Saturday, April 6, 2013

Actually, the hopeful ending suprised me a little.

Yesterday, I received by email the last of the "Thank you but we've gone in another direction" letters from the last of the theatre companies that looked at any of my material.

When I was younger, something like that would have been like a humiliating kick in the crotch.  As if there were any other kind of kick to the crotch.

I'm older now.  And with age comes either wisdom, or the lack of the ability to continue to care at that level.  I'm banking on wisdom.

A small part of me was looking forward to the challenge; first, the challenge of the audition (which I've written about and am firmly convinced that it wasn't bad), and the imagined challenge of working on a new show with a new cast in a new place.  A breath of fresh air for my oxygen deprived soul.

But younger days had fewer responsibilities; gas in the car, rent paid.....post office box paid for.  Now, there are larger bills and a lovely woman who gets quite irritated at prolonged absence.  She has a vivid, yet misguided imagination.  I was/am never quite the target of female attention that she believes I am/was.

And my days of throwing in with anything that sounds fun and pays a little has been replaced with something sounds fun and pays a bit more. 

Oh, yes, and I'm ancient by any "travelling actor" standard.

So, my head with its enormous brain (which I occasionally use to work crossword puzzles and income tax forms) is of the belief that "to everything there is a season" and my season in the sun has become a comfortable seat in the dugout; and it was a good ride and great fun and I have a ton of memories that continue to make me smile as they play on the movie screen in the back of my head.

My heart is in self-loathing.

I'm heavier; and slower, and jowlier.  My eyesight is going.  The old injuries are collecting their dividends like a hoard of Mr. Monopolys.

The spirit is willing.  I still have keen analysis skills.  I can still tear a passion to tatters, to very rags to split the ears of the groundlings.  And I can occasionally make like Yorick, and set the table at a roar.

But the flesh is weak.  Stoopid flesh.

There may be one more great project out there; something that I've been working on for a long while, but this malady of slight misery has given me a direction for it I can truly play now.

Working title:  Holmes in Twilight.

So.....TAKE ME....TO......THE VOLCANO!

Because nobody knows anything; and I'll just jump....and we'll see.

1 comment:

Kizz said...

There are things ahead of you. Different maybe, but there.