So for the impact to make sense, you'll have to read the post under this one, but I found an article about Malcolm Gladwell's new book that made me reassess my moroseness:
“What’s surprising is how much work it takes. Ten thousand hours is a long time. It’s both a daunting and an empowering lesson. It says that, if you haven’t made it, it may not be because you don’t have what it takes. It may just be that you have misunderstood how extraordinarily long it takes for everyone. When you see how long the Beatles put in before they arrived in the USA in 1964 . . . There’s not a shortage of talent in the world. There’s a shortage of people willing to go to Hamburg to play eight-hour sets.” -Malcolm Gladwell
Oh.
Well, in that case, instead of holding my pity party, I've got some more hours to put in. Excuse me, I just remembered I'm lucky enough to be putting some of those in on a really lovely show off of Michigan Ave.
Sometimes, you gotta take your eyes off the horizon to see how far you've actually come. Because the horizon is always, always receeding in the distance. No matter how much ground you may have covered.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Lots
The adventure - lovely. The show - amazing. My current mood - abjectly morose.
It was bracing to be in London again. However stupid it may sound, it does feel like home, and it is a place of great magic for me. It was very odd having my husband along, because I've never been in the city with someone before - it's always been a place I explored basically alone. Of course I had friends and companions at different moments, but I was essentially wandering with only my own curiousity as a guide. Suddenly I had this other person, and this other person had no agenda but definitely got irritated and bored by following my agenda on occasion. It was like dragging the poor man to a 10 day college reunion. It's interesting to meet the people your spouse spent time with, but eventually it wears on you because it isn't your world you're catching up on.
Regardless, we had some glorious moments and no real blow outs, so I think that's pretty successful traveling. I was just reminded of how jealous of my time my husband can be - he gets saturated, and can handle our being apart, but overall he'd like us to hang out most of the time, and he doesn't want to come second to anyone else. (Fair enough, obviously.)
The trip was both a reminder that we are separate people as well as how much I have been absorbed into the "us-ness" we have. I have mixed feelings about that. I think more and more of the "us" as home base, and it's a great relief to have a place in the world that's home base. But there are parts of me I have put in storage for the moment, and I hope someday to unwrap them again.
I got back and started rehearsing for an equity show. It was fantastic and frightening, wonderful and woeful. I LOVE working where people do this for their living - they act in shows, and they get health insurance, and pension plans, and a support system, and a series of rules that makes their lives easier. I love the people I've met in this show - everyone is there to do a good job and I can respect everyone's work. Also, they make me laugh myself silly.
I am also completely overwhelmed with trying to be good enough, and deathly afraid this will be my only chance at acting in a world like this. It's taken so long, soooooo long to book this one show on this level, and now I don't want to go back, I want to stay here, and I'm afraid I don't have the chops for it. I've done a handful of auditions since we started, and none of them have been impressive, and I haven't booked a single one of those jobs.
I can't help but think, if I were any good, wouldn't I have already gotten on this level and stayed there? I mean, I've met people who came to town and in a year and a half have booked six months of an equity show and a reading at the Goodman. After seven years, I'm working equity....as a non-equity, non-dancing dancer and an understudy.
So here's the problem. Even if I'm actually not that talented, I can't stop. I love it. I LOVE it. It makes sense. I love 8 shows a week and rehearsal halls and silly backstage talk and TELLING A STORY. So even if I suck, I have to keep trying. Because I love it. But how sad it will be to know I suck and still keep trying? I want my love of it to make me talented, but it doesn't.
I'll be ok working non-equity - I still love theatre for telling a story, and that's something completely independent of union status. I just want so much for this to be my work, and there's not enough money in non-eq, even commercial non-eq, to keep me afloat. One of the best parts of these months have been the very few days I have had to spend working in an office, and now, with no more paid work on the horizon, it's back to the office, and that's hard to take. It's my Flowers for Algernon moment, and I'm worried I'll never get back.
I guess I'll have to work harder. Sigh. When I see Northwestern grads bounce from show to show, I can't help feeling a little bitter. Maybe someday I'll get there.
It was bracing to be in London again. However stupid it may sound, it does feel like home, and it is a place of great magic for me. It was very odd having my husband along, because I've never been in the city with someone before - it's always been a place I explored basically alone. Of course I had friends and companions at different moments, but I was essentially wandering with only my own curiousity as a guide. Suddenly I had this other person, and this other person had no agenda but definitely got irritated and bored by following my agenda on occasion. It was like dragging the poor man to a 10 day college reunion. It's interesting to meet the people your spouse spent time with, but eventually it wears on you because it isn't your world you're catching up on.
Regardless, we had some glorious moments and no real blow outs, so I think that's pretty successful traveling. I was just reminded of how jealous of my time my husband can be - he gets saturated, and can handle our being apart, but overall he'd like us to hang out most of the time, and he doesn't want to come second to anyone else. (Fair enough, obviously.)
The trip was both a reminder that we are separate people as well as how much I have been absorbed into the "us-ness" we have. I have mixed feelings about that. I think more and more of the "us" as home base, and it's a great relief to have a place in the world that's home base. But there are parts of me I have put in storage for the moment, and I hope someday to unwrap them again.
I got back and started rehearsing for an equity show. It was fantastic and frightening, wonderful and woeful. I LOVE working where people do this for their living - they act in shows, and they get health insurance, and pension plans, and a support system, and a series of rules that makes their lives easier. I love the people I've met in this show - everyone is there to do a good job and I can respect everyone's work. Also, they make me laugh myself silly.
I am also completely overwhelmed with trying to be good enough, and deathly afraid this will be my only chance at acting in a world like this. It's taken so long, soooooo long to book this one show on this level, and now I don't want to go back, I want to stay here, and I'm afraid I don't have the chops for it. I've done a handful of auditions since we started, and none of them have been impressive, and I haven't booked a single one of those jobs.
I can't help but think, if I were any good, wouldn't I have already gotten on this level and stayed there? I mean, I've met people who came to town and in a year and a half have booked six months of an equity show and a reading at the Goodman. After seven years, I'm working equity....as a non-equity, non-dancing dancer and an understudy.
So here's the problem. Even if I'm actually not that talented, I can't stop. I love it. I LOVE it. It makes sense. I love 8 shows a week and rehearsal halls and silly backstage talk and TELLING A STORY. So even if I suck, I have to keep trying. Because I love it. But how sad it will be to know I suck and still keep trying? I want my love of it to make me talented, but it doesn't.
I'll be ok working non-equity - I still love theatre for telling a story, and that's something completely independent of union status. I just want so much for this to be my work, and there's not enough money in non-eq, even commercial non-eq, to keep me afloat. One of the best parts of these months have been the very few days I have had to spend working in an office, and now, with no more paid work on the horizon, it's back to the office, and that's hard to take. It's my Flowers for Algernon moment, and I'm worried I'll never get back.
I guess I'll have to work harder. Sigh. When I see Northwestern grads bounce from show to show, I can't help feeling a little bitter. Maybe someday I'll get there.
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