shine your teeth to meaningless

I don't know when it happened, but somewhere in the last ten years or so, auditions have become incredibly high-pressure and high-stakes. To use a baseball analogy: whenever an actor goes in for television, he is a pinch hitter, with two out in the bottom of the 9th in a tie game. If he's lucky, he only has one strike against him when he steps up to the plate.

Yesterday, I had an audition for a show that I absolutely love. In fact, I think it's the best new show of the year, and consistently blows me away week after week. The part was a possible reoccurring role, and even though I got the call late in the day on Monday, I worked my ass off all afternoon and evening preparing the character and learning the audition scene.

I woke early yesterday, and carefully planned out my morning so I wouldn't feel rushed or stressed, and I got to the audition right on time. I signed in, I looked over my sides, and was called into the room quickly.

I said hello, sat down to begin the scene, and promptly forgot everything I'd done to prepare the audition.

Everything I'd done to prepare, all the work and energy and acting-fu I'd poured into the audition flew right out of my mind, and I gave a disastrous, embarassing audition. I even forgot a line, to add to the humiliation.

They thanked me for coming in, and though one of the people in the room said I did a nice job, I think we all know that I took a strike, then swung wildly at a change-up that was well out of the zone.

I know that not every audition is going to be perfect, and I know that there will be other auditions in the future, probably for this very show, but I couldn't help but feel like an epic loser when I walked out of the room. By the time I got to my car, I realized that I'd been walking with my head hung and shoulders slumped, and I felt the all-too-familiar tug of sadness and disappointment growing in a ball in my stomach and tugging at the corners of my eyes.

That feeling stayed with me all day, all night, and currently sits over me like a heavy, wet and stinky blanket (proably purchased from a street vendor in Tijuana, peed on by a cat, and wadded up in the trunk of my car for a month, underneath an empty-but-greasy In-N-Out bag.)

I have to put it behind me, and I have to just get through it, but it's hard this time, because I like the show so much, and would absolutely love to be on it.

It doesn't help that I'm feeling kind of shitty about myself right now. I read something Neil Gaiman wrote a couple of days ago about writers. He said that anyone can start, but real professional (I misread the source, and used the wrong word here. There's a huge difference between "not real" and "not professional." I admire Neil Gaiman deeply, and it kills me that I misread and therefore misrepresented him here. I really regret the error.) writers actually finish. By that metric, I'm currently not a real professional writer. I have too many started-but-not-completed stories surrounding me. They sit in my office and clog up my desk and my mind, like they're demanding to be completed and stalking me like zombies until they are. Real Life, and a need to focus my time and energy on supporting my family, have completely taken away the time and slowly and steadily drained the creative passion I once had, and need to write stuff that doesn't suck. When I was a kid, when I was asked "what would you ask for, if you could have anything you want?" I used to reply, "X-ray vision" or "the ability to fly!" or some other super power. These days, all I want is more time.

I'm not doing NaNoWiMo, but I promise myself right now that I will hold up one of my unfinished babies into the creative aether that it stirs up, get over the paralyzing fear of sucking, and hold it up there until it grows into a completed story.