This Time Around

As I was saying.... or, haven't said for two years and ten months now. I'm not exactly sure how to pick up the thread here and yet I am compelled to continue this documentation of my move from Denver to Los Angeles - now in its six year.

The subject of my last post came swiftly to an end after I wrote about it.  Maybe not so swiftly.  After two years of on-again-off-again coupledom and a sharp, painful and unsuccessful final stab at making it work,  Doug and I are no longer together.  It is a death and I am still in mourning.  Lessons for this lifetime seem to be less about accepting love and more about learning to respect it for the intoxicating, fickle bully that it is.  I'm not good at letting go, but I've come to see that for me romantic love is dangerous and marbled with the fat of delusion.  A deep, beguiling distraction that abandons me at the same dusty, isolated bus stop once it's had its terrible way.  Letting go is essential to my survival.  Learn I must.

As I meditate on a future alone, I am a lot less frightening than I was before.  In fact, it seems the safest, most peaceful, productive and perhaps happiest outcome of all.  If I was certain that I could be truly happy alone, I would gladly let love move right past me and start living.  But I am certain of nothing.  I am in my 40s.

Aging in Los Angeles is fascinating.  My current day job is at a plastic surgeon's office and I see and feel first hand the desire to deny the passing of time.  Though I have been reluctant to engage in the deeper procedures for undoing time and experience (no knives or needles just yet), I am as guilty as anyone of indulging the imagination of my vanity - of staring deeply into the surface of my face and making countless mental corrections.  Of course, I feel justified in my vanity.  I'm am attempting, at a very late hour in the day, to convince people to look at me and listen to me - to believe that I should be looked at and listened to.  That's what you do as an actor; convince.  Content is up to the writer and context is up to the producer and/or director.  Performers, particularly actors looking for camera work in Los Angeles, have to justify their use by being beautiful or pleasing or charismatic or hypnotic or funny or entertaining or in some cases just young.  You have to say with your face, body and voice that you are deserving of the attention of many eyes, ears, minds and hearts.  That gets harder to do the older you become.  I realize that at this point and at this age I may not be able to do it without some help from a doctor or nurse.  Even if it just means I can walk into an audition with more confidence.  Confidence is everything in the land of tinsel.

If I were not interested in making a living as an actor it might be easier.  First of all, I most likely would not be living in Los Angeles, where its completely normal to distort your appearance to gain confidence and win approval.  And though I might not be happy with a sagging chin, multiplying wrinkles and loosening skin, I don't see myself getting poked or cut in order to change the situation of my face if it didn't affect my job opportunities.  New clothes, good haircuts, skin creams? Yes to them all, but that's where I would stop.  But, since I'm still here and suddenly deciding to try again as an actor I'm struggling with the question of whether or not to nip and tuck.  I want to look like myself and I do worry that freezing, zapping and cutting my face will force a new and unnatural look and I would much rather look old than look like a living, smooth skinned mummy.  However, my proximity to beauty services does allow me the type of insight one might need for getting the best kind of "work" done.  Would it feel like cheating or just like wearing contacts instead of glasses?  I don't yet know.  I'm only in my 40s.

Aging and love; two lessons that only seem harder in a town like this.  Maybe I'm preparing myself for something even bigger.  Ego boot camp.  Choosing the worst place to feel old and insecure in order to fortify myself for some higher vista with a wider view.  Or maybe I'm just a masochist like so many who come to Los Angles - trying to find the point at which I can simply let go.