I have always depended upon the validation of strangers...
Why is it that the people least suited to acting always seem to end up as actors?
Acting is an amazing job, don't get me wrong. The roar of the greasepaint and so on and so forth - I firmly believe that it's the best job in the world, and if you can do it as a job and still pay the mortgage then in my humble opinion you are on to a winner. But let's be honest here, it's not the best for the self esteem, is it? Where most of my friends (alright, not my friends, because I seem to know mainly freelancers, but most people in general) will go through a job interview or two every few years, we actors change jobs much more frequently - say every few months. And those are only the jobs we get. For every casting we book we probably lose - oh, I don't know, 4 or 5? Maybe more, 10 or 12?
Rejection is the centrepiece of the profession. And I probably spend as much time chanting to myself "it's not because you're not good enough, it's because you're not right for the part" as I do asking "what's my motivation"? So why (oh, why, oh, why etc ad nauseum) does it seem to attract nut jobs who thrive on adoration and seek to validate themselves by the opinions of peers, superiors or - erm - otherwise?
Just recently, I met a man. He's got an incredible singing voice, and plays jaw dropping piano, BY EAR, and is just generally lovely. And before you go running off to snitch on me to Pierre, it's OK; yes he's lovely, but gay, and this is a purely platonic thing. But, for some reason I can't quite fathom out, I'm desperate for him to approve my singing voice. Now, I know I can sing. I know my voice is fairly decent. Not world stopping, but good enough. And yet I'm embarrassing myself with how much I care about what this guy - who I've known all of about 10 minutes - thinks of it.
It seems that nowadays, in the age of Twitbook, blogs, Bebo and the like, nothing is real until you've broadcast it to the world. Unless you've seen it in someone's tweets, or in a status update, can we be sure that it really happened? I even find myself experiencing something and then shaping it into a pithy one-liner. And because I'm me, it has to be 3rd person, preferably in the present continuous (I will never forgive Facebook for getting rid of the 'is'). "Tegwen is dreaming of snowboarding", "Tegwen is well aware that she should really be tidying the flat", "Tegwen is exhausted after a long day's rehearsals". It's never quite enough to simply 'feel' these things, they have to be validated by the world at large.
But here I am. Logging on to share this with you all. Because you'll validate it and then I'll know it's real. And in a bizarre kind of philosophical recursion, I'm blogging about how odd this is, but I'll check back here periodically through the day and everytime someone comments I'll know that you're reading this and somehow that'll make it all worthwhile...
Acting is an amazing job, don't get me wrong. The roar of the greasepaint and so on and so forth - I firmly believe that it's the best job in the world, and if you can do it as a job and still pay the mortgage then in my humble opinion you are on to a winner. But let's be honest here, it's not the best for the self esteem, is it? Where most of my friends (alright, not my friends, because I seem to know mainly freelancers, but most people in general) will go through a job interview or two every few years, we actors change jobs much more frequently - say every few months. And those are only the jobs we get. For every casting we book we probably lose - oh, I don't know, 4 or 5? Maybe more, 10 or 12?
Rejection is the centrepiece of the profession. And I probably spend as much time chanting to myself "it's not because you're not good enough, it's because you're not right for the part" as I do asking "what's my motivation"? So why (oh, why, oh, why etc ad nauseum) does it seem to attract nut jobs who thrive on adoration and seek to validate themselves by the opinions of peers, superiors or - erm - otherwise?
Just recently, I met a man. He's got an incredible singing voice, and plays jaw dropping piano, BY EAR, and is just generally lovely. And before you go running off to snitch on me to Pierre, it's OK; yes he's lovely, but gay, and this is a purely platonic thing. But, for some reason I can't quite fathom out, I'm desperate for him to approve my singing voice. Now, I know I can sing. I know my voice is fairly decent. Not world stopping, but good enough. And yet I'm embarrassing myself with how much I care about what this guy - who I've known all of about 10 minutes - thinks of it.
It seems that nowadays, in the age of Twitbook, blogs, Bebo and the like, nothing is real until you've broadcast it to the world. Unless you've seen it in someone's tweets, or in a status update, can we be sure that it really happened? I even find myself experiencing something and then shaping it into a pithy one-liner. And because I'm me, it has to be 3rd person, preferably in the present continuous (I will never forgive Facebook for getting rid of the 'is'). "Tegwen is dreaming of snowboarding", "Tegwen is well aware that she should really be tidying the flat", "Tegwen is exhausted after a long day's rehearsals". It's never quite enough to simply 'feel' these things, they have to be validated by the world at large.
But here I am. Logging on to share this with you all. Because you'll validate it and then I'll know it's real. And in a bizarre kind of philosophical recursion, I'm blogging about how odd this is, but I'll check back here periodically through the day and everytime someone comments I'll know that you're reading this and somehow that'll make it all worthwhile...
posted by Tegwen at 10:02
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