I spent a chunk of time today writing an email to a friend in which I alternately whined and tried to take responsibility for my whining.
Driving home from an audition, I tried to square two different truths with each other.
The first is that I've always been irritated by people who are unhappy but make no effort to extricate themselves from that unhappiness. Some unhappinesses are inescapable, of course, grief from a death, job changes, breakups, adjustments from a move, chemical imbalances. But if you are in a situation that you dislike but make no effort to change that situation, I start to lose patience with you. I will grant dispensation to those who are unhappy in one situation but find outlets elsewhere - if you have a job you hate, for instance, but you do it to feed your family or fund your travel bug or buy equipment for your photography hobby you love. I will absolutely buy in to the unhappiness "deal", where unhappiness in one place earns you happiness elsewhere.
I'll also listen with sympathy to the person who is unhappy but is trying different tactics to fix the problem, even if those tactics don't work and the unhappiness persists.
Again, my beef is with the perennially unhappy who make NO CHANGES. Say you're a stay at home dad but you never ever shut up about feeling emasculated by it. This is your life and you need to find a way to be ok with it. Say you're in the corporate rat race and you don't have any time for the things you wish you were doing. Find a way to love the race or get out. Say you've always wanted to go to India but your new hi-def tv just absorbed all your disposable income - I have absolutely zero patience for you, sell the damned thing and go do something.
Ah, but today I thought about how, fittingly, I am hoist by my own petard. My second truth is that I am unhappy that I have absolutely no disposable income because I am an actor and a teaching artist in a rough economy, and there's not a lot of work to be had. Alternately, I'm unhappy when I'm not spending my time on the acting, I can forgo disposable income when all my free time is occupied with a show. It's worse than just unhappiness, too - I feel in danger of becoming permanently disappointed, because all the promise I felt I had ten years ago is draining away under the hostile consistency of rejection that being an actor delivers.
(Side note - if you happen to be reading this and you have ever once wished anything bad to happen to me, you have had your wish, time and time again. There have been so many times I wasn't chosen for something and was left only with the mantra of "what was wrong with me" to pass the time until the next turn on the chopping block - there have been so many times that I truly have no idea what that number is. I can tell you I did at least 14 commercial auditions this month and booked none of them. That's a rejection every other day all month. If you think all actors are self-absorbed twats, we may be, but on the other hand, you try keeping your shit together when you get judged and found wanting nearly every day. Also, if for any reason you've ever hated me, there is no way you could ever hate me as much as I hate myself some moments. So, if something I wrote here pissed you off, or if I was ever condescending or rude or overly needy or mean or sarcastic or boring, don't worry - I have been repaid in full, and there will always be more coming.)
Back to the point...by my own stricture, the long slow slide into permanent disappointment means it might be time to give it up, to find something else, hell, to just go get a damn job and make money and have this be a fun hobby.
But here's the kicker, for me. If I give up, actually start spending my time doing something else, I will unequivocally be disappointed. I might as well tattoo it on my forehead then: THIS PERSON HAS FAILED. I'm sad a lot now, I have trouble staving off the demons, I sink into a world of self-doubt and inaction, BUT BUT BUT...when the yes comes, when someone casts me in something, or I sing a really perfect line, or I make someone laugh, or someone asks me to be in a workshop of a play, or I have an audition that feels like finally telling a story...it's magic. It's validation. It's joy on a scale I can't imagine in any other form.
It's delight. And delight is transforming. I can shift and melt and reform into the person I am actually supposed to be, one that has enough personhood to listen to someone else, play with others, love and be happy.
I hate the disappointment. I hate it. I don't want to be that, I don't want to feel it, I want to be able to transcend it and I hate myself even more every time it catches me, but if I give up, it wins. Instead I try to fight it, and when I lose the strength to fight it, I try to live through it and keep it mind that, just like winter, or an evil spell, or a rain cloud, it will lift. It will lift and it will be spring, or restoration, or sunshine.
So I had two auditions today and someone asked me to be in a workshop, and I have to stop writing to go be in a show. It's still raining, but I see the horizon lit up over in the distance, and it is beautiful.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Absent
A friend is in London on a training course. She posts beautiful pictures that affect me physically. I can see one of those images - the view from Primrose Hill, for instance, and the sight of it blooms in my gut like an ache, a physical loss.
I hate that I feel as if I'm in exile from London, because I know, I just know it sounds absurd and pretentious. It's not my country. I don't know it or understand it as a local, because I was always and ever just a visitor. I cringe when non-Southerners claim to luuuv gumbo and wisteria and I know in my soul they don't have a clue what they are talking about, so I'm painfully aware I'm on non-native ground.
But, in the past, when I go to London, something fits. The air smells right, my skin does well in the climate, the sound of the traffic, the accents, the echo of thousands of years of literature soothes. Some unhappiness that sits in my chest eases in London, in church pews and museums and pubs and wine shops and car boot sales and underground stations and Marks & Spencers. I have at least lived there, alongside natives. I can identify a Bramley apple and pronounce both Greenwich and Ipswich correctly and really, it's a Marathon bar and Smarties, not Snickers and M&Ms. I have some minimal street cred, some time on the ground.
Habermas Girl is in Italy. She posts pictures that make me madly jealous. I would LOVE to go to Italy, I would hock my last pearl, and maybe someday I will own enough pearls that hocking them would mass enough coin for a trip. I have memories of lying in a churchyard in Florence in the spring, picking tiny white flowers and soaking up sunshine and feeling as if no one could ever be discontent in Italy. I long to go.
But I don't think it would ease me the way London could. There's something about the character of London that appeals, the humor and the reserve and the oldness and the oddness of things.
A friend came to dinner two weeks ago and was flying out to London the next day. I must have gotten that wistful look on my face as we talked about it, and my husband knows what it is to me, and how long it has been since I've been there, felt that ease, and he very sweetly said he'd give up the new tires we need if it meant I could go to London. Awww. Ludicrous, of course, because we absolutely have to have new tires, we won't survive the winter without them, and of course the money for tires would never cover an entire trip to London. It was like saying, I'll go without dinner so you can buy a new car.
Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing the country's effect on me. That's likely, given my penchant for romanticizing. Eleven years ago, I came back from the UK and moved to Chicago. It was hard. I'd left all my friends behind and shown up in a town where I knew no one and it was just going to get colder. I worked as a temp in an investment firm, I got cast in a campy, silly sketch show. I thought dispassionately about how much easier being magically dead would be to having to re-create myself piece by piece. Not that I wanted to harm myself, but "not being" at the time sounded better than "being", which felt messy and sad and painful and lonely.
For Christmas I asked my parents for money to go to the UK at New Year's. They were very sweet, and smiled, and said no.
And I went anyway. It was the best decision I could possibly have made. (I charged it, and worked 7 days a week for 8 weeks when I got back to pay for it.) I was serenely, blissfully, magnificently happy for about 9 days. Coming back again was dreadful, of course, but I had managed to prove to myself that being that horribly unhappy was temporary. No, more than that, I could lift that veil any time I wanted to, with just a plane ticket.
Time has passed, and the scales are much more even now. I can't say for sure where my happiness lives anymore. Is it somewhere in London? Or are the relationships I made there less important now than the ones I have here?
Or is there some secret harmonic at work there, some resonance fills me up no matter who is there? And if there is, how long will it be until I can go relax into it, lie back and let myself be finally at ease?
I hate that I feel as if I'm in exile from London, because I know, I just know it sounds absurd and pretentious. It's not my country. I don't know it or understand it as a local, because I was always and ever just a visitor. I cringe when non-Southerners claim to luuuv gumbo and wisteria and I know in my soul they don't have a clue what they are talking about, so I'm painfully aware I'm on non-native ground.
But, in the past, when I go to London, something fits. The air smells right, my skin does well in the climate, the sound of the traffic, the accents, the echo of thousands of years of literature soothes. Some unhappiness that sits in my chest eases in London, in church pews and museums and pubs and wine shops and car boot sales and underground stations and Marks & Spencers. I have at least lived there, alongside natives. I can identify a Bramley apple and pronounce both Greenwich and Ipswich correctly and really, it's a Marathon bar and Smarties, not Snickers and M&Ms. I have some minimal street cred, some time on the ground.
Habermas Girl is in Italy. She posts pictures that make me madly jealous. I would LOVE to go to Italy, I would hock my last pearl, and maybe someday I will own enough pearls that hocking them would mass enough coin for a trip. I have memories of lying in a churchyard in Florence in the spring, picking tiny white flowers and soaking up sunshine and feeling as if no one could ever be discontent in Italy. I long to go.
But I don't think it would ease me the way London could. There's something about the character of London that appeals, the humor and the reserve and the oldness and the oddness of things.
A friend came to dinner two weeks ago and was flying out to London the next day. I must have gotten that wistful look on my face as we talked about it, and my husband knows what it is to me, and how long it has been since I've been there, felt that ease, and he very sweetly said he'd give up the new tires we need if it meant I could go to London. Awww. Ludicrous, of course, because we absolutely have to have new tires, we won't survive the winter without them, and of course the money for tires would never cover an entire trip to London. It was like saying, I'll go without dinner so you can buy a new car.
Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing the country's effect on me. That's likely, given my penchant for romanticizing. Eleven years ago, I came back from the UK and moved to Chicago. It was hard. I'd left all my friends behind and shown up in a town where I knew no one and it was just going to get colder. I worked as a temp in an investment firm, I got cast in a campy, silly sketch show. I thought dispassionately about how much easier being magically dead would be to having to re-create myself piece by piece. Not that I wanted to harm myself, but "not being" at the time sounded better than "being", which felt messy and sad and painful and lonely.
For Christmas I asked my parents for money to go to the UK at New Year's. They were very sweet, and smiled, and said no.
And I went anyway. It was the best decision I could possibly have made. (I charged it, and worked 7 days a week for 8 weeks when I got back to pay for it.) I was serenely, blissfully, magnificently happy for about 9 days. Coming back again was dreadful, of course, but I had managed to prove to myself that being that horribly unhappy was temporary. No, more than that, I could lift that veil any time I wanted to, with just a plane ticket.
Time has passed, and the scales are much more even now. I can't say for sure where my happiness lives anymore. Is it somewhere in London? Or are the relationships I made there less important now than the ones I have here?
Or is there some secret harmonic at work there, some resonance fills me up no matter who is there? And if there is, how long will it be until I can go relax into it, lie back and let myself be finally at ease?
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Words
I just used the word "louche" properly in a sentence. (Not here - I was writing emails, of course. To people who respond.)
Here's what happens to me, and forgive me if this is too self-congratulatory - I'm writing along, and a word will come to me, a complex, juicy, enjoyable word, like "louche"* or "inimitable", and it feels fantastic, it feels like exactly the right word, but an unusual word, there's special thrill in it, like having a sandwich with grainy artisan-y bread instead of just slabs of generic wheat. But then I can never trust the word initially, I nearly always think, hang on, you don't use that word a lot, you'd better check to see if it means what you think it means (and if you are spelling it correctly). You'd better mean what you think you mean.
And here's the best part, the self-congratulatory part: it nearly always does. The word aligns. Every time I can remember, I look that word up and think, yep, that is exactly what I wanted to say. And that, that is...delightful.
Now, I don't go looking for wildly unique words. I don't try to shoehorn them into conversation (ok, I rarely try to shoehorn them into conversation, mostly because in conversation I can't look the word up and make sure it's really saying what I want to say, and I am guaranteed to mispronounce it). But when one comes to me and means what I thought it meant, it feels...it feels like having a wild bird eat from your hand. Like finding the perfect fitting coat in a resale shop for $10. Like getting a really excellent haircut.
(*I just went looking for something else and found the OED's word of the day for Oct 21 was louche!! Word of honor, I don't follow the OED WOD; the word louche came to me unbidden, out of the mists of memory, probably memory of descriptions of Byron, not from that source. I've no way to prove it, but it's so.)
Saturday, October 20, 2012
For this
I get bogged down in my own shortcomings. Sink into them like a morass, my negativity never escaping the quicksand of my own judgment.
Then I go see a play. It takes a really good play, a really blissful, exciting, transformative, imaginative sort of play, one that makes you see the things that aren't there, whether it's a cold winter's night or the inside of your own heart.
And when I see a play like this, everything falls into place again for a few hours. The world makes sense when we can tell each other stories like this. We might let the devil capture us for millennium, but one day we will find a way back out of the trap, and when we do we will have landed right back where we were taken, armed with a new knowledge of ourselves.
And if I can do this for people, if I can spend even a fraction of my life making up stories for people to discover themselves inside, I will be happy. Not every second, and not always as deeply as I wish, but happy, and that happiness will be a thing that the joys of others will only increase, not threaten.
Inside a story, I may yet find the person it is I want to be.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Can't stop
I'm on a destructive path, though I shouldn't say "I can't stop" because I suspect I could stop given the right circumstances. However, I do not seem to be stopping.
There are a lot of people better than me at a lot of things. Truth be told, there's probably someone better than me at all things, taken one at a time. I am not a superlative sort of person - nice enough, good enough, but not someone who ranks high in lists, or wins things, or, truth be told, even gets picked in her chosen profession all that often. Sometimes I do, yes, and when I do, it feels terrific. Outstanding. Those are the good days, the ones that keep me going forward instead of just leaping down a well.
But often in life, a situation comes up where someone is better than I am...usually at one thing, though often at multiple things.
Now I'm in a situation where someone got picked for something and I did not. To be fair - I was never actually in the running AT ALL. As in, the person making the decision was not thinking, hmmm, should I take elsbeth for this purpose, or this trulyfantasticamazingperfectthrilling bag of awesome instead?? No, it's just the alternate person was always and ever the right person for the job.
Ok. Ok. Fair enough. Happens to us all. Best and smartest thing to do (you know this, right??) is just put it behind me and get on with whatever's next.
Except I don't. I keep checking back in on this situation ALL THE TIME and every time I do I feel like throwing up, but I just don't seem to stop. I can't seem to look away. Even though (I think?) I truly could forget about it if I just stopped reminding myself every two seconds.
Which is the point in question. I'm not enjoying feeling permanently, intrinsically inferior. So why can't I stop? Am I desperately looking for evidence that this person made the wrong choice and that The Perfect One is not, in actual fact, perfect? Do I feel the need to punish myself in some way I'm not currently conscious of? Do I alternately look for proof that the job itself was not worth having by checking in on TPO?
I remember this sensation from the past - I was cast in a musical in college as an old woman (I wasn't one at the time) and a beautiful, sweet blonde was cast to sing all the really pretty songs. In keeping with this post, she was an amazing singer and absolutely blew me out of the water - I was jealous but even then I would never ever have expected to be cast in that role instead of her, she was incredible and perfect for it. To add insult to injury, however, her costume was a dress that had been specially made for me the year before, for a different play. And they had to take it in to fit the gorgeous blonde. Which meant I could never wear it again (I'd rented it the year before for Halloween, to be Jane Eyre).
I loved that costume. It was Victorian, black, off the shoulder, the neckline trimmed with jet beads. I LOVED that dress. And every night I would make a special trip during the prettiest song of the show (which of course she was singing), and watch how beautiful this blonde girl sounded and looked in a way I would never be able to match, wearing a dress that even though it had been made for me, looked way better on her.
It made me feel like shit, naturally. I teared up most nights, more from jealousy than being moved by the singing (though it truly was lovely). But every night I was in the wings, watching it. And I didn't have to be there - I could have sat in the green room or stayed in a dressing room cracking jokes with fellow cast members.
So, thinking of that, the only explanation is I must like feeling inferior? But I don't!
So confusing. Ok, off to cyberstalk someone who is better than I am in every imaginable way.
Addendum: someone recently mentioned the blonde to me, and then waxed poetic about the very scene I just described and how absolutely beautiful she was and how every man wanted that girl, and even with a headstart of about 17 years to get over it, I still felt like shit.
Man, I wish I'd go ahead and grow up, certain things would be so much easier.
There are a lot of people better than me at a lot of things. Truth be told, there's probably someone better than me at all things, taken one at a time. I am not a superlative sort of person - nice enough, good enough, but not someone who ranks high in lists, or wins things, or, truth be told, even gets picked in her chosen profession all that often. Sometimes I do, yes, and when I do, it feels terrific. Outstanding. Those are the good days, the ones that keep me going forward instead of just leaping down a well.
But often in life, a situation comes up where someone is better than I am...usually at one thing, though often at multiple things.
Now I'm in a situation where someone got picked for something and I did not. To be fair - I was never actually in the running AT ALL. As in, the person making the decision was not thinking, hmmm, should I take elsbeth for this purpose, or this trulyfantasticamazingperfectthrilling bag of awesome instead?? No, it's just the alternate person was always and ever the right person for the job.
Ok. Ok. Fair enough. Happens to us all. Best and smartest thing to do (you know this, right??) is just put it behind me and get on with whatever's next.
Except I don't. I keep checking back in on this situation ALL THE TIME and every time I do I feel like throwing up, but I just don't seem to stop. I can't seem to look away. Even though (I think?) I truly could forget about it if I just stopped reminding myself every two seconds.
Which is the point in question. I'm not enjoying feeling permanently, intrinsically inferior. So why can't I stop? Am I desperately looking for evidence that this person made the wrong choice and that The Perfect One is not, in actual fact, perfect? Do I feel the need to punish myself in some way I'm not currently conscious of? Do I alternately look for proof that the job itself was not worth having by checking in on TPO?
I remember this sensation from the past - I was cast in a musical in college as an old woman (I wasn't one at the time) and a beautiful, sweet blonde was cast to sing all the really pretty songs. In keeping with this post, she was an amazing singer and absolutely blew me out of the water - I was jealous but even then I would never ever have expected to be cast in that role instead of her, she was incredible and perfect for it. To add insult to injury, however, her costume was a dress that had been specially made for me the year before, for a different play. And they had to take it in to fit the gorgeous blonde. Which meant I could never wear it again (I'd rented it the year before for Halloween, to be Jane Eyre).
I loved that costume. It was Victorian, black, off the shoulder, the neckline trimmed with jet beads. I LOVED that dress. And every night I would make a special trip during the prettiest song of the show (which of course she was singing), and watch how beautiful this blonde girl sounded and looked in a way I would never be able to match, wearing a dress that even though it had been made for me, looked way better on her.
It made me feel like shit, naturally. I teared up most nights, more from jealousy than being moved by the singing (though it truly was lovely). But every night I was in the wings, watching it. And I didn't have to be there - I could have sat in the green room or stayed in a dressing room cracking jokes with fellow cast members.
So, thinking of that, the only explanation is I must like feeling inferior? But I don't!
So confusing. Ok, off to cyberstalk someone who is better than I am in every imaginable way.
Addendum: someone recently mentioned the blonde to me, and then waxed poetic about the very scene I just described and how absolutely beautiful she was and how every man wanted that girl, and even with a headstart of about 17 years to get over it, I still felt like shit.
Man, I wish I'd go ahead and grow up, certain things would be so much easier.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
A Good Choking
It is very tiring to get choked to death on stage. Very.
And a little creepy.
Turns out, I've never been choked to death on stage before - I've had my throat slit, and I've been stabbed to death in a swordfight, but this is the first time I've gotten to act out being throttled. It's interesting, because it starts to feel like I am actually being strangled, and I have to go out of my way to breathe in and out to remind myself I can. Even though I shouldn't because the audience is about three feet away and might spot me breathing while I'm being choked.
On a side note, it's actually waaaaay creepier to then die into a pool of blood on the floor that gradually seeps into my clothes as I lie there "dead".
This is all fiction, of course, but if you have a secret distaste for me, you might want to catch this show. I can actually think of a few people who might really enjoy watching me get choked to death - after all, since I can't breathe, I can't talk, so it effectively silences me, and that's something I know certain people have wanted to see happen.
And a little creepy.
Turns out, I've never been choked to death on stage before - I've had my throat slit, and I've been stabbed to death in a swordfight, but this is the first time I've gotten to act out being throttled. It's interesting, because it starts to feel like I am actually being strangled, and I have to go out of my way to breathe in and out to remind myself I can. Even though I shouldn't because the audience is about three feet away and might spot me breathing while I'm being choked.
On a side note, it's actually waaaaay creepier to then die into a pool of blood on the floor that gradually seeps into my clothes as I lie there "dead".
This is all fiction, of course, but if you have a secret distaste for me, you might want to catch this show. I can actually think of a few people who might really enjoy watching me get choked to death - after all, since I can't breathe, I can't talk, so it effectively silences me, and that's something I know certain people have wanted to see happen.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Commercial
I filmed a commercial last Friday and it's left me a bit shaken. Because it turned out to be wickedly difficult, and although every person involved was overwhelmingly nice to me, I left feeling inept. Inept at the thing I do to earn money.
Now, I'm trying to give myself a break. I'm still fairly new at the commercial world, and there were some mitigating factors that made it harder than it had to be. The text I had to say was pretty long for the 8 seconds they wanted me to say it in, and although they were very very specific about the words, they'd waited on purpose to give me the script about an hour, maybe two hours earlier. They do this on purpose, because they don't want you to memorize it in a certain way and be unable to change, but sadly, I sort of did get stuck saying it a certain way because my brain was always scrambling frantically to remember what came next so emphasizing certain words gave my poor brain catch-up time.
All of the above are excuses. My job was to say a string of words in the right order in 8 seconds however these people wanted them said. And I found that very very difficult, and it's possible I did not succeed, that they just gave up and took "good enough" because it was clear I wasn't capable of anything else. Not that I'm sure that's true, I just know that is a possibility.
BUT I'm still trying to give myself a break. The poise and concentration you need to execute these scripts are learned skills, and they are hard to attain when you're also just frightened to death, when the pressure and lights and attention are all on. I didn't have them last Friday, and I suspect the resulting ad will be hard to watch, to say the least. But maybe next time I'll feel more confident? I can hope so.
"A pupil in the art of walking a tightrope, fearing every moment he will fall, cannot be expected to achieve the easy smile of the adept."
I can hope for the easy smile, but I'll have to earn it the hard way.
Now, I'm trying to give myself a break. I'm still fairly new at the commercial world, and there were some mitigating factors that made it harder than it had to be. The text I had to say was pretty long for the 8 seconds they wanted me to say it in, and although they were very very specific about the words, they'd waited on purpose to give me the script about an hour, maybe two hours earlier. They do this on purpose, because they don't want you to memorize it in a certain way and be unable to change, but sadly, I sort of did get stuck saying it a certain way because my brain was always scrambling frantically to remember what came next so emphasizing certain words gave my poor brain catch-up time.
All of the above are excuses. My job was to say a string of words in the right order in 8 seconds however these people wanted them said. And I found that very very difficult, and it's possible I did not succeed, that they just gave up and took "good enough" because it was clear I wasn't capable of anything else. Not that I'm sure that's true, I just know that is a possibility.
BUT I'm still trying to give myself a break. The poise and concentration you need to execute these scripts are learned skills, and they are hard to attain when you're also just frightened to death, when the pressure and lights and attention are all on. I didn't have them last Friday, and I suspect the resulting ad will be hard to watch, to say the least. But maybe next time I'll feel more confident? I can hope so.
"A pupil in the art of walking a tightrope, fearing every moment he will fall, cannot be expected to achieve the easy smile of the adept."
I can hope for the easy smile, but I'll have to earn it the hard way.
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
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