Went to a play last night - and realized I want to be an actor when I grow up. There's just one thing. I have a memory that doesn't hold words. As I sat there, enjoying the music, the performance and structure (that analytical side is the radio programmer in me - I have to deconstruct everything I see and figure out the whys and hows) I realized that'd be what I'd try to do if I could. But I can't. On the way out of the theater I realized that's exactly why I enjoy doing voice acting so much - because I can READ the script. It's my little slice of the life. I wish I could get more of it to do.
There's also the matter of talent. I have long said that to make it in radio, and I think this would apply to any performing art, you need three things: Talent, Tenacity, and Luck. Somewhere there are great undiscovered actors. Some have given up. Somewhere there are singers who can blow the doors off, who can summon angels or demons. But they sing in the car. Or in the backyard, hanging laundry, where no one hears except the sheets blowing in the wind. Others persist.
We usually see the worst or best of people thanks to the media today. Heroes and looters, victims and the saved. When we see good acting, or hear a great performance, we aren't shown the kid practicing his guitar for years... the lessons, the stumbles, the yields to temptation, the seduction of the easy way out or the hard hard road taken, driven by passion that will not die no matter what.
How many have it in them to live on a tour bus for 280 nights a year?
Sometimes luck drives a corporate promotional machine-like juggernaut of flash and artless artiface.
Sometimes talent is so overwhelming it cannot be denied. Sometimes, it's not ever heard or seen.
How many great songs sit in notebooks, deep in closets full of old clothes and older, now ragged, dreams? How many of those could connect to a hurting soul and offer solace and empathy, but never will?
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