"I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal." --Groucho Marx


An undercover talent agent (claiming to be with one of the big three agencies) on Twitter dispensed some advice last night about how a day gig is as important as any amount of training. He/she said that working actors are not just those with full time creative jobs but those with a good side gig that helps them survive while they work toward their goals. It was refreshing to read that because I've spent my entire life feeling that I'm failing if I am not able to support myself purely with my creative work. It came at the perfect time too. I'm resenting my job at the moment for various reasons, the most important being it sucks up more of my time and attention than I feel is appropriate for a circumstance that isn't furthering my dream.

Money is never an authentic creative block.*

I realized I have been very hard on myself this year. Granted, it's a life long habit of mine to expect nothing but perfection in all things. But during these past 12 months, I have been down right cruel to myself on a variety of topics. I think it's time to give myself some peace. The rest of this year will be dedicated to kindness and understanding. I have no goals beyond that. It'll be a difficult task.

I'd like to love my reality again.






*Quote from The Artist's Way

"The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment." -- Henry Miller

"One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing." -- Morris L. West

"Many people think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your ONLY hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a person can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless." -- Henry Ford


It is ridiculously cold in Los Angeles. Once the sun sets, it is down right arctic. __wolverine__ had to break out one of his east coast sweaters so I had something warm to wear tonight. It's supposed to be in the twenties tomorrow night, which is mind boggling to me. I plan to be indoors to avoid that.

The last two days have been like meditations. Life has moved at a pace slow enough for each moment to have an impact yet fast enough not to allow me to linger on any one thing. As is the way of the world, light and dark have come clashing over the same hours to create that exquisite agony. I'm starting to understand the benefit of not allowing your ego to enter into your world. It's so much less complicated and these crucible moments are easier to weather because they simply are what they are without any autobiographical garbage adding subtext that wasn't meant to be there.

I found out from Onika that the second film I did this summer (Monika's Day) should be in rough cut by Thanksgiving. I've seen one of the scenes and it's hilarious. I can't wait to see the complete work. I think half the Tiki room is in it. And we are a talented bunch of people. It should be a fun movie with a distinctly Los Angeles stamp on it.

"Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best."
-- Eknath Easwaran

"Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts." -- Elbert Hubbard


I am in a very delicate place.

I'm nearing a kind of exhaustion that sends people to the hospital. I crave a vacation or a couple of days of decadent luxury. Both cost time and money, neither of which I have enough of to make these things possible. Given the tremendous amount of work I do, I should be capable of treating myself. That's part of the problem, though. Things are terribly out of balance.

It came to a point this weekend where I was convinced that I was about to drop dead in my tracks. I felt like a horse being driven across the plains by a relentless rider with an urgent mission. Just the simple act of drawing in air to my lungs felt laborious and my entire body vibrated with a tiny tremble imperceptible to the naked eye. It thundered through my body like an earthquake. I could not vanquish it in way. It's a warning sign. And I am heeding it.

I need to find a way to not work quite so hard while reaping greater rewards. I also need to feed my creative desires more consistently. Writing hasn't been cutting it. Writing, for me, is as natural as breathing. It's something I do because it's necessary to my core being. It doesn't give me pleasure or a sense of satisfaction in the way that performing arts do.

I could use a little miracle or a fairy godmother right about now.

As feared, I spent the last week of October sick. I don't remember much of it. I valiantly marched through what I had committed to doing. And I slept quite a bit.

Neither __wolverine__ nor I ever captured that Halloween feeling. I made pumpkin soup and some game hens. It was probably the weakest 'celebration' we've ever had. I shut down any attempts at petulance because trying to get healthy was a worthy goal even if it meant sacrificing our favorite night of the year.

Of course, today is the first day in weeks that I've felt even vaguely human. I had a twisted notion it would turn out this way too. I'll take it. I have had some epic Halloween nights in my past and there will be others.

I realized, during all the hours I had in bed to rest, that the chaos of this past year was partially within my ability to tone down. Everything I've wanted in the past 12 months, I've made happen. The trick is wanting worthy things. I've wanted some things that turned out to be too small to nurture or grow me forward. Now I'm stuck with some circumstances that will be messy to exit. But I wanted some very big, difficult to attain things. And I flourished in those times.

It all comes down to the challenge of maintaining focus. As humans we are disturbed from our paths by financial issues, other humans with their drama, daily rotating personal demons and so forth. Learning to stay on an intended path leading to the places we want to be while also dealing with the minutia that comes at us is a skill to be desired, honed and mastered.

I just need a cure for the tedium or a way to survive those swaths of time without complicating my life more than necessary.

"The successful man is the average man, focused."

-- Source Unknown

Things are moving a million miles an hour.  And yet, not enough is changing.  I feel like I am one of those waifs during the Great Depression looking into windows at the people who are living as if they are untouchable by the shifts of fortune and economic downturns.

I feel disconnected.

I feel like a ghost.

I'm busy. It's just not the right kind of activity.  Not enough of the flavor I prefer. 

My bold changes at the start of this year were successful but they were not revolutionary enough.  I sold myself short when I should have aimed higher.

Time to aim higher.

 "Recognize that life is what you get when you'’re born ... living is what you do with it."

-- Jim Allen

 

 

I went to Lucent Dossier's Ravenous Rouge tonight at the El Rey Theatre.  I haunted a dark corner and simply soaked it all in.  I'd have preferred a little perch or a seat but those were in shortage even though I arrived a mere fifteen minutes after the doors opened.  So I haunted, on foot, wordless and with a sense of private joy that was sometimes tinged with a little sadness.  

"I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike."

-- Emile Henry Gauvreau

"You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood -- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life."

-- Jessamyn West

I'm still waging the battle to balance the 'job' with an actual life.  Every time I have it tamed, someone quits and I am left picking up the slack, which steals from my creative time.  It keeps happening.  I won't put up with it any longer.  I want what I want and I know full well I can have it.

Monika's Day wrapped a week or so ago.  Now both the films I did this year are being edited.  

Speaking of Onika, she'll be on Dexter tomorrow as one of the paramedics that pulls him out of  his car accident.  I'm ridiculously excited for her.

"The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other."

-- David Riesman

Liberation.

I woke up and instantly felt it all around me.  While I still have a packed schedule, it isn't about building someone else's dream in order to draw a pay check.  This sense of freedom has never been this powerful a sensation in the context of days off, which strikes me as dangerous.  This is how it feels the day after I've quit a 'job' to embark on the difficult task of surviving as an autonomous creative.  I wonder what that means?

Fall has arrived and with it my own year long transformation.  The shift is probably subtle to everyone else but very noticeable to me, just like a Southern California season.  You have to look for the nuances and details.  It was a lot of work but it makes my life far more serene.  

Today is the birthday of my girlfriend rochellestarr .  The plan is to hit a bar tonight and do something again this weekend with our men involved.  Either way it is trouble.  The question is... will it be trouble for Hollywood or for the two of us?

"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

-- Helen Keller

I almost did it.  I nearly woke myself up this morning and crawled out of bed for the first time in months so that I could get somethings done before having to dash out to LA Live.  But one day off after a grueling and physically exhausting week was not enough recovery.  I may look like I'm young to most of the world but I don't have the stamina of a twenty year old.  In all fairness, though, I think even a twenty year old would have been bested by what I lived through too.

The highlight of my weekend was the trip home Saturday night.  Three of us were on the Metro talking as we went home from the Tiki room.  It was the best twenty minutes I've had in a while and I know it was because I was sitting there with other human beings as we connected.  Exchanging thoughts and wit with other creatives is nothing short of heaven to me, particularly since I deal with so many idiots bearing stunted brains and annoying delusions of entitlement.  It reminded me that people can be interesting, clever and engaging.  I'd started to forget that it was possible.

The only good thing about all of this mess that is my daily life is that I've steadily lost weight.  Yesterday, I put on a pair of jeans that I have only recently fit into and saw that they were starting to become a little loose.  Instead of my flesh spill out over the edges, the jeans were resting on my hips.  I derive a great deal more pleasure from that than I do from eating the food that made me fat to begin with.  I'll admit it.  I'm a little superficial when it comes to my body.  I like to look good and be in shape.  It's an aphrodisiac for me.

It's time to get back on top of all the projects I had to set aside last week. I sacrificed to survive. Now it's time to sacrifice for my art. I'm taking it all back.

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

-- Henri Bergson

I have no idea when my schedule is going to lighten up.  I wish I could say I was having the time of my life but I'm not.  I'm in a sort of hell and trying to decide if it's worth the price.  Is there a victory of any sort in what I am doing other than seeing to basic survival?

I don't want to do anything drastic until we get past the one year anniversary of the fateful week last October that destroyed so many of us.  I have a feeling there will be another bad bump in the road based on what I am reading and hearing from people who are savvy at making money in ridiculous amounts.  I hope they are wrong.

I am tired of living while I hold my breath.  This isn't how I thought this point in my life would be.  And as romantic as it is to live out a noir fairy tale, stark reality is rarely as sexy as fiction.

"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

-- Don Marquis

It's time for the dreaded headshot renewal. I need new ones.  It's been a few years.  Five to be exact.

I keep putting off the whole process.  It's so hard to find a photographer who isn't after a quick payday and understands chemistry as well as an aesthetic match up.  I'm an eclectic artist so I like unusual headshots.

I loathe this process.

I can't keep putting it off.

It's Emmy Sunday and I could care less.

Well, that's not entirely true. I crave epic glamour like an addict looking for a fix. I spend my nights most weeks facilitating fantastical evenings of stunning elegance for other people. It eventually gets to me and I become feverish with the need to be on the receiving end of that equation. This past week was particularly difficult for me as it culminated in a lush private event that was so gorgeous it made my eyelashes hurt. So, watching the Emmy red carpet being built up at LA Live was a taunting slap in the face that drove me to not want to be anywhere near it all.

Instead, I sit quietly rocking in the darkness muttering about sequins, rhinestones and thousand dollar heels.

I have to do something to defuse this deep need. I have another brutal week ahead of me with more challenge and hard work in it than I have seen this year.  I also have fewer days in between to recharge and tend to my own projects.

"The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want."

-- Ben Stein

"You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage -- pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically -- to say 'no' to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside."

-- Stephen Covey

 

Mondays have become a solitary day of collecting myself without the influence of others.  I barely said much of anything aloud as I hid behind a pair of rhinestoned black sunglasses and slithered my way around the Arts District.  I completed my errands while also indulging my deprave need to find the perfect recipe for making bloody red soap bubbles to blow into the Fall wind.

My misanthropy is raging. I'm probably not going to be particularly social this Fall.  I'm sick of being disappointed.  I'd rather spend my energy where it reaps rewards.  My creativity is in prime shape and demands that I make use of it.

"What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart."

-- Marshall B. Rosenberg

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another."

-- Thomas Merton

 

I didn't want to get out of bed today.  It's been a blah week with nothing remotely interesting going on in it and I have another two days of that to deal with before it is over.  Boredom and I do not have a good relationship.  I have spent most of my adult life living out a series of adventures so when things get like this for more than two days I become completely stir crazy.  It can be a bit dangerous.

Possum Walk finishes principle photography this weekend.  Even though I have been wrapped for a month or more, the news hit me like a ton of bricks.  There is a finality to knowing a project I've been part of for so long is winding down.  It's bittersweet.  It echoes the strange emptiness I've been experiencing this week, making it even worse.  For a short time, I was part of a greater whole... a creative, perverted collective of souls bent toward a singular purpose.  It felt good.  And now it's gone again.  

Once more, I am sitting here in that place where I want to be part of some collaborative crowd of deliciously twisted and free spirited artists who enjoy one another's company as well as their individual contributions.  Unfortunately, all signs from the universe are pointing toward solo accomplishment in my future.  Either I do it alone or I don't get to be creative.

"Time is not a line, but a series of now points."

-- Taisen Deshimaru

I've been meditating on how tired and numb I feel.  It's not really numb so much as the lack of any sensation.  I've spent my whole life having intense emotions, passions and incredible experiences. I guess when you live that fast, fiery and hard its bound to have a cost.  In my case, it's total exhaustion.  My nerves are fried.  My emotions are fried.  My sense of thrill is fried.

I know what I need but I'm not finding it.  I need a jump start.  And I want it from a very specific type of energy.  There doesn't seem to be much of it out there.  I guess timing might have something to do with that.  We live in times where depression is common if not predominant among human emotions.  There is a lot of pain out there and not very much love.

It's another case of poor timing that I discovered love as a way of life just when we'd be short on it as a society.  Or, perhaps, it's always been like this and I'm only noticing because I am no longer looking for the constant battles to wage against the evil in human souls.

How does one rebuild stamina for life in the fast lane?

"Now in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it -- not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it."

-- John Ruskin

I'm at a crossroads right now.  I have several opportunities to do things but they all pull in different directions.  I can write (which I'll do in some form regardless).  I can do live shows (which I will do to a certain extent since this is private party season).  I can continue to plug away at auditions. Or I can focus on promoting the projects I've been involved with this year.

I can't do it all.  It will muddy the waters and create the confusion I have whined about for the past few years wherein people are confused about what it is I do.  It won't all converge to make a cohesive picture, either.

I feel like I need a spiritual, creative retreat where I have the freedom to just commune with the universe, create with abandon and find my way without having to worry about survival.  I need a Burning Man without the drugs, dirt or hefty entry fee.
 

"We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs."

-- Bertrand Russell

I woke up one morning last week to no internet.  It turned out to be the modem, which had cease to function over night.  As such, we went without the internet until this evening after an annoyingly drawn out saga with AT&T tech support.  It's working but it's very slow.

I have restored my website and have begun to catch up on the hundreds of emails I've received this past week.  I am dreadfully behind on various projects since most of my communicating was going down digitally.

Of course, it did spare you from my insane ramblings...

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

-- Copernicus

It was a good day.  

Granted, I had preemptively inform Monday it would be a good day even if I had to beat it to a bloody pulp.  Getting back on track wasn't a suggestion - it was a demand. And for my efforts I had a finger directly on the pulse of the source all day long.  The serendipity was plentiful.  It was exactly how I prefer to spend my time - peaceful and creative.

In what amounts to a decadent treat for this vixen, I received a sneak peak at some Possum Walk stuff.  I was blown away to the point of being speechless.  The sheer level of talent and passion behind that movie is unique and special.  It continues to surprise me.  It's going to be fun watching all of this go public leading up to the premiere.

As the Summer literally melts into Fall I am looking forward to my favorite part of the year.  The harvest to be yielded after half a year of blood, sweat and tears will be bountiful.

"Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness."

-- Lao-tzu

It may be August but plans for Halloween are in full swing across Los Angeles.  Auditions are starting and productions are gearing up.  It's going to be an unusually huge year for Halloween in Los Angeles.  I'd dare say few other cities will be able to compete with all the festivities.

Normally, I abhor starting a holiday off months before it's even in season but this year my zeal for Halloween is off the charts.  As I write this I have fired up some spicy Fall candles and put the final touches on some proposals for various events that asked for a bid from me.  I'm very proud of the creative wave of ideas I put forth.  I'd like to do them all but only one or two of these will be possible this year unless someone with a mega budget decides to come along.

I hope to have my commitments resolved by the end of this week so I can get going with rehearsals.

"Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!"

-- Thomas F. Healey

The push to find fun in every week has finally begun.  I have had some of that elusive fun.  And, in turn, my soul is lighter.  I'm creative.  I'm a little less numb, weighty and grey.  This was a wise objective to sacrifice for and I encourage all of you out there who are in a rut to do it as well.  Before you talk yourself out of it and say it's selfish or you have obligations, remember that your relationship with yourself has value.

My desire to birth things into the world is returning with a healthy hum.  I even dream about it.  I had this crazy dream that I wanted to do a sexed up Rat Pack tribute in some old store space on Hollywood Blvd with a bunch of actors from various mob flicks.  I remember being scared.  I remember jumping right in head first and getting it done.  Even my dream self is daring to fly again.

I am heavily craving creative collaboration.

Which brings me to what happens when I start to open back up to the world.  I start noticing how unreliable the people are around me in Los Angeles.  I love this town but so many of the people in it truly suck.  After experiencing a return to genuine human exchange in Texas, a situation that still lives on as those lovely people weekly communicate with me, I'm unwilling to settle for what I've put up with all this time.  I want people who will give me roses now and remind me regularly why we connect.  I want to be able to do the same in return and not be treated like some sort of freak for that deep sense of love.

It exists.  And I will have it.