Sometimes I think my family and friends are on the payroll for some basic cable network to keep me in the dark that my life is actually a reality show. My own little Truman Show that comes on a channel I don't get, probably with some pseudo cool name, like "Jess in the City", or "Lifestyles of the Broke and Shameless".
Moments like this past Monday make me certain that I'm going to turn and see a boom protruding from the wall before some hired hand hurriedly hides it.
Maybe.
Monday morning, after being turned away from the CTA for trying to bring my bike on board during morning rush hour- see: haters- I now had little more than an hour to peddle from the westside to my job interview at Navy Pier. Dressed in my interview garb, Google Maps telling me I had to about 10 miles, and I had not had my Wheaties or even a swig of Great Value instant coffee.
A girl's gotta eat, gotta work to eat, gotta have a job, gotta peddle. Zooming through Chicago morning rush hour, Motown Pandora providing ironic underscore ("Everybody plays the fool... Sometimes...")
I felt like I was on some strange "I Want to Work for Diddy" challenge, like I had fifteen minutes to get to the Bronx and get Mr. Combs a sugar cookie, but I made it, on time, a little sweatier from the journey, having been called some colorful names by drivers, and having lost a shoe from my bag that I had planned on changing into post-interview (if you see a pink and gray cross-trainer out there between Laramie and Sacramento on Lake Street, it's scared and lonely and wants desperately to return home) but I was there and ready nonetheless.
Thank the lord for clean public restrooms to freshen up and McDonald's large dollar coffees. Amen.
One month ago today, I closed my first professional show in Iowa City, was living with six cats in an 1860s mansion. I was exhausted, humbled by the experience and the outpouring of love that came from the ensemble and community, and anxiously looking ahead to the next adventure, wondering what shape it would take and what permutation of the ever evolving Jessica would be embarking on it.
With my luggage, my bicycle bruises, my country road tan, and abundance of lessons, experiences, and new tribesmen and women who I'm proud to know as artists and have as colleagues and friends, I came back to Chicago to join the hustle.
The event I described above was the most vivid example of what that hustle feels like, and it cannot be created in a classroom. My month being back in the city since Riverside's closing has been filled with building this new muscle, the willingness to audition for everything and go broke/tired/hungry for the opportunity to keep going.
Lessons from the front have included:
The mathematics of "If I get on the train at 6:30 for a 7:45 audition, will I be done before my transfer expires or will I have to put more on my fare card?" Graduated from word problems to simply, problems? Word.
The grace and integrity of how to walk into the room as if you didn't just contend with a thousand degree heat and a string of unfortunate events involving friends, lovers, mailmen, and the realization that you are vying for a spot that so many others are-who, for all intents and purposes are exactly your "type"- and still do your best work, or at least try.
The bounce back ability when you walk out of an audition knowing that you just dropped some doodoo in that room, but not dwelling on it long enough to stop putting myself out there... Although long enough to ease my bruised ego with some mini bottles of Chardonnay and a movie. Then I got it together.
How to, always, always, always remember the joy- even when, especially when, my feet hurt, my tires are flat, the things that were working are now missing, and when they smile in your face and you never hear from them again. The saltiest first date, cue Prince: "All I wanna know is baby, if you said my audition was good, HOW COME YOU DON'T CALL ME ANYMORE?"... Can I at least get my headshot back?
And most importantly, how to maintain my own process when nobody's there under fluorescent lights at 9 in the morning to coach me through anymore. How to trust what I've learned, use what I've learned, and move that forward, how to fuse all these things so that my training enhances my art, and my art enhances my self and vice-versa.
Under is over. For real for real over. And while the sadness (and at times, joy) that knowledge brings me ebbs and flows, I'm feeling the beginnings of a different kind of strength that can only come with independence, the
knowledge that this leg of the journey is my own. This is in no way meant to downplay the men and women in my life whom I am blessed to call my inspiration, my encouragement, my family, my friends, but to fully honor the gifts they give me continuously, I have to stand as I am and forge my own way.
I'll close with this, since I've decided to celebrate the month of August Wilson August, with a quote of his from the preface of King Hedley II:
" Before one can become an artist, one must first be. It is being in all facets, its many definitions, that endow the artist with an immutable sense of himself that is necessary for the accomplishment of his task. Simply put, art is beholden to the kiln in which the artist was fired."
Let it burn.
And stay tuned for Lifestyles of the Broke and Shameless.
The title of this post is a quote from Paulo Coelho.
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