"You want to experience the anticipation for what's around the next bend, but there's just too much stuff for you to do right now before you can allow yourself to feel the excitement. You have big decisions to make as the Sun moves through your 12th House of Destiny for the next month. Choose carefully, for your current choices will likely have a lasting impact."-my Google horoscope for Sunday, December 21st
It's almost four o'clock in the morning and I've been torturing myself for hours, days weeks...
I have become completely and totally nocturnal in the past few days. If my insomnia was bad before, it may now have reached irreversible. The problem is, I'm too anxious and too excited about my life to sleep. Sleep seems so irrelevent, so expendable right now...there is just too much to do, to much to think about, to ruminate on... possibilities overflowing all around me. I am sometimes hit by these amazing periods of inspiration, of total openness and awareness of all that I am capable of receiving from the universe, and how much I am capable of giving back in return.
I know I sound totally esoteric and a little insane. I've been sleeping about 4 hours a night for the past couple weeks. And consuming far too much coffee and alcohol.
Tonight I got home and was determined to finish my grad school applications. I've nearly done just that. I've put my documents to bed for the night and will reopen them tomorrow to be printed out. I may edit again tomorrow night, but I've decided: they go out on Monday. No exception. I must lift this weight from my sloping little shoulders. I must cease the self-torment. I could edit until I'm dead. I'm choosing life instead. Que sera sera, as they say. C'est la vie. Soon it will be out of my hands and into the universe. And the hands of Kristin Linklater, head of acting at Columbia, my dream school.
Yes, that's right. She has her own technique. I can't handle my affection for this ivy-league institution. It's reached an obsessive, all-consuming level. I'm completely infatuated.
My friends are amazingly supportive. I feel like I should come with a disclaimer: Difficult, Exhausting, but Unendingly Loyal and Eternally Grateful! Will Challenge and Enhance Your Life With Her Presence!
It never ceases to amaze me how little we change over the years. Yes, we grow and learn and devise ways of coping with our neuroses, but they remain embedded inside our psyches, nonetheless. The childhood baggage, the insecurities...these things are irremoveable parts of who we are. Yes, we can turn down the volume, shut them away in drawers and cabinets, yet they always remain. Our vulnerabilities are part of what makes each of us special, and understanding and embracing them gives us immeasurable strength. However, every so often when they peek out from behind closed doors and cause us momentary lapses in sanity and coherence, we have no choice but to collapse under the weight. For a moment. To release it. My insecurities are like poltergeists: they just need to be acknowledged and released. They have unfinished business, and when it's completed, they retreat. Except they're never fully evicerated. They just lie dormant for a while, until roused the next time.
I may have a tired emotional cycle. But it's much shorter now than it used to be.
And now I think I have a personal statement.
Here goes nothing:
Though it's been a year and a half since I finished my BFA, I never really stopped feeling like a student. All that's changed is that the walls of the classroom have faded away, or rather have receded out of sight so that now I look out at the world and can see no walls, no boundaries. I am a student of experience, not only of the theatre, but of the streets, the subway, the restaurants I work in, the city of New York and beyond.
For more than half of my undergraduate career, I was still a teenager, vigorously working toward discovering and defining who I was as a person. The search for myself was prevalent throughout my technique training, and after four years of work I found that while my fragile adolescent whimsy had transformed into a poised and confident adult perspective, I was still unsure of my place in the theatre industry. Certain of my artistic inspirations and beginning to explore my own creative strengths, I moved to New York hoping to fall into a niche. The professional tools I had were steering me down a specific path that was leading my performance career into the mainstream musical theatre, hopefully capitalizing on my special skill as a violinist along the way. Though I had some success in that area, sparking interest in casting directors and working a little along the way, I quickly discovered how important it was to me to constantly redefine my ideas of art and its relationship with its audience. I longed to continually seek out more effective and meaningful means of collaborative communication. I wanted a chance to experiment, to collaborate more actively on progressive new work, to develop a wider variety of skills, and to deepen and diversify my artistic sensibilities.
As the gradual decline of our economy has coincided with my generation's transition into adulthood, I find myself emerging as an artist in an age of extreme social despair. We have felt the odds of achieving our personal goals rising higher and higher against us; and yet, as artists we continue to believe fundamentally in our responsibility to care for each other and the world we live in. I've always felt compelled to act in the interest of the greater good, and to me, the theatre is the place where that responsibility can blend harmoniously with my own pursuit of self-fulfillment. As I grow and learn from my adult experiences, a certain truth has moved to the forefront of my awareness: as Anne Bogart wrote, "you cannot create results; you can only create conditions in which something can happen." I can no longer sit back and wait patiently for my career to happen. I must pursue my goals more actively, more vigorously, taking control of my circumstances, placing myself at the forefront of the theatre of the new millenium. I believe that I can stand on that precipice at Columbia University, prepared to leap at every opportunity.
For more than half of my undergraduate career, I was still a teenager, vigorously working toward discovering and defining who I was as a person. The search for myself was prevalent throughout my technique training, and after four years of work I found that while my fragile adolescent whimsy had transformed into a poised and confident adult perspective, I was still unsure of my place in the theatre industry. Certain of my artistic inspirations and beginning to explore my own creative strengths, I moved to New York hoping to fall into a niche. The professional tools I had were steering me down a specific path that was leading my performance career into the mainstream musical theatre, hopefully capitalizing on my special skill as a violinist along the way. Though I had some success in that area, sparking interest in casting directors and working a little along the way, I quickly discovered how important it was to me to constantly redefine my ideas of art and its relationship with its audience. I longed to continually seek out more effective and meaningful means of collaborative communication. I wanted a chance to experiment, to collaborate more actively on progressive new work, to develop a wider variety of skills, and to deepen and diversify my artistic sensibilities.
As the gradual decline of our economy has coincided with my generation's transition into adulthood, I find myself emerging as an artist in an age of extreme social despair. We have felt the odds of achieving our personal goals rising higher and higher against us; and yet, as artists we continue to believe fundamentally in our responsibility to care for each other and the world we live in. I've always felt compelled to act in the interest of the greater good, and to me, the theatre is the place where that responsibility can blend harmoniously with my own pursuit of self-fulfillment. As I grow and learn from my adult experiences, a certain truth has moved to the forefront of my awareness: as Anne Bogart wrote, "you cannot create results; you can only create conditions in which something can happen." I can no longer sit back and wait patiently for my career to happen. I must pursue my goals more actively, more vigorously, taking control of my circumstances, placing myself at the forefront of the theatre of the new millenium. I believe that I can stand on that precipice at Columbia University, prepared to leap at every opportunity.
The limit was 500 words (approximately.) I clocked in at a miraculous 496.
I hope it's good. I hope it accomplishes what I was intending. I hope you like it, but please don't tell me what you think. What I think and how I feel about it is more important. I can't revise it any longer. I have to stop beating myself up. I always secretly wanted to be a writer, but honestly, I don't think I could handle it. Acting is so much more cathartic. Good acting absolutely depends on being able to silence the voices in your head and be present in the moment. Writing is all about utilizing the voices in your head. I think I have too many angry, scared voices to be harnessed. They resist being translated. They resist being edited. I hate editing myself. And I hate being edited by others. Putting the voices into someone else's head is fantastic.
Okay, so it's a little like therapy. But I swear to you, communication of ideas is of utmost importance to me as an actor, and I prefer to communicate other people's ideas that move me. My own ideas are so confused, so frustrated. But people who have talent for saying things that matter... those people are my heros.
All I can do is cry and scream and sing and laugh through your words onstage.
"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says 'I'll try again tomorrow."
- Mary Anne Radmacher
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