Thursday, November 16, 2006

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is that feeling that something isn’t right. Something went wrong. You’re missing something that you had but you lost. Wanting to go back to find that map that you lost for your life. The ideas and dreams of adulthood that were lost in the river of work and relationships and children. Finding the path again. That path that you were sure that you were on when you started college.
For me, the path was lost when I lost a role in a play in my Freshman year in college. With that roll, I would have pursued another and another. Instead of performing that night, I sat and watched the show. I fell in love and created a new idea of my future. That was the night. The night my acting career ended and my marriage began. 1992. 14 years.
The path that I am on is satisfying and right. Every year (around my birthday) I get the nagging feeling that I’m missing out. I am a performer. I always have been. Performance is what makes me happy. Performing in school as the teacher makes me happy, but it isn’t enough anymore. I need to be on stage somewhere. NOW.
When I think about my time touring colleges in 1992, I feel that I have missed something by not pursuing my then dream of radio performance. I would like to be on the radio. I think that the medium is suited to me and me to it. I have never done any radio work nor have I studied the art. I just like the idea of it.
I think about beginning a podcast. I wonder what I would talk about. I wonder whether it would be interesting to anyone but me.
I sat up last night searching for the whereabouts of my list of friends from high school. I want to reconnect with them. I feel bad that I made those connections break when I went off to college. “It was like you just disappeared,” is what Rick Fonte said. Even when Craig died, I didn’t reconnect. I didn’t take time out of my life to go to the funeral or the wake. I’m horrible at funerals. I always say the wrong things.
We are producing one-act plays this winter. I only want to produce those plays that I have an emotional attachment to. The plays from H.E.L.P. 1992. That’s where I left. That’s where I want to return to find my way.