Paradise Lost

I've come to some interesting realizations about myself and my relationship to the city of Santa Barbara. I lived in Santa Barbara as a student at Westmont College from September of 1988 to May of 1990. Freshman and Sophomore years only, with my education there cut short by the economics of my misguided decision to get married on May 27th, 1990.

It would be irrational to describe my time at Westmont, and in Santa Barbara, as an idyllic Eden, but in my mind it has taken on that flavor. I've not spent too much time wondering about this, but my recent (I just got off the plane) visit has led to reflection. Things in college were as real as anywhere else, and hardship and pain were by no means banished from the campus. Students died on a mission trip to Mexico. A star soccer player fled the country under sexual assault charges. The lone vocal Democrat on a campus of Republicans endured a great deal during the election.

Personally, I experienced loneliness, heartache, stress, and sorrow.

So, why is Santa Barbara my Eden, other than the fact that it is the most heart breakingly beautiful city in America that isn't located on a tropical island?

Two things, primarily, stand out. First, it was the end of my adolescence. I went straight from Santa Barbara into my wedding, and then to Chicago. The day I stepped away from that city, I became a man in the truest sense. I shouldered a man's burdens, responsibilities, and struggles. I entered a marriage that would send me into three years of depression before it finally ended in February of 1996. While bad things happened, while there were hurts and struggles and pain, it was still the pain of someone who was in many ways an innocent. Jeff Maurer said to me one day, "there are those who are innocent and those who are not. Dan, at this point, you are still an innocent."

An innocent in Eden. But once I left that place, my innocence was not to last.

The innocence I lost has little to do with sexuality, and more to do with responsibility, deepening awareness of my own capacity for hypocrisy, weakness, and inadequacy. As I traded Santa Barbara for Chicago, I also lost my conviction in certain right and wrong. My blacks and whites began, more and more, to bleed into shades of grey. This was a slower process, certainly, than the time it takes to drive from California to Illinois, but nevertheless, these two cities represent for me a time and place of innocence and potential, and a time and place of struggle and loss.

That's one thing. The second is that it was in Santa Barbara that I found what has become my life work. To be sure, I started acting in High School. I did shows at College Park and with my church, Hope Center. But it was in Santa Barbara that theatre went from something fun to something transformative. It went from a hobby to a passion.

Looking back, it would not be unfair to say that two men outside my family deeply impacted my life before I turned twenty. One would be my pastor, Roger Dill. The other would be my director and teacher, John Blondell. I've said before on these pages that everything I do with theatre, on some level, is my trying to get back to the experiences I had on that campus, the belief that with art we are doing something that can truly impact people. I may have been the only person who felt that way at the time, but again, as I look back, the word "transformative" is emblazoned across the sky.

Thus, when my hostess tossed off a casual question over breakfast, I about fell off my chair. "Do you know John Blondell?"

Oh, the man who irrevocably shaped my idea of what theatre is? The man who provided the educational and philosophical foundation for my life's work? The man who inspired and excited my mind and soul more than any other teacher before or since? Yes, actually. I do.

Although, in truth, I don't. The John Blondell I knew has, like the city and the school, become a figure of legend in my personal history. The real John is no more the mentor I knew than I am the student he had in his first years at the school. He's a man with a long history, two kids, and who knows what else. All of us have changed immeasurably since 1990, let alone people who have in the imagination taken on almost iconic importance.

So, as fun as it would have been, it is probably best that he did not attend the wine tasting we went to that afternoon, although he had been on the guest list. I would most likely have embarrassed myself more than I did.

This is a digression, however, from the question of Santa Barbara as Eden. I did six shows while in Santa Barbara: Peter Pan, Mother Courage and Her Children, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare on Location: Just the High Points, An Evening with Williams and Mamet, and The Dining Room. Of these six shows, five of them are points of frequent recollection, fondness and inspiration. (The Dining Room simply taught me that I don't much care for A.R. Gurney's writing.)

All of this history, this mythology, this baggage, I carried with me this weekend. I'd visited Santa Barbara before, on single-day work trips that had just enough time for me to drive up to the campus and walk around for five minutes, find the memorial for the students who died in Mexico, and then leave in order to return to the airport. This was the first time, however, that I'd spent time wandering the city with someone who lived there. The first time I had accidentally turned down a street I had known, walked past a building full of memories, or really taken the time to feel the passage of years.

It was very, very hard to leave.