Saturday, July 15, 2006
Praise, Praise, Praise....
...and deep gratefull thanks to the person who invented and perfected the in-window air-conditioner!!! In fact, HAIL to whoever thought of "conditioning" air in the first place......Thank you ,thank you, THANK you!
When I was a kid, I could never understand how my Uncle Ed had to make sure a restaurant or theater or anywhere was totally air-conditioned before we all agreed to go there...I remember thinking how old he must be and silly , to care about such things. And now I am exactly the same way I remember him being: concerned about heat stroke! Or at the very least, discomfort and sweat!
My young kid body clearly didn't experience the heat and humidity the way my body does now, and, even though I remember sweating, and the delicious feel of the swimming pool water against my sunburned young skin, it always seemed to me that Uncle Ed was nitpicking, and being his usual crotchety self to demand freezing cold temperatures while he ate or sat in a synagogue! But he did...and now, so do I!
Our little Sunday night dinner celebration for Paul and Steve is postponed until the cooler Fall because NYC is about to heat up to 96 degrees or more and our kitchen will be unbearable to cook in....this was actually Paul's suggestion, and after discussing it, Peter and i agreed he was right....The only place to be over the next few days in directly in front of our living room airconditioner...luckily our desks are right in line with a cool stream of air, and so we shall get much work done that needs doing before we leave for San Francisco.
We watched TRANSAMERICA last night on pay-per-view...what a sweet movie...and what a wonderful wonderful actress Felicity Huffman is. Brava to her.
Now, in an attempt to finish THE ACTORS TIMELINE, let me draw your attention back to where we were:
We were in the Age of Enduring...that time, inevitable in a long career , when it sometimes feels like Art, but mostly feels like one's weekends are dribbling away inside stuffy theaters, repeating shows that often are not as much fun as reading a good book! But, Actors are Actors, and, as with every profession,one must put up with the bad as well as enjoy the good...this is The Life, and performing is , nonetheless, a privilege enjoyed by few. Still....something begins to nag one's thinking around about this time on the Line:
I feel my power more than ever now...my personal creative power...surely there is more for me to do with it than the same thing I have been doing with it all these years....I have impressed enough audiences for my Ego to be satisfied...I have money in the bank and ways of earning it with ease...NOW: what DO I do next with all this "juice" iside me?
A valuable, potentially productive moment on The Actors TimeLine: the verb? To PUSH BOUNDARIES!!! TO EXPLORE and WIDEN THE HORIZON!!!
A scary, but wonderful time, when the idea of what is not only possible but imperative dances before a creative actors eyes: and the age-old question arises: "Am I my resume?" (with an accent over the final "e") comes up a lot!
About this time, an actor actually begins to understand the world around him better than before, and to seriously read other sections of the NY TIMES than the Arts and Leisure Section..one's place "in it all" comes into question...the idea of feeding one starving child actually becomes more important than scoring at the next audition, and spending time in one's life instead of on another theatrical stage seems far more important. It is a dis-orienting time, because , after all, an Actor's longitude and latitude have always been defined by the next role, the next great job...it's like one's self-concept starts to dissolve and something more iluminated takes its place, and by the light of that new self-concept, one can see more clearly.
Now, this is not to say the Actor disappears...no. Not at all. But along side the Actor may appear the Teacher, the Director, the Writer, the Meditator, the Friend of Others....but in order to have enough time to explore all these new facets, the Actor has to start making new sorts of choices, and this may define the actor from The Actor... The Time Line continues, but the stages along it? They become more personal, less predictable. More individual. ANd , most importantly, THE REASONS THE ACTOR USED TO HAVE FOR BEING AN ACTOR HAVE CHANGED RADICALLY,at least at first glance, and The Actor is amazed to find that the profession of Acting is, possibly, a noble one, after all.
Personally, I believe that the same selfless impulse to perform theater is in us from beginning to end: we want to give to an audience...give things they can get no where else..things that will alter their life perceptions in good ways...comfort that they are not alone...and this desire to give is with us from the very start...but our terrors obscures so much when we are young. We think we seek comfort by getting applause , when really we truly want to give it. But with age comes, not so much wisdom as realization through hard experience, and if we hang in there, it purifies our knowledge of self and we are blessed with understanding.
That is when THE ACTORS TIMELINE turns a wonderful punchline and we can laugh! Laugh at what used to make us cry: we care.
When I was a kid, I could never understand how my Uncle Ed had to make sure a restaurant or theater or anywhere was totally air-conditioned before we all agreed to go there...I remember thinking how old he must be and silly , to care about such things. And now I am exactly the same way I remember him being: concerned about heat stroke! Or at the very least, discomfort and sweat!
My young kid body clearly didn't experience the heat and humidity the way my body does now, and, even though I remember sweating, and the delicious feel of the swimming pool water against my sunburned young skin, it always seemed to me that Uncle Ed was nitpicking, and being his usual crotchety self to demand freezing cold temperatures while he ate or sat in a synagogue! But he did...and now, so do I!
Our little Sunday night dinner celebration for Paul and Steve is postponed until the cooler Fall because NYC is about to heat up to 96 degrees or more and our kitchen will be unbearable to cook in....this was actually Paul's suggestion, and after discussing it, Peter and i agreed he was right....The only place to be over the next few days in directly in front of our living room airconditioner...luckily our desks are right in line with a cool stream of air, and so we shall get much work done that needs doing before we leave for San Francisco.
We watched TRANSAMERICA last night on pay-per-view...what a sweet movie...and what a wonderful wonderful actress Felicity Huffman is. Brava to her.
Now, in an attempt to finish THE ACTORS TIMELINE, let me draw your attention back to where we were:
We were in the Age of Enduring...that time, inevitable in a long career , when it sometimes feels like Art, but mostly feels like one's weekends are dribbling away inside stuffy theaters, repeating shows that often are not as much fun as reading a good book! But, Actors are Actors, and, as with every profession,one must put up with the bad as well as enjoy the good...this is The Life, and performing is , nonetheless, a privilege enjoyed by few. Still....something begins to nag one's thinking around about this time on the Line:
I feel my power more than ever now...my personal creative power...surely there is more for me to do with it than the same thing I have been doing with it all these years....I have impressed enough audiences for my Ego to be satisfied...I have money in the bank and ways of earning it with ease...NOW: what DO I do next with all this "juice" iside me?
A valuable, potentially productive moment on The Actors TimeLine: the verb? To PUSH BOUNDARIES!!! TO EXPLORE and WIDEN THE HORIZON!!!
A scary, but wonderful time, when the idea of what is not only possible but imperative dances before a creative actors eyes: and the age-old question arises: "Am I my resume?" (with an accent over the final "e") comes up a lot!
About this time, an actor actually begins to understand the world around him better than before, and to seriously read other sections of the NY TIMES than the Arts and Leisure Section..one's place "in it all" comes into question...the idea of feeding one starving child actually becomes more important than scoring at the next audition, and spending time in one's life instead of on another theatrical stage seems far more important. It is a dis-orienting time, because , after all, an Actor's longitude and latitude have always been defined by the next role, the next great job...it's like one's self-concept starts to dissolve and something more iluminated takes its place, and by the light of that new self-concept, one can see more clearly.
Now, this is not to say the Actor disappears...no. Not at all. But along side the Actor may appear the Teacher, the Director, the Writer, the Meditator, the Friend of Others....but in order to have enough time to explore all these new facets, the Actor has to start making new sorts of choices, and this may define the actor from The Actor... The Time Line continues, but the stages along it? They become more personal, less predictable. More individual. ANd , most importantly, THE REASONS THE ACTOR USED TO HAVE FOR BEING AN ACTOR HAVE CHANGED RADICALLY,at least at first glance, and The Actor is amazed to find that the profession of Acting is, possibly, a noble one, after all.
Personally, I believe that the same selfless impulse to perform theater is in us from beginning to end: we want to give to an audience...give things they can get no where else..things that will alter their life perceptions in good ways...comfort that they are not alone...and this desire to give is with us from the very start...but our terrors obscures so much when we are young. We think we seek comfort by getting applause , when really we truly want to give it. But with age comes, not so much wisdom as realization through hard experience, and if we hang in there, it purifies our knowledge of self and we are blessed with understanding.
That is when THE ACTORS TIMELINE turns a wonderful punchline and we can laugh! Laugh at what used to make us cry: we care.
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