February 07 • Acting to Act Out
Day 213 Oscar Wilde famously said, “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” This sentiment, or observation, is just too appropriate for my addiction. I’ve always loved my cleverness and being ‘smarter than the average kid.’ I’ve always valued being able to be whom I needed to be in every circumstance. Several years ago I was at the funeral of a friend that had been quite the thespian. To close the eulogy, his brother read a poem he had written that was profound for me. It ended with: “He was an actor, I was just acting,
like the shadow up on the stage.” And I just realized that a book of one-act plays I wrote in the 90s has a dominant theme of finding one’s self, removing the mask, unveiling the truth, etc. Those are all common issues of movies and theatre, but writing about them was always the easiest of subjects for me. And I think I must have known why. On the other hand, maybe this is just so much BS; insights and perspectives from life reflections with explanations searching for an application. Either way, that pretty well sums it up. Yes, it is a common problem for people to try to appear as someone they are not, but it gets out of control in an addictive environment when there is much to hide. It did in my life. –JR