Being Beautiful
Thursday, December 14, 2006My GA's were typing in names and came across my webpage. I said, "Don't go into that page" which may have acted like a inducement...so, Hello Cindy, Sarah, Ian...
I think I shall be random.
First, a really lovely picture of Edward Woodall. http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/gallery/v/press/christmas/george/cast/Ed+Woodall.tif.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=0 In my fantasy life I'm rich enough to be able to study acting under him. Apparently he does a lot of classes about movement that I think would be really interesting. I read the notes someone took on a class he taught today, and thought, wow, that's fascinating. I've always thought that understanding how people move, how what they do to convey things, enriches a story. Gestures in story should be gently written of course, because otherwise it looks like your character is a frenzied mad person, but still, yeah, it would be good. (Here's the link: http://website-archive.nt-online.org/youth/scripts/notespilgrimage.html ) Of course, I'd like to see him on stage, as well. He's in a lot of very progressive things that would be interesting to experience.
Last weekend I went and watched the nutcracker, because my boss invited me. I'm trying to remember if I posted on it, but I'm too lazy to look. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and it made me think a lot about why we want to act. Why do we want to go on stage, why do we want to write. Why do we want to entertain? I am reminded of the idea that it is a drive, really, one that you can't quite fight. You want to try and use the talents inside you, sometimes they demand to be used. For myself, I've always wanted to act, to sing, to play an instrument. I settled for the loudest voice, writing, because it was the one that I could do the most easily, that I felt fit me best. But still, there's a part of me that would love, dearly, to act.
One hates to talk about it because, in some ways, it seems like that dream that everyone has, and when someone says, "I want to act" or "I want to write" it is easy to roll your eyes at them, especially if they want to do more than one thing. Everyone wants to be famous, sweety, you can almost hear them saying, "Get in line." But it takes work, you see, and you have to pick and choose. Ever since I was a little girl, like all the millions of other little girls, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I thought they looks so lovely. Beautiful. Elegant. They glittered. They moved with ease and were never sloppy, and most of all, they were often the center of some very good looking man's attraction. But every little girl wants to be a ballerina, a princess, special and beautiful. Some of us get lessons and roles in local things, some of us, a very very few of us, continue that training and move on, and some of us borrow books from the school library, beg for the proper shoes for Christmas, and spend time trying to figure out how it is done. I spent hours standing against the living room wall, book in one hand, trying to learn all the ways to stand. When the text got beyond me, I gave up, figuring that something I could do would appear.
I wonder if sometimes it there is a cycle, here, that I will fall in to. My grandmother could not afford dance or piano lessons, so she bought them for my mother. I think she loved them, but she knew they weren't really for her, per se, but for the little girl my grandmother once was. She could not give me lessons, which of course, I wanted (I feel badly asking for them, because I know now that the guilt of not being able to give is often worse than the pain of not getting) which I thought of, wondering what my mother, wondering what my friend Stephen, looked like on the stage. It brought this to mind, and I thought, will I get lessons for my own daughter, whether she wants them or not, just because I could not have them, myself?
But that takes a turn away from the question, it does not answer it. Why do we all want to be beautiful? Is that my problem? That I want to be beautiful, elegant, accomplished, that I want to feel like maybe I'm interesting, special, still? Or do I have a true desire for the stage, and therefore, should consider pursuing it? Am I, at heart, still the same little girl who watched the firebird and wanted, desperately, to be a ballerina?
Those are not answerable questions, by the way. The only way I can answer them is to stand up, go find out if I can join the nearly brand new theater group, and try it. I'm scared, in a lot of ways, especially since I did pursue the theater before. You may know this, so forgive me, but I was in a [play, a main part, and I would spend, night after night, scared stiff I would fail, wishing to God I'd never done this....and then my grandmother died, and the understudy took over. But now I'm scared, not only that I am not fit for this world, but that if I pour too much of me into it, I won't be as successful as a writer as I could be. And I am a writer. I am a really, really good writer. I know that's me.
I guess it's not about knowing what i want, but knowing if i should want it?
I think I will go back to cleaning the office.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 3:15 PM
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