Aaaand Scene.

I am a horrible actress.  Seriously.  And it's weird because I would totally think I would be good at it.  And I also think that other people think that I would be totally good at it.  But I'm not.

Just like how I am super duper funny sometimes, when I'm trying not to be, but then you ask me to be funny on demand and...I got nothin'.  That's how it is with me and acting.

I thought it would be a good idea to put a voice over reel together before I move back to Lala Land.  Incidentally, I would officially be okay with them tearing down the Hollywood sign if they would replace it with one that said "Lala Land".  I really would.  Maybe when I move back I will start a petition.

So, I have a friend up here in Nowhereville (where I smartly moved to when I left Lala Land) who has been doing voice over work for almost twenty years and she has an in home studio.  She was someone whom (I'm using "whom" without really knowing if that's the right choice...I never did understand the rules of "whom") I looked up to back in the day (she's a friend of my friends mother originally, so she's a generation ahead of me) and we have a lot of similarities in our humor and such (sick, twisted, and inappropriate) and we've always had a special bond.  I figured, she has so much experience and I'm SUCH a natural, of course, and in no time we can whip something up that I can take with me and it will be just one more thing I can have in my talent arsenal to use to make some mula.

Um...not so much.  First of all, where I got the idea that I could just make a voice over demo reel with no experience is kind of beyond me.  Yesterday, prior to 2pm, it just seemed like the logical thing to do.  Fast forward to 4pm with me in the recording booth, lump in my throat, fighting back tears, and completely unable to do anything, much less act, it started to seem like a really dumb idea.

I have been listening to radio my whole life.  How many commercials I've actually heard since birth is probably equivalent to how many stars are in the sky.  Zillions I think.  How many of these ads have I mimicked to perfection?  Ga-Zillions.  I have one of those voices.  I can parrot very well, tone, inflection, you name it, I can copy it.  And people laugh and say, "You sound EXACTLY like that!"  And I do.  I totally do.  So, I just kinda figured that I could sound commercially, use my voice, and that would be that.  Well, that's not how it works.

If the script calls for the word "Magical", you have to sound well, magical.  Right now it seems like I could do that, but yesterday when called upon to do so, I couldn't.  I couldn't do anything right.  I couldn't speak from my diaphragm.  What the hell does that mean?  My voice was too high.  I sounded dead.  I couldn't be sexy, sincere, sophisticated, caring, serious, jolly, or any other adjective that suggests that a human being has a pulse.  At least those were my notes.

My friend, let's call her Wendy had to repeat over and over "Just get out of your own way".  Um, okay, I don't even know what that means, so being able to do it in the next fives seconds probably isn't going to happen.  I've been told this before you know.  Not with acting, but just with life.  Get out of your own way.  Now, I actually do know what this means, but what it actually entails DOING, I have no clue.

This is why I want to take acting classes.  Desperately.  I know I can freakin' do this shiz.  I know I can.  But something happens to me when it's time to perform and I cannot explain it.  I am not the only one, I've seen it with other people and one of the places I've seen it a lot is on America's Next Top Model. (My very favorite guilty pleasure show.)

If you watch the show then you will totally know what I'm talking about.  There's always this one girl on the show who totally has what it takes to win, but she's so traumatized by everything that's happening that she simply cannot do what is asked of her.  The people try to help, the photographer, the director, whoever, the more anxiety ridden she becomes and eventually she just starts crying.  What happens is, everyone knows she can do it, SHE knows she can do it, but for some reason she's not doing it and everyone is bewildered and she knows that they are like "what the f?" and so then she's like "what the f?" and then instead of thinking about what she's supposed to be doing, she starts thinking about why she's not doing it, why she can't do it, what is wrong with her, and then the internal monologue becomes extreeeemely self defeating and there you are.  Tears.  And a shitty performance.  And all the while watching from home you can see what they want from her, and you can see that she's totally capable if she would just...just...just...get out of her own way!  It's painful to watch.

I understand the frustration of everyone involved because that's totally me.

I think the problem with me is that my self perception is very very off kilter.  Everything I do when "acting" comes off as ridiculously fake.  I do that annoying crap where I try to look/sound happy, sexy, angry, whatever instead of FEELING happy, sexy, angry, whatever.  And I mostly think that's because I'm not sure what any of that stuff feels like.  Well, angry I could probably do, but...the other stuff...I can mimic what other people do, but if I'm not feeling it, it just seems phony, cause it is.

I guess this is why a guy that I dated several years ago used to always tell me to take some improv classes.  He told me they were like therapy.  This guy was, and still is, a total jerk (we are still sort of friends), but he could see me very very clearly.  The problem was, he was just like me and so in hating things about himself that he saw in me, he would give me tips and advice from a places of disgust and "tough love" that only caused me to feel worse about myself, so nothing he said ever helped.  I wish he could have be more kind about it, maybe I would have listened to him.

This brings me to the issue of sensitivity that is also a part of this whole failure to perform thing.  I am so freakin' sensitive.  All of the notes that I got yesterday from my friend were totally valid, but they weren't kid-gloved and I felt very stupid and inadequate.  Like a total failure and an idiot.  And I don't blame her for not loading up her hints with honey and molasses, that's not typically what people do out in the real world, but...I'm just too sensitive at this point to not beat myself up when I'm not doing a good job.

I know I'm not the only person in the world with low self esteem and a distorted sense of self who ever wanted to act.  I actually think that those are the two biggest requirements to being actor.  I mean...am I wrong?  I think a lot of actors, Jamie Lee Curtis being one of them,  come to their "craft" (god I hate it when they refer to it that way) because they are missing a fundamental sense of love and security from their childhood so they make a career out of getting reactions out of people.  Acting.

What it all comes down to in the end is practice.  Practice hearing/taking criticisms (which are NOT personal), practice feeling things that may otherwise be a bit unfamiliar, and practice learning what constitutes normal human behavior.

I honestly don't know how I've gotten this far in life.

Aaaand Scene.

Sour Grapes

Just in case you aren't familiar with the term, "Sour Grapes"  is what happens when you want something really badly, but can't have it so you pretend like you don't want it.  I think the story goes that there was a fox or some other animal and a monkey (or some other animal) and the monkey is up in the tree with some delicious grapes and the fox is down on the ground and really really wants some, but he's enemies with the monkey and the monkey doesn't want to share so the fox says "Oh I don't want any of your crummy grapes anyway because they are sour".  I know, don't quit my day job.  If that's not the story, that's fine.  You get the jist.

The reason I bring it up is because I know deep down (I think) that my whole move from Hollywoodland has a little something to do with this whole sour grapes thing.  It's either a case of sour grapes or a case of I finally realized that I have no talent and no artistic capabilities anywhere inside of me and it would be a waste for me to pursue anything that would require me to possess either of those qualities.  Yeah, it's one of those two things.  Sometimes it's honestly hard to tell which one it is.

Or maybe it's a case of "The Grass Is Always Greener" (listen to the awesome Travis song "Side" when pondering this).  If it is...surely I will get sick of moving in and out of the city at some point and this whole thing can finally come to an end.  Until then...(Jesus, I recently stated on my Facebook page that I longed for the days when my blogs were about LA men and their douchebaggery...Be Careful What You Wish For!!!!)  My Goodness.

You see, I was convinced that my days of singing were pretty much over.  And I decided quite a while back that I hated auditioning so much that I would rather not act than ever embarrass myself again at a casting call or in an acting class.  I've always known deep down (I think) that that was total bullshit, but fear is a pretty strong device for paralyzation (wow, that's actually a word!), the thing is though...the artist inside, the one buried and stuffed down down doooown can't shut the f^&* up.  It doesn't care if you are afraid, it doesn't want to be suffocated.  It doesn't want to die.  It will shout with it's last dying breath "Look at Me! Looooook at Meeeee!"  Bastard.

If that hungry little artist is a bastard, then inspiration is a little bitch.  Being inspired makes it really hard for me to just give up on my dreams.   Unfortunately, the inspiration is fleeting and the fear is rather constant.  I need to figure out how to flip the scales on that one.  But seriously folks, shouldn't those dreams just die already?  Starving artists are kinda hot when they are in their twenties...in their thirties and beyond...aren't they just tragic?  Or pathetic even?  GET A REAL JOB AND GIVE IT UP LOSER!  Isn't that what people say as they pass by pointing and laughing?  The extremely insecure part of me thinks the world is a cruel place, no?  Jeez louis.

This past Thursday my brother put together a show at his cabaret venue down in Hollywood.  It was a celebration for his birthday and the theme was "Songs that I am Thankful For" cause Thanksgiving is upon us and it seemed apropos.  He asked if I would like to perform at this show and of course I said yes, even though I haven't performed or applied my voice to anything useful in over two years.  He chose a song that we had recorded about 5 years ago that I never let see the light of day.  It was an original arrangement of the song "Take a Chance on Me" by Abba.  We had turned it into a ballad, cause I really just love to sing sad sad saaad songs.  Anyway, he always liked it and since it was his birthday, I agreed to sing whatever song he chose.  I rehearsed it up here at my Mom's house for about a week and I pretty much thought it sounded like crap still, but I reasoned that if my brother liked it, it couldn't sound all that bad and that I just had to trust him and not myself because I usually think most of my work is total crap.  (That's how you can tell I'm a real artist...right?)

Well, as it turns out, my brother was right and the song apparently wasn't total crap because after performing it I got several of those genuine "I really liked it" "That was great" "I love what you did with that song" comments.  You can tell the real compliments from the fake ones, believe me.  Besides that, I felt great about it.  That isn't to say that my voice is exactly where I want it to be or that it was a perfect performance by any means.  It just means that I got to experience once again this thing that performing is.  And I love it.  I love singing.  I love singing for an audience.  There's just no two ways about it.  This is not something that I should be stifling or pushing away or quitting or second guessing or not doing because I think I'm too old or I'm not good enough.  This is something that I should be doing.  As much as possible.  It's just as simple as that.

My therapist says that art does not come from us, it comes through us.  I like that idea because it certainly takes some of the pressure off.  If there is something outside of us that chooses us as a vehicle for expression, who are we to deny that?  It's an honor to be chosen and it shouldn't be taken lightly.

I know that jealousy and anger stem from not having things that we want.  Things that we see other people having.  It's hard to stomach.  It could be an object, it could be another person, it could be an opportunity.  I think that a lot of my experience in Los Angeles was colored by this type of covetousness.  I think I thought that if I left and didn't have to have other peoples amazing lives shoved in my face all day long that I would stop wanting what they had, but...I don't think that it works that way.  I don't want those things because they are in my face, I want them because I think I can do the same things and as much as my f-ed up psyche has tried to tell me that I don't deserve them or can't have them, there's always this little voice inside me that knows better.  That doesn't want to give up.  Little trooper that voice.  What a persistent little beast it is.  It's either a smart little voice or a delusional little voice.  If I keep referring to it that way, we are going to have to err on the side of delusion and I'm going to get hauled off to the looney bin, so I'll stop.

So now I'm thinking about moving back to Hollywood.  I never in a hundred years thought that was going to happen.  Nosirreebob I surely did not see that coming.  There are other things that I am interested in doing down there other than singing, but I won't get into that right now.  For now it will suffice to say that I'm thinking about it.  Hard.  I miss my brother, I miss my friends.  I miss the weather.  I know I was freakin' lonelier than all get out, but there are a lot of reasons for that and I might be able to do something about that now.  Now that I have a fresh perspective.

I am going to end the blog here.  I do want to give a shout out to miss Audra Mae who is an extremely talented singer/songwriter.  I told her I was gonna post her CD here on my blog, so...look to the left.  She is amazeballs, you should buy this music.  Click and enjoy:)

---(Also, if you are going to be doing any shopping online this holiday season, do it here on my blog page through Amazon...I am currently unemployed you know...help a single gal out!)

I also want to thank my brother for always pushing me, believing in me, and making music with me.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  I love you lots and lots.

xo