experience provided me with the spark to continue on toward college as an artist and actor, more confident in my abilities than ever and with an artistic and intellectual curiosity that has served me ever since. And, most important, it gave me the courage to finally and irrevocably give up the bassoon.
THE GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE EARLY EIGHTIES (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
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THE CLASH, LONDON CALLING
One of the greatest albums that will ever be made ever. So achingly smart and angry at the same time. Terrific melodies that disguise political angst and turmoil. It was like England was on fire and these guys took musical pictures.
Not a punk album per se, the Clash at the time were expanding their musical horizons with ska, R&B, dub, reggae, and rockabilly.
I remember playing “Lost in the Supermarket” on a date with a girl who had previously only listened to Joni Mitchell and her confused look as she struggled to understand what was sonically going on.
TALKING HEADS, THE NAME OF THIS BAND IS TALKING HEADS
An adrenalized sneak peek into one of America’s greatest bands in live performance. This album was filled with sweaty, mysterious rhythms and disjointed lyrics. There’s a strange dynamic in Talking Heads: the stiff, intellectual bark of David Byrne mixed with the kinetic groove of one of the swingingest new wave funk bands ever assembled. There were strange new lands explored on this album: futuristic cities, psycho killers, as well as odes to air and drugs and feelings.
David Byrne, with his gigantic suit, was someone I could relate to, an alien trapped in a twitchy human body.
XTC, ENGLISH SETTLEMENT
This band has been largely forgotten, but their gorgeous instrumentation tempered by edgy lyrics and a pastoral snarl made them my personal Beatles. The lead singer, Andy Partridge, had a nervous breakdown and swore he would never tour again, so the band holed up in some tiny bucolic English town, and their music became less punky and angry and more orchestral album after album. His adenoidal voice and twelve-string guitar soared through “Senses Working Overtime,” and I was hooked for life.
The song was on constant play through my first Sony Walkman’s foamy earphones.
SQUEEZE, EAST SIDE STORY
Difford and Tilbrook were the new Lennon and McCartney to us pre-hipsters in the early eighties. Their melodies were just so damn catchy and beautiful. And they weren’t afraid to be really smart and super edgy at the same time. They were never sentimental but always clever. They made strangely uplifting and hopeful music in a dark musical era. I still don’t know what half their songs mean.
Plus girls just love Squeeze, even today. Lads, trust me. When on a date, set your Spotify to Squeeze and wait for the sexy magic!
ELVIS COSTELLO, IMPERIAL BEDROOM
This early-mid-period Elvis album has avalanches of lyrics cut with a palpable longing. There’s a lush beauty and sadness here that the spokesman for my generation of angry nerds was never able to capture again. I still have the entirety of “Beyond Belief” memorized from repeated listens. Go ahead, quiz me. His earlier, punkier stuff rammed up against his orchestral production in a glorious way on this album, which perfectly bridged post-punk to modern alternative rock.
R.E.M., RECKONING
Who were these freaks in their caps and scarves whirling around onstage singing indecipherable lyrics about weird Southern mythological stories?! There was so much anguished feeling underneath all of that kudzu noise! And what the hell was Michael Stipe saying?!
When I saw them play live at a gymnasium at MIT in 1985, the brainy audience was baffled by a lead singer in a raincoat and a Cubs hat who faced away from the audience toward the back wall, twirled around, and drone-howled poetry for the entire two-hour set. Meanwhile, Peter Buck and Mike Mills were rocking out like midseventies Stones.
I got to see them a few years back on their final tour, and I cried like a baby angel when Michael Stipe sang the glorious “I’m SOOOOOORRRRRY” chorus of “So. Central Rain.”
LAURIE ANDERSON, BIG SCIENCE
Performance art made new wave rock and roll. This oddly affecting spoken-word tapestry mesmerizingly dissected the disaffected modern world. Stories of downtown New York for those of us who had never visited downtown New York. The furthest thing from Van Halen that you could possibly listen to. The best album to drop a reference to if you wanted to impress artsy college girls in glasses who doodled on their jeans in ink and eventually make out with them.
HÜSKER DÜ, ZEN ARCADE
A punk concept album?! Thirty years before Green Day did one, this Minneapolis trio erupted an epically loud soundscape song cycle about some dude who runs away from home and goes through all kinds of weird, horrible experiences, only to discover it was all a dream. Hardcore punk opera.
I’ve seen both founders, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, live, but I wish I had seen the Dü, as they were supposed to have been one of the best live bands ever.
THE REPLACEMENTS, LET IT BE
Drunk-punk poets of the northern plains, steeped in anger, heartbreak, and a sneering sense of humor. Catchy, jangly tunes that were equal parts Stones and Ramones.
“Unsatisfied” is a song every teenager should sing at the top of their lungs, forlorn and misunderstood, as I did so many times later in life, driving my 1973 Volvo through rain-slicked Seattle streets circa 1985.
X, WILD GIFT
A boyfriend/girlfriend outfit from Venice, California, X was the most literate punk band around. And they made at least five great albums through the early eighties. Just listen to their names and quiver in delight: John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, and DJ Bonebrake. Listen to “White Girl” and you will know exactly what makes the electric ghosts of Los Angeles dance.
VIOLENT FEMMES, VIOLENT FEMMES
Having heard some of their advance singles at WNTH, the New Trier High School radio station, a bunch of us headed out to see the Femmes at one of their earliest concerts. It was at a small Chicago club in 1983, and there were about eighty people in the audience. The music was electric and stripped down at the same time. The drummer stood and played a snare drum and cymbal in the front center of the stage. Our little acned faces were melted. About a month later their stuff was all you heard on the radio.
THE SMITHS, THE SMITHS
Punk rock meets Frank Sinatra meets Oscar Wilde. Morrissey’s poster with his perfect, perfect hair hung on my wall with thumbtacks through most of my early college years. I had never heard someone summarize my feelings so exactly. Moz was sick of love and sex and romance and was heartrendingly alone. But we knew it was mostly an act. How could he be so alone with hair like that?
Chapter 7
A CHORUS LINE MATINEE
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I left the north shore of Chicago for Tufts University in Boston and was thrilled and excited to plunge headfirst into the whole college-experience thing. I was also a bit relieved to be leaving my parents and the quietly unhappy condo they inhabited.
I had been rejected by Brown, Stanford, and Oberlin and accepted by the universities of both Michigan and Illinois. But it was Tufts that I fell in love with after a visit there, and I was thrilled to be a part of its well-regarded experimental theater program.
Tufts was beautiful. It’s the quintessential New England college campus, with lots of leafy trees, girls in preppy sweaters, and cool old Pepperidge Farm–type buildings. Plus it was in Boston, which is where half of America goes to school on any given day.
My roommate was a guy named Rob from Prescott, Arizona, who had LONG hair and big muscles; played endless, terrible electric guitar solos; and drove a truck. He was not your typical college New England–y roommate. I wanted a more typical roommate. You know, like someo
ne from a Wes Anderson movie or Vampire Weekend. Someone who was always reading Sylvia Plath, Rousseau, and Spin magazine. Not a future member of the WWE or Duck Dynasty.
I would always try to be friendly to Rob as he noodled along to Jethro Tull albums that he blasted on his HUGE stereo system, and he always totally ignored me. It wasn’t until months later that we started hanging out and he revealed that he had found out before school that I had gone to New Trier and had heard from a friend that the school had a lot of rich preppies at it, so he made up his mind beforehand that I was probably a total butt like James Spader in Pretty in Pink and decided to essentially ice me. Isn’t it funny how we make up our minds about people? Rob turned out to be a really smart, funny, great guy, not a muscle-headed moose like I had judged him to be.
I continued my passion for acting by diving into the thriving theater department at Tufts. Theater. The study of acting can become a heroin-like obsession and can take over your life. Theater departments at colleges are like fascinating little cults that suck away your time, energy, and very soul (evil laugh). Unlike a cult, however, they give back with a glorious production of . . . PIPPIN!
Just kidding. We never did any goofy musicals. We were ARTÍSTES, DAMN IT! We did inexplicable Beckett plays and experimental Shakespeare productions that drew confused audiences that numbered in the tens. College campuses all over this great nation are filled with pale, eccentric misfits, spending literally every extra second of their college time building sets, hanging lights, rehearsing scenes, and goofing off backstage. I was one of those dramatic misfits and I LOVED it. I had truly found my home.
(A couple years or so ago, I got to go speak on the campus and I swung by the [newly redone and recently relocated] Tufts Arena Theatre. I skulked around backstage and watched the students having a technical rehearsal for some kind of crazy play. The energy was exactly the same. The camaraderie and fun. The air and the hush and the way dust motes floated in the light, which splayed sharply across the space, casting dramatic shadows. As I silently peered from behind a pillar at the actors on the stage, there was an experience of timelessness, nostalgia, eternity, and peace. It was as if it were almost thirty years previous and I had simply jumped back in time/space in an older, beefier man-suit. It was one of those perfect, transcendent, magical moments we live for. I sure hope there is a theater department in the next world. Sign me up for the general auditions if there is.)