The Boy from Virginia Loses Faith (The Hiatus Series)

There is a solitary empty perfume bottle that has been sitting on my floor for about 3 weeks. It was once filled with a cocktail that was used to promote a new fragrance at work. It has sat there next to a pile of sheet, music, bank letters, and my accordion folder of receipts. For the past 2 days, I’ve been secretly wishing that that bottle was still full with the intoxicating elixir. I’ve also been wishing that the bottle was about one hundred times larger and would take away the amount of negativity that I feel inside due to shattered dreams.

As an actor, you start your career with dreams larger than a Giant’s beanstalk. If you’ve studied for 6 years, like I have, and gotten both your Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in the craft, you just assume that these things will apply to the rest of your career. In other words, you’d hope that these pieces of paper you worked so hard for (and went into debt for) would have leverage and make you feel powerful beyond belief. So you leave school, walk out into the adult world, start having soul crushing audition experiences, and try to keep your wits about yourself, as well as your spirits up.

If you’re me, you move to London in the middle of a blizzard, with the blind hope that your mere presence in such a city will rock it to its core. You think, “I’m here; now the real fun begins. The world better watch out for me!” So you audition for an opera, and get it. You go on a few failed auditions, you go on a lot of successful ones. You spend a year working almost non-stop, being creatively fulfilled, and all while being able to afford your lifestyle. Then something happens…

You realize that because you are an American, living in a foreign country that your time is going to run out. So you try to do your best to keep hope alive as the auditions become less frequent, and the work you agree to do (just to stay creatively busy) becomes unpaid, and poorly managed. You hold on to the faith that what you studied so hard to do will eventually get you in the door if you just keep up the great work, even if you are in a bad show. You just want to shine and have a reason to invite people to see you work, secretly hoping that someone will recognize your potential and cast you in that one role that’s perfect for you, and artistically stimulating. You realize at day’s end that you’d like a challenge; something to push you to be better.

What you don’t realize, initially, is that you doing unpaid work puts you in a position where you can’t audition for things that could potentially be more lucrative. (“Potentially” is the key word in this industry as abosulutely NOTHING is guaranteed, no matter how talented you are.) You also don’t realize how much weight you have lost. Not because you are working out at a gym (because you can’t afford a gym when your rent is out of your budget), but because you can’t afford to eat. And what you have in your fridge are condiments and the occasional sandwich meat and cheese, if you’re lucky. You also don’t realize that you should be keeping up wit your skills by going to dance/ acting classes to keep your instrument (yourself) in tune. But of course, your rent couple with bills and transporation are too high for you to afford, even if you do make bonus at work.

If you’re me, you will throw yourself into the audition process as intensively as you can and still mess up during an audition because you are nervous, or don’t trust yourself enough to be what they want because you start thinking “I’m not muscular enough. Everyone else here is muscular, and I’m a twig and no one thinks twigs are sexy.” You later discover that this is, of course, true. You find out that a more built person has walked away with your role, even though you could’ve acted the pants off of the part. You also feel that you will defy the odds and are not going to go to a gym to “potentially” get a role as that would be feeding into a way of thought that you don’t agree with: that skinny people are not cute and can’t be leading men at all, nor be interesting enough to look at on a stage or screen (something that is not true, if the right actor is cast).

If you’re me, you would’ve realized that because your time is running out in this foreign country, you would want to make something massive happen as soon as possible. Since some of your friends have seemed to make it big in the industry, you feel “why not me?” So a wonderful opportunity comes along for you to push yourself to the maximum. You think “This could be the answer to my prayers and my financial woes of the moment” as you are in serious rent-debt and all you want to do is be able to pay up what you owe through the end of September when your lease expires. And hopefully you’d have enough money to fund a temporary place to stay for the month of October. So you embrace the chance to prove your chops in the audition and you successfully get to a final round, where, of course there are 12 other men who are “your type.” Then you hear NOTHING back. This silence confirms, for you, your lack of a place in the theatre industry in London and you decide that it’s time to pack your bags and move back to your homeland because you didn’t even made a dent in the structure that is London.

You feel that your presence in London made no difference to the theatre industry. You didn’t inspire anyone to want to pursue their dreams. You didn’t show up on a TV screen with your brightest smile. You never became a household name. Instead, all you feel is failure. You feel that you came to London, got some…”sort of” experience, and realized that the industry is not geared towards hard working, genuine people who really want to thrive by just doing what they learned to do. No, the industry seems to be in favor of people who show a blatant disregard for the craft, who somehow seem to have money to throw away on acting classes that clearly don’t work for them, or people who know how to smooze with the best of them. Being real, in a world where most people spend their days being someone else, is not important.

If you’re me, you start to lose faith.

And that’s where I’ve been this past week. I’ve been praying for almost two months now that I receive my break here in London. After having to endure some unfruitful productions earlier this year, I was hoping to the high heavens that London would redeem itself by giving me the opportunity to perform in something new, substantial, and necessary. I wanted one final gig so that I would feel my time this year wouldn’t be in vain. Obviously, prayer doesn’t work.

This entry is not for those who are devout believers, because what I will write after this will make the most positive of positive people angry. It will also make others feel as if they need to try and comfort me or change my thought process. If you feel in any shape way or form that you are one of these people, I suggest you stop your reading at this point.

For those who have chosen to read on, out of sheer curiosity, or because you are clearly interested in someone’s honest thought process, here goes:

God sometimes sucks.

There, I said it, and I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who’s thought it. At the times when we need Him (or Her) most, we tend to get let down. (I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of readers now) And then we are supposed to live with the hope that His plan was actually to have us fail now, so that we can succeed later? Excuse me? So God is just upstairs seeing how we get ourselves out of sticky situations before He decides to bestow us with the privilege to Pass Go and Collect $200 on His monopoly board? I have so many issues with this philosophy at the moment.

Here’s the deal. When I was young, I was taught to make goals; long term and short term ones. Of course short term goals alter, but if you are passionate about the long term ones, you will die, making sure you achieve them. So my question becomes: What’s the purpose of having clear goals if they are only going to get shat upon by a higher power that should be helping your succeed? Now I’m not interested in backlash or responses from people who feel it’s their duty to say something just to be sympathetic (or people who feel the need to condemn my honesty). What I really don’t want to hear is the “it always gets harder before it gets easier” crap. Instead I think ‘what about the people who have it easy already and are allowed access to the shit they don’t deserve?’ Why do people bust their asses only to go to their deathbeds STILL busting their asses? You would think we’d had enough of being busted, but some little kernel of hope keeps us working (I would say that little kernel is called “money”) and so does the idea that it’ll all work out in the end.

On Thursday of last week it hit me that it doesn’t always work out and no one ever teaches people how to deal with the truth of that fact. No. Instead of discovering how to deal with the shit life throws us, we have to individually learn how to duck and dodge the fecal matter. Funny enough, we are expected to move on with our lives as if we never got side swiped by the shit in the first place. What kind of delusional existence are we living in?

I am sick of making myself believe that things will get better because some psychological philosophy of positivity said that good thoughts make good things happen. Let me tell you this; actors go into auditions most of the time thinking, “we’re going to give it our best and we got it in the bag.” Guess what? After audition number twenty -two of giving 99.99%, some people still leave the audition with nothing in their bags. So that hope starts to dwindle away causing peole to think, ‘Maybe a desk job was the right job? Maybe people weren’t far off when they said I was making a mistake by bulldozing my way into this career.’ From then on, the dreams die a little. Stephen Sondeheim never lied when he wrote the words “Every Day a Little Death.”

Because my dreams are dying a bit every day, I’m finding that I no longer subscribe to that whole “the race is not given to the swift, but to the ones who endureth” line. Why? Because I have heard about drug dealers who are out in the world setting up shop one day, profiting the next, and they are selling drugs, ruining other people’s lives, and getting away with it. There are mothers murdering their babies and getting away with it. In my arena, there are actors on stage/screen butchering dialogue and ruining roles and GETTING AWAY WITH IT! We allow this sort of mediocrity in the world. It isn’t something thrust upon us (contrary to popular belief).

When it comes to survival, however, trust me, I’m going to. This state I’m in isn’t permanent at all. (Yes, I’m spouting a lot of redundant points that basically reiterate my anger at the harshness of this industry, but I do have a valid point. To those still reading, hear me out) From now on, however, I just refuse to subscribe to anymore deflective mantras to make me feel positive about things. Life. Is. Not. Fair. I’ve known this forever. So why in the world would I ever think that an ethereal justice would prevail in the scheme of my minuscule life? Why should I continue to hope that God will come through in a huge way for me when in certain areas, He seems to be a big talk and no miracles?

Look at the people of Somalia. I bet all of the citizens of that country kept praying and hoping for help and assistance. But now beautiful children are starving to death. Fathers are committing suicide because they feel powerless when it comes to providing for their families. Yet in California, or some other wealthy place, some twat, ignorant of the plight of the downtrodden, has purchased a yacht (or some other superfluous material fodder) for an astronomical price that serves only its manufacturer and not those who need it most. Justice? Fairness? I think not.

Let me bring this issue a bit closer to home…two years ago, my grandmother died alone, and before that she suffered many years prior from kidney failure, and bone cancer. The most detrimental ailment was congestive heart failure. If God was a God of miracles and awesome work, He would’ve fixed her. (And “fixing,” to me, does not entail copping out and sending her to Heaven before her time was up). He would’ve allowed her one last hurrah and let her go out on a high; peacefully, and surrounded by loved ones.

If there was fairness, I wouldn’t have a mother who thinks that a motivational speech is calling me a “wimp” over my answering machine and continuing to kick me while I was down (although she doesn’t think that’s what she was doing. I acknowledge  that her idea of care is shown through tough love, but if love is going to be that tough then I don’t need it.) I’m in a fragile state, and anyone who knows me, truly, knows that when I shut down, it is because I need a social hiatus. I need time away from people who want to help, because I need to want to help myself first and foremost. Basically, this is my dirty house and I must clean it before I invite anyone over. Standard procedure. To be honest, if I could enter a monastery for a month, just to get away from my own thoughts and gain some peace and quiet, I’d check in within the next 24 hours.

I would love it if I could drop off the face of the world for a while, pull a Sookie Stackhouse and disappear for a year without  a care in the world. I’d pop back up and everything would’ve changed, yes. Hopefully, for the better (see…I’ve not completely gone to the dark side. I still have hope…just not the Disney kind anymore.) but, alas, I live in the real world, and breaks aren’t the luxury item du jour.

But the real world has still given me options I would’ve never dreamed. So this past weekend, I decided to die.  My biggest belief is that something must die in order for something else to live. Hopefully, the self-sacrifice has done me a world of good…

(To be continued…)