Life/Acting Lessons

I’ve been lost. I’m not perfect. I’m trying to figure it all out. I’m trying to be myself. Better myself. I’m hoping this post is proof that I’m growing as an artist.

Something happened during Mariela in the Desert last semester. That was my last semester. Then, I graduated and worked, shamefully using video games to distract myself in the small breaks between shifts at the auto parts store. I was hurting from some emotions that were nipping at my insides’ edges. Screens slowly became drug-like in their power to transport me. Phone, TV, etc.

The thing that was bothering me was that I felt like I had succeeded and failed with the character of Jose. On the one hand, I felt like I was trying my best by doing what I had developed a technique to do. For a character that I loved. Kinda. But on the other hand, I saw how unprofessional and toxic I could be during the creative process. When my choices and ideas didn’t feel like enough. And in a way, I could never feel satisfied with either side of my experience of performing in that play. Like my body was rejecting the knowledge I was learning as a creative collaborator in training, bristling tersely at these moments while feeling myself in desperate appreciation for having them.

I’m writing now to try to figure it out. What’s this chip on my shoulder, for real? Why am I so angry? So, upset? So alone in my feelings? There’s an old homeless junkie in me that keeps whispering bad ideas. Like he’s got it all figured out, but most of the answers I need from him are beyond my capacity (according to him), and that really “the play” was all a set-up. The people “out-to-get-me” put me in a play, as Jose, to “get” me and they got me. Months after the play, on my most self-loathing days, I could become conspiratorial. Like when I read, I think, or actually, when it was ChatGpt who told me, while wistfully reminiscing about Mariela, that part of the threshing-of-skin ritual the Aztecs took part in, had been an actual belief system. The priests took off the skin of the sacrificed and wore the skin around the city. Celebrated in parades, adorned in colorful costumes, these sacrificed victims were no longer themselves, but now considered the actual Gods, their hearts removed, while conscious, to keep the Sun on its axis. Ritual becoming reality. So, I started thinking maybe Jose had become an evil component of the play, as if the play itself were a Mexican myth come true, and in my performing him, like the flailed victims, I had become this evil God. I was Jose. Not because I was that good an actor, and not because Jose represented something like God, but because simply wearing the outfit made me Jose, and Jose’s willingness to die makes him a sacrifice for the sake of the Sun’s (Son’s) return. “THAT’S why,” I would rediscover, “the Sun rises at the end of the play!”

And in my self-loathing way, I would be at work, but much farther away in my mind. I’d see myself, unlike Jose, and more like those factual victims, who sometimes came to the sacrifice altar as punishment for having lost some battle or other, and who were probably less than willing to die for the Gods of their enemy. I kept seeing the scene where Jose would have to die and my body stiffened from stress. I could see the whole thing from above or from behind some big eye holes. I could see me, scared, carve onto center stage like I was a jaded cliff, that refused to grind down against the swells of the desert. I saw myself pretending I was Jose, but really I didn’t know if I had “it” in me. Whatever “it” is. Like I was a version of myself, peeping out to the audience from behind a mask, four times the size of my face. (Like in FNAF 2! Or Ari Aster’s Midsommar!) I had to die, for the play’s sake, but I couldn’t convince myself I really wanted to.

I was overwhelmed. I tried exercises to help breathe and cry and let go. It was really hard. I felt a lot of things. A lot of regret for moments I felt embarrassed about, a lot of shame. And Somewhere between the end of the play, graduating, and work, I thought “okay…now Juilliard.” Because that’s been my 10 year plan. But, Rebecca and I needed to move, we couldn’t afford the rent, and we both felt that now we had more time for tons of possible next steps…but none of the money for any of them. These conversations were brief compared to the amount of time I spent working and playing video games. I started getting more hours, even taking on two more jobs. I was still clutching onto Juilliard, but knowing deeper down that I had to make sense of some things before I could move forward with any plan.

Mainly, what I’m discovering with this entry is: why I wasn’t satisfied with my hard work. In the last 15 years, I always thought of myself as a slacker, a lazy person who needed to learn some discipline to become someone. To at least do something with my life. But in the last two years, I proved I could work hard, harder than I had ever worked before. So, why was I still so sensitive to criticism/feedback, so rigid in my “open-mindedness” during rehearsals, and so hard on myself, that I could lose my sense of self worth as soon as I got on stage?

Probably trauma, is the short answer. I’ve started reading, How to Be the Love You Seek, Let That Shit Go, You’re Perfect Partner won’t be Perfect! as my starting books. By all means, write to me about other greats I should read. I feel ready to break the cycle of all this. More ready than before. About a month ago, before Thanksgiving, because of this vaguely developed need to work till exhaustion, I had started to feel more aggravated. And so quit one job, winding down in hours at the other, when I got into an argument with my boss. Someone I’d only known for 3 months. Well, things didn’t go my way and I was kind of snappy, maybe even belligerent, not with threats just in attitude. I quit, I was close to losing my shit. I was so mad, the “people-out-to-get-me” got me again! Then, things intensified. The following week, I had some panic attacks that swung me into 2 different emergency rooms. How had I done it again? Tortured myself to the point of self-expulsion? My poor girlfriend, Rebecca struggling with her own shitty job, it’s shitty boss, the both of us hating being broke, feeling stuck in a city with little support for our specifically conceived dreams. Miami’s highways add to it all, they make me feel like we’re further away than we really are. Just like that, it was like how I was at the end of Mariela’s. Internally Quit. Ashamed and confused.

Anyway, I’m better now, even though I still dont have all the answers. One of the first things I did while panicking, was go to the new Barnes and Noble in Kendall, (Barnes if you’re as cool as me and Bex) to read about anxiety. It’s been two weeks now and I’ve been reading every day. I’m feeling better now, more confident in my ability to find myself. Becoming more aware of the words with which I use to talk to myself. I want to learn how I can improve the relationship I have with myself, for the sake of the person I want to be one day. A person worthy of good work and a life embodied by love.