What a birthday. What a world. What a show. I basked in it for a couple of hours and came home to an email complaining that the NEXT show hadn’t sold enough tickets. It’s the nature of the job. Feast and famine, highs and lows.
I think that, despite the fact that I don’t actually use much of my degree anymore, I’m very, very glad my journey took me through the mental space of art school. I learned about critique, giving it and taking it. I learned about taxes. I learned about advertisement and believing in yourself even when no-one else does. I learned about liking people even when you didn’t like their art, and I learned about admiring art even when you really, really didn’t like the people.
And I got my expectations set really, really early.
None of that “American Dream” bullshit for me. I’d chosen not just “a career in the arts” (which was totally possible) but “an artistic Lifestyle” (which was totally probable). I remember driving through the suburbs looking at beautiful houses and getting it into my brain: “this is not for me – I don’t get this – I will never have this”. Sometimes it was with resignation, sometimes I romanticized it, sometimes I railed against it, but I got over thinking “this isn’t fair”. I’d go visit the house of the president of the school, or one of my teachers, and they’d have these huge, beautiful homes, and I’d force myself to remember : this is what you get if you patronize the arts. Support the arts. Believe in art. The rich can BUY the art. But we’ll never be those people. We have to believe in and Love what we do because we don’t get to have that.
And there is an arrogance there. We try to believe, and some of us do, that somehow this Life is more fulfilling. That we have more purpose. That we’re more alive. Some times I believe that. Generally I’ve stepped down from that pedestal. But I DO believe that I do what I do because I can’t imagine doing anything else and staying sane. I can’t imagine NOT playing, not making. Not doing. And it’s too exhausting to try to have a Real Job and do this on the side.
Maybe if art school hadn’t been an option, and maybe if I HADN’T come to terms with the idea that I’d probably Live and die poor during my formative years, maybe I’d have figured out how to have it “all”. Like the women I interview for In Process… with their 2 kids and beautiful DC homes and amazing arts careers and amazing teaching careers and Ivy League degrees…. Maybe I’d just have MADE IT WORK if I HAD TO.
As I’ve gotten older, and especially as we’ve been sedentary, no longer traveling, stuck at home for longer and longer – I fear that the covetousness, the chase of the finer THINGS in Life, I feel the stickiness of that. The desire. The envy. There’s a reason that that’s a sin. I feel embarrassed by my home and Lifestyle in a way that… I don’t THINK my friends actually care about? I feel envious of others’ homes in a way that is POISONOUS. I worry that I’m not giving my wife ENOUGH when actually I don’t think she cares.
There was this beautiful balance none too long ago when I was so happy with how much stuff I was able to have because I was no longer struggling. No longer Living hand-to-mouth, no longer afraid of missing a check or losing out on a gig. I could say “no” to gigs and with that there was POWER. But now I’m past that and I’m worried that my car’s not nice enough and that I want hardwood floors.
I’m trying to quiet that desire. Shut it out and shut it down. It’s the ads talking. My father talking. The TV talking. That’s not me.
That cannot be ME.
