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Our trip to France this year was momentous on so many levels. I’ve written about episodes of the trip in earlier posts, but recently I was going through some of the brochures and literature I had kept from our trip this spring and felt inspired to share a few more thoughts and memories. Kay and I spent a day in Paris in 2012 on a twelve-hour layover between flights. As we walked along the Seine River past the Louvre (a building that is so long it has the illusion of a vanishing point when viewed from end-to-end), I regretted our time constraint. Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and a French café made the cut in our dawn-to-dusk excursion that day. For the trip this year, I bought our tickets to the Louvre in advance because I did not want to waste a single minute standing in line to purchase the tickets and then stand in another line to get into the museum. I hate standing in lines, especially in the rain, and on the day we were scheduled to visit the Louvre, sure enough, the line to purchase tickets was the length of the museum itself, and sure enough, it was raining. I laughed snootily as I breezed by the wet and sour-faced people. Lauren, our youngest, was with us on this day, and she admitted how impressed she was with her old man for getting the tickets in advance, getting us to the glass pyramid entrance, and getting us inside out of the rain with such ease and speed. I got a, “Way to go, Dad” as we rode the escalator down into the hub of the Louvre. I like it when I can still impress my daughters. It takes a little more to impress Kay. After thirty-eight years, she has seen most of my tricks, but despite the diminishing number of ruses inside the magic bag, I still keep trying. The multi-paged download on the museum’s website included an assortment of pertinent information to review ahead of time from detailed museum schematics to the gallery locations of the most famous art pieces. By following the map layout of the galleries, I could easily travel from floor to floor and find the Vermeer’s, the da Vinci’s, the Michelangelo’s, the Napoleon apartments, the Impressionists, the African and Far Eastern collections, and the Egyptian, Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman antiquities. I love exploring all these cultures. It’s as if the museum (any museum for that matter) was one big time machine; just step inside the capsule, set the dial for the desired historical location, and push the “go” button. But the experience on the ground was overwhelming. The size of the museum is grand in scale, something a map from the website cannot capture, and we stopped frequently to ask directions when the maze confounded the mice. One page of this website publication that especially caught my eye was the “Safety Advice.” One would expect such a page pointing out exits in case of…

When I first began my career as an actor back in the 1970's, there were not many professional opportunities in Nashville. The few theatre gigs I landed were not what could be called career-launching. So I headed west to advance my education. When I came home from Pepperdine University for Christmas break, Opryland, a theme park that produced variety shows with specific musical genres, was holding auditions for the upcoming season. This was a great opportunity for singer/dancer/musician types, artistic forms that went beyond my limited abilities, but I thought I would audition, sing a couple of bars of something that would not humiliate me, and see what might happen. Wonder of wonders, I got a job in the “Showboat” show; a minstrel song and dance review that mixed turn-of-the-20th century tunes and dance styles with hit music of the 1970’s. There was one named role written into the show, Captain Jerry, who would narrate the story. The creative production team held internal auditions among the cast to see who of the singer/dancers would get what featured solos and dance numbers. After stumbling through my audition, Paul Crabtree, the writer/director of the show, looked at me with a droll expression and said, “And you shall talk.” Thus Captain Jerry was thrust upon me. The park was open seven days a week, and two full casts were needed. Each cast worked six days a week and did 3-5 shows a day depending on the performance rotation. I did the role of Captain Jerry for two full seasons, and while I now pride myself in my professionalism, back then I was prone to mischief-making. Sometimes between shows I would dress up in a bright yellow, full-length slicker raincoat, sport a sombrero the size of an outer ring of Saturn, mount up on a thirty-six inch push-broom, and ride onto the stage of another show in progress, kiss a female cast member, and shout “El-Toro Pooh-Pooh strikes again,” then dash away. Another time I did an entire Captain Jerry speech in a German accent. It just so happened, one of the big-wigs from the Entertainment Department was in the audience and heard my sprechen deutsch monologue. A man born without a funny bone, he marched backstage and summarily suspended me for the next day, without pay. However, I was to come to the park and sit out my shift in the Entertainment office. I arrived the next day with a backpack full of plays to read. The stage manager for our “Showboat” cast was from Brooklyn, and he had coveted the role of Captain Jerry from the first rehearsal. My infraction gave him his big break. That morning the big-wig who had suspended me sauntered through the reception area where I sat reading a play. He wore a patronizing grin on his face enjoying his little power trip of showing me who’s the boss. He was on his way to see the stage manager’s first show as Captain Jerry. An hour later he burst…

In February of 1983 I went on a road trip with six other men to attend a spiritual renewal conference in North Carolina. I was the only actor in the group. Five were musicians and the sixth a pastor. A thousand or so people would attend this three-day event. The musicians would give concerts and lead corporate worship, the pastor would be one of many speakers and seminar leaders, and then there was me, the actor. I don’t remember how I got this gig or how I landed on the Saturday night docket. That specific night was not slated as a Christian vaudeville show where a number of acts would have five minutes of stage time. I was the only act. I had no name recognition or a long list of artistic achievements that qualified me for this prime-time opportunity. But I was in the van with these six men headed to the conference and was charged with the task of performing my one-man show “The Voice of the Lion” on that Saturday evening. Four years prior to that February weekend, shortly after Kay and I were married and soon after discovering “we” were pregnant with our first daughter, Kristin, instead of doing something responsible, i.e., find stable employment, I decided to write “The Voice of the Lion,” a play about the apostle Paul. Then, after Kristin was born, I made the decision to throw what possessions we could cram into our Volvo, including our four-month-old daughter and her baby bed, and move us to Spokane, Washington to finish writing the play with a dear friend who had been the artistic director of two national theatre companies and had moved to the state the year before. He had connections with theatre and film companies on the west coast, and we had high aspirations of raising large amounts of capital to launch a big production of the play that would incorporate multiple stages, lazer lighting, and holograms. Yes, holograms; good enough for George Lucas, we argued, so why not for the leading apostle of the first century church? And how else were we going to pull off the Damascus road experience on cue night-after-night without a hologram? Kay was a reluctant, yet devoted partner in this scheme. It was not an adventure she would have envisioned or embraced, but she was then and ever has been, supportive in my artistic leaps of faith or foolishness even when they would cause her internal turmoil. After a year out west hard-charging to get a production funded and mounted, to no avail, Kay informed me that “we” were pregnant again with our second daughter, Lauren, so with my tail between my legs, we threw our stuff back into the Volvo and headed home to Nashville. I had a second opportunity to do the responsible thing: get that “real” job, but chose instead to transform the “Lion” dream from a quarter-million dollar spectacle into a one-man show with a set that consisted of two benches.…

There are moments in our lives where we need to be touched or held; to feel an embrace of warmth and comfort; to experience the invisible yet powerful force of strength transfer from one human being to another. Of our five senses, touch might be the one most overlooked, that is until someone touches us, whether for good or ill, and something is awakened. A father’s touch to their child can transfer an energy that has no parallel in the other four senses. Then there are times when a touch or an embrace is not enough; when the moment demands a lifting off the ground and being carried on the strength of others. My first memory of being carried by my father was at the age of four. Dad was starring as Billy Bigelow in the musical production of “Carousel.” When Billy discovers that he is going to be a father he sings the “Soliloquy,” a song that expresses his pride at this news, describes his own strengths and weakness as a father, and offers his dreams and aspirations for his son. When Billy comes to the point in the song where he would offer pointers on courtship, he suddenly realizes that this child just might turn out to be a girl. His whole perspective changes in an instant. At that point Billy realizes that whether a boy or a girl, he is now a father and this child is a new and important responsibility that will alter his life forever and he resolves to carry this new weight. Billy never gets to meet his daughter. He dies of a self-inflicted knife wound after a foiled robbery. I was in the audience for one of the performances and became hysterical when my father plunged the knife into his heart and collapsed onto the stage floor. My mother’s insistence that, “This is just make-believe,” did not quiet me. I had to be taken out of the theatre. My four-year-old understanding of death was limited, but seeing my daddy in such of state was traumatic in the extreme. It was not until I was taken backstage and saw my father greeting an adoring public that I began to feel relief, but my soul was not fully restored until he hoisted me upon his shoulders and I felt his live-body heat and strength flow into me. He carried me the rest of the night aloft on his powerful shoulders.   In Tim O’Brien’s brilliant book, “The Things They Carried,” the author chronicles the items carried by the regular soldier during the Vietnam War. O’Brien writes that what was carried by these men was determined by necessity, a soldier’s rank, and the specifics of the mission from weaponry to medical supplies; any additional objects an individual carried was personal and subjective. O’Brien describes that those more personal items (letters and photos, good-luck charms, religious objects, etc.), revealed each man’s character and beliefs. But the most important entity any one soldier was ever asked to…

When you look someone in the eye, just look, holding the gaze or the glare, allowing the seconds to tick by, not speaking but studying in silence the shape of the face, the lines, the contours, yet always returning to the eyes, and being vulnerable enough to allow the observer of you to do likewise, can be as truthful and revelatory a moment as any person can have in their life. An actor is a truth-seeker. When an actor goes on stage, it is with the intention to look into the eyes of their opposite and not just speak the truth, but see it and draw it out in the other. When done well it is thrilling for the actors involved and riveting for an audience to watch. Whoopi Goldberg said, “An actress can only play a woman. I’m an actor; I can play anything.” My dear friend, David Compton could play anything. I envied him. He made me jealous. I stole from him. I tried to detect falsehood when I watched him and always gave up after a few seconds. There were two roles for which I entertained the notion of auditioning when Nashville Repertory Theatre announced the auditions: The Old Man in “The Christmas Story” and the Emcee in “Cabaret.” What was I thinking? Who was I kidding? What reality was I trying to bend? David embodied those two roles, as in all roles he accepted, with a force that made each character he portrayed reach transcendence. When he played Sherlock Holmes in Nashville Children’s Theatre's production of “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure,” my jaw dropped to the floor in those opening scenes and remained there for the entire performance. After multiple doses of Advil, I finally got the feeling back in my face. I only saw him break character once, and it was my fault entirely. In “The Christmas Story,” David also was part of the Ensemble, and he played the old Schoolmarm. At the same time, I was in a production of “A Christmas Carol” playing Scrooge, a production that included Amanda Compton, David’s gifted and lovely wife. On a night off, I went to see “A Christmas Story,” and when David came out in his Schoolmarm dress and red wig and began to address the class, which included members of the audience, he looked at me and began to berate me for misbehaving…a totally bogus charge. However, David was enjoying himself at my expense. He finished by asking me if I had anything to say for myself. I thought for a second and responded with, “Bah Humbug?” It took several beats for him to get control. It was pure joy for both of us. In two rare acting combinations, David and I played bitterest enemies in one production and best friends in another. We were cast in Nashville Rep’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” David as Bob Ewell and I as Atticus Finch. (It was also the first time I had the privilege to work…

With our daughter safely on the train to Avignon, Kay and I found ourselves arriving in Annecy shortly before nightfall. Our modus operandi when we travel abroad is to book a few nights in B&B’s or hotels in certain locales beforehand, and then once we are on the ground, have the flexibility to deviate from the path. We arrive in a city or village and book something that suits our fancy in the moment, stay longer in one location, or bounce to another. Risky behavior, I know, but that is the fun of unexpected circumstances and special encounters while traveling. We had booked the apartment in Paris at the top of trip, a B&B in Mont St. Michel, a one-night stay in St. Jean in the Pyrenees (ended up being three nights because we loved the place and the location), and a two-night stay in Annecy. We were going to explore the French Alps, and Annecy was the perfect jumping-off location. Other locations we chose on the fly. I must admit that as night fell on Annecy and we were unable to find the location of our B&B, I reluctantly thought a pre-programmed G.P.S. would have been helpful, but would I confess that to my daughter? Never. We knew we were close, but could not zero in on the exact location. It had been a long day of driving and we were fading, so I had Kay pull over at a random location, I hopped out and went inside a hotel and booked a room. As good fortune would have it, our third floor, balcony window looked out onto the cobblestone street where only pedestrian traffic was allowed. It was the Old City section filled with quaint craft and gift shops and restaurants. Annecy is sometimes called the Venice of the Alps because of its two canals and the river Thiou running through the Old City. At dinner the following evening we were placed in open-air seating of a nice restaurant cheek-by-jowl with three other couples: German, Swiss, and French. Between the four couples, there were enough universal gestures and elementary language skills for us to communicate although most of the time we just laughed and shrugged our shoulders at our lack of fully understanding one another. At least we were not negotiating international treaties, just enjoying a meal in close proximity. We planned a day trip up to Chamonix, and again “Wrong-Way” Arnold, got us off the path requiring a ten kilometer backtrack. I gave myself a consolation prize for continuing to reduce the backtracking distance, and by happy coincidence, the wrong direction for Chamonix just happened to be the correct direction for our continuing journey toward the Pyrenees the following day. Unbeknown to me, Kay had programmed her phone with G.P.S. tracking the direct route from Annecy to Chamonix, and she kindly offered it as an addition to the map. I took it, but did so without gratitude. The last thing I wanted was to be indebted to a little…

I love maps especially the old medieval kind where the mapmakers used their powerful imaginations depicting fantastical images of monsters in an attempt to explain the dark and dangerous mysteries of lands and vast oceans yet discovered. The visionaries looked beyond their immediate horizons and envisioned the wonders of the unexplored. No such monsters to be found on the Michelin highway map of France, but my heart still palpitated at the thought of navigating this wonderful country, and after three days of tromping around Paris with miles logged and Fitbit merit badges for Kay, it was time venture out. By my clockwise count on the Michelin map there are seventeen main entrées (not the main course, but the right of entry) and/or sorties (not the military attack, but the brief trip away from) leading into and out of Paris. The nice lady at the rental car place gave us a city map; however, the reality on the ground was a bit different than simply following her green highlighted route out of Charles De Gaulle airport into the countryside. The highway arteries from the center of Paris have a spider web effect that created a feeling of consternation similar to Rowan Atkinson’s expression in the cover photo of this essay after looking at his map. Add to our departure: a pouring rain, rush hour traffic, and the unfamiliar French road signage. All this proved a formidable challenge, but one I embraced with an explorer’s zest. Bring on the monsters. Once we were zipping along in the car, I gave up trying to follow the city map given me by the rental car lady, and by my best calculation in the moment, chose the sixteenth highway of the seventeen available choices out of Paris. I overshot it by one. Kay was doing an excellent job driving: changing lanes, weaving through traffic, and making quick highway transitions on my short-notice commands like a calm professional. I call her “Mario” for the racing legend not the video game character. We stopped once to get verbal directions, and after a couple of wonderful, albeit humorous encounters with congenial Parisians (language barriers make for elaborate gesticulations and elevated voices), we were on the road with only about thirty kilometers of backtracking to do. We also had our youngest daughter, Lauren Blair Zilen, in the backseat. She was traveling with us for a few days before striking out on her own. L.B. is a savvy traveler, but her choice for directional guidance is to use the high-tech G.P.S. navigation provided by Google Maps. She remained patient and even helpful to her snobbish father pointing out road signage. Her extra pair of eyes was beneficial. And I need to add here that she bought the Michelin map presenting it to me with a mixture of good humor and admiration when we met in Paris at the beginning of our trip. Out of Paris with clearing skies ahead, we made our way through the beautiful landscape heading west toward…

For the last few years Kay and I have had the opportunities to travel to places we’ve dreamed about for years but been unable to afford. A relative on Kay’s side of the family has been generous with monetary Christmas gifts, and we have chosen to use that gift to fund travel. We booked two weeks for a France excursion with daytrips into Switzerland and Spain as we moved around the country. When we started booking our B&B’s, we discussed driving north to Brussels from Paris for a couple of days, but opted to go south instead. Then the terrorists struck in Brussels. It never occurred to us that we should cancel our trip. I recently heard a statistic that stated you are seven times more likely to die from being hit by a falling object than by a terrorist. Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” With that in mind, I watched the film “Trumbo” about screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, who was caught up in the exposing of members of the Communist Party during a period in American history known as “the red scare.” This registered party was as legitimate and legal a political entity as the Republican and Democratic parties. About the same time the Dixiecrats (a splinter from the Democratic Party which gave us the likes of Senator Strom Thurmond) was also formed on the sole platform of segregation and state’s rights; these folks still seemed eager to fight the Civil War that was settled over a hundred years before and had claimed the lives of over 600,000 American citizens before the powers that be stopped the madness. But in 1948, nobody in Congress seemed to think that the members of the Dixiecrats were worthy of Senate Committee hearings. The Communist infiltrators that were secretly taking over our government in the late 1940’s into the 1950’s were hauled before Congressional tribunals for the main purpose of allowing the likes of Senators Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon to show the country they were earning their paychecks by protecting our vulnerable nation from the communist infestation. The only people during that time who actually went to jail were primarily Hollywood screenwriters who had chosen to exercise their right to free speech and assembly by joining the Communist Party. These people never broke any laws. Then in 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarthy for his over-reaching “red scare” tactics, one of the few Senators ever to be disciplined in such a fashion. Three years later he died in disgrace from the effects of alcoholism. And twenty years after these Senate hearings, Nixon gave us Watergate. A few years ago, I had the privilege of doing a production of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible” for Nashville Repertory Theatre. Miller wrote the play during the time of the “red-scare” Senate hearings and set the story during the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts from 1692 to 1693. Some of the religious leaders…

In honor of my friend, Scot Copeland, who shuffled off his mortal coil on this day a year ago, I am re-posting this remembrance. He has left a hole in the hearts of many across this land, and while his work will be celebrated on into the future, it is the heart of the man that we cherish and hold dear. God bless you, B.A. 3, and Rene, and Josh and Ben. Back in 1951 some friends of Groucho Marx pressured him to join the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills. He never participated in any of the club’s activities, and after his short-lived membership, he wrote a letter of resignation to the president of the club. The president responded immediately with his own letter asking for an explanation for his abrupt and unexpected departure, and Groucho promptly wrote back: “Because I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” In his lifetime, Scot Copeland was given awards and memberships to many organizations, but there was a little known club to which he belonged that was so exclusive it had only three members: the Bad Ass Club. Its origins began years ago through an unusual set of events. In the summer of 1999 after her first year of college, my oldest daughter, Kristin, had a suitor she had dated at college pay a visit to the farm. He had expressed his affections, and Kristin entertained the notion that this relationship had potential. But after a couple of days of close quarters, Kristin knew this was a dead end street and put the poor boy on the plane in tears at the end of his stay. She was a bit melancholy after returning from the airport, and so Kay and I decided we would take her out to dinner and cheer her up. Kristin and I got into the car, I in the driver’s seat and Kristin scooting into the back seat, and we waited in the driveway for Kay to join us. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my daughter’s downcast eyes. “Honey, I know it’s tough but you did the right thing. I’m proud of you,” I said, but my vote of confidence in her judgment on ending this romance received a tepid, “Yeah. Thanks, Dad.” So I tried the big-picture approach. “So Kid, when you are imagining the guy you would fall in love with and see as a lifetime partner, what kind of guy would he be?” She was quiet for a moment, the sound of the idling car engine filling the silence, and then she responded. “I want a Bad Ass like you, Daddy.” And she paused briefly before adding. “…and Robert Kiefer.” My heart swelled with pride. Even if it wasn’t true, the fact that she believed it and stated it was enough. I wanted to be sure of the veracity of what she said and looked into the rearview mirror once again. She bore a solemn countenance;…

So how did this courtship begin? There were a few chance and premeditated encounters, memorable and brief, but nothing of consequence until that fateful day on a frozen pond in January of 1978. Prior to graduating from UNC in Chapel Hill, N.C., with my Master of Fine Arts degree in acting in December, 1977, I got a call from the artistic director of the Advent Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee informing me that I had been hired for the upcoming season. I had auditioned earlier that fall, and I was excited by the prospect of becoming a founding member of this new professional theatre company. For an actor to have work before graduating was a happy rarity and to be back in the city where I grew up and begin a career among family and friends was sweet indeed. Once back in town, I started attending a non-denominational church on Music Row.  There was a large singles' contingent in the church, some of whom I knew well.  Many of us were coming out of the sixties & seventies, hippy experience looking for a deeper and continuous relationship with a personal God that went far beyond the traditions and rituals offered by most institutional churches. It was the dead of winter with a sustained, sub-freezing cold spell long enough to ice over small ponds to a thickness that could support multitudes.  One Sunday afternoon a dear friend whom I had known since high school invited me to a church singles' gathering at a farm to play broom hockey, a rare winter sport for the southland.  I was not all that interested until my friend informed me that Kay Patton would be there.  This friend, her inner matchmaker well tuned, was persuasive.  I had observed Kay at church once I returned from North Carolina and had commented earlier to my friend how attractive I found her. Her current romantic status was “Officially unattached,” but she had at least three other aspiring suitors.  That day, two of those three would be counted among the singles' group at this winter happening.  If I was to have any shot at getting her attention, I needed to move fast and make her aware of me, i.e., move to the head of the line by any means necessary removing the competition. It was BYOB for this event, “Bring Your Own Broom,” so I rushed to the store and bought my first straw broom, not to clean house but to sweep the opposition out of the way and maybe, in the process, sweep Kay off her feet.  The teams were chosen, a fairly even male-to-female ratio on each team, with the object being to sweep a soccer ball up and down the pond and past your opponent’s goalie for a score. Our form of this hockey game used a soccer ball for a puck, a broom for a hockey stick, and your standard Timberland hiking boots for skates.  In the course of the game, I was not above inflicting bruises…