Thursday 16 November
A Long Bitchy Entry.
It's going to be one of those days today. I can always tell when I sit down in front of my computer, open FrontPage and realize that I can't think of a thing to write about. I want to start writing but my fingers won't budge. And it's not because I'm at a loss of things to talk about. No, no, quite on the contrary. It's because my head is too cluttered with all the shit floating around in it and I can't grab a hold of any one thought to slap down in words. Thank God I only have one class today.
Okay, I really hate to go here, but it's the first thing I could pin down from the whirlwind that is my brain this Thursday morning. Before I continue, I want you to take a deep breath, hold it, let it out on a nice, sympathetic, "awwwwwww" and then let it go. What I'm about to discuss is probably going to make me sound like a bit of a pathetic loser but I assure you that I don't take well to pity so I'd advise you to get it out of your systems now. Thank you.
The other day, I mentioned a strange sensation coming over me that I unbelievably recognized as me missing high school. I have to say I was noticeably bugged out by the notion that I, Mr. Get Me The Fuck Out of Here himself, would ever, in a zillion years, feel that way, let alone admit it. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about this phenomenon and its cause. At first, I thought it might have something to do with my little gay theory; about how I may have pushed myself into acceptance too quickly while I was in high school and how I'm now feeling the effects and wanting to backtrack a bit. Maybe that's part of it but I still felt that it went deeper than that.
I got an e-mail from Kym today and as I was writing her back, it all came pouring out.
It's not high school itself that I miss. It's the surrounding circumstances of my life during high school that I miss.
I've stood by this my entire life since the age of 15: high school sucked. It did. I hated 80% of my teachers, gym class made my life a miserable pit of firey hell, the majority of my graduating class could go suck and choke on a nut for all I cared. I felt stunted by their retarded rules and trapped by the juvenile mentality of just about everyone surrounding me. After a weekend of professional theatre and dinner at hip restaurants in the city with Melissa and our new circle of New Yorker friends, I felt like I was returning to romper room every Monday morning. I couldn't wait to get to college. It was going to be so much better than the silly crap I had to put myself through for six hours a day. I would get to study what I really wanted to and not have to deal with the high school way of thinking anymore. It would be as close to pure independence that I'd ever gotten and being a textbook Capricorn, that was pure music to my ears.
And to a degree, I was right. College itself, as opposed to high school itself, is an insanely huge improvement. Given the choice, I would never want to deal with high school again. My own apartment, no one to answer to outside of class, the train to New York a few blocks away... almost complete freedom to come and go as I absolutely please. I only have one class that doesn't directly relate to theatre and acting (and I'm probably going to drop it and retake it over the summer anyway). Paradise, no?
Well not exactly.
I realized that what I've been missing about high school doesn't have to do with high school itself at all. There are two major factors that are causing me to feel this way - at least that I've been able to pin down.
While I've been doing what I feel as extremely well thus far in my acting classes and such, I'm realizing more and more what tremendous pressure I am and have been under since the day I got here. I hardly took notice before at just how competitive it is here. Not just in the race for leading roles but in the way every single person here is scrutinized under a microscope by just about every student, teacher and faculty member. One slip up and you're given a scarlet letter until you can prove yourself otherwise. Everyone has seemed to have forgotten that we're all here to learn and ultimately get better at all this shit. We were all accepted out of an enormous applicant pool because we've all got what it takes. No one is going to be perfect when they graduate and definitely not while we're still in the midst of our training but most of the people here refuse to acknowledge that fact. Instead, they're ready to pick apart your performance until there's nothing left to show for it. Of course, there is definitely a feeling of support in some ways but the competitive air has been getting thicker and thicker as the year goes on.
It was different two years ago, before I got to MGSA. It wasn't about having perfect technique or being as flawless as humanly possible. You weren't examined with a magnifying glass and criticized for every tiny mistake you may have made. It was about the pure joy you felt for being on stage and the rush you got from nailing your song or giving your scene all you had. It was about having a ball with the people there with you and putting on the best show you possibly could for an audience who was there to enjoy themselves, not critique. It all came down to fun. The success of the show was measured by how much fun we all had putting it together.
But when all the emphasis is put on being perfect, all the fun gets squeezed out of it. You're no longer there for the pleasure of performing or for your love of theatre, you're there to impress a bunch of stiff teachers and students who've lost a good portion of their sense of joy. Obviously, I know that in order to become a professional at this, you can't base your training in fun. Otherwise we'd end up with movies and plays that look like your sophomore year production of "Oklahoma!" Ugh, what a nightmarish thought. But I think it's vital to keep that underneath all the technique you learn and not put 100% of your focus on whether or not your alignment is correct.
Look, this is how it is in the real world and I have a good grasp on that fact. But I think that while I still can, I may pass on another summer at Broadway Theatre Project or at a summer stock theatre and simply do a show at one of my old community theatres. I think it would be good for me.
I mean, you know, just for the fun of it.
The other thing - and this is the real pathetic one - is that other than my two roommates, I really don't feel like I've connected with anyone here on the same level that I was with my friends from home. Before coming to college, so many people had warned me that "your friendships from home will diminish while you start to make lasting ones in school." Maybe that was true for them, but for me it's a crock of shit. Aside from Joey and Dierdre, I don't feel like I have anyone here who'd I'd really call my friend. I mean, I like everyone well enough and we have a good time when we all get together but there's nobody here that even compares to Kym, Marissa, Tams, Brooke... not even close. When I'm one on one with my friends here, there's always a slight awkwardness factor for some reason or another. I don't feel comfortable with them the way I did with my gang from home. My phone never rings unless it's school related or if there's an actor party going on. I thought it may have to do with the fact that we all have our own apartments now and live with a handful of friends as it is but it was pretty much the same story last year when we all lived in dorms with roommates we hated like the plague.
With Kym, we used to be able to go into Philly and have a perfectly good time just talking about everything and everyone over Chai Lattes and then busting out our angst ridden notebooks full of poetry, prose and short storied inspired by our need to rebel against the triteness of our peers by being our artistic little selves. One of our favorite nights out together was a chilly Friday night Senior year, writing on a bench in Rittenhouse Square Park (in notebooks, not on the bench itself...) and taking black and white photos of each other on and around all the statues and sculptures about the square. I'll have to get my hands on the one of me kissing the frog statue to see if he'd turn into my long awaited prince. Add that baby to the gallery. But we used to do things like that all the time. Interesting, creative little ventures every weekend to break from the normality of suburbia. The thought of merely sitting at a diner after a blockbuster sellout of a movie just didn't do it for us. And even when we did take the path most taken, we found ways - without even realizing it - to make it interesting. Sure, our crazy little group has had our share of nights at the Philly Diner - the default hangout for basically everyone at our high school - but I would bet money that no one ever experienced an evening there the way we did. When I call us "crazy" I do mean it. We're nuts. But in the absolute most fabulous way imaginable.
That's what I miss so badly. I haven't had a single night like ours used to be since we all left for school last year. Sure, I have made a number of friends here and we have a good time together. But there's a big difference between friends and family, which is what I consider the gang from home to be.
Ugh, here I am getting all corny and choked up and shit. What can I say, I'm a homesick sentimental bastard who's been bored for five months.
I've got to get the hell off this computer today.
Forum:
Do you have friends you consider family?