Followable Dreams

Leta is very practical about this shit.  We met for sushi back in early March, back when I was still counting the amount of time I’d been in New York in days and weeks.  Somehow we got to talking about our ways of life and the common endeavor that we shared – to work in theatre in America (somehow?  It’s pretty much all we talk about – we theatrical types).  I felt put upon by my parents for the selfishness of following my dreams.  I felt that it weighed very heavy on me the fact that my family believed I was lowballing myself, that no good would come of this, that it was self-indulgent.  Leta gave me an interesting bone to chew.  She worked a temp position, admin for a small New York City University, and had been there long enough to be a permanent fixture, yet had always resisted going permanent, and so there was always something of “the other” to her.  She also frequently worked as an assistant director and stage manager on off and off-off broadway productions, so people around the office would say of her that she was “following her dreams”, her “dreams of show business”.

“And I say, it’s not my dream I’m following – it’s just my career choice.  I’m following the steps of my chosen career, which requires a little more of a roundabout attempt than straight admin.  I’m not being idealistic, I’m practically following a course of action – this is what directors need to do, it’s not my dream.”

For a long time I thought she was totally right.  It was a nice little empowering flash of lightening in my world of self-defense.  And she is right in the sense that you don’t wake up in the morning and think “how can I follow my dream today?”  You don’t walk around waiting for the wind to pick you up and fly you away to the clouds – or at least Leta didn’t.  I didn’t.  I wrote because I knew/know that my type isn’t going to mature for another ten years or so.  I take classes because I want to keep current with people and get to know the different facets of my trade.  Practical steps to an impractical life choice.

It occurred to me all by my lonesome that it is not as simple as that either.  I got an email from my cousin Anna because she was thinking of stalling what she had built up of her career(already in Journalism) to pursue an MA in journalism that would make her a more desirable candidate in higher end jobs in a shrinking market.  She asked my advice specifically because I was “following my dream”, and my knee-jerk response was the new Leta Doctrine – acting and writing is my profession, and I work to make myself more marketable and useful in those environments.  Calling it a dream makes it fanciful and impractical.

It is not a dream, it is the same hard work as anything.

It is not an ideal, it is realistic and grubby.

But oh, oh it is a dream.  Oh to be professionally curious.  Oh to sit in a rehearsal room – even one with no heat or light or WC nearby, and to stand up and play with scenarios and words, and discuss the effect of scenarios and words.  To read newspapers and books and mince the ingredients, sautee the mirepoix of culture and create a flavorful broth of live theatre, where you get to fill someone else’s shoes.  Someone who is not hesitant.  Someone who does believe life is a dream.  Someone who believes it is a struggle.

What I mean is that you don’t want to take away the sense that it is a dream you are living, if you are following a route that is impractical and that is founded upon your vision of the world.

Because you are not working within society’s vision of the world, you are recreating it.  And that is a huge, huge, HUGE responsibility and opportunity and a gift, and you must not spoil it nor taint it with your assumption that you are merely doing your job.

There are two men – one who carries rocks and another who carries precious jewels.  If you have an important thing to be carried – a precious, fragile thing, should you give it to the man who hauls rocks, or the man who hauls diamonds?   We thought in Jewish Assembly, when the youth leader presented this riddle to us, that you should give it to the man who carries rocks.  He rarely gets anything special and he would be honored to carry something precious.  He would treat it so well knowing that it was his time in the sun.

You should give it to the man who hauls precious things because he knows how to treat them.

That is the answer.