There’s that point in the process when you stop judging your character and you just play. It’s how actors play Nazis or domestic violence victims or, in my case, the obnoxious guy who keeps interrupting the show. There’s always judgment at first: too wordy, too geeky, too “know-it-all who got beat up as a kid.” If you sat next to this guy on the bus you’d avoid eye contact with him at all expense. You just know he’d strike up the band if you gave him the time of day.

He’d start in, “Now why would you fly the buttress off the South support?!”
You’d scrunch up your face, “Excuse me?”

And you’re cooked. He might even follow you to work, just to finish his rant. My character may as well be that guy from the bus.

But somehow you accept it and you ask yourself, So…that guy from the bus…what would shut him up long enough to realize something is beautiful or transcendent or at least worthy of his approval? And you’re in. And the further in you go, the cooler it gets. Eventually you even learn to celebrate it, which gets really fun. That’s where I’m at now, and it’s a liberating feeling.

If I had a kid I’d say, “That’s right Junior - Daddy gets to go to work tonight and pretend to be that crazy man from the bus. Then I’ll come straight home and tell you all about it.”

And Junior might say, “Dad, they didn’t have buses back in the 15th Century.”

And I’d realize my kid was gonna get beat up a lot.

– Jeremy S., Author in Hunchback