There's No Business Like Show Business Like No Business I Know

I'm a lucky guy. 

I work in show biz!!!!

"There's no business like no business like show business like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing!
Everything about it is a show!"

I spent my day today putting together scenery, assembling props, and generally being useful at 30 Rock for NBC, primarily for Saturday Night Live.  I watched Kelly Clarkson soundcheck her spot on SNL ---- and I got paid for it. 

I often think about how hard I've worked to get here.  You know, it's been worth it and I would do it again in a minute.  I have no regrets.

But I know what prices I've paid...

I work when there's work, as many hours as I'm called to do.  

I go through periods of unemployment, simply because that is the nature of the business.  Feast or famine.

But I get to be involved in the world I dreamed about when I was a kid.  And I like it that way.

Sure, I do other things --- but all of them are in the business of show.. 

I direct (whenever I can), I act (rarely) and I write (more and more).  I teach (acting)

I also exercise daily ---- which I love intensely. 

But ONLY when I am working in show business do I feel that I am useful --- and it's been that way since I was 13, from the day I decided I would get involved with this world of work I love so much..

If you feel the way I do, you will find your way into the artform.  I guarantee  it.  Your life might not look like the one you fantasized about when you were a kid but you will find your way.  (Lord knows, mine is nothing like what I intended --- but it's a good life and I am proud of having come as far as I have).

Part of why I enjoy my life now is that I worked very hard when I was younger to prepare myself for this time of my life.  I know how to do the things I wanted to do; act, direct, teach.  Granted, everything is an evolving process ---- but I put in the hours, days, weeks, years to earn my place at the table.

New Beginnings...

Who else to welcome in the New Year?

I took a prolonged break from this blog.  I felt overwhelmed by the technology, the concept of social networking, and while I was going through the process of getting married I didn't want to share my thoughts and feelings across the web.  I actually do believe some things are private, such as ones home life.

I am back.





For the coming year I have several resolutions:

1. To teach acting
2. To live simply
3. To save money
4. To exercise consistently

Beyond these simple goals (which in private I have concretized --- because without specifics, there can be no success).

I will writing here about my personal journey as both a person and an artist....two roads that are inseparable.  I welcome your comments and feedback.  Let's build a community of like-minded people, dedicated to living well and making beautiful things.

LOOKING FOR WORK
Ours is not to reason why....

I've been looking for work my entire working life. That's right, over thirty years. Since I was 15. The first job I had was washing the windows of the stores on the Upper West Side, near where I grew up. I think I got a dollar a window, big money if you add up how many windows you can do in an afternoon (and you're a fifteen year old kid in 1979). I loved it and held that gig for several years.

I had a job as a busboy in a deli on West 57th street the same year. Cleaning, mopping, doing dishes. I didn't like that much --- not because of the work but because it was steady. I had to be in the same place, the same hours week after week. I lasted two months.

I'm a freelance person by training and temperament. I've always loved hunting for the next gig, show, experience. When I was younger this attitude extended to my dealings with the opposite sex. I am much more settled now when it comes to my dealings with women (one woman, getting remarried, life is MUCH simpler that way) but I'm still a rover in my work life --- and I like it that way.

Of course working in theater, where there is little consistency and few long-term jobs, help with staying freelance. At this stay of the game I am probably ready to go to work on a daily basis.

But who knows? Possibly I will work this way for the rest of my professional bouncing from job to job. I know that I love the challenge of making something where there was nothing before.

What about you? What's your style? What do you prefer?

YARD SALE FOR THE SOUL....

Knowing what to sell, what to give, and what to keep....

This weekend I was out at my mother's house on Long Island helping her with a Yard Sale. You all know yard sales, of course; endless lines and piles of used stuff that you don't need but are tempted to buy simply because it's there. Goldfish bowls, golf clubs, Ray Mancini Sings The Blues records and God knows what else, all there lying in wait to suck your wallet dry.

I had never really thought about what it means to the person running the yard sale to get rid of all this stuff.

For my mother, and by extension me, it was the beginning of major change.

As my parents age, they are looking to sell their home, move back into the City, downsize, and simplify their lives. This sale of endless tchotckeys was the beginning of this movement to a new life for them.

My parent's lives are changing.

Buddha wrote that nothing is permanent, that the ultimate illusion is stability. I remember feeling the truth of this when I was with my mother on her last day in the apartment I grew up in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan prior to she and my father's moving out to Long Island. All around us the movers and workmen were quickly and efficiently removing any trace of the life we all led in that place for the prior thirty years. My mother asked me if I was upset. I started to cry but something inside of me stopped and I answered:

"No, it's just a place. A place we loved, but just a place."

That moment stays with me. I can never quite get as attached to people, places or things as I used to. I know it's all going to end, myself included ---- and somehow, that's not a bad thought. Of course, this clarity comes and goes. Like the rest of us, I'm human. I just feel lucky to have this sense of distance at least sometimes present in my life.

And you? These are big thoughts, particularly when you're talking about a yard sale...but then again, we get what we pay for ---- and we all pay, one way or another. What do you think?

Changes....

"Time to face the strange ch-ch-changes..." --- David Bowie

At this stage of the game in my life I am yet again beset by the need to change.

I have bursitis in my left foot.

That might not seem like such a crisis. But for me it means I need to figure out yet again how to sustain myself within the world of show business and theater. You see, I spent the last 12 years of my life making the bulk of my living from working as an IATSE Local 1 stagehand. While I work for other possibilities (I direct plays and teach acting ---- and made half my living doing that work last year) my bread and butter has been stagehanding. Now with my foot on the fritz, I am forced to rethink how to live (I don't believe in survival anymore; we're put here to live and enjoy life, not suffer it.)

Needing to shift is not new to me; I am an actor who went to Wall Street who went back to theater as a stage manager who became an arts administrator who became a stagehand who went back to school to get an MFA in Directing who then taught high school in Baltimore City who then came back to NYC and began to direct plays and teach acting. But I never get used to it.

So here I am at a crossroads. It's exciting. It's scary. It's life.

I wonder about you...How have you changed? What gets you through uncertain times?