I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word; now in the morning I sleep alone, sweep the streets that I used to own…
~ Rule the World, Coldplay
Zach I’m a gypsy, I’ve never had an apartment in my life that isn’t a sublet! All I know how to do is to point my toes and leap…
~ A Chorus Line
The one thing that’s hard about having given a really amazing performance is that you gave a really amazing performance.
That’s not as oxymoronic as it sounds.
I was explaining to Amras at dinner following my performance with the Cabaret evening that it can be difficult to come back to ‘reality’ after you’ve been forcibly ,one could argue beautifully, reminded of what it is you should be doing. What is it that your heart – no matter how crushed down by practicality – still wants to be doing. These people, they have seen almost every cast and every guest entertainer there is, to bring them to their feet takes something special….I was something special, and not out of pity, I earned it. And I remembered what it felt like to earn it, to establish that circle with an audience, to feed off of that energy so that you’re ravenous and exhausted afterwards all at the same time.
I remembered…and then the next morning, I had to get back behind my desk…and this time, this time it hurt…shrugging that day-to-day façade back on, it’s like coming back from Narnia. You don’t adjust as well as you perhaps should.
Since my performance with the Cabaret show night before last, I have had multiple guests – many of whom I only have a passing acquaintance with – pay me showers of compliments on my voice, most of which I accept with something of an awkward grace…but there’s one, there’s one that just makes me want to break and give them the real answer, because this time it hurts…
Why on earth are you behind that desk and not on the stage?
Why? You truly want to know why? Because I can’t afford it! Because I was “born too soon and I started too late”, because I’ve heard too many times that I’m the wrong height the wrong weight or the wrong vocal style, but mostly…mostly because I can’t afford it. Because the training and lessons and everything that was given to me as a child and as a young adult cost more than I could possibly have imagined at the time and there’s no way I can keep up with them. I have been wrestling with trying to accept that for years now, and it has never and will never sit right with me, but it’s the way it is right now.
Please I appreciate and am grateful for what you’re trying to say, but I so dearly wish you would find some other way to say it, because every time I hear those words or some variation thereof, the knife drives a little deeper into my heart and it gets a little harder to shrug it off and say something along the lines of que sera sera.
Dreams cost money, they cost more money than I or anyone that loves me has at the moment, you can want this more than anything else in the world, but if you don’t have the finances to be able to live while you’re going after it than it becomes as impossible as Don Quiote’s windmills.
And usually I can come back from that; I have a game plan, I have a timeline, I’m sticking to it and it’s working…
But this time…this time it’s just been really really hard to come back from Narnia…