My various opinions, in general, of the world and everything in it, have recently been shaped by a complete shutdown of all “non-essential" activities, and then slamming myself into the world of grad school by moving to a new country. This is a moment in time. My ideas will shift again, hopefully away from a capitalist structure engrained in me since I started being unable to afford things. I had the privilege of not thinking about that growing up - apple slices and pb&j sandwiches, and rides to theater camp, were simply part of the natural order of things as far as I was concerned. Food appeared when I was hungry, and activities were available when I was interested in them. (Thanks, Mom.) Now that I know what a bank account is, and consider it the ultimate judge of what I can and cannot do with my life, I have some things to consider. I've been considering things for a little over a decade now. I've learned some stuff but still feel like I haven't made any decisions.
During the shutdown, I learned what “essential jobs" are. No, I always knew what those were- but what the pandemic taught me was that society as a whole can agree that there are some things we simply cannot shut down. (This is pretty huge, considering “society as a whole" can't agree on much.) Emergency services can't take a day off. You have to wake up and go fight fires, even if you have a cold. What this let us not-exactly-wealthy people know was that there is job security in these fields. This kind of job security seems to come attached to very little aid and support in times of national crisis, occasional hero worship with not enough compensation, and high stress / collected first and secondhand trauma. We knew this? But now we KNOW this. Service positions that fill needs with immediacy take the kind of dedication that I don't understand entirely, or maybe a gear in your head that thrives on stress and trauma? How else can you explain that EMTs in the united states make $20 an hour (less in Canada)? I'm boiling down a big idea into a capitalist one, I know, but I'm gonna keep going... So I don't have an essential job, and I could (if I was being cruel to myself) categorize everything I had ever done as “non-essential." We made teachers keep going to work, such as it was, but I didn't consider myself a “real teacher" because I was avoiding working in a school like the plague (pardon the expression.) I had chosen my arts path, and in doing so, I set myself up for a life of moderate poverty and no work during a national emergency that would last for an indeterminate amount of time. (Yes, the artist mentality is that you “deserve" to live with cockroaches and survive on oatmeal, oh hey maybe I've tapped into something about the EMTs...) I did my best to try to teach online, but without a history or previous knowledge such as an online homeschool service has, or even any online content creator. I mostly floundered uselessly. I even tried to make art. Some of it was okay. Depression was high in my community. I considered becoming a pilot with high hopes that I could, I don't know, deliver mail or medicine to isolated islands? I considered becoming a funeral director - I already know how to stage manage, and hey, we'll always have more dead people and therefore grieving families. (It was a grim time.) Mostly I learned that I like house plants and that motivation to work out often comes after you make yourself move. I learned how to literally run away from the weepies. This introspection is valuable. But it's not what I want my whole life to be. I've had about a month of grad school now, and I'm starting to realize that not everyone agrees on what grad school is for. (We ESPECIALLY do not have even one tiny inkling of what arts education is for, but that's a whole different bucket of worms. Or is it?) On my first day of a class called Theatre Theory, where the professor literally began with “I don't know why they're making you take this," they asked what I was there for. Okay, time to put in the words why I packed everything into a truck and crossed a border. Why grad school? The student visa, first of all. The international community. I'd also like an MA to prove to employers that I deserve a sustainable job, but I'm doubtful that will come to any fruition. I'm here to hone my theatre skills. I'm here to prove that I know what I'm doing. I'm here to collaborate. “Ah," my professor said, “you're essentially a practitioner." Yes, sir. “And your first semester you'll be taking Theory, and Historiography." Yes that's right. “Well... you're going to be bored." This week we read an essay in Historiography about the way universities advertise their arts programs (“become the next big thing!") vs. how they are actually run. I said the essay made me angry and my professor seemed surprised. I said it did not take into consideration that the market value of an arts degree is what should help us eat food, have children, live our lives. My professor seems to be of the opinion that we are supposed to be here to better ourselves, to write books that only two people will read, to discuss and analyze. Academia for academics. Not to get jobs. Not to get famous. And “making things" was not mentioned. I let him know I had a hard time conceiving of, well, anything that doesn't have an audience. In retrospect, what I meant was I have a hard time conceiving of action without service. Yes, even though I know my job is “not essential." I, apparently, have drawn a line somewhere. I wandered away from that discussion, frustrated by his unchecked privilege (my cries of “but we need to eat, man!" went mostly unheard,) and I showed up for a meeting I had set up with the university theatre's tech director. “Yeahhh," she says, “there seems to be a schism between the thinking and the doing here... which is a curricular problem, not a you problem. Anyway, would you like to paint some black rehearsal cubes blacker?" YES PLEASE YES I WOULD. ANYTHING. PUT A TOOL IN MY HAND. I did indeed paint black things blacker, painted wood to look like wood, wound up jumping up a ladder to the aid of someone who needed me to catch a set piece. The familiarity of what I believe “theater education" actually feels like filled me, made me feel secure. Anticipating needs, communicating with the neurodivergent, being on what felt like a team with a goal, these were comfortable feelings. The pandemic shutdown of 2020 pushed me out of the world and made me reflect. How do I want to interact with my community? How much do I want to allow my capitalist job (that I need in order to survive) to take advantage of my time? What jobs are even available to me that I want to be doing? Is it a privileged perspective to even consider what I want? The guilt of the intrinsic “non-essential" nature of art pushed me towards teaching, where serving the community felt real. I pushed myself into that as far as I could go, hit a wall, and now the pendulum is swinging back towards that monk on a mountaintop... but, apparently, not too far. Dear Future Grace,
This is what your Milwaukee family has taught you: Go to the party. Even if you think that open invitation isn't really for me. Even if you think but I haven't seen them in years, they don't really expect me to be there. Even if you think but they won't even really have time to talk to me. Even if you think but I'm not really in the mood to be ON and EXTRA SOCIAL. Even if you think but I don't really know too many people there. You just spent 4 hours in a park surrounded in people who were there because you asked out loud. Who you haven't seen in years. Who didn't all know each other. You didn't really have time to have an in-depth conversation with everyone. At at one point, you sat down in the grass with a dog and said “I've just done a lot of people-ing today" and everyone laughed and totally understood what you meant and let you sit quietly for a minute. They get you. They get you in ways you didn't know was possible. They get you without knowing everything about you. Yes, the fact that you only had a few minutes with each one was overwhelming and sad and you needed a big nap afterwards. But people were there who have known you since you were a kid. And people were there who met you in college. And one person was there who met you when you were SIX years old. And one person was there who you met only a few months ago. And all together, this community carries all the pieces that make up who you are. You are the sum of many memories and stories and good feelings. You are not a point in time, you are not a dot on a graph, your whole identity is merely an intersection of many lines. Even when they're a little wrong about you, they're right. And the kindnesses you have collected and cultivated, when they all point towards you all at the same time, buoy you. If you let them. Yes, it is overwhelming. It is so overwhelming. It is hard to let people be kind to you. Unpack the reasons for that later. Some times, you can just let yourself float atop the kindness. Even when it feels like it will break your heart. They're there when you need them. They're there even when you don't need them and just like them. They're there as a reaction to you, the person you are, or the person you try to be. They've been there for years. They're not going anywhere. (Even when they go away.) You already know all the best people. |
AuthorGrace is an actor and teaching artist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This blog is a record of some of those adventures. Archives
November 2023
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