Passion for Passion

"I absolutely knew that I would feel this way. I knew that coming
here would bring out all of my most deeply supressed thoughts and
emotions. Feeling the passion in this room unearths every artistic
failure of my pathetic, untalented life. Witnessing the talent flow
from these people onto everyone in the audience awakens my buried, but
never forgotten, feelings in the darkest part of my uncreative heart.
My most severe failures as a person come pushing to the surface each
time I subject myself to this."
I watch the actors sing and dance the first few scores of Tommy. They
hit every note with uncontainable enthusiasm and emphasis. Each line is
delivered with sheer passion. Talent truly flows out from their bodies
and into each of us held captive in the audience. Everyone is spell
bound and mistified and completely focused on their movement and sound.
All except for me.
Tommy is being adressed by his older alter-ego. My eyes almost begin to
well with tears. All I can think to myself is what a tremendous failure
I am. I watch the actors, passionate artistic people who have found
their source of expression. They know what they love and what drives
them from that intangible source deep within. I think to myself that
they must wake in the morning with a focus. They must feel a call to
their art, some sort of anonomous pull to create. Maybe they all of the
sudden have urges and ideas and must immediately remove them from their
insides and show the rest of us. I hold back my tears as the relization
hits me once again that I will never feel this is my soul.
I see myself on the stage, in the fourth grade. It all comes rushing
back to me, the way everything looked from up there. The lights were so
bright I couldn't see much past the first row of parents and older
brothers and sisters. But they were out there, I knew that
instinctivly. My face become hot and sticky and my hands were all
sweaty as I waited silently off to the side. My role in the play was
small. Mostly I just came and went with the other kids and stood
around. I had but one line to deliver, towards the end of the play. It
was some four or five words long, which carried little importance to
the plot. I glanced again at the audience as my line fast approached.
The lights blinded me and though I couldn't see most of the people, I
felt them. I could hear their breath and see the occasional snap of a
camera. I felt their eyes on me, at that moment an eight year old girl
terrified and red faced in front of everyone she knew. The heat of them
made me nauseous and every expectation that I imagined they held came
crushing over me and stole my breath. My mind stopping fear had taken
total control of my body and senses and I stood there like a statue,
paralysed and utterly motionless. Then the kid next to me jabbed me in
the ribs. Panting, I came to the realization that there was silence. No
one was speaking. The silent hum of the other kids saying their lines,
which had only a moment ago been the back drop of my thoughts, was
gone. The kid jabbed me again and I looked at him without a clue or a
thought in my head. A teacher across the stage motioned to the girl who
stood center stage and she, very confusidly and slowly, said a line.
All of my classmates on stage looked at me again, baffled and
impatient. I remained silent and still and no thoughts ran through my
mind. After more motioning and gesturing from various teachers the kid
next to me delivered his line and the play went on. It took me a long
time to understand what had happened.
The gypsy on stage weaves her way around Tommy's father and draws the
boy away. She floats across the stage, her sheer skirt flowing along
behind her and around her as she moves. She is beatiful, dazzling and
exotic. Every step is as if on air as she winds her way around the
stage. She stops centerstage and pauses for a moment to sing directly
to the audience. I look at her eyes. They shine, they jump off of her
face and I can see into her. She stands there and bears her soul to
those she knows, those she loves and all that she'll never even meet.
She has no inhabitions, no fear. The gypsy stands there, tall and
radient and lets every part of herself be exposed to the world. I look
away now. I cannot bear the intensity she radiates. I have no defense
or response for it.
I'm blowing up the eighthundreth ballon of the morning. My fingers are
powdery and dry from tieing the ends. I'm wearing old jeans and a
loosing fitting stripped long sleeve shirt that once belonged to my
brother. It's eighty degrees out but it's the best rocker looking
outfit I have. I tie another balloon as my bored glance falls on my
bass case. I take a deep breath, attempting to ward off the nervousness
rising up in me. Very soon the grunt work of setting up a recital will
be done and it'll be time to actually play. In front of half my school
and my parents I will either play good music or embarrass myself. I'll
get up there with my guitar teacher and play the bass line to "Blowin'
in the Wind" as he stums the rest. I'll plug my fretless bass into the
amp and have no more chances to run away and hide. I'll show the world
the I'm a musician. They'll all see how good I am. I take another deep
breath and try and calm my nerves. Not long after my mounting
nervousness took hold the recital began. Not long after that it was my
turn. My guitar teacher anounced me and what I would be playing and we
began. Well, he began anyway. I missed my cue to start. So he stopped,
and made a joke about technical difficulties. He began again and I
resolved to not only start my part this time, but play it flawlessly. I
came in a half beat too late and, in addition to missing several notes
alltogether, remained behind his part the entire time. When we finshed
the lovely song I had mutilated into ear peircing peices their was
scattered applause from the audience. Their was, however, no lack of
pity for the fifteen year old girl who was clearly not musically
inclined.
The lights come on as intermission begins. My dad says something to me
but I'm not really listening, just absorbing and feeling everything
around me. The room is so full of life and energy. The audience buzzes
with small talk. I am capable of creating nothing, nothing comes
pouring out of me or gets it's beginnings in my mind. I present nothing
of any use to mankind. I am a failure, a souless, visonless zombie
sentenced to walk through life never seeing and never being seen.
I'm in the dark room. I've stayed after school to finish an assignment
and am alone. I tenderly work at developing my negatives. I take
special care to leave them in their developing liquids for the exact
right amount of time. I use the tongs to swoosh the developers around
over the photo paper just as I was taught. It's the end of the year and
the cramped, windowless space swelters. I think about graduation as I
sweat. I remove my blue and grey polka dotted button down to reveal the
matching sleeveless shirt underneath. I wonder about college and what
it'll feel like to live on my own. I envision my apartment, how I'll
arrange all the furniture I don't have. I move the pictures from tray
to tray, being careful not to splash my pants or skin. My mind weaves
in and out between the prom, graduation and, life as an adult. I finish
my pictures and hang them to dry. As I'm getting my books together to
leave my teacher comes in. He goes to my box and produces the two
pictures I had developed the day before. The objects in the picture
were almost unrecognizable behind all the spots and streaks on the
photographs. He gives me some pointers on developing film. My
dissapointment in my self must have been strewn across my face because
just before I reached the door he called out to me, "You know kiddo,
photography isn't for everyone. There's nothing wrong with trying
something new and finding out it's just not for you."
Tommy towers above, singing from atop a huge pinball machine. The
girls, all wearing bright sixties dresses and long scares in their
hair, swoon about below. The police officers keep them back, their arms
intetwining them into one solid wall. Everyone on stage is singing now,
all of their sounds converging into one resounding voice. I try and
imagine what it must have felt like to write this. I imagine Pete and
the guys in a room, all bursting with ideas and interupting eachother
and finshing eachothers thoughts. I imagine it's original conception. I
imagine Pete doing something trivial, maybe watching TV or driving his
car. Maybe it just hits him, inspiration and ideas meld into eachother
as a creative work is born way down deep inside one individual person.
And then, he presents his ideas to the guys. And they all add to it and
feed off of eachother. Then, in leaps and bounds and baby steps, as
quickly as it hit Pete, it was done. Out on paper and up on the stage.
Just like that.
I watch Tommy's friends desert him on the stage and leave him with just
his family and younger alter-ego. Tommy goes to the mirror and looks at
himself. He sings "Can you hear me?/Can you see me?/Can you feel
me?/Can you heal me?". I absorb this for a moment, memorized by the
power and brilliance of it, and then I think to myself, "I'm heard, I
have a passion which can be seen when looked for hard enough. I feel
and have something that I attain to be. I have a passion for something,
it never leaves me and inspires in myself pure desire. I have drive, I
want for something so badly that my mind hurts and my heart stops
beating when I think about it. I am driven, day and night, year after
year, failure after failure towards something. I am driven to find a
passion, for finding an outlet for my creativity. I have passion for
finding passion. A passion for passion. There is nothing in me to heal,
there is no great lacking in my soul and no void in my heart". I sit
breathless. I sit there, while Tommy roars to a finish, simply
breathless and thoughtless. I have come to the realization which
validates my entire existence. This realization immediately beings to
exorcise the demons of doubt from my body. I feel full somehow, as if
my life until this moment had been a fast and my heart and soul have
now been rewarded with that which fills it best, all the beauty that
lies within open creativity and it's boundless possibilities.
The tiny, contained smile grows as my mind begins to churn. I feel
something unfolding in my heart and being hammered out in my mind. This
revelation has sparked small firings all over my body. I have one small
idea at a time. An image pops into my head. Memories flow through my
veins and emotion pulses at my fingertips. They all course their way
through my body up to my mind to be sorted out and put in their proper
place. I begin to realize what is happening and glance at my watch. I
get fidgetey in my seat as my mind races. I have no conception of how
Tommy is ending, I can focus solely on all the once small thoughts in
my head that have now meged into one sweeping and winding tale which I
must release from my body at once. I cannot sit still. I can think of
nothing other than how to tell this story, how to present it to others
across a page so it makes sence. I weave my words together with meaning
and feeling and passion as I absently see the final moments of Tommy.
"The play has ended but something else has only just begun", I tell
myself as I applaud. I somehow take myself out of this story
formulation mode long enough to put one foot in front of the other and
walk from the auditorum.
As I pass through the glass double doors out into the warmish night air
I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I see everything that I am not and
will never be. But for the first time, in that nanosecond I catch my
own eye in the glass, I see just what I am and always have been.