Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Inside Outside


The old American Dream of having a good job that can support a family has been trampled by the designer boots my generation has charged on credit cards. The old white-picket fence family life is now called old fashioned and boring and why waste your life changing diapers when you can get on reality television or a music video with some sexy pop star? We feel compelled to be more interesting than our parents and grandparents. We don't need marriage. We say. We don't need that old-fashioned custom to tell others that we're committed to one another. She knows. He knows. Besides divorces happen all the time so it's not like people really stick with the whole, "till death do us part" bull anyway. I'd rather lead a life of cell phone photographs, job jumping and future dodging. I feel as if we were all raised to believe--not from our parents necessarily, but from other outside sources--that we must follow our dreams. That because we are all unique and so very special, we must figure out a way to share ourselves with as many strangers as possible through some artform--because the more people who know you the more important you are--and then make lots of money from it. Because we are better than "real jobs". We must chase that pretty rainbow and when we find it, we'll get our promised pot of gold.   

I think many of us miss our rainbows because we are looking for the dark crayon-colored ones we once drew as children--as if the wax crumbs will be piled on the sidewalk, a sign to look up. But now what? We are nearing thirty and we realize we are not--and will probably never be--apart of that minuscule minority who make their living as artists. I can still create for the sake of loving it. And I can go to the movies without wishing I was in the movie or at the Oscars on a plush purple chair, winking my painted eye at the camera. I can say something funny once in awhile; doesn't mean I deserve a microphone and fifteen minutes of stagetime. Why do a hobby at all if it isn't going to turn into my path, my journey to superstardom? Thank you Words--no really thank you--for that stream of thoughts from my subconscious and into sentences because then I can see--really see--how fucking absurd it all is. When I look into my soul, I know what I want. It isn't headshots, talent agents and auditions. And that doesn't mean I don't love being on stage and acting in a play or playing a song for my husband on my guitar or making my family laugh at the dinner table. It just means that I care more about walking my dog to the beach where I can admire the soft cement sky as it is poked and pierced by the budding branches of hundred year old trees. Oh how I want to escape this sharp mold of what my generation considers "successful" and kick it into the street to be run over by a line of buses. Because I'm happy and that's what matters. Not whether I appear in an episode of CSI or get cast in a Broadway play. Because that's not the life that's right for me. I'm too fragile for that shit!   

A Wise Friend

A wise friend is akin to a book of old wisdom.  A book of bone and soul and skin. A book that breathes and speaks and eats. A book with a so...