Monday, February 14, 2011

Be My Valentine, or, The Gauntlet

Everything yesterday feels like it’s from some dream. All very Inception of me. I woke up and couldn’t understand what happened and what didn’t. Some of it still feels vague. I’m still mildly confused about what did occur and what didn’t, even after I see visible proof. Maybe I’m just tired.

I had a dream that I was a cutter. My arms were only slightly scarred, but my family hated me for it. Judged me. I covered up the cuts and scars with black electrical tape.

Debating whether to go to my voice lesson today or not. Part of me just does not feel like I can do it right now. Part of me knows I have to. I keep waking up early every day but all I want to do is sleep.

EDIT: Am not going to my lesson. I need to put the pieces of my brain back together.

Been really thinking on why I’m doing this – the acting thing. I’ve had a few discussions with different people lately about the subject, and I’m finding a trend that disturbs me. Or maybe I just don’t understand it. Or maybe I’m naïve. But I’ve been asked what the ultimate goal is, the ultimate dream of this is, and I answer honestly that I just want to make art and share it with as many people as possible, to perform and feel and make others feel and see beauty and pain. I don’t need a big apartment. I don’t need a lot. I just want to be able to live off of what I do and share my art. Broadway would be amazing, sure, and that’s a level of performance I’d love to get to someday. But it’s not the end-all be-all of this journey.

And for so many others I talk to, it’s fame. It’s money. It’s power. It’s mainstream big lights, big laughs, awards, TV, Hollywood. And that’s what they want out of this – and I don’t judge them or blame them, I just feel a little disillusioned. Am I naïve for believing in art the way I do? I guess I once believed that NYU would be filled with people who felt the way I did, whose passion drove them there because they had no other choice, they perform because they have to. But I guess not. I’m seeing more and more that the art turns into a lust for “network comedies” and “my name in lights” and money. Yeah, I want money. Who doesn’t want money? But this is not the business for money.

So I guess I’m wondering where the art is, and if I’m really running this gauntlet alone.

I also don’t think I’m eating well enough right now. I get so busy doing homework and wrapped up in what I’m doing that I just forget to eat. I think I had cereal, coffee and a handful of some snack food yesterday. Nuts and banana chips around lunchtime. My eating habits are very sporadic.

I’ve sort of given myself a little side project, which is extremely difficult for me, but I want to try anyway. I’ve taken Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and I have made it my project to create music for it. I don’t have music in my blood the way some people do, but I figure that trying to do this will help me understand the music theory I’m struggling with right now. I don’t even know how to begin, but I want to try.

Olympia Dukakis is coming to my acting class tomorrow – very exciting. She’s doing some exercises with us and I’ll be sure to share, if I can write it down true to her teachings.

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