Read by Joe Appel
The first two weeks of school could be summarised as followed :
Terror (I don’t know anybody)
Thrill (New adventure)
Work (10 Plays, 15 Movies, A Song)
I thought the best option was to quit.
But in-between, I was giving a lesson to one of my students. We were reading an article about Leprechauns. Folklore. The reason for stories. I thought, I prefer storytelling, not acting.
No. It’s just new.
On Tuesday, I was watching ‘Persona,’ directed by Ingmar Bergman. In the movie, there’s the idea that we’re playing parts (personas), the parts we’re most comfortable with. Perhaps I was most comfortable with being a specific thing, a writer, and with years and years of training, just like strength training, it was the only thing people saw of me, and that I saw of myself. But there were new muscles being formed in these first two weeks, and over the year, that would I hope become more obvious. Is it a form of intelligence to trust that whatever I am doing right now will work out? I am a singer. I am an actor. Yikes I can’t land the high notes. Naïveté.
A long conversation with a friend led to a break.
« Can we just leave it as it is? »
Referring to how we talk to each other. No visits, no step up in feeling or commitment to each other. Let’s stop.
I’d like to think relationships don’t stagnate. They either progress on some level, or die. If it was kept the way it was, it would die. I guess the friendship would die.
« I don’t think…, » I said. « Maybe it’s not a good thing we keep talking. »
« Let’s stay in touch, » the friend said. A reflex to keep it ambiguous. I wondered if the friendship would last longer than a week.
With all the films I was being asked to watch, some 40 or so, I couldn’t find all of them and I was a bit worried I’d not meet the goal. So I checked YouTube, and started collecting films Italian, Swedish, English and French. Whatever got me to the finish line.
« Ehi Josh, you still in Norway or what? » the professor said.
We were in class, and it was almost pitch dark, except the spotlight on a couple of students, including me. I didn’t think I was in some random Scandinavian country, at least I thought that was the case.
« Where is your pulsion ! » she cried out. My drive. Shouting the words ping and pong wasn’t exactly my idea of fun, to get me motivated. Ping, Pong. Ping, Pong.
« I think you’re just different » another friend said. « They don’t understand the Americano yet. »
Perhaps it was true. The ten Tarantino we watched this week weren’t exactly a representation of me, even if that’s what other students were starting to associate on an unconscious level. A stunt double serial killer, a bank robber.
Later in the class we were talking about what we do as actors.
« À votre manière, » the prof said. « Nothing more, the way who you’re already. »
After bombing a song, being in class with 19 year olds (and some 40s/50s/60s), I didn’t know who I was already, or at least, any more.
I just hoped I could find a rhythm at some point.
This past weekend I traveled to Normandy with 23 other people for a tennis tournament. We rented three bungalows, and spent the weekend by the beach. Though the ocean was freezing I went for a swim. The last of the summer.
There was a sense of security being surrounded by 23 people, traveling. It wasn’t 4 or 5. Big enough to feel that there were certain people you could turn to, and others who were occasional chatting partners, people you’d laugh with for a second before returning to those you felt more comfortable with. But in the end, everybody helping set up for the tournament, preparing lunch, dinner, coffee, games. It was a full feeling.
One morning I ate chocolate petals, a cereal for kids. And so I was a kid, in the backdrop of Normandy blue and rain, grass, green green Normandy with its simple solid palettes of color.
I returned to Paris dreading a bit the life here. But I walked to my local bakery and after choosing a baguette a brioche au chocolat was slipped into my bag. A free little gift.
« Merci Maman, » I thought.
It was relationship being built in the reverberations of trust, quick glances, my fidelity to this bakery.
I chomped on the bread as I was watching a tv show by Jane Campion, the New Zealand mountains looking like those from Canada, where I used to stay just briefly. Reverberations of a different life. I think Paris was now a backdrop I was trying to make sense of more deeply. There were no mountains here, but people. People who created my nature, as grand as those cliff peaks.
