Dance

“Eat Yer Heart Out” 48x60 by Andrew Panzarella (Hollywood)

Rain pours down. Five ripe red guava hang just past the window screen. I think of creation. I think of cardinals coming before I get to those fruit. My greed comes from the seeds, comes from my desire to suck and spit and then start these, to see them become plants, to see their fleshy stems turn woody, to know I am a part of this.

The rain will teach if you listen, the rhythm, the way waves of heat blow through the window, the way this creation is different from music, from any other distraction that does not glisten. 

In Mid City lives a man I call Hollywood, a man who sat with me for an hour and discussed his craft. He told me how deep inside we get to go when trying to embody a character, that it is not the lines that draw the audience in so much as the emotions. The emotions come from the actor accessing and owning his own life experience.

Hollywood paints also. Six foot by three foot canvases. Big bright faces with Hollywood kind of themes, with the glitter of that life, with bright colors. With glamor perhaps. These faces, they look back at me while we discuss doubt and shame, while we as two men talk about crying, talk about what might exist inside, talk about the way a simple song and dance can turn into a burst of tears. Not for fear so much as release, so much as for letting go of what everybody else might think.

Throughout the day I have considered whether my attempt in these auditions is a distraction from the business I build, from what it takes to offer what I have created to the public. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a way to get out of the sun. The same way that lately I hope for the rain because I know this will keep me inside.

Sometimes I need silence and motionless contemplation. 

I wonder about running from doubt and shame. I wonder about sitting with it. I wonder about taking the time to listen to the rain and ask what it is inside that says I’m not enough. I wonder about the times it seems as if this voice turns off and the way of the heart is one of creation.

I’ve taken to reading Thomas Merton on the toilet lately. I opened randomly to this page today and cannot help but think that something more was at work, for the entry was written exactly sixty-four years ago to the date. Merton said, “I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into my being. But not by my plans and my agitation.” 

We spoke of confidence this morning. Hollywood showed me a part in a big series that he worked many years to get. He spoke about how some only saw the results. Not the work it took to get there. I filmed for the role of a dog walker in a commercial. 

I might need to borrow Merton’s ideas, to know that for me to exist and walk through this world with a sense of purpose that it cannot be my confidence. Achievement can be fleeting. Failure is subjective. When I continue no matter what that might be called courage.

The rain has stopped now. A cool breeze hits me. Time to pick those strawberry guava. Time to check the other plants. Time to swim and become the water.