I had a bit of a computer crash earlier this week - well, not exactly a computer crash... more like a computer fender-bender - and lost a number of files that I'd had open and was working on when it happened. Sadly many of them were journal entries that I was going back over. The short version of this story is that as a result, there are only three entries since February 22nd, instead of, say six.
We'll all get over it, I'm sure. Though my bitterness is likely to linger a bit longer than yours, since I'm the poor son of a bitch who not only lost his fleeting impressions of a specific (or several specific) day(s) in his life, he also had to type them. And some of them were bitch-ass long, my friends.
But life is fleeting, isn't it? Better that my computer should crash than, say, a bus should crash into me, right?
Aside from the demise of my brilliant observations on the world at large, it's been a pretty good week. I've been working steadily at The Population Council, a non-profit organization that's involved in population research and women's reproductive health issues around the world. They're keeping me pretty busy, and money's getting back on track. I'm finally getting my act together again, after the hit I took to do Father Figures back in Pittsburgh. The show was a great experience, but it didn't pay much, and I've been struggling to get caught up with money ever since. Ah well... it's the price of being a starving artist.
So lately, I've been re-reading one of my favorite books, Emma Who Saved My Life. It's one of my favorite books because I think it's the quintessential actor-trying-to-make-it- in-New-York story. The author, Wilton Barnhardt, went on to write another of my favorite books, Gospel. But this is his first book, and it's really wonderful. I'm gonna risk copyright infringement imprisonment to share this passage with you, which I think captures perfectly the experience of feeling alone in New York City...
I've felt like that before... only for me, it was my reflection in a subway car window. The lighting on subway cars is just as bad, and makes you look every bit as shitty and more as described above. And that's what I love so much about this book; that it captures not just the universal qualities of struggling as an actor here, but the universal qualities of what it is to be human and to find your place in the world.
The best fiction always makes it easy to recognize yourself in a character and his struggles, but still manages to surprise you when you do.
We'll all get over it, I'm sure. Though my bitterness is likely to linger a bit longer than yours, since I'm the poor son of a bitch who not only lost his fleeting impressions of a specific (or several specific) day(s) in his life, he also had to type them. And some of them were bitch-ass long, my friends.
But life is fleeting, isn't it? Better that my computer should crash than, say, a bus should crash into me, right?
Aside from the demise of my brilliant observations on the world at large, it's been a pretty good week. I've been working steadily at The Population Council, a non-profit organization that's involved in population research and women's reproductive health issues around the world. They're keeping me pretty busy, and money's getting back on track. I'm finally getting my act together again, after the hit I took to do Father Figures back in Pittsburgh. The show was a great experience, but it didn't pay much, and I've been struggling to get caught up with money ever since. Ah well... it's the price of being a starving artist.
So lately, I've been re-reading one of my favorite books, Emma Who Saved My Life. It's one of my favorite books because I think it's the quintessential actor-trying-to-make-it- in-New-York story. The author, Wilton Barnhardt, went on to write another of my favorite books, Gospel. But this is his first book, and it's really wonderful. I'm gonna risk copyright infringement imprisonment to share this passage with you, which I think captures perfectly the experience of feeling alone in New York City..."...and there I was chewing bland flavorless pizza looking fat and washed out in the fluorescent light of Baldo's window reflection and I was all alone while everyone else in the world was out on a date or laughing or dancing or having fun or experience love in some form somewhere - wait, focus on the thought: making love somewhere, in each other's arms, touching, another human being's face and lips just THAT far away before you kissed them, and this wasn't some special occasion but what some people, MOST people did every night, and there I was fat and older chewing on pizza all alone, and instead of a simple I am very lonely, which would have sufficed, the mind burst through some kind of previously untried barrier and it told me: I have been lonely all my life."
I've felt like that before... only for me, it was my reflection in a subway car window. The lighting on subway cars is just as bad, and makes you look every bit as shitty and more as described above. And that's what I love so much about this book; that it captures not just the universal qualities of struggling as an actor here, but the universal qualities of what it is to be human and to find your place in the world.
The best fiction always makes it easy to recognize yourself in a character and his struggles, but still manages to surprise you when you do.
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