Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 3 - The Rehearsal Room

 The Rehearsal Room

The rehearsal room is a term that I use to refer to the space we hold as creators of theatre. Wherever it is that we prepare a performance for our audience is the rehearsal room. This room must be a safe space for everyone. Recently this has been forgotten in this movement/desire to “do better”. We’re so focused on doing better and regulating those who we perceive as unenlightened in the new protocols that we’ve made the rehearsal room a superfund site. And that will kill the theatre faster than any lack of budget or audience (or the five dollar Costco cookie). 

I’ve noticed a general cultural shift to assuming the worst intentions of our colleagues. Everyone is now a stranger, an enemy… a sinner. I’ve seen veteran members of the community and even founding Artistic Directors “cancelled” for speaking in terms that last year would have never fluttered an eyelash. This mob-style rule is inherently dangerous to our field and must be guarded against at all costs. The rehearsal room is a place where our older members must be safe to bring and express their generational norms, unaware of the new ways of doing things.

Let me expand: We must allow all of ourselves to freely express our established world views, our judgments and our prejudices so that they can be aired, discussed, debated, relieved, re-educated, sometimes affirmed, mostly unwound... That’s right. All of us. We’re not monks. Monks aren’t monks, they’re just playing them on TV. 

This is not an “all lives matter” statement. Understand that our movements for justice for all marginalized people are valid and we need our leaders to listen and make change. That’s not what I’m talking about here. We all have prejudices. All of us. We all harbor generalizations borne out of experience, and out of fear and fantasy. We all deserve to have those inconsistencies in our characters, and we have the right to work on them, or not to. In the rehearsal room, everyone is truly equal. 

It must be safe for us to be fully ourselves in the rehearsal room. If a conversation needs to take place that will educate or shift members of our community who may be behind the culture curve, those who are facilitating the discussion must be patient and kind in the discourse. There’s a tendency for us to instantly want others to understand what we understand and be perfect now that we’ve told them. Maturity is the understanding that evolution is a slow process. It requires the processing of information over a period of time that leads to epiphones. It’s like building a theatre show. It’s thick and lurchy. That’s just the way it is. 

Further, education is a two-way street. Some of our oldest community members are Baby Boomers. Some of them fought in, or fought to stop the Vietnam War. They helped to usher in the Civil Rights movement and have supported marginalized groups their entire lives. They have something to teach us as creators. They’ve participated in the most dynamic lifetime since the Great Depression, and they have something valuable to offer us. We should do a lot more listening and a lot less lecturing. The rehearsal room is the place where these conversations must be unavoidable. If an older or a less woke troupe member makes a faux pas, it must become an opportunity for dialogue, not a surprise public humiliation (as a colleague put it recently). This is absolutely critical. Approaching any actor/creator as a sinner smacks of Christian patriarchal dogma and it must be militantly guarded against in my view. Everyone has a right to be heard, and everyone has a right to feel safe. And everyone has the gawd-given right not to be a monk.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 2 - Rhetorical V Substantive Justice

 Rhetorical vs. Substantive Justice 

I have “coined” a couple of terms for use in the discussion of this topic. Use at will. 

First, definitions. 

Rhetorical justice is a justice of language. It’s an attempt to make the words that we use more sympathetic to marginalized people. On its face it’s a great accomplishment that we (for the most part) no longer use the “R” word for the intellectually disabled, or trigger pronouns for minority groups. Rhetorical justice is the way we speak in a restorative manner about everyone in our society. It’s a good little sibling to substantive justice.  

Substantive justice is the justice of action and intent. It encompasses what people are thinking and how they act in the attempt at restoring justice to all for whom justice needs restored. In a substantive justice model, we look at the intent of an “offender”, and then their words. We ask questions to learn the intent. We look for common ground. We embrace those who have wronged us and assume good intent from all. We look to improve future interactions through education and love, and we move away from the ineffective and draconian punishment paradigm. 

Currently, due either to laziness or a lack of awareness, our culture at-large, and our theatre communities, are not embracing substantive justice principles; they are instead giving almost sole focus to rhetorical justice. This is very dangerous for theatre makers. It creates a hollow infrastructure: one in which saying the proper words, using the proper style book (a style book is a hard-bound book that is produced by The Associated Press periodically to alert newsrooms to changes in socially acceptable terminology) is as important or more important than providing substantive justice. 

Simply saying the right words without substantive action is an ego-maintenance activity, and has no place in the theatre. An example is described by the buzz-phrase you’ve heard:  “Virtue Signaling”. Substantive justice is required moving forward in order for future theatre companies and creators to address issues that are salient and in need of attention in an effective, change-making way. Words beget words, actions beget actions. Rehearse as you will perform. We are performers and we must solemnly take a hard shift if we are to build a regenerative stasis for the preservation of our art form.

The nature of the theatre is one of experimentation. It’s one of endemic faulty steps and trip-ups. It’s one of constant re-education and debate. It’s an art that challenges everything: established systems, outmoded ways of thinking, the fetishism of the new, the lens itself through which the paradigm is visible, even wokeness.

The theatre must challenge everything in its view in order to function at all. Push and pull are the lungs of the theatre. There must be tension and release, the gears of relationship clunkily grinding in and out of gear, as if forging a road out of wilderness with a machete. It’s not smooth. It’s not comfortable. It’s not safe for the ego. It’s not a place for the faint of heart, nor for anyone who would want to set systems in stone. The theatre is a place of openings. It’s a living organism. It’s a flower reaching for the sun, changing direction as needed to grab the most nutrients. It’s a people outstretching their arms to the heavens, begging for something fresh, new, enlightened, nourishing. The theatre is a place for the wild ones. It is a place for explorers with no hard limits and nearly no sense of self-preservation. The theatre is a place for adventurer souls to collide in a loving, sweltering, sometimes violent dance that shows the true nature of the human condition, without artifice--beyond the presentation.  

Without the right to fuck up, theatre makers would never make any kind of decent work. We’d make things that require a laugh track: shells of shows that discuss trivial mundanities as if they were cultural earthquakes. Disingenuous tripe... the deadly theatre that Peter Brook talks about in 1968.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Substantive Justice and a Regenerative Practice Part 1

 Zack Preston Rouse

June, 2021

Greetings!

As a theatre creator, I have found the making process of a theatrical production to always be everything, regardless of scale. Literally, it’s inspiring, it’s heartrending, heartbreaking, breathtakingly beautiful. It’s an exercise in futility, a simple exercise, a romp, and a snooze. Theatre is life. And it’s hard. It’s insanely hard to build believable characters who breathe like real humans. It's hard to produce shows that reflect humanity in all of its immense depth and breadth. All the circumstantial, financial and psychological trappings that are endemic to our discipline have, over the years, created a kind of collective trauma in our community that needs to be dealt with. Add to this our current cultural awakening that calls us to create true equity across our society, for everyone, now and finally, and we have a tall task ahead of us. 

In order for us to move into a new, regenerative model of theatre making in our culture, it is critical we take a few steps to correct some bad habits that we’ve formed. This piece, of which this post is part one, is an attempt at outing these habits in an open forum so that they can be seen, aired out, and moved beyond. We all have these habits to some degree or another, and reading this with an open heart will be more effective than taking the stance that you’ve seen it all before. 

I’ll probably fail at my task, but the show must go on so I'll try. I’m going to be very direct and honest in this. If you are offended by something I wrote, I’m sorry. If you’re triggered by something that is in this piece, not my intent. It’ll probably happen. I don’t do passive aggression and I don’t coddle. That’s not to be mean. It’s to be efficient and effective with my words, but equally important is that it’s just my personality. I don’t do small talk very well. And I don’t walk on eggshells. I believe open, honest communication to be the most loving path. I’m sensitive and get my feelings hurt too, sometimes. We all have the right to get offended, feel the way we feel, and get over it. I wrote this piece out of love for you, my theatre community. Take that intent throughout, and any offenses should be less painful. I hope.

Oh, and I curse sometimes. I think it’s fun and adds to the color of my writing. I have tourette syndrome, and that may have something to do with my saying things in a way that is sometimes controversial. Who knows? This is my take and you can take it or leave it, in whole or in part. That’s what freedom is. 

Intro

Over the lifespan of my involvement in the making of shows for an audience (I’m 45 years old), I have seen my artistic community work diligently (almost undyingly) to become a more just, more inclusive, more egalitarian, more healthy field of study and practice. In my estimation, theatre communities are the most liberal you’ll find on the planet. They’re so liberal, in fact, that they will play with Christian fundamentalists and not judge them (except by the same standard as everyone else: did you give a good performance?). That said, there have always, as far as I can tell, been systemic issues of patriarchy, hierarchy, racism, sexism, institutionalized and change resistant phobia-maintenance… 

Theatre people are people. And we’re people in a greater society that experiences these issues at-large in built-in ways. The theatre, for how liberal a practice it is, is not immune to the character flaws of its greater culture, and we should hope it would never be, because there are no monks. As audiences we want to see ourselves on stage and screen, reflected back at us in a truthful, honest, sometimes heroic and often pathetic manner so that we may attempt, through self-awareness, to grow beyond our limits toward an ability to evolve as a species. 

Recently, we’ve seen with the necessary development of movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter, some wonderful cultural shifts. We’ve started to see a film industry by and for women. We’ve started to see a larger cultural awakening (Whitey getting woke) to the apartheid nature of our so-called democracy along race lines. And we’ve seen actual prosecutions of murderers in uniform. These are all necessary advancements in society that are now finally happening. And as humans are prone, along with these great strides has come a regrettable Newspeakianism (a kind of leftist fascism of thought a la “1984” by George Orwell) that threatens to shred the very culture that is working so hard to “do better”.

Against the backdrop of a deepening economic and climatic crisis which may render all of these progresses moot in the coming decades, we in the theatre community actively watch our greater society swirl around and through itself: a dying beast kvetching in turmoil over the soul’s lack of agency to save the body. We too feel the push to make Hail Mary maneuvers. Hell, we just want to make work in a world that ignores live theatre as if it’s the 90 year old deaf blind grandmother in the corner with a lemonade. “She’s fine, eat your cake.”

Theatre has been dying for decades. It’s the art form that nobly and tragically accepts one solitary audience member, for the show will go on. We often perform for tiny audiences, we feel dejected by it, we go to the bar and drink ourselves into oblivion, and then we go back to the theater the next night and do it again. Why?

This passion and dedication for the art form shows a resiliency in our field that is second maybe only to journalism. Whole generations of theatre makers come and go with nearly no audience for whom to perform. When I pass someone on the street and they say, “Hey! That was you in that thing I saw, right?!”, I'm ecstatic. Not because I got an accolade, but because someone came to the theatre. Does that make you want to cry? Go buy a theatre ticket, then. You can’t, you have rehearsal? I get it. 

This is the crisis that I’ve been living with for the entire time I’ve been a theatre maker. How the hell do I get butts in seats? What the hell are people willing to leave their couches for? 

So when the “Woke” movement hit my small-town theatre community during the pandemic, I became aware that a crisis within a crisis was beginning to develop. It started as a trickle. Some of my colleagues started talking about how this word or that word is no longer allowed to be used. “We use this word now because that’s respectful of this group of marginalized people. We don’t talk about that issue this way anymore. We now look at this issue through this lens or in this framework.” It’s certainly a good thing to keep looking at ways to include more people in what is truly the grand socio-self-reflective art. The more the merrier, I say! But then the trickle became a flash-flood.

Whereas pre-pandemic we were all wedged like Dirk Gently’s couch into an unsustainable yet somehow still going paradigm of Scavengerism (begging foundations to prioritize a show over a meal program for poor kids), now we’ve added to this fundamental crisis a new lexical crisis of conscience. If we naturally assumed the best in everyone, and looked at intention when judging a person’s behavior, this year-long homebound respite should have created an opportunity to make some serious headway toward substantive justice.

But alack, we are humans. The result seems to be more of a smorgasbord of intellectual cannibalism. A new lexicon of consequence (vs. intent, as Jordan Peterson discusses) is emerging out of the chaos of swirling linguistics and social media smackdowns. A lack of production and a glut of rancor is now all the community can seem to muster. Previously productive companies are hamstrung by woke protocols and are now impotent to just make the work for fear of being cancelled entirely--which they are anyway by default. 

Like all human endeavors, there are growing pains. When the term “non-traditional casting” became the new buzzword (decades ago, now), the progressive companies rightly adopted it to show solidarity with minority groups and marginalized performers: performers who were in every way as talented and passionate about the art form as anyone else, but who for issues of systemic prejudice weren’t given the same opportunities to just work as white men. “Non-traditional casting” was the OG BIPOC-friendly term in theatre circles. You knew if you were a performer from a background that wasn’t male and white, that you had a place in a theatre that was bold enough to publicly state their participation in the practice. 

Unfortunately, conjuncting the overarching current philosophy of a true crime entertainment--the lowest common denominator content that will sell the most ads (we have collectively decided that what the most people can tolerate to watch is violence and so that’s nearly all we make anymore), we now have this industry autosarcophagy taking place. This grimaced pathology of assuming the worst in each other has led to a community, already beleaguered by too numerous challenges to count, that appears to want its own total demise and is leaping toward the edge of the cliff like a peaking tweeker.

Older community members post audition notices saying that they’re using inclusive casting methods, and self-labelled leaders in the community smack them down for not using the proper wording. People pile insults onto a hapless victim who was simply trying to include everyone in the rare opportunity to be in a paid production. Debates ensue about whether it’s okay to cast a teenage girl as a teenage girl anymore, or if the girl must now be played by a member of a marginalized group to show solidarity. White, privileged company managers brow-beat the community over social media about what the BIPOC community wants and needs (Thou doth protest too much!), dissertating to such a degree as to drown out any hope of dialogue--or even just the sound of an actual BIPOC voice coming through.

My heart is broken. I watch my own community dismantling itself as systematically as the oppression it purports to make inroads against. I worry that theatre may now, finally, totally be dead, not by the hand of American Spartan capitalism as oracled, but by the hand of its own practitioners over what to call a coffee mug: it’s now to be referred to as a ceramic cylinder. “Get it right. It’s Ceramx.”

I jest as I cry. And yet I hold a glimmer of hope that we can pull something together. Like a show in a moldy basement, the dryer rumbling low during the performance. It could still open. There could still be an audience. There could still be a thing to do and see and learn from. There could still… after all of this last century of challenges, be a theatre art again.

An Actor's Greatest Moment And He's Absent For It

My greatest moment as an actor (so far) was in college. I was playing BAAL in a student production. Being a Senior, I had been very lucky and had great success getting cast in meaty roles all the way through school...so I thought I knew my shit.
Student productions tend to have very short runs, two weekends at most. So you have to get to it if you want to learn anything. I was so obsessed with acting in those days that all I did was learn lines, interpret character, smoke pot and get deep, talk shop to anyone who would listen. I breathed acting. But I have the age-old problem, like many of us, of having two minds on stage: The character's mind; and the actor's mind. The actor is constantly distracting the character and making me drop out of the moment for whatever trite thought about a lunch date or a botched audition, or worse, how cue 212 was dropped by the SM, and how am I going to change my blocking so that everyone can see my beautiful mug for my monologue.
Well it was our second to last performance, and the production was quite experimental. The student director had decided to add all kinds of artifice to the elegant, simply brilliant modern Shakespearish gait of Brecht. He cast painters and musicians in character roles, ignoring good taste and quality (in my naive college aged view). By this point in the run I had my lines and blocking so cold, all my intentions decided and re-decided and re-interpreted once again. I was on autopilot. I was doing what I think is wrongly called by many, "Phoning it in". This is a wrong term in my opinion because this is the space where the magic begins. A necessary rung on a ladder that most of us never see the top of.
Something else was at work. There was a magical dust that settled over me that night. Somewhere in the middle of the performance, I can't remember when, because, it's magic, things started getting very fuzzy. The veil began to lift for me as a performer, where it never had before, and very rarely ever did again (so far). And when it came time for BAAL to die, begging for his mommy to return him to her bosom, the most basic of all human needs returned at once after a life of incivility and relentless adolescence, rape, murder and abandonment in the name of independence (what an irony!), Zack Rouse was gone. Actor man, with all my analysis, all my judgment, all my opinion, had simply vanished, and where there had been a personality driven by ego to surpass the competition, do everything perfectly and achieve the adoration of professors and peers, given awards and told I no longer have to attend class because I'm just an ACTOR now, there was now a dead BAAL.
Blank. Blind. Empty Body-vessel. Actor.
I awoke at curtain call, which was one severe bow and an exit, to sit in a chair for half an hour, waiting while my ego returned to me. And fortunately, when I got back, I had no opinion about what I had done that night. I didn't think I was the greatest actor who ever lived. I didn't envision myself receiving an Oscar and thanking the Academy. I didn't care. 60 people watched my performance that night. Hardly world changing.
For those who are religious, I will challenge that this is what preachers are talking about. They are talking about a unification of humanity in the internal/eternal world of the "Open Vessel".
I will submit to you all that indeed, I ceased to exist for a period of time. The universe had no need for the ego identified as Zack, with its prescribed tastes and opinions. And so for a time, Zack died. And was reborn when the vessel that held this ego was finished with its job of representing BAAL.
This is why acting is not an ego pursuit. This is why acting is at its very core the spiritual and solemn endeavor to map the universe. Actors are Astronauts.

-ZR

Harold Pinter's The Homecoming: "Luke, you are my reviewer"

The First Review Is In! Luke is the verdict...

See Review Here From The Oregonian


So,The Homecoming         

is officially open. We had a good first weekend run, and at least two reviewers were there. 

REVIEWS!!!:

What a mindfuck. My auto spell check says mindfuck isn't a word, but I think it should be added to google's lexicon. Afterall, if google is a word, why can't mindfuck be?

Mindfuck. So, yes, as an actor working on the HARDEST PLAY EVER WRITTEN, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, you have to ride the line between broadcasting a metaphor to an audience, laying it all out there for them so that it's easy to digest, showing all the inner turmoil that is the character; and keeping all of it close to the chest so as to leave the decision making up to the viewer. 

Most reviewers have no idea what that process is like. The process of developing a piece of living literature for public presentation. Especially in an age of 10 second soundbites and loud colorful images of breasts and dilated female eyes. This play, upon reading, is so complex, so enigmatic, so specific and vague at the same time, that to choose a path and "show" it would be to spit on the memory of the Nobel Prize winning playwright. He didn't want us to broadcast the bitch. He wanted us to play it close to the chest. 

I said this to my fellow cast mates in email today:

I think, that with theatre moving away from Drama, and toward a visual experience (meaning away from the written word), it is harder for the viewer to accept literary theatre. This is sad, on the one hand, but it is also just the way things go, as generations flow through time and our artistic forms morph and twist. 

Pinter is still of that Dramatic form, the literary form. And we are working with Paul (Angelo) to execute that literature with respect. We're not broadcasting a blunt interpretation of the play to an assumed sense-dulled audience that can only hear the loudest of metaphors. 

This [piece] is a challenge to show to the public, most of whom are looking for ten second visual cues that move the story along. Most "modern" pieces have three times as many events occurring in them as this piece has. And yet, the emotional landscape of this piece is unparalleled.  And I believe that people have the capacity to ignore the cartoonish nature of their culture when they are interested in something deeper. I believe that people are smarter than the ad execs who barrage them with banal simplicity.

If people can't hear our subtext, then we maybe are flat. Another possibility is that there are a few who are themselves emotionally deaf as a result of being assaulted by archetypical scenarios.

We are doing a good job. (PAUSE) I think.

I can't say whether we are flat or sufficient. I'm not the one in that position, the reviewer is in that position. But I know, that as an audience member, the worst insult to me, the biggest proof that I've just wasted my last 2 hours and money on ticket, overpriced bad coffee and a shitty pastry(in other words the professional regional theatre experience), is when a theatre troupe doesn't let me make my own decisions about what just happened on stage. That may be the playwright's fault, or the director's. But it doesn't matter in the end. If the Who is removed from the Whodunit, I'm pissed.

I would rather be flat than to be guilty of answering the Who part of the question. 

ZPR

My Dad's Passing One Year Ago Tomorrow

My father, Paul S. Rouse, died one year ago tomorrow. I remembered this today, and a rush of sadness and remembrance came over me.

He was a brilliant man in many ways. His talents were far reaching, and ultimately un-realized were his dreams.

He was a photographer of great ability. My grandfather, Paul Rouse,

was a professional photographer for Indiana University Bloomington, and an actor in Hollywood westerns in the 40's. And my dad inherited his amazing ability to capture the spirit of a person in a photograph. He also had an innate artistic sense which allowed him to take abstract photos and create interesting and beautiful images. I remember a photograph he took from my mom's and my apartment in 1977 or so. He laid down on the balcony, which had a vaguely roman looking railing, and took a picture of the clouds moving overhead the railing. The image is somewhere in my mother's photo albums. None of these have been digitized yet, so they can't be put into blog format. But when I can, I will include these wonderful pictures in the blog.

Steve was also a writer. He was less disciplined with the writing than he was with other things, like his love of technology, and most of his works remain unfinished. When he died, I inherited his hard drives and a lot of that material is on those drives. I will get to them when I can, and begin sifting through the annals to find projects that I might be able to complete for him, a duty I feel toward my father's work and legacy. He has somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 nearly complete screenplays, and numerous essays and commentaries on life and reflections on the world.

My dad was a brilliantly talented musician as well. He started with violin as a child, and evidently was something of a prodigy. As he got older, he moved to keyboards and piano, and never took it to a professional level, although he was clearly capable of going all the way if he had focused on it as a career. My grandmother, Vera,

was a pianist, and my grandparents always had an organ in the house, as long as I can remember. My dad would sit down and tool around the blues for hours when I would visit; and when I was a baby, there is a photo somewhere of me in my diapers, perched on the bench, banging away at the keyboard. I'd love to get ahold of that pic. Again, not yet digitized.

He was, more than a musician, a listener. His need to listen to music was so great, that it became a career in and of itself to him. He was an archivist and audiophile. His stereos were always the biggest and baddest, he had stereo headphones for each of us when I'd come visit, so that we could watch Raiders of the Lost Arc with the best sound possible. These are wonderful memories for me.

His chosen career was in TV news. He directed the news in Pueblo, CO for the NBC affiliate in the tiny dusty high desert town where I was born, for a number of years. He and my mother worked together at the station. She was the anchor, and he was the director. He was a fantastic video editor. For his whole life he enjoyed delving into footage and creating a story by clipping pieces of tape together. I too love music and video editing and photography.

My dad was born in Los Angeles in 1947, and my grandmother, an avid gardener and Irish farm stock, felt it was important to raise the family in the country. Paul agreed. So they returned to Indiana, and that's where my father and aunt were raised. The things that I always remember hearing about my dad's upbringing was the abundance of laughter in the house. Things were always kept fun. I'm sure there were difficulties, as there are in any household. But overall, I think that it was an incredibly nurturing and artistically inclined home.

My dad was afflicted, you can say. He had clinical depression in an era when it was just being discovered that people had hormonal imbalances in their bodies. He always kind of wandered around in a fog and never had the gumption or wherewithal to complete the most mundane of tasks. I can understand this, having been diagnosed with tourette syndrome myself. I'm more highly functioning that he was, but still have some challenges to success in my areas of study.

This was hard for the people who loved him to watch. It was so hard to watch someone with endless talent and ability sit on the couch for years smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and watching movies (albeit he had a great collection!). But he was also afflicted with a stubbornness that prevented him from letting people help him get things moving in his life.

His diet didn't help, either. He never ate much, and when he did, it was usually a Marie Calendar's t.v. dinner, full of enough sodium to kill a horse. Or chocolate candies to snack on while he watched a flick. I think that when you have depression, the very first thing you need to do is fix your diet and exercise regimen and then you can see what truly ails you. If you then still have problems, seek medical or herbal help. But he was either never interested in taking that step, or just couldn't find the momentum to start a change for himself. Add that to 40 years of smoking cigarettes, and you have a losing combination.

I would say his crowning achievement was his bluegrass radio show in Bloomington, IN, in his final years. He was a great knowledge base on bluegrass music and its history. He hosted a great show on WFHB in Bloomington, IN. I will post his shows as I get ahold of them. He affected so many listeners, turned people onto bluegrass who had never known the music before or had an affinity, and he charmed people with his personality, which was witty, intelligent, and whip-smart funny.

So, last year, at 64, when he finally began to succumb to the beast that a poor diet and a cigarette addiction will create in your body, I was extremely sad, but not surprised. I had been telling him for years to change his habits. I gave him Oscar-worthy motivational speeches every time we spoke on the phone. I was never too present in his life, from the time he and my mom separated, but we were much like brothers. So similar in so many ways, with similar passions, parallel interests, a love of film, writing, photography, all the visual arts are in our blood, and not going away. My life was just getting started and his was already winding down. This saddens me greatly, that humans and animals often are relegated to passing genes on to the next generation, and that's about all the contact they can have with each other.

He only met his granddaughter once, and I know that was a source of sadness for him. I think he felt like he'd failed me in some ways, as a father who couldn't even parent himself.

But he did the very best he could with the tools he was given in this life, and I love him with all of my heart. I am very blessed to have such a great family, with all of their talents, and their endless heart. 

For me, success in life is less about what tasks you accomplish, or how much money you acquire or blow through, and more about the impact you make on those around you: your loved ones, friends, enemies, your audiences...And did you make a positive impact on the world, or a negative one. That's why I can't call business people successful humans on the merits of their ability to produce money. What are you doing for our world? 

My father, Steve Rouse, left a positive mark on this world. And his ripple will continue to be felt for decades. And for me, that is as successful as a human can ever hope to be. I am proud of my Daddy Steve and I celebrate who he IS.

ZPR

High Fructose Corn Syrup