"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain …"
Cicero
I think I can sum up most of this year as painful. Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of escapist fun but the reason for the escapist fun is because of the pain...oh, the circle of pain! The reason I have chosen to write about it now is due to a build-up of circumstances and events that came to a head this past week and a recent epiphany......read on...
So lets back-up a bit. Two people I know passed away last week in very short order. Both were a surprise, at least to me. It's always upsetting when people pass away, but these two seemed to be more, I don't know, painful. Not crying uncontrollably painful, but the other kind of pain....sadness, depression, melancholia. Once again, not unusual, but it felt as if there was something else behind my sadness that I couldn't quite put my finger on. So off and on this past week I've felt sad and uneasy. One key to unraveling the mystery lies in understanding the two men who passed away. One was a director that I worked for when I first came to LA and the other a member of a theater company we both belonged to.
In the first case, I didn't directly work for Tony but he and his brothers production company, Scott Free. Scott Free was my first entertainment industry job and I was pretty thrilled when I got it. I worked there for two years working my way up through the ranks. The two years I worked there were a crash course in all the politics and sweat that go into making a movie. It was amazing. Difficult, but amazing. It's now that I realize all the various places I have gone, jobs that I have had, are directly or indirectly related to my employment there. The friends I made when I first started are still my friends today and a very important part of my life. Even those that I didn't keep in touch with I hear about through others and we are all still connected in one form or another. When Tony passed, an email chain was started and all of us sort of reconnected and spoke about our time there, our experiences with him and what a magical time that was for all of us to have worked there when we did. And it was. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all "candyland-bunnies-and-rainbows" but it was special, mostly for the people who were there at that time and what we all experienced together. And I didn't realize how rare that was until after I left and understood that all places weren't like that - at least not in the entertainment industry.
The other key portion of this, my first job, was the fact that when I took this job it was because I wanted to learn the nuts-and-bolts of production and I thought it would inform me as an actress....Honestly, I was too terrified to start pursuing acting full-throttle. So this seemed like an intelligent decision: why not earn money in "the industry" and learn things that will be beneficial rather than working at some restaurant or bar, which I had already done and was mind-numbing, back-breaking work. Makes sense, right?
Cut to 10 years later and I'm a member of a theater company, which is where I met Max. I was a member for a little over a year and got to know Max better before he left the company, which was a few months before I did. What can I say other than he was a lovely human being - funny, quirky, game for anything. He had a quick mind an easygoing manner. I knew he was sick but I didn't realize how bad it was until after he was gone and heard the news. There was a memorial service, or rather, a gathering of people who knew and loved him to celebrate his life, which I went to this past Saturday. It was uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. This was a man who had a life well-lived. I learned a lot of funny and surprising things about him - most of all what an amazing human being he was and how much he was loved. He achieved success in life even if he never became a household name in the acting world....
Which leads me to present and how all this comes together. I woke up one morning and realized why all of this was making me feel so uneasy, dejected, etc. It was the fact that these two deaths represented for me the death of an idea. I have consistantly had a foot in two worlds - the "working" world and the "acting" world, never feeling I could commit to one or the other but being resentful of both. Letting fear take over and never truly making a decision one way or the other. For some reason I woke up on Sunday thinking "the old way is dead, make way for the new". The way I've been thinking, that it's either or, you have to choose - has been a limiting belief system that hasn't worked and that now is the time to create something new - take chances, believe in the possibility of doing it all instead of how it can't work. I don't know how this will look or what form it will take but I do feel I've taken the most important step, the first step, in releasing the out-moded ideas of the past.....stay tuned...
And to Max and Tony:
I am grateful for having been in each of your presence. Your lives have had a profound affect on mine.
Thank you .....
