I love songs about Jesus, for some reaso.

Dan Bern - Jerusalem (download)

I went to the Holy Land. It was mostly hummus.

In Israel, instead of saying, “What do you do?” people ask, “What are you doing?” It’s a quirk of translation I found remarkably disconcerting. Standard smalltalk suddenly transformed into an existential cross-examination— I would pause, mouth full of pita, and think, my God, what am I doing?

When I was in high school we used to play an improv game called What Are You Doing? The basic idea was that you mime an action, then someone says, “What are you doing?” and you have to answer with anything other than what you’re actually doing. It’s a pretty stupid game.

Sometimes I feel like I live my life like a giant What Are You Doing game. I act in a play, I write a short story, I teach for a little bit, I decide it’s time to get serious about my playwrighting, I make some stupid web videos. It’s a good way to lower people’s expectations, to only half commit: “Oh, you didn’t like my acting? Well, that’s okay, because I’m not really an actor, I’m a writer. Oh, you think my writing’s bad? What do you expect? I’m just a comedian.” If you’re constantly moonlighting you never have to really be good at anything.

There’s something Sisyphean about it, the constant second guessing; you roll the rock up the hill and you knock it back down again. But say what you will about Sisyphus; the man knew how to keep himself busy.