Becoming

"Change one thing." That is the back-to-basics and admittedly sound advice I was given recently by a learned buddy. Being me, while I know full well which changes need to be made and pronto, I still a) cannot quite decide what to switch up first or at all, and b) remain unconvinced that bigger and better things will happen as a result of said swap.

Why? Well, because it is bigger and better things we are going for. This is a self-absorbed blog devoted almost entirely to my angst-ridden search for myself. Which is an exercise in futility of course because I am now and always have been painfully self-aware. I know my dark corners and I know my light ones. I am always learning more. Excited to learn more. Ever-hopeful there is more. But I rarely surprise myself and not because I don't embrace change. I have a love-hate relationship with change. But I know all things must change, to something new, to something strange.

I know how to mix it up. I have done nothing but for years. Not because I am miz courageous. Not because I don't have a comfort zone. But because it doesn't stop. It never stops. Artistically I am fine with that. Life-living I am fine with that. But the minutiae, the day to day, the hand to mouth, the paycheck to paycheck--the dull business of being able to survive--these are the ties that bind, these are the forests I cannot see for the trees as I try to be the glorious-est me. And so it's obvious that to this mind-meld-mess must come the changes. But first there come the questions.

Do you think I chose to be like this? I am queen of the adapters. Plug me in to any socket and I will at least spark up a little something. I learned how to test the temperature of a room when I left the womb and it is a dubiously crippling talent. I work against it in fact because otherwise it would be too much to leave the house, I think. It comes in handy at other times. And I hope it makes me careful with people's hearts if nothing else. It definitely keeps me honest. But the problem with being sure of yourself is that you may just be the only one. And alone gets you nowhere. And being an artist, you have to be constantly balancing on a thin red line between self-love and self-hate. Otherwise you are just a good mimic.

Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? If you have the artistic tendencies, you do. It is stupifyingly lonely to be an actor, a musician, a dancer, a painter, a writer, and so on. Anyone who inhabits the workaday world out of necessity but comes alive in the realms of the imagination knows this.

If you are lucky you make friends but truly it is every man, woman, child for themselves in the end and in the beginning and an awful lot of time in between. When the dance is over, the song is sung, the last notes played, the canvas dried, and the curtain dropped all that is left is you and your art. And it is very very very hard to shake that this is how it must be if you have a dream of living your art. Fucking scary.

And yet, I have to save the world. From myself. Again. No friends, no weapons, no hope. But you know what is left?

Me.