When I was young — fourth grade is my best estimation — we took a field trip to a nature preserve of some kind. I don’t remember the bus ride, but I do remember that when I got there, it seemed to me we must have thousands of miles from anywhere. I thought I would be afraid, but instead I felt free. I was a latch-key kid, even then; I had grown accustomed to relying on myself. Granted, there were chaperones everywhere, but it felt a grand adventure.

Ostensibly, we were there to learn about nature and grasslands and whatever else you teach a fourth grader but the part of the trip that stands out in my mind was the little game they had us play. If you don’t know me well, it may surprise you that I was an insufferable nerd right up until around my freshman year in high school. Straight A’s, loner reading in the corner, video games in the summer, doing math for fun, acne and too much body fat… the whole shot. I learned to read when I was three because I wanted to be smart more than anything. Not too much has changed, but I have learned to be social, at least.

So, when the tour guide suggested a game where each student was going on a little treasure hunt, my ears perked up. We were given a map and a compass and told we were going to be “orienteering” to find our way to each step to the treasure. Needless to say, I was first to the treasure by about ten minutes, already looking for another challenge.

And I felt good about myself. I felt like I had triumphed.

No doubt much of this is washed in nostalgia and precocious childhood perspective, but I can’t say when I have since felt so strongly that the world was my oyster. That I had possibilities everywhere but driving direction.

Later in my life, when I was an apathetic teenager, my father would try to teach me how to orienteer in the wilderness without compass or map, but I paid little attention. One lesson did stick, though. Find your direction, orient on the sun and then head that direction without swerving. I managed well enough to find the truck when deer hunting.

I wonder here aloud (a-typed?) whether that sort of point-and-go attitude could get one through life. Worked for Teddy Roosevelt, right?

I was not cast in Noises Off! and now I’m not really sure what to do with myself. I had plans for very specific workshops this year, but I am second guessing in the afterglow of an unsuccessful audition. Not being cast was disappointing, of course, and there are other things where I might be a shoo-in. I think instead I will focus on personal growth outside of a show. Fitness, education, and simple meditation.

But I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow. What can I say? For me, the horizon is a moving target.

This article I don’t care much about, and I think Huffington Post can be overboard on the liberal tip, but this is a solid point.

I've always been amused at the idea that a religious person can say that an atheist will burn in hell as a result of their beliefs, and that is not considered offensive; but if an atheist says that believing in God makes no sense, that is considered deeply offensive. One person is charging the other with faulty logic; the other is charging them with a base immorality that warrants eternal torture. How is the former even vaguely more insulting than the latter?

via Cenk Uygur: The Silent Minority.

I recently updated the look of this blog to be sort of a personal motivation experience when I visit it. After all, I’m not really posting any links that you could not find on digg or metafilter or oneplusinifinity or bblinks or any other more timely and robust aggregator. Nor am I some sort of humorist who has side-splitting anecdotes told in a rip-snorting manner (at least, not typically). This is an online journal more than anything: an affirmation, a daily reminder, a space to vent, and so forth. Many things I have written recently have been in the private vault, so my “blogging” must seem sporadic at best, purposeless at worst.

That said, I will endeavour to make it more than a private repository with a — I think — pretty face. Once a week, at least, I will post something public that is not simply a link (see my coined “delecterious” at left). Also, I intend on adding a comment system to the links over there, so that we can all have discussion about the little tidbits I have proliferated within a context becoming.

Moving on.

Last night, I auditioned at Sunset Playhouse for their upcoming production of Noises Off! This was by far the most competition I have ever had at an audition. That is to say, there were probably twenty men at the first night of auditions hoping for the the five male roles. But also to say that a higher percentage of them were skilled than in my past auditions. I felt incredibly nervous, but a touch relieved as well. While I think it may still be a small step toward professional work, it is definitely in that direction. Sunset is probably community theater only by definition; they require professional quality in their performers.

Obviously, the pants-kicking my friends have been delivering is motivating me to challenge myself, but I do wonder what my limits are. When I finished Jake’s Women, I received glowing praise for my performance, which I took to heart. I came away from that production feeling like I had the chops to go pro in Milwaukee, possibly to have a meteoric rise. Confidence bubbled over. Now, reality in the form of self-doubt seeps back in, and I can’t help wondering if that was simply the stars aligning. Do I have talent or is it something more ephemeral and beyond my control? Something I channeled a few times which will flee from me should I try to put the yoke on once more.

When I get in this mood, I try to remember that everyone feels this, particularly actors. The definition of courage is the overcoming of fear and doubt to do what seems beyond one’s ability. In a context lacking valor or glory, continuing to pursue a dream is perhaps the most intrepid interpretation. Everyone has doubts, right?

They must, I suppose. But I have seen people, and maybe you have too, who seem to lack that. I envy them and sometimes rail against them. I spit words like “entitled” and “princess” and “asshole” at people who lack compunction when they assert their rights.

Often, it is deserved. Occasionally, in their confidence, they trample over the rights of others with nary a backward glance. But sometimes it is jealousy on my part. I wish that my brain did not tend toward self-sacrifice. I wish that I could be assertive without being aggressive, because I feel guilty over the slightest transgressions. And guilt is heavy. It breaks the back.

I digress here, so to come back around to my point a bit, at the auditions I was struck by something. Only a select few of the actors were going to get a role in that show. Obviously, that created Musical Chairs anxiety. That tension led us all to chat while we waited to audition. Many of us were self-deprecating, some falsely, some not. We consoled and encouraged one another, some falsely, some not. I myself walked the lying line as I told people their best qualities and avoided further quantification.

My epiphany came around the time I had relaxed enough to chat up my scene partner before I went in to read a second time. I genuinely liked him. I breached etiquette a bit, asking him questions about his preferred role and how he was going to read. But if he were to get even my preferred role and not me, I would hold no ill will. Hell, I don’t think he’s even any better or worse than I am for any role. There are some people who I would not consider for certain roles were I the director, to be sure, but therein lies the rub of this whole thing.

There’s a freedom that comes with not being the director and with realizing that the director is human. They have preferences and biases. They cast based on talent, hopefully, but they also cast based on their own prejudices, visual and otherwise. No matter how well I read for a role, I might not fit the director’s vision. Actors tell each other this all the time to deaden the sting of not being cast, but why should there be any sting at all?

It’s the sometimes arbitrary choice of a director. Taking it personally… well, that’s just silly. To get a little Harvey Dent on the problem, the only constant in the process is chance. You perform at your best, but even at the genetic level, chance is in control of your destiny in this area.

This also eliminates the desire for catty behavior toward other actors. They are all just trying to make it. Maybe some of them are prettier, or skinnier, or have naturally superb voices, or were born in to circumstances that let them train from birth to become performers, or whatever. You study your craft, you show what you’ve got, you attempt to improve, but at any one audition, the choice is often arbitrary. Feeling unreasoning spite toward your “competition” is entirely baseless and fruitless.

And that’s how I approach it. A warm, hale handshake. A welcoming smile. Praise when it is deserved. Encouragement when it is needed. Openness to the experience. Embracing not only the butterflies, but the fragile souls of your fellow artists because they are brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They are brave in the face of vulnerability. We’re in this fight together, after all.

My friend, Ricky Gervais, and I are visiting a cherry orchard with some very salt-of-the-earth people, who invite us to lunch in their barn-like open eating area. As we chat and eat, I notice that the place is also my apartment.

Ricky is wearing a shirt which is completely black, but which is also completely yellow and covered in some black hand-made lettering spelling out some phrase that I mentioned to him was indicative of our friendship.

As a prank on the people of the orchard, Ricky has sealed something in a brown packing envelope. He opens it to reveal a vaguely face-hugger-y thing which immediately begins to screech and squiggle out of his grasp to skitter along the ground.

Eventually I catch the thing by stabbing it with a large fork, I fling it into my kitchen sink and cram parts of it into the garbage disposal and switch it on. The thing seemingly dies, but to be sure, I continue to force feed it into the in-sink-erator. Somehow the device is actually beneath the opening, though, and it slides to one side, allowing the creature to fall partially into the cabinet beneath the sink. Meanwhile, Ricky is laughing his characteristic, high-pitched cackle.

As I continue to struggle with the monster, I begin to yell at my friend Ricky for thinking this would be a funny prank to pull. He’s having none of it. After a brief spat, he makes for the door. I yank the rest of the creature out of the sink and shove the remains back into the package, yelling, “Well, you’re taking this with you.”

As he reaches the outer door of my apartment, I see the words on his t-shirt and am suddenly moved. He’s not the sort to wear anything but black, but he is wearing this homemade shirt with our phrase on it. I apologize, we hug, he leaves.