a broken car, a ticking clock, and the feeling of more of the same
a basic thesis on life at the moment
Later today, I’m taking a red eye flight to Missouri, to visit family for a few days before attending a film festival in Wisconsin, where a short I was in is premiering. I spent a ton of money on the plane tickets, surely more money than I will directly see from the short itself, but that’s the nature of the business. A lot of people make things with a lot of heart, for very little money. A lot of people make things for a lot of money, with very little heart. A lot of people try to do both, and the existence of all these people is why the 101 is gridlocked for twelve hours a day.
My car has been in the shop for the last two weeks. I was worried it wouldn’t be ready before I had to leave for this trip, but luckily I was able to get it back yesterday, and can leave it with a friend who lives near LAX while I’m away. It was a relief to get the car back, so I could finally put an end to Ubering everywhere and leeching off the kindness of my friends for the last two weeks.
The repair was large scale and expensive. It raised the question of just how long the future I have with this car really is. Anyone who has been in my life for any portion of the last two decades could tell you how important this car is to me. It’s one of the most important relationships in my life. While my car was wrecked, the thought of losing it was devastating. Worse, the day that the car stopped functioning, I was also told that one of my family members, who I will see this weekend, wasn’t doing so well either.
I will spare the details, because I come from a family that fiercely protects its privacy. I never understood this as a kid. I’ve always been quite an open book, obviously. But as I grow older, I have begun to respect this value more. Many experiences, memories, secrets, are fragile. You can’t let just anyone hold them. But choosing to trust is an act of bravery, and if you are four paragraphs into this newsletter, I choose to trust you: One of my loved ones is sick. They have been for a while, so you’d think the realization would be less surprising. But it takes me aback whenever I remember.
I am no stranger to loss. But both this car, and this person, have played a significant role in my life at many, many stages. Two weeks ago, I sobbed on the phone with Triple A, suddenly facing the reality of this new stage of life: that more and more and more things I love will continue to slip through my grasp, and each time it will hurt with the same intensity that I loved them, and sometimes even more.
Obviously, I have a flair for the dramatic. I move through the world nearly always chasing a source of intense passion. Classically, it’s a blessing and a curse.
The other night, I had two unsettling dreams: In one, my college playwriting professor, with whom I believe I’d had an amazing relationship, presented me with a book she had written that detailed all the flaws inherent to my writing and my personality. She did so in front of all my peers. It was humiliating, gut wrenching. In this same dream-universe, my manager was helping me coordinate a second callback for a role I was desperate to get. I kept running into logistical obstacles, and in the end, missed the appointment completely.
In a sense, both of these dreams illustrate something fairly obvious and predictable about my two great passions: writing is an act of extreme vulnerability and trust, and for my writing to lose me favor with those I value, is a horrifying thought. With being an actor in Los Angeles comes the intense pursuit of a grand reward, and a daunting lack of control over the outcomes. With soaring heights come shocking lows, and that’s always felt like a given in choosing the identity of “artist”.
When I went to school, for example, I learned that art had to come with some level of punishment. To “pursue” writing was to write constantly, with intense discipline, because that is the valid approach over just having fun. To “pursue” acting was to bare your soul, strip your skin back and give it all to the world: not just on stage, but in life itself. To succeed as an artist meant to pour more into your craft than anyone else you knew, because within the exhaustion lies the ultimate reward: 15 minutes of external validation. To be clear, I think this idea sucks really bad.
Not to be annoying, but I believe it to be reflective of a capitalist framework that results from the judeo-christian ideal, (or American-immigrant philosophy) that to suffer is to be valid. So you should choose to do so as much as possible for your life to have meaning. Ultimately, I think this mostly functions as a tool to get working people to sacrifice more to be allowed proximity to their dreams: which usually means providing more labor for less reward to a more powerful institution that reaps the greatest share of the benefits. God that sounds so annoying, but I think it’s true.
As much as I reject that notion, its influence is all over society, and it implicitly affects me daily. I’m always chiding myself over my own work ethic, and how my productivity is the only missing variable in the equation between my dreams and my reality. I prepare myself to choose punishment to reap reward, but ultimately, I’m never able to fully go all the way. Because in reality, I love simply chasing genuine passion and inspiration.
One week after the car fiasco, I made random breakthroughs on two small projects: a painting I was working on, and a song I was writing. Neither are works of high art, built on strokes of genius, or anything, but it was an amazing feeling to surprise myself by taking any step forward. Neither of these projects have included self imposed deadlines or a schedule towards completion. There is no adherence to technique or any rubric besides what my eyeballs, my ear holes, and my heartbeat feel about their impact. They are unable to be scaled or monetized, or I, at least, am unwilling to entertain the notion. I feel more pride about these projects than I have about anything else in quite some time. They didn’t come with much punishment. Every stroke, every chord, mostly contains joy. And neither are completed, maybe they never will be.
It’s becoming important to me to protect my sources of genuine joy, and love, and to keep them untainted from the pains of productivity or punishment. Because life will throw that stuff your way whether you want it or not. When you least expect it, or desire it, one way or another, the things you love can leave. There will always be a repair. There will always be sickness, there will always be heartbreak. To write is to be critiqued, to act is to be rejected, to love is to lose.
Respite, to me, comes with the realization that I feel almost no responsibility to seek out anything other than joy, when I can. Life will provide the counterbalance. I do have a flair for the dramatic. I move through the world nearly always chasing a source of intense passion. Later today, you will find me stagnant on the 101, cherishing the extra time spent with the car I’ve loved my whole life.
this made me bawl buckets