Saturday, December 1, 2012

Postscript.

I've been walking down this road for a couple of days now, and although I believe it's run its course, I'll offer one more observation on the idea that what you do matters.....

I have a small group of close friends, scattered to the four winds throughout the country.  We met in various circumstances; from graduate school, back to college.  A few, oddly and wonderfully enough, from high school.  Dozens from theatres during the Acting Wars.  And some survivors of the days of my professorial persona.

Each time we get together (and some are more frequent than others), it's almost like time has stood still from one merry meeting to the next.  The conversation flows; the laughter fills the days like sunshine and the nights like a flaming comet; and though we are saddened by the parting (for parting is all we know of Heaven and all we need of Hell) we know that the next meeting will bring back the music and the magic....

It is the strangers, though, that'll shock you to tears.

I recently received an email from somebody I have never truly met....they are working around the Minneapolis/St. Paul theatre scene, and have been for several years, and by chance they came across my name on the Social Network and dropped me a line.

To thank me.

It seems when I was a young man, a college fella, struggling to find the voice of the actor and falling unflinchingly into the depths of drunkyness, I did a role.....John Merrick in THE ELEPHANT MAN.  I believe it was the last play I did in college....would have been the Fall of 1984.  And they saw this particular play as part of a High School field trip...and they stayed for a Q and A after the show.  And apparently I answered a couple of questions.

And I made enough of an impression that they pursued the craft.

You never know what fires you're going to light.

Because, in the long run, the people that walk, run or take up residence in your life may forget what you say, and forget what you did...but they will never forget the way you made them feel.

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