The Hymn of Promise.

When I was in Wesley choir at Fairview United Methodist Church, we sang the hymn of promise at the end of every choir practice and again every Sunday at the end of the children's sermon.  I feel like it's appropriate for the ending of our time with AWG.  When I was a child I never thought of the time that there wouldn't be a "next time" to sing this song - now I know that we're embarking on the last time we'll all meet.

I think the main reason that I have not wanted this class to end is because while we’re still training and working, we are still training and working. Once it’s over we'll be 100% responsible for implementing everything we've been taught, which was the objective of the entire course, but that’s the hard part.

If we did not give 100% during this class -  and at times I have felt like I haven’t and that’s a disservice to me - Now we are responsible for our actions and our transgressions.  We’ reached the top-most rung B/A can offer and now we have to climb on our own.  It’s scary but from uncertainty comes growth as a person.  So, thank you for the opportunity, the love, the push, and for being you. 

I’m forever grateful.   

New Orleans, Louisiana – May, 2022.

 

After a two-year hiatus, two of my best friends and I traveled down to the land of music and booze for our yearly boy’s trip.  In years past there would be eight to ten of us starting a marathon weekend of martinis, grits, and bar hopping but this year it’s just the three of us.  Mark, Chris, and I.  Last year Mark moved to Los Angeles, and we have missed him so much.  Each time we come we do something cultural with no repeats.  This year we went to the Mardi Gras float museum and seeing these remnants of floats past as well as floats currently being assembled was really something.  My mind kept wondering into the dollars and cents of the whole thing – these are painfully skilled artists, and I can’t even imagine how much a completed float or even components must cost.  A labor of love and extreme patience is all I can take away.  

Mark and my rooms at our hotel open off a large, shared balcony and it was a little strange to see two women and a man sunbathing topless out there yesterday while they smoked cigarettes and drank beer, but I couldn’t understand the language they were speaking, and I guess that’s just their culture.  Poor Chris booked a nice room at the Bourbon Orleans hotel with a private balcony and a loft sleeping area BUT it’s right on the corner of Bourbon and Orleans – I don’t think he’s slept since we arrived.  He had that look of “don’t fuck with me” yesterday morning. I can sleep though anything but a meal.

Now that our weekend is ending it reminds me of another chapter in my life that’s about to close – but I’ll talk about that more in the next couple of weeks.

 Lately, I've noticed my blogs have been a little heavy.  Let's have a laugh at my expense then expand.

Yesterday, I went to Sam's club to get gas and pick up some baking necessities and afterwards I drove over to Aldi to see if they had shortening because Kroger and everywhere else has Crisco at $6.99 per can and only six months ago it was $3.99 - I'm trying to save a few pennies.  As soon as I walked into Aldi I realized that it was a dumb move not putting on any underwear that morning and my grey sweatpants were no match to hide the unexpected erection I got as soon as I walked in the door.  I mean, I love a good deal but I've never gotten that excited about it.  There was no way to hide this or ease it down, either.  So I walked around the store with my hand in my pocket holding my tallywhacker against my stomach - because that was SO much less obvious something was awry.  As I'm walking down the aisle trying to steer my cart I had to poke a quarter in to retrieve, and having not much luck making a straight line, I overheard a woman telling someone about her cat knocking off a cake she'd made and that was why she was there buying the ingredients to make another.  I started to laugh.  Her story reminded me of one I'd heard around the dinner table maybe 10 years ago when I was home visiting.  Aldi didn't have any shortening so I parked my basket, took my quarter, and got in my car and headed home...still laughing to myself about an incident with a cake, a cat, and my grandmother and her siblings sometime back in the 50's.

My grandmother and her sisters were all attractive and fairly particular on their appearance but my grandmother, Virginia, was the most particular person I've even known.  You could barely snub out a cigarette before she was emptying the ashtray and one of my cousins told me when she would visit my grandparents when she was a kid that you could barely get your panties pulled up before my grandmother was in there scrubbing out the toilet.  She looked as fresh when she got home from a full day of work at 5:00pm as she did when she left the house at 6:00am.  Her sister, Louise, was asked by her husband one night if she was going to get up in the morning to make breakfast for him before he headed to the deer woods and she said "shit".  Virginia gets up and makes Raleigh breakfast for him because she loves him; "Carol, 'Virginur' makes his breakfast because she doesn't want anyone messing up her kitchen, damn.  Knock yourself out."  You get the picture.

In 1951, my mother and her cousin, Linda, went back to Myrtle Beach on the train from south Arkansas with their aunt (by marriage) Mary Sue to visit with she and Uncle Pee Wee.  When it was time for them to come home, my grandparents headed out there to pick them up - with a carload of family on the trip as well.  Sisters Louise, Zaddie, and their mother, Grandma Knight.  Unofficially, and officially, Pee Wee was their favorite.  They headed out there in a 1942 Plymouth and while they were out there my grandfather bought a new 1951 Mercury - not sure if he was just that spontaneous or if there was car trouble along the way but they bought a new car.  At dinner one night as they were all sitting around the table there was a german's chocolate cake Mary Sue had made placed on the sideboard behind where my grandmother was sitting and Louise was sitting directly across from her at the table.  Louise noticed the cat jump up on the sideboard and then STEP OVER the cake and then jump down.  She said nothing...until it was time to cut and serve the cake.  As my grandmother cut her first piece and was bringing the bite to her mouth, Louise shouted "Virginur, don't eat that!  The cat drug his balls across the top!"  She very gently put her fork down and just stared at her plate.  Everyone of course lost their shit.  Mary Sue asked why she would say that and Louise told her that she saw it happen and Pee Wee chimed in "Goddammit Marsu, that tomcat will fuck anything including our dessert" and then he grabbed the cat and threw it out the window.  I hope they lived on the first floor but it really wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't.

So, when we have a german's chocolate cake at a family gathering, it's call a "Cat ball cake".  

 When you apply you have to be prepared for two things - being denied or prepared to pay it back.  

School loan debt - it's a huge controversy.  I understand that many young people are drowning in paying back what they felt was an investment in their own future and I hate to see people struggle doing what they believed was right.  I wonder if they were misguided from the beginning by being told they had to go to college or by believing they had to go to a school they couldn't afford when there are less expensive schools to attend that will yield you the same degree - albeit, possibly not the same advantages.  But, knowing what you're going to pay in the end, having done the research and the due diligence accounting, who is really to blame for the financial burden?  I've wanted things my entire life and I've even sacrificed to get some of them - buying a Rolex when I graduated from college was dumb but I worked for the jewelry store I bought it from and he let me pay it out on lay-a-way for over a year with no interest.  Still, sorta dumb but I still wear it with pride.  

I went to a local college, Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, AR, and received a BBA in marketing.  I worked four jobs during college and also took out student loans for my sophomore through senior years.  The cost per semester was around $3,000.  My grandmother died when I was 15 and she left me enough money for me to go to school for the four years it took me to earn my degree but after my freshman year, my family's accountant suggested to take out student loans so the withdrawal every semester wouldn't count as income and then draft the sum from that one account to the lending institution when my degree was completed.  So, I followed this advice.  After graduation I talked with my mother and asked her to take care of the details of the transactions necessary and she said she'd take care of it.  I felt pretty lucky to have been blessed with the ability to basically go to school for free.

About two years after I graduated, I was living in Dallas by then, and I'd been promoted to an area sales manager position at Dillard's.  Going from $12 per hour to $33,000 per year was a HUGE jump.  I was already making more money than most of the people in my family retired making.  I thought I had arrived.  On a trip back home to south Arkansas I decided I was going to trade the new Silverado I got (though the situation of my grandmother passing away) when I was 16 in on a new Chevy truck at the local dealership.  Trying to stay "local" I walked in with my downpayment and the title to my 6 year old truck (that still looked brand new) and forged ahead on the first big purchase of my life.  They took my personal information, we talked about my family and my new life in Dallas, then the finance guy came back with my credit report and he and the salesman both looked at me like I was trying to pull a fast one.  My credit report showed that I was a year delinquent on payments on my student loans and my credit score was somewhere below 500.  I was in shock.  I was also so embarrassed that I wanted to crawl under the desk and disappear.  I'd never missed a payment on anything in my life.  There was a phone number on the credit report for the bank I'd borrowed the money from and I called them and they reported "your loan payments were to start over a year ago and there were two payments made but the rest is delinquent".  They'd sent the statements to my mother's address all this time because that was my permanent address until I moved to Dallas.  Defeated, I drove back to my mother's house and sat down in the living room with her and tried to calmly understand what happened.  When I started out with "I was denied a loan for the new truck" she replied "I was afraid of that".  

As it turned out, the money I'd been left to pay for school, my mother spent.  I don't know on what and she wouldn't be able to tell anyone either because I now know how horrible she was with personal finances.  She made two payments on the student loan and just stopped paying it but didn't tell me about it because if she were to then I would have found out that the money I thought was there to cover my expenses was actually spent by her so if we never talked about it - in her mind - it never happened.  This was around 3pm on a Saturday and I was so angry and hurt and betrayed that I just got my overnight bag and got in my truck and headed back to Dallas.  I cried some on the way home and also thought of how I was going to fix this.  The next week I called the bank fixed the mailing address and made a verbal promise that as soon as the payment slips came in I'd pay the delinquent amount and start making the payments.  This took all of my downpayment money and they explained to me that this would not fix my credit for years  to come.  It was actually another five years before I was able to finance a vehicle on my own.  Of course it never dawned on me to ask someone to co-sign for me but I think we can see that would have been a another disaster in itself.  

I think the biggest disappointment, other than the fact that my mother blatantly stole thousands of dollars from me, was that I hand't made it my priority to take care of my own affairs.  I learned a tremendous lesson.  Not to say I've never lived over my means in all this time but I haven't let things go so far that I couldn't reel it all back into place.  

So, to all the people potentially wanting to commit themselves to a life of "living on time", come talk to me.  I've run the gamut - but, I'm still here!

 ...Or am I just restless?

For a few months I've caught myself actually being bored.  I have things that do occupy some of my downtime:  Making pies for a local restaurant, and peddling vintage objects for the home at a local vendor mall.  An hour and a half a day for baking and then sourcing vintage products when things pop up don't really take a full day.  Auditions come in sometimes one a week and sometimes five a week but those are pretty straightforward and don't take much time to knock out.  I've not worked in two months on an acting gig so I've had a lot of free time on my hands which makes me restless and before I know it I'm bored but I haven't started climbing the walls yet.

I feel like I need to do something more structured to occupy my time but I'm unsure what to do and even that makes me a little frayed around the edges.  I don't really want to dive back into the mortgage world and working retail at my age wouldn't be a good idea for the customers.  For 7 years, aside from a year I spend managing a showroom in the design district a year ago, I've only focused on my acting career and was also able to because I had a partner that afforded me the luxury of not having to shell out rent for nine years but that's all different now.  Life changes and we move along with it.  I may just be restless because I don't have a set structure and an exact steady income and I do miss that.  Maybe being sensitive to not knowing what's next keeps me going but lately it's been slightly debilitating. 

I did read a great blurb in The NY Times this morning and here's the quote from Annette Bening; 

"To someone just starting out, I’d suggest finding a good teacher or institution where you can go and study acting as an art. Though when you’re actually doing it, it’s not an intellectual process — you want to be free to experience the moment. So much of what you learn in training is how to listen, to allow your focus to be off you and on the other actors, which is the great relief that acting can bring. If you respond intuitively, that’s gold. In the moments you feel like a phony, that’s when you go back to the basics, which is what [the Russian theater director Konstantin] Stanislavski taught: “What do I want? What do I do to get it? And what’s in my way?” The more that’s in the way, the better off you are because you need to have a hole inside of you that you’re trying to fill. Sometimes, of course, you just need a job, and if you get a gig that isn’t satisfying those higher artistic ideals, that can be OK. Work is work. If you can be selective and follow the work you love, that’s a privilege.

I regularly took time off because I had four kids, so I was stopping and starting a lot, which ended up being a good thing. Some people don’t want to have children, and they’re able to dedicate themselves in a different way. I’ve found, though, that when you have responsibilities that are outside of yourself, it makes your work better. And your desire to continue to excavate and express the inexpressible doesn’t leave you. It might wane, but then it comes back."

 

I was chosen. 

This week has been full of emotional experiences.  I made a new friend this year who is half my age and I don't know how to describe the feeling I get when I'm asked the how and why of subjects by someone who reminds me of myself at that same age.  Old?  Possibly, or maybe it's a feeling of trust and confidence.  There are many kinds of people in this world that seek someone to look up to or follow in their footsteps.  I'm by far not a perfect person but I do feel I've learned from a lot of mistakes and my sins from the past because they're what have made me the person I am today.  I feel arrogant by saying I'm someone that people look up to but I do revere the fact that I am a respectable person...I just need to work on being more kind and generous without the baggage of higher expectations that some people may have not learned to live up to yet. I supposed that's my challenge hiding in this gift of life.

I can't give the mental bandwidth for more elaboration right now because I've got to turn in an audition and, as I was discussing with my friend Becky over the past couple of days, I can't bare to hear from the casting director "we expected better".  

Happy Easter to everyone - He is risen.

 I experienced two polar opposites this week.

During my weekly class we all received critiques on our monologue selections and some had issues, still, with their selections and delivery.  One in particular was told to find another one all together and even tried to defend their choice.  I felt bad for the guy and suggested a movie and a scene to find and study as did the teacher.  After class he reached out to me and asked where to find the movie and I told him even though it's 2022 and a simple google search would return the information.  Then I saw a classic scene from Designing Women where Charlene goes off on one of her tangents and I thought - this would be another great thing for this guy to find and study!  I shared the video and explained why it was a good comedic monologue and it could be done by either sex but he replied that he was told not to do comedy as it wasn't his strong suit and also that he couldn't find the script for the movie I suggested and he'd like to avoid paying to rent if possible.  I screamed at the phone "it's $2.99 to rent - TWO NINETY NINE!!!  But, I regained my composure and replied "Small price to pay for good material".  His response of "I'll check it out for sure" then rambling on and on about how good I am and how I can play anything prompted me to tell him that it's not easy and don't think that I don't have to work hard for everything you see in class.  I'm afraid that he just doesn't get it and worse still, he never will.  

Cut to my being asked to read for a very seasoned actress for her to audition for a movie shooting in Wyoming.  My agent connected us.  We talked on the phone then we face-timed to get it done.  This actress has over 300 episodes of TV experience under her belt and didn't tell the producers to piss up a rope for not simply offering the role to her.  She had no idea how to self tape because she'd never done it.  I also coached her and she just said "oh, that's great!  Thanks!" to everything and even on my suggestions on how to deliver the three different scenes.  We did have to reconvene after she studied the lines a little more and got over the little bit of frustration of her not being comfortable taping herself but after a couple of hours on her own we taped her scenes without incident.  

Two different people, the kinda same scenario of not knowing what to really do but one knowing that she had to get it done and accepted and was receptive to an outsiders help opposed to someone who can't even get out of his own way and who also has the support system of some industry leading professionals at his disposal.  I am in awe of each of these people for their ability to handle their situations.  

I am making up my mind to stop obsessing on how to help people who won't use it and focus on making myself available for those who understand it.  But, let me tell you, it's hard.