(Hubby's sole comment on this post was that it is "very long". It's rather personal and will probably take you ten minutes to read, if you feel like it. Forgive my long winded rambling, I had coffee today for the first time in months and have been at the computer all day. I'm feeling hyper and deep. xoxo)Since becoming pregnant, people keep warning me to "sleep now, while you still can," which is a little annoying, seeing as I haven't slept a normal night's sleep in probably five years. (My darling husband suffers from sleep apnea, ie: he snores, so I'm basically already acclimated to being woken up every thirty minutes or so.) In defense of this handsome creature, it's one of the man's only flaws, so I can hardly be too mad at him for it.
Now that I'm pregnant, and waking up every hour to pee, I'm getting even less sleep. Add into this equation Kittie, our surly tuxedo cat, who likes to wake us up in the wee hours of the morn, and I'm one tired cookie. (A double chocolate Milano cookie. Mmmm.)
But when I do sleep, man are my dreams bizarre.
The other night I had a vivid dream that Barbara Streisand was dead. There were endless tribute shows playing on the television and I was beyond consolation. In my dream state, I kept waking Hubby up to ask him, "Is this true? Or is it just a dream?" and every time he'd confirm Babs's untimely exit. You can imagine the first thing I asked him when I actually did wake up: "Is Barbara Streisand dead?"
Thank God it was just a weirdo pregnancy dream.
Today, after Kittie woke me up, I fell back asleep and slept for an uncharacteristically long while. I dreamed that I'd adopted a pretty little four year old girl (who, mysteriously, was the spitting image of Aarti Sequeira, winner of this season's Next Food Network Star), and we needed to get to New York asap, since the Today show wanted to interview her about the adoption.
I also dreamed I was in church, and a long lost text was being revealed, one which finally proved that Jesus Christ had condoned homosexuality. Mary, CSA, (or was it ASC? either way, in the dream, I took this to mean CEO) was also quoted in the text. Somehow a dance number was also involved, but my phone rang and woke me up before the routine actually commenced.
These ain't your run of the mill dreams, Dear Reader! Half the time I can't even remember them. Another running theme flavoring my reveries as of late has to do with my long defunct acting career. I've been having anxiety acting dreams, in which I'm in costume preparing for some random production of Fiddler on the Roof or something. These dreams are particularly real, and a part of me wishes, after all these years, that I wasn't still having them.
This morning, after the Jesus text had been revealed, I woke up, went into the bathroom, and performed the little dance number I'd been practicing in the dream. (Step, SLIDE, step, back...)
People who know me best have been quick to tell me I didn't try hard enough to achieve my creative dreams. (Hubby, with a veritable cornucopia of dreams of his own, has never accused me of this, because I think he realizes better than anybody that it's not a black or white issue.) At any rate, it's a question I fear I'll be dissecting and dreaming about until the day I die. (Step, SLIDE, step, back...Oh my lord, I have been so afrighted! Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced, NO hat upon his head...)
Yikes. I think part of me will always be that teenager staring into the bathroom mirror, rambling on about what a douche Lord Hamlet is being.
Sometimes I think, could I not have been born with a strong and deep desire to become something just a bit more realistically attainable? And just as soon as I've thought it, I bite my tongue. I am who I am because of those dreams. And yet...
After Hubby and I got married, I spent a large chunk of money on getting new headshots taken. I was in a good place, and isn't that what the universe likes to see, just before it rewards some poor schmuck with a pretty dream? I had a great job, and for the first time in my life could actually afford to spend money on my career.
I'd decided, by this point, that I wanted to focus on commercials. This somehow felt different, more within reach, and practical, to boot. I enrolled in classes at a now defunct acting school, which promised to match students up with commercial agents, which, I was told, was pretty much mandatory in order to land a commercial gig.
Now, some people are naturally good with numbers, or computers, some at gardening or sewing- and I'm not trying to be weird here, but I'm good at commercials. Or I would have been, if someone had only given me a frigging fragging break! From the start, my teacher told me I probably didn't need to be in the beginners class, since I was already so relaxed on camera, yet he took my money anyway. After that, he watched me carefully. An actor himself, he'd sometimes look at me thoughtfully and ask me questions like, how do you prepare yourself to be so relaxed on camera? Do you meditate or something? Are you in a long-term relationship? Do you do yoga?
The truth was, I didn't know why I was so good at smiling and reading blurbs about under arm wetness or shaving cream. I just was.
After years of fruitless auditioning for plays and musicals, I decided commercials would be my final push. I was told you could earn a boatload of revenue if you landed even one, but what you really needed to make this happen was an agent. Which I never got.
If you really pay attention, it's usually the same actors in most of these commercials. Like the girl with the really wide jawline that seems to be in every local commercial nowadays. How do these people get work? That's a question I simply don't have the answer to. I never did.
The performing arts is one profession which you can actually be quite good at and still never succeed. I think of my friends, all of them so unique and talented, and am reminded that this just isn't like other endeavors, it really isn't. You can be amazing and still not get that one big break.
I remember the first day of acting class at The Boston Conservatory; I was seventeen, and all of the freshman had piled into the black box theatre to perform monologues in front of each other. It was terrifying. Our intimidating British acting teacher, Steve, stood at the back of the theatre, and I later found out my friend Ryan had been standing next to him. When it was my turn to perform my piece, about the day John Lennon had been shot, Steve said to Ryan, "That girl is the only one who did it right. She's not overacting, like the rest."
Sometimes I think reading lines off of a sheet of paper was the one thing that came naturally to me. But that still wasn't enough for me to become a working actor.
Flash forward years later, in New York City, when a new, advanced commercial acting teacher pooled his two classes together for an informal mock competition to see who'd be the winner of a commercial he'd actually been responsible in the past for casting. It called for us to act sort of deranged, something I've never had trouble with, and when all was said and done, the prize went to me. If he'd actually been casting this commercial again, he said, the spot would have gone to me.
And yet, he never called me when casting a real commercial! Despite all the auditions I went on, all the butterflies, all those minutes spent standing outside doors, waiting my turn, willing myself to Cowboy Up (this was during the Red Sox's Kevin Millar days), nothing substantial ever came of it.
The last straw came when I auditioned for some twirpy casting director from Third Watch, who was in charge of casting the extras. I went in and performed the Squeaky Fromme monologue from Assassins, the one where she talks about the first time she met Charles Manson, and this youngster proceeded to give me...notes.
He was wasting my time. Actors, at least if you've been trained at the place I was trained, are taught to be ever humble, open and grateful, to not have an attitude, but enough was enough. That day, standing in front of the Third Watch twirp, I remember thinking, for the first time in my life, you know what? Fuck you, buddy. And I meant it.
When people say I didn't try hard enough, I do half agree with them. Sure, I could have been more persistent. And if I were to be completely honest with myself, I didn't really pay my dues. It was a fragile time, though. Hubby had left California to move to New York with me, and we were twenty-one and in love. 9-11 happened shortly thereafter, and part of me just wanted to stay with him in New York, in our one room abode, forever. The way to build a career in the theatre is to travel, and yet the idea of leaving him for some crappy bus tour slowly faded out of my mind. Despite my protestations to my disapproving mother, who felt I wasn't trying hard enough, looking back, I'm not sure I wanted it badly enough anymore. After all she'd sacrificed to help make my dreams a reality, I was letting both of us down.
Sometimes, late at night, when I wake up to pee for the umpteenth time, I wonder...will this dream ever let me rest? Will it not fade away, gently, mercifully, or will I forever be waking up at 4am, mysteriously reciting a Shakespeare sonnet? And then I'll go months and months without giving it a second thought. It's not black or white; no siree, Barbara Streisand.
I'm no dummy, I know full well you can want something and have it not be what you need. I've spent years analyzing why I failed to achieve what I so passionately set out to do, and the answer is never satisfactory. The sad part is, this ambition- dusty, worn, and untouched, is so embedded in who I think I am that to this day, when someone doesn't realize I used to sing, or act, part of me feels the urge to tell them. Tell them what? Why am I so uncomfortable letting go of something I no longer have the desire to actively strive for?
It was a monster of a dream. And I met some of my best friends, and the love of my life, the father of my little bambino to be, through it. My acting training has taught me to take direction, to be outgoing, to not be afraid to get my hands dirty. In many ways, it prepared me for the real world. Was that its sole purpose? And if so, will it ever just let me rest?
I don't know. One day I hope to escape the strange, quiet guilt associated with abandoning my dreams. Because it does stay with you, even if it fades into the background most of the time. Do you ever feel this way, Dear Reader? Or am I insane?
In the end, I was just so tired of
the reaching. This business, by sheer nature, is one of endless grasping, and I was tired of it. I stopped temping and waiting tables and took a full-time job, with benefits. Not that we don't still struggle, years later. We just need a break! That's all we've ever needed! I said to my mother the other day, regarding Hubby's imminent release back into the job market, after being in school for the past two years. "You've had breaks, sweetie," my mother reminds me, but I tell her I've had breaks professionally, sure- but creatively?
These days, Hubby and I seem to exist somewhere in between both worlds. We're not working artists, I've totally gone corporate, and yet we still don't have the money for a down payment for a home of our own, or even for the car that we so desperately need to buy. Even so, the government still tells us I make too much money for him to be eligible for financial aid, or a low interest loan, or even work study! All of Hubby's loans are private ones, and the interest is exorbitant. The dude at the financial aid office just shrugged and informed my
husband that if he got our marriage annulled, he'd be eligible for
financial aid.
We pay our own way, on our own terms, and we wouldn't have it any other way; but I do sometimes wonder...will we ever get that elusive break?
Corporate America has been my bread and butter for years, although I can't say I've ever really
fit in. (I don't play squash, and don't have a fucking clue as to what
that even is, nor do I want to). Would these ivy league types want their
daughters to turn out like me, low on the corporate totem pole, having abandoned her dreams, and at the same time, do
my actor friends look down on me, for settling? I don't fit comfortably into either world, not really. Everyone's currency is different, and I
float somewhere in between, with a set of ideals and opinions all my own.
In the end, am I sometimes truly heartbroken about never having played Ophelia, or Maria in West Side Story, at the same time worrying about finding a real home for my child to dwell in? The answer to both is yes, I suppose. I casually worry about both. I'm happy with the way things are proceeding, and trust that we must be on the right path, yet I'd be foolish not to wonder about our next step. Boston proper is far too expensive for us to buy a home, and I don't really want to move to the suburbs, having spent half of my life waiting to escape them. Not that we wouldn't have run into these same issues in NYC, I'm quick to remind Hubby. I'm not sure where we'll end up, but I'd certainly like to have an idea!
I can't help but think of that Robert Frost poem, where Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not follow both, and be one traveler...
He took the road less traveled by, and that made all the difference. As for me, I don't think I've taken either path, really. I'm a quiet person, but I've always done my own thing, on my own terms. I think I've sort of been straddling the middle somewhere, walking through the leaves, ruining my shoes, carving out my own path to follow. Isn't that what a lot of us do? With this baby coming, things are sure to get pretty interesting. If there's one thing I can teach him, it would be not to follow anyone else's path, even if it's tempting.
Will our baby have big dreams? Hubby and I are a lot alike, and it's safe to say our child will probably inherit some of that
optimistic dreaminess. Will his soul be that of the tortured artist? Or will he
simply want to become an accountant? And when it comes right down to it, which do I wish for him?
In spite of everything, I wish the same thing, every time. I want him to pursue that which makes him happy, even if it's difficult. It's better to have reached and missed the mark than to never have reached at
all. It builds character, introduces you to interesting people, and gives you something to talk about on the world wide web. (tee hee)
And of course, if he changes his mind halfway down the path and wants to change directions, that will be okay, too. xoxo
