Chicken in a Santa Hat

In our parents’ generation, if you were writing a short story for a friend and needed a picture of a Chicken in a Santa hat, you might be plum out of luck.  I mean, you would have go out and find a chicken, a Santa hat, and a film camera.  Then you’d have to take the picture, get your picture developed and physically tape it onto your story.  Not so today! 

Readers, the interweb is a marvelous thing.  With a few quick key strokes, a virtual cornucopia of Christmas-themed-poultry appear at my fingertips. Ok, I might not have gotten just the chicken I envisioned in just the jaunty hat I would have liked (so spoiled am I that this actually makes me briefly angry), but with almost zero effort I have a Christmas Chicken.

Much like the invention of the calculator, I choose to think of this as standing on the shoulders of giants—the internet saves me oodles of time.  That I use that saved time to watch “Shit Brides Say” (featuring my good friend Lucas,) or google pictures of January Jones’ baby is, I think, a moot point.

This week I was on set for a children’s toy commercial.  At auditions, at wardrobe fittings and on set, you spend a lot of your time…waiting. 

I thought I was just playing a mom, but when I arrived at my fitting the head of wardrobe said “And this will be your outfit for the Lady of the Lake.”  Now, there are many moments in Commercial-land when I wish I had someone with whom to share a sidelong glance—a knowing, amused locking of the eyes—but it’s not wise to laugh at the hand that feeds you. So I said thank you, and tried on my aqua-green diaphanous gown.

On the shoot day, I arrived at 6:45 am (via public transit because I don’t have a car and I’m super cheap.)  I got into my first outfit—the grecian-gown—and waited in front of a portable heater for my moment in the deep background.  Apparently in certain types of children’s commercials you need to have an adult present on screen for legal reasons—whether you want her there or not.  So even thought the little girl is playing with a doll in a lagoon in her fantasy, a Lady of the Lake watches demurely against the painted Styrofoam rocks.  Actually demurely was a character choice I made upon hearing wardrobe tell make-up not to do too much to me, since they “want her to disappear.”

So I wait until I’m needed, get shuttled into position near the fake lagoon, on real sand, and then wait some more until we’re ready to shoot. Then we shoot again and again and again until everyone is happy with the first 5 seconds of magic.

Then, while they spent hours getting close-ups of the little girl and the toy, I got to leave the lagoon and change into standard tv-mom-clothes and a half-ponytail.   I have never seen an actual mom wearing a half-ponytail.  I haven’t sported one myself since I was about 14. But Commercial-land is not necessarily about veritas.  It is about hair that flows, but doesn’t cover your face.  It is about warm lighting, warm smiles, unending happiness and a product will make all your dreams come true.  We’re in a sound stage. The lagoon is fake, the bathroom only has two walls, I’m wearing a pretend wedding ring, and the girl is not my daughter.  

But I digress.  My point is that I spent most of the day waiting.  Lights got set up.  Camera’s got positioned.  The little girl spent hours in the water being delighted.  “And smiling!  All the time smiling!  You’re soooooo happy!”  But I chilled by Craft services, snacked on guacamole, added some more colour-coded boxes to the list in my agenda, and waited. 

And you know what?  It was great.  It’s fun to work.  It’s fun to pretend, and eat free food, and get paid.  And as someone who works from home and is self-employed, it is a remarkable feeling to know that just by being there, I’m at work.

If you have an office job, or a teaching job, or a construction job, I’m not saying you don’t work—you work a lot and hard.  A 9 to 5 (or 7 or 11) is a taxing schedule, even when it’s incredibly rewarding.  But also, just by showing up at your place of work, you’re kind of working.  You’re at work. That’s got to feel good.  Walking down the hall, going to the water-cooler, dropping off files at someone’s desk, taking the stairs—it’s all part of work.  And sometimes, I’m really jealous of that.  At home, I don’t feel like I’m at work just because I sit down at my desk in the corner of the living room.

At home, I often feel that I’m not working enough—and it doesn’t count as work until there are words on the page.  After all, I’m in my pajamas and I’ve stopped three times to adjust the thermostat, reheat my coffee, and throw in a load of laundry.  I can’t count any of that, ‘cause I’m at home. That some of my work necessitates puttering, thinking, pondering, and yes …waiting…feels like cheating or laziness, even though I know how important it is.

And what’s perhaps worse…I never leave work.  When I leave set or even an audition, I’ve done something at a place and then I go home. Today I had a fitting for a different commercial.  The director came over to me squinting.  He said “I’m looking at your nose.”  I told him I never broke it…that’s just how the noses in my family look.  He said “Ok. I’m just trying to figure out how to light it.”  So I waited.  Awkwardly.  And briefly I felt like a Christmas-Chicken in a disappointingly un-jaunty hat. But then I got to leave that place and go home. 

When I move from my desk to my couch, the satisfaction of leaving work is not nearly he same.  Plus my stacks of paper and filing and coloured markers glare at me with beady accusing eyes while I try to watch The Daily Show.  It’s extremely disconcerting.

So this is what I’ve been thinking about this week.  Work, time, waiting and reward.  And this is what I figure.  It’s rewarding to spend time writing—crafting something that’s mine.  Even at my desk in the living room.  Even though it makes work-home and home-work.  In a different way, it’s rewarding to stand around waiting on set, dressed up like a moss-fairy, smile a whole bunch and get paid. And in yet another—but no less real way—it is extremely satisfying to find just the photo you need floating around on the internet in two seconds flat. 

So pretty much I had a great week.  Writing.  Commercialing. Chicken in a Santa hat.  Booyeah.

Chicken picture from redtiedesigns.com

On Set Shot featuring "Mom" hair-do, from my Gallery.

When I was an Assasin: Or, One Way to Deal with January

January is a horrible month.  There should be a pre-January after Christmas, before January starts, so we can all get our shit together.  A week before New Years is just enough to recover from Christmas and suddenly there you are, thrust into the New Year, pants around your ankles.

On top of the anxiety that curdles in my belly like a bad cheese at the prospect of all the things I should do this year—many many coloured boxes taunting me –it is a cold and bleary month. That’s right: Bleary.  Not because it’s dim and indistinct as the dictionary would have you believe—but because it is equal parts bleak and weary.  Spoiler alert:  If you came to the November Rain City Chronicles, you know where this is going.

When I was in college in Michigan, January was such a bleary affair—cold, snowed-in and grey—that they made something called Interim—which was essentially a one month January term between fall and spring semester. Interim was easier, it was usually pass/fail, and you were encouraged to take something outside of your discipline—go abroad, fulfill a language requirement in three weeks, or take something fun.  That way you wouldn’t succumb to total despair.  Also, we played Assassins—to keep our spirits up, one imagines.

Now Assassins goes like this.  Anyone in the dorm who signs up to play gets a target’s name.  You don’t know who has you and no one knows who has them.  Your job is to ‘assassinate’ your target with a nerf gun.  Then, you take his or her target’s name and kill again…until eventually one person emerges victorious, rising out of the nerf foam and faux-slayings a hero.  As I said, to lift our spirits.

So, Assassins has a few basic rules:

1.  Your weapon must be a standard nerf or suction dart-type gun.
2. Any kill must have at least one witness or it doesn’t count.
3. No kill can have MORE than 4 witnesses (to prevent the giant slaughterhouse the dining hall would become)
4. Classrooms are off limits—it is after all, an institution of higher learning.

Now, I am a deeply competitive person.  I once potato-sacked-raced an entire class of fifth graders and cheered horrendously when I won.  I was their teacher.  Another time, a four year old girl I babysat had a mermaid sticker board, and would insist that only she got to decide where everything went.  So when she wasn’t looking, I would move stickers around and insert new ones.  Out of spite, I think.  That’s what sort of adult I am.   So when I started playing Assassins, something dark and a little disturbing clicked deep inside of me.  I very badly wanted to win.

I don’t remember who my first few targets were.  The whole time is awash in fear and adrenaline—because I could not help but take this that seriously.  I wore cargo pants, combat boots, and a camouflage shirt to class.  I started collecting the weapons of the early casualties, so I had 2 or 3 guns on my person at a time—one of which was a tiny dart hand-pistol and one of which was a huge, semi-automatic nerf gun.  I imagined myself as a spy or covert operator.  It was kind of sexy and thrilling and fun.  At first.

Very quickly, however, intrigue turned to pure fear.  I got super paranoid.  I made my roommates enter our room and sweep it before I would go in.  I wouldn’t go down the hall to the common bathroom by myself.  I slept with the pistol under my pillow, and went to class with it tucked in my belt.  I saw danger everywhere.  But I was not wrong.

My friend Lucas called and asked me to meet him in front of the mailboxes.  He was already ‘dead’ and my friend, so I thought I was safe. That’s when I got shot for the first time.  Lucas lured me down for a floormate of his.  And while there were too many witnesses for it to count (if only real bullets worked so bureaucratically), I was livid.  The treachery!  My roommates and I went back up to our room and wrote a letter to Lucas that began “Dear Judas…” and I wrote it with a safety pin and my own blood.  Mostly we did that because we thought it would be dramatic and funny.  Mostly.

I hid in peoples bunk beds.  I tip-toed down the hallways.  I became vigilant.  And pretty soon, the only two people left in the dorm were me and Nate Karsten.  Since our dorm was separated into Women’s  and Men’s floors, there were only certain times—“Open House Hours”—where I was actually not safe in my own room, but by now the dorm had polarized and Nate had spies everywhere.  I would sneak down to the basement at one in the morning to visit with my boyfriend—it being too dangerous at other times—and immediately someone would dart out of the room.  Minutes later Nate would appear, dragged out of bed in only his boxers, and the fire-fight would send me back up the stairwell to the safety of my floor.

We had a shoot-out in the gym—until there were too many witnesses.

Nate tried to drive by shoot me from the open door of a van and I only escaped because I varied my routes to and from the dining hall. 

Nowhere was safe.  One afternoon, Nate showed up at my work.  I looked up from my desk in the business department and saw a guy hovering in the doorway—a witness.  Instinctively I pulled the dart-pistol out of my belt and jumped up just as Nate Karsten popped up from behind the front desk.  We shot and ducked around files and staplers until a professor yanked Nate out of the office and lectured him on appropriate behaviour.  Now, I’m not sure what constitutes “appropriate behaviour” when a college sanctions the imaginary slaying of classmates as a community-building exercise, but I didn’t complain because it was one more day I didn’t die. 

I was scared to leave my room.  I had a stomach ache.  I was nervous all the time.  I knew it was just a game—but I couldn’t help myself.  And I’d come so far. My friends thought I was nuts—but Nate was wily and cunning and nefarious and he was everywhere.  I decided I needed an offensive move to end this, so I dragged my roommate Katie down to Nate’s room during open house hours.  I nodded, Katie threw open his door, and there he was on the couch.  I aimed my semi-automatic nerf gun and fired, but while the bullet was in the air, Nate’s friend jumped off the couch and took the bullet in his chest.  I shit you not.   And before I could reload Nate locked himself in the bathroom.  Nate was an arch-nemesis who would not be foiled.

And that’s pretty much when I decided I wanted to die.  The waiting and the fear and the constant threat of Nate Karsten was killing me.  I wanted to win, but mostly I just didn’t want to lose. And now what I really really wanted, was for it to be over. 

Interim term is supposed to fun and relaxing—it’s supposed to make January bearable, so that maybe you can make it through February, and by March the overwhelming despair of the universe will pale enough to put you back on an even keel.  But this? This was not relaxing.  And it wasn’t fun.  It was like an exhilarating, consuming kind of awful.

So maybe I got lax.  Maybe Nate Karsten was just that good.  Or my desire for rest was more powerful than my need to win.  Because Nate Karsten shot me in the head in broad daylight outside of the Knollcrest dining hall after two weeks of our mano a mano showdown.

I was defeated.  I was embarrassed.  But mostly, I was sooooo relieved. 

Was that feeling of relief worth the three and a half weeks of extreme panic?  I can’t say.  The relief was amazing.  And Assassins was certainly a distraction.  And this January, as I find it hard to get out of bed, hard to get excited about things, hard to go outside, hard to fight the bleariness …I wonder if a distraction is exactly what I need.  

I’m not gonna play Assassins again.  Ever.  I don’t have the constitution.  But remembering my showdown with Nate does remind me that maybe I take things a little too seriously.  And that does help.  Because January won’t last forever.  The sun and flowers are coming.   So lighten up, already.  And maybe don’t use phrases like “the overwhelming despair of the universe” in your blog.  I mean for real. 

Colour me Rad: Thinking Inside the Box.

So it’s January.  A time of new beginnings…resolutions…big big plans.  And I am all about lists.  I mean, ALL about them.  I use coloured markers.  I make boxes that I can check off.  People look at my whiteboard and go—“Why don’t you just erase things once you’re done?”   What’s wrong with you?   If I erased things on my list, I couldn’t check the little box.  I couldn’t have the satisfaction of looking at a list of little checked boxes: things accomplished.  I couldn’t keep at bay (however briefly) the feeling that time is sucking away my youth and potential while I watch Downton Abbey and make off-colour remarks on twitter. 

I mean, Downton Abbey is a very good show.  But in advance of making my 2012 goals (two weeks into January, because I have not yet resolved to be on time for things), I pulled out my 2011 goals and with the exception of “get a new agent,” and  “start using twitter,” I can’t check anything off.  Now, I have started many of the things on my list, and that’s not nothing.  But I want tangible progress.  I want little boxes with big red checks.

So great is my desire for the checked box, that in highschool for a period of several weeks to several months, I made lists every night before I went to bed and they included

 Wake up

Shower

Get Dressed

Eat Breakfast

Brush Teeth

Do Hair.

I’m not kidding.  And I know it borders on OCD, but I left for school feeling like a champion.  You wanna feel good about yourself?  Set the bar very low.

I am not a naturally organized person.  In fact my sister said “I don’t know why you bother making all these lists.  As soon as they’re done, you lose them.”  And she’s right, I do.  But the writing of the list does a great deal to quell my anxiety and move the chaos from my head to the page.  Lists are plans.  Steps you can take.  Progress you can make.

Annie Dillard writes “A schedule defends from chaos and whim.  It is a net for catching days.  It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” (The Writing Life, 32).  So too with lists.  And being that I am self-employed creative person, my need for structure and scaffolding is great. 

So I make lists and I colour-code my Moleskine Agenda.  That’s right.  I sit down in January, and put all my family birthdays in (lime green text with a baby blue cloud around it, or vice versa); I write in anniversaries and upcoming weddings (alternating orange and red); I flip to the end of every month and write “PAY RENT” two days before it’s due (colour not decided yet because colour-coding your agenda takes a significant amount of time and I’m waiting till I catch up on The New Girl.)  And I LOVE this.  I love looking at this year in front of me that starts to have some edges and walls.  It’s like the week or month or year ahead is a ski hill and I’m deciding where to plant my poles.

But that’s about as far as the excitement takes me.  It’s like buying your books at the beginning of the semester and looking at your syllabus—that part is exciting; writing the 20 page paper at the end…less so.  Or as a kid—I loved building the fort, or dressing up my sisters and brother as settlers (and once making Larissa be the horse to draw the buggy), or setting up the “grocery store” with empty boxes of cereal and Kraft Dinner my mom had saved for us…but then, I was done.  Once we were all set up, I no longer wanted to “play.” I mean, how do you even play house, or fort, or grocery store.  There are no rules!  No plot!

But just as with life, you need to play, do, improvise.  You need fill the space between.  It’s all fine and good to write “Complete Spec Script” or “Come up with a pilot idea” or “Write a blog a week”…but then you have to do that.  You need to sit at your computer and make shit happen. 

Now, I’m not above micro-managing myself…

  Sit down at desk.

  Turn on computer.

  Open word document.

But at a certain point there is the work that cannot be cudgeled into being.  That’s a real word.  I thought I made it up, but it’s right there in my dictionary: cudgeled.  You must build a scaffold, a schedule or a list…and then you must build, do, fill.  And that makes me go…eeecccgggghhh.   

And “eeecccggggghhh” pretty much explains how I’ve felt all of January so far.  All these dreams, plans, potential…I want to be excited…I want to have done many of those things…but the doing…the doing….eeecccgggghhh.  Plus, I start to think “and then what?”  So I finish my Spec Script.  So I write a hilarious short film.  So I finally finish my animation voice-over demo. Then what?  Will my life be complete?  Probably not.  But it will be complete-er.  That’s not a word.  Don’t even bother looking it up.

So I am here.  And I am writing a blog.  And then I’ll go to Yoga.  And then I’ll watch me some Zooey Deschanel while I finish colour-coding my agenda.  2012, look out.  I got me a WHOLE buncha boxes lined up.

           

  Blog

Buy your own Pony.

Readers, dry your invisible tears, gather your invisible gophers—I’m back.  Before I so rudely went AWOL, I went on at some length about the invisible boundaries that hold us back—how we are limited by what we imagine to be possible and how we often wait for others to reward us when we do what we think we’re supposed to.  And sometimes that doesn’t happen.  Once you leave school there are very few gold stars and no one will buy you a pony for following the rules and staying in line.  In fact, I lamented the often whack-a-mole-like relationship between what we do and what happens: hit a gopher here and another one randomly pops up elsewhere.  Happenstance.  Little plastic gophers of chaos.

So then what?  What do we do?  I think especially, but not only, of artists: We do a lot of work without pay, we see very talented individuals get passed over again and again while less talented people breakthrough to exceptional success, we keep expecting some sort of break just around the corner but have no guarantee of it, we watch the digital world create so much opportunity for art but don’t see how it will fund artists, and choosing to continue on our path is a constant exercise of hope in defiance of the invisible, more traditional boundaries that surround us. 

How do I keep going when I’m not booking anything?  When I’m not making money?  When another grant proposal gets rejected?  When someone asks me “But what do you really do?” When I see younger, less experienced people get bigger better parts than me?  When every creative endeavour I begin requires so much work with so little promise of return that I don’t know where to spend my energy?  When I start to believe that I’m just not good enough, I’m not working hard enough, and maybe I don’t even like what I do?

I don’t know.  But these are the things I whisper to myself in the dark of night. 

1.  Water your own garden. 

It can be so difficult to keep going when you face rejection, criticism, or another hope dashed.  And truthfully, it would be easier to stop—to go get a safer, more traditional job.  The world is hungry for art—but nobody gives a shit if you do it or not.    Annie Dillard writes about how free a writer is “because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.”  AMAZING!!  But she goes on to say, “The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever.” (The Writing Life, 11)  And that’s true.  No one really cares whether you write soul-rending poems, bring audiences to tears on stage, or blow out incredible tunes that make us feel the world in a new way.  People may love it when you give it to them, or they may not.  And because no one is waiting around for your great piece of art, no one is going to push you to keep going when you’re tired and defeated.  Whether you write in the early mornings when your children are still asleep, or make music on the weekends after a long grueling week, or make your art your livelihood, what you’re doing is off the grid—there’s no simple plan or map to follow.  No one will value your small successes or feel the pain of your very many defeats.  You’ll have friends and encouragers, sure.  But at the end of the day, your garden of creativity is completely your own.   And it will die without a little love.  So water your own garden.  Encourage yourself, take care of your own art, and create the space and time and refreshment you need.

2.  Don’t wait for Permission

One of my wonderful acting mentors, Gina Chiarelli, once said “Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to do something you know perfectly well you can do yourself.”  Like watering your own garden, you need to take ownership over your own life.  So often I go in for auditions and desperately want to do a good job and get “picked.”  It starts to feel like I’m just waiting for someone else to tell me that I’m good enough.  I want to please the casting director, my teacher, or my agent—and when I don’t get the job I feel shitty and beat myself up.  I want someone to recognize, validate and reward me, instead of knowing I come to the table with something unique and valuable to contribute, that I’ve worked hard and can trust my own instincts—whether it’s what they happen to want right now or not.   I’m not saying that getting parts or grants or publishing deals is unrelated to your talent and hard work…I’m just saying that whack-a-mole applies here too.  Sometimes you’re too blonde, or your book is too science-fictiony, or your music is too up-beat for the particular set of judges looking at it this round.   Maybe you’re too tall to play against the lead, or they gave a jazz grant last year, or they had a lot of applicants and it was basically a numbers game.  That doesn’t mean you’re not good.

I just found out I didn’t get a small part on a new pilot I was up for, but I did get a small part on a Christmas movie.  I had a good audition for both.  So, you win some, you lose some.  Chin up.  You are not every role you do or don’t get.

3.  Buy your own Pony

I’ll admit, this makes me tired.  I really just want someone else to give me a pony.  Hire me to play a role in your new comedy, or write for a hit sitcom, or premiere some fantastic play.  Give me a Jessie.  Or a Pulitzer.  Or just give me money.  But I can’t control what other people do.  I can study and write and network, but the truth is, if you want rewards for all the hard work you put in, go get them.  Create the role you want to play.  Write the story you want to hear.  Stage the play you want to star in.  It’s exhausting and daunting but it is the reality—no one is going to do it for you, so stop waiting and buy your own pony.  I won’t even judge you if you give yourself a papier-mâché Oscar.

 

These are all mental shifts for me.  Mostly they mean I can’t blame anyone else or expect anything from anyone else.  That’s hard to get used to when you were the keener at the front of the class.  But it’s tremendously freeing too—I don’t need your permission, your validation or your approval.  My art and my self worth exist outside of those things.  You can reject my wonderful children’s story, and I won’t fall apart—I’ll edit and submit somewhere new.  You can hire someone else for the lead in one of my favourite plays and I’ll still come and see it, knowing my interpretation would have been different but valid.  I will write my own hilarious sitcom and you will rue the day you missed your chance with me. 

Sigh….I’m not there yet.  I bruise pretty easily.  But I also bounce back…and I’m working on it.  Because damn it if I’m gonna let those little gophers get me down.

When I was an assassin. Sort of.

Readers.  I realize that I have left you hanging.  I started talking all about expectations and invisible boundaries and wanting a pony and promised you I had more to say next week and then...silence.  Invisible tears are being shed. Invisble ponies are probably dying.  Well, I do have more to say, but it won't be today, because I'm getting ready to tell a story at the Rain City Chronicles Storytelling event next Thursday.  The theme is Duty Calls and I will be talking about the time in College when I was an assassin.  Sort of.  I mean I was in College, but I wasn't really an assassin.  If you want to find out more you need to come! And Jill Barber is the musical guest, so it will probably sell out... Click here or for more info or here for tickets!

But...if you're just a-jonesin' for something creatively delightful to do this very night or tomorrow...might I suggest a litte rollicking Mardi-Gras themed Halloween Concert at the Cellar Jazz Club?  It promises to be loud and boisterous and the best place in Vancouver to get beads thrown at your head while enjoy some big band music and sip sazeracs.