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 me inside. 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, it was hard to feel satisfied with either side of my experience of performing in that play. Like my body was rejecting the knowledge, I was paying to learn, as a creative collaborator in training. I bristled tersely (blowing up, full of rage, once or twice) at these challenging 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. Months after the play, on my most self-loathing days, I could become conspiratorial. It felt like the people “out-to-get-me” put me in a play, as Jose, to “get” me and they got me. Confirmation of this was 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. Before being skinless, these sacrificial victims were celebrated in parades and adorned in colorful costumes resembling gods. To the Aztecs, the sacrifices were not themselves but, being costumed, were considered the actual Gods. Their hearts removed, while conscious, to keep the Sun on its axis. Ritual becoming reality. I started thinking, in my failure, that 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 version of a God. I was Jose. Not because I was that good an actor, to be clear, and not because Jose represented something like God, but because simply wearing the outfit of Jose, would have made me him, in ritual. The part of myself I was disappointed in, was with my attitude during rehearsals. By the end of the process, Jose’s death in the play refracted my experience of performing it. Jose’s simple revelation that he loves his family changes his death into a sacrifice. It is his willingness to change his perspective on his life, even if obnoxiously slight, that changes his character, and consequentially, brings on the Sun’s (Son’s) return. “THAT’S why,” I would rediscover three months later, washing dishes at one in the morning, “the Sun rises at the end of the play!”

But, that hasn’t satisfied me. Hasn’t felt like enough. Is it a revelation or a stretch? In my self-loathing way, I would be at work, but much farther away in my mind. I’d see myself different from Jose, who found everlasting peace in his ability to see his life differently. And see myself more like those factual victims, who sometimes came to the sacrifice altar as punishment. Captured 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. Like the stage was my own altar, I could see the whole thing from above or maybe from behind, my eyes looking from behind some big holes that stretched into the house of the theater. I could see me, scared, carve onto center stage, as if the stage were a jaded cliff and I was at its edge, refusing to let the sandy swells of the play’s desert grind me down. I was struggling to surrender to a story more important than my own. I could see myself pretending I was Jose, but really I knew, 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!) The horror, though, at least in memory, was that 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. Other moments from other rehearsals, from far back in high school, bubbled up to validate my shame. And Somewhere between the end of the Mariela, 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 right as I jumped 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, herself struggling with her own shitty job, it’s shitty boss, found it hard to console me. The both of us hating being broke, feeling stuck in a city with little support for our dreams. Miami’s highways add to it all, they make me feel like we’re further away than we really are. Now, I somehow felt like how I felt at the end of Mariela’s. On a bed, dying. Leaving the hospital with antihistamines, I thought, “Maybe I’m allergic to joy…”.

Anyway, I’m better now, even though I’m acting lost. Internally, I feel like I’m quitting some negative behavior patterns. Externally, I’m confused about what I want to do next. 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 more confident in my ability to find myself. Becoming more aware of the words with which I use to talk to myself. I’m trying to improve this 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. Thank you for reading this. Is “If you’re reading this, it’s not too late” a good line?

I want to continue to use this website as a form of self-promotion. But, I also want to express on here something just as important: The ups and downs of a journey I’m on towards greatness.

Rolling Ferro