Monday, August 25, 2008
ANd the World Goes 'Round
Funny about Time...and it's passing: looking through Facebook at all the wonderful and varied things my students are getting hired to do, all the great performance opportunities they are being given throughout the world, and all the brave striving they are all engaged in, it (of course) takes me back to when i was their age, and, in them, and all that they are doing, I see my self and so many of my own memories...so much of my own past in this business.
It's like remembering the fragrance of flowers in a garden after you have already passed them by ....the trail of how they looked and smelled follows you...at least in the vivid part of your brain that remembers such things....these beautiful young actors and actresses are flowers in the garden of my life...and their professional activities stir the soil of memory.
Their first apartments, the joys of call-backs and the terrors as well...the "where will my next job come from:" mantra...the shock at discovering that it all does not work as you thought it would...the sheer sensual joy of being on tour for the first time in new and exciting places....the friends...the smell of life on the road...the shopping malls and discovering that America lives a plastic life, repeated mall after mall, mile after mile...going to strange new lands and taking walks in jungles! All the drinking, the loves, the fatigues and the opening night parties....the need for quiet and space and being afraid to sleep alone in strange hotel rooms...the huddling together of young animals in new surroundings, and the pride,...the sheer pride and pleasure of giving your show to those night-after-night crowds of strangers...where do they all come from? The smell of the streets (either familiar or strange streets) when you come out the Stage Door and realize you have your whole night (and life) ahead of you....
The smell of summers on porches of hotels, as you wait for your late night dates...
I could go on forever, which is what I feel these students of mine are doing for me: allowing me, in some real way, to go on and on...
I yearn to be them...yet am glad I am not.
Because i remember all the illusion I lived in as well.
and all the concomitant lack of wisdom that only brought more pain than was necessary....but then again, who's to say what is necessary in a life?
Must get on with the day....yet, like a comfortable bed I know I can always fall back into, this blog is here, and I will be back to it soon ....it is my way of honoring these students and my own journey at the same time...honoring and enjoying.
It's like remembering the fragrance of flowers in a garden after you have already passed them by ....the trail of how they looked and smelled follows you...at least in the vivid part of your brain that remembers such things....these beautiful young actors and actresses are flowers in the garden of my life...and their professional activities stir the soil of memory.
Their first apartments, the joys of call-backs and the terrors as well...the "where will my next job come from:" mantra...the shock at discovering that it all does not work as you thought it would...the sheer sensual joy of being on tour for the first time in new and exciting places....the friends...the smell of life on the road...the shopping malls and discovering that America lives a plastic life, repeated mall after mall, mile after mile...going to strange new lands and taking walks in jungles! All the drinking, the loves, the fatigues and the opening night parties....the need for quiet and space and being afraid to sleep alone in strange hotel rooms...the huddling together of young animals in new surroundings, and the pride,...the sheer pride and pleasure of giving your show to those night-after-night crowds of strangers...where do they all come from? The smell of the streets (either familiar or strange streets) when you come out the Stage Door and realize you have your whole night (and life) ahead of you....
The smell of summers on porches of hotels, as you wait for your late night dates...
I could go on forever, which is what I feel these students of mine are doing for me: allowing me, in some real way, to go on and on...
I yearn to be them...yet am glad I am not.
Because i remember all the illusion I lived in as well.
and all the concomitant lack of wisdom that only brought more pain than was necessary....but then again, who's to say what is necessary in a life?
Must get on with the day....yet, like a comfortable bed I know I can always fall back into, this blog is here, and I will be back to it soon ....it is my way of honoring these students and my own journey at the same time...honoring and enjoying.
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