Tight

BEFORE I say anything else, I'm watching Dancing with the Stars and both Dolly Parton and Wayne Newton are scaring me. Scaring me! Wayne hasn't had his face pulled back as tight as Dolly has, but man. Wrinkles add character. Sinatra looked great as old blue eyes, Sophia Loren is still a hottie. Plastic surgery people, please save the money for something else. It's okay...no, shh shhhhhh, it's okay to age.

Wait - how many times have I written about turning 40? Also, am I not working out like it's a new fad? Okay, guilty. I'm still not ever going to pull my skin back over my face like a condom on an apple core. Yeah, I said it. How's that for a mental image?

We all want to be loved forever, and we sometimes want the ridiculous combination of our youthful bodies with our current wisdom and knowledge. I know I'm chasing it. I see it all over the place in the entertainment world. People want to be seen. They want to be noticed. Just like the craft we practice, the lives within tend to be an enhanced mirror of the lives outside of entertainment. That's why some films and shows tend to resonate so well with audiences. It's not a matter of finely crafting stories based on psychological study and behavioral equations. As one of my greatest acting teachers once said, "actors are very special broken people". The same holds true of any kind of artist.

In a rehearsal this past weekend with that very same teacher as a director, I watched really interesting behavior of people who were getting parts taken away and given to them, who had a chance to establish themselves in a pecking order that just doesn't exist. It happens every time he revisits the show. People want his approval. They want a chance to set themselves apart from others. It's not competition - there's nothing to win. It's manufactured self-esteem. There was one girl in particular who has always drawn attention to herself. She laughed the loudest, even when nothing was funny. When the whole cast would be addressed, she would either talk to someone else or rifle through her purse. She, like Britney, like Paris, like Lindsay, will not stand with others on the same level. She wasn't the only one at the rehearsal, either. There were others screaming for attention, for approval, even physically staying close to the strongest person in the room, the "alpha male" director. It's behavior that occurs in rehearsals and in performances, where the self-involved aren't self-aware. I kept looking around at other people, to see if they noticed the same things I was watching. Only a couple did.

Back in real life, the volume is turned down on the same attention-getting habits, but they're still there. I wonder where they come from, and often ask myself how they make the transition from an innocent cry for help to a destructive, self-serving path that really leads to endless dissatisfaction. So Dolly and Wayne have altered their looks, and I know a few surgically enhanced girls at the office. The girl I saw at rehearsal is really no different than the brat I worked with who never quite found out what it was to be accountable for her actions, even when she could clearly see the cause and effect of them. I've seen the most unbalanced people complain about the drama of others, and all of it, both the creative and real worlds I live in, begins to blur and I ask myself why people seem so disconnected, and at the same time want approval, want to redefine the world according to them.

What in our world ranks possessions over ideas? What makes it possible to believe that we're not okay the way we are? When this life seems to be made of all these irregular puzzle pieces, and we end up craving something real, what happens when we center ourselves and are once again able to manage the whole thing? Do the real things we needed get capped and put back in the medicine cabinet?

You have two options: 1) to tighten up because life moves fast and as you get older, sometimes your decisions illustrate the fact that you are alone with your own values and perceptions, or 2) to relax your hold on everything and see yourself in the ever changing context of the world, constantly getting better and never letting any outside influences take anything away from who you are.

So who are you? Who is the country star, the vegas performer, the obnoxious actress, the divorcee with fake breasts, or the writer blogging late at night? We're not so different, you and I. We cross paths, we fade away, we lose sight of each other, of ourselves, and here we are again. We all want to be loved forever. Shouldn't we first get that love from ourselves?