Muse-ings

I find the notion of the Muse fascinating, an elusive and fickle creature who brings people inspiration, usually at the most inopportune times. Perhaps it's like the Easter bunny leaving little idea eggs all over, some of them we step on and squish out everywhere. I'm not sure anyone would approve of the Easter bunny showing up in August or whenever he wanted, we have a specific day scheduled for his arrival. Imagine the tooth-fairy showing up in the middle of the night to get your tooth, but she's so clumbsy she wakes you up every time, giving you face-bruises and instead of money she leaves ice-cubes, so if you don't deal with it right away you wake up in a cold, wet bed. That's just how I feel when my muse gives me a great idea in the car and for some reason I can't get to a pen and write it down, and by the time I get home I forgot most of it anyway.

It's also fascinating that most people talk about the muse as female. For most people, if Angelina Jolie walked in the room to tell you something, you'd probably drop whatever you were doing to listen. The problem is if she does this when you're in the middle of an important discussion or heated debate you can't just get out of, and when you are free to listen to what she has to say, she's gotten jealous of having to share your attention attention and moved on.

Stephen King in his book "On Writing" has the best idea I've heard about the muse. Instead of a gorgeous ethereal female figure, the muse it a fat, lazy man who sits on your couch eating chips all day, making messes everywhere you have to clean up. The problem is you can't kick him out because every once in a while he'll say something that is brilliant you just have to write that very second before he interrupts to tell you there's no more toilet paper so he used other things. (I took some liberties on this retelling).

Sometimes I find the muse is more akin to someone who sleeps around. More than once I've had a moment of sheer inspiration and written down what I believed to be a uniquely new idea. I was so excited about it until I went to see a movie the next day and saw that exact thing on screen. Apparently my muse and I are not in a monogamous relationship if she's giving out the same ideas to whoever she pleases. What if this can work both ways? Maybe I can have several muses I draw from...but the idea of sustaining a relationship with several muses is not that palatable when I think of how tenuous my current muse-receptor relationship is.

My new plan on relating with my muse is to treat it like a house cat. Cats can show you great love and companionship, but scratch your face the very next second. So far, very apt with the muse. The more you want a cat to come, the less it will. Yep, very muse-like. If you have a regular schedule, the cat knows it and adjusts, being all cute and cuddly when it expects to be fed. So, perhaps I will have to take the easiest and often most difficult approach to courting my muse. I must have a regular schedule where I write no matter what and completely ignore my muse. He/She/it will just have to adjust to not being fawned over whenever they want attention and fit themselves into my schedule if they want to be stroked.

Now it's more like a relationship that got too serious so I broke it off, but I still want to be friends. I might miss the compulsive nature of my muse and all the random adventures we used to have, but that's the price of a stable, reliable relationship...and who says we can't still drive to the beach at 3 am once in a while?

Caring is...caring

How much do you care about things?

How much should you care about things?

So many relationships fall apart because people care about the wrong things. Scratch that, they fall apart because the individuals care very much about certain things but perhaps channel that caring into other aspects. Namely into trivial matters like putting the toilet paper roll in backwards (there is a correct way, just so you know). Is that what the relationship is about? If the rolls go in right, you'll live happily forever? Nah, it's a signifier for being heard and respected, but these are the things we find ourselves caring so much about, to the point of destruction, at times.

I've been seriously wondering how to upgrade my status at work, to get paid for the job I do, not the position I am in, filling the shoes of someone who left, but since I'm doing it so well, they just aren't opening that position up. That means I'm not being recognized in the same financial way my predecessor was. I also do more than him, but he was with the company too long and was far too jaded to really care. That's the path I see myself on. Caring so much about being compensated that I am expending my energy trying to justify my own right to be paid closer to my worth. Do I want to continue working for Columbia? Heck no. Why do I care?...because I do. I would be far happier to clock in my hours there, and clock out the second I leave that building. I should expend my energy in my real passions, instead of in a corporation who can't even put the toilet paper in right!

Something in me needs to change. I may give them a few hours every week, but I cannot give them my energy the rest of the time. I don't need that raise and job title (though I would not reject either), so I need to stop spending valuable head-space on that topic. I need to care less about that. I know me and my need to achieve, but who in their right mind would want to achieve at banging their head against a cold rock?

Perhaps too many people.

Either way, what do I care about?

Love[?] And sharing it in the ways I know how through my writing and acting. And accepting all the hardships that go along with it.

Is that it?

Probably not, but it's a good start, and much better than the other option, the one that ends next to a toilet.

Acting at first sight

Yesterday I was involved in the very first audition for Portland's biggest casting agency in their new location. This was great for me, because I wanted to christen in the new digs. I was even the first actor to show up. I helped read for the first auditioners (groups of four), and realized some things I did right by seeing what the other people were doing. For example, staying on script. They also didn't really connect with each other, which is sad. Acting is connecting with people, whether they are there or not. Having just done a film mostly in front of green screen to other actors who were not actually there, it kind of hurt a little to see these people standing right next to each other and not connecting. Though I know I've had these exact moments before, so I can't really complain and not be hypocritical.

Then it was my turn to audition with my group. I knew one of them from a play we had done a year earlier, so that was a good start. The real (mini)stress was wondering who was going to audition as my wife. I feel that it is very important when you play a couple, even in audition, you have to, you know, touch each other. At least pretend that holding hands is small potatoes compared to what you've done with each other in private settings. Luckily, she was great. We had our arms around each other and gently put our hands on each others legs and made those small actions of saying: Hey, there's love here; dig it.

This led me down a whole different meandering mental path after the audition. How strange it really is to walk into a room, meet a stranger, act as if you've lived full lives together, then part ways, maybe only to see each other at another audition months later. Is it strange? I'm not sure I have the proper perspective for this one. I'm an actor, so making things real is what I do, whether they are or not. Acting is not pretending, acting is knowing and exploring what could be and conjuring it into reality. For those five minutes, we were a couple. Then the walking to my car thinking about...you know...the stuff people think about when relationships end.

Life is just strange no matter who you are.