February 26th 2014: Financial Burden

Financial burden. I still don’t get it, until I find myself crying inconsolably as I receive my paycheck  just to distribute it among all my pending bills. I still don’t get it. Sorry dear, you still can’t get a real mattress, you still can’t get a comforter, why are you even thinking about how much you’ld like to renew your wardrobe? I’m so sorry you don’t have a decent pair of classic stilettos.

I find it hard not to be a cheap person and yet not being able to afford basically anything outside of my needs (and yet, sometimes managing to acquire some things). Just this past week I have been acting out the following performance score:

 

Which of course failed after 1 week.

And more than anything, score or no score, I cannot live any other way. That is as far as I can stretch my earnings. I chose to live under the poverty line but I really don’t know how to. I have been trying and I have pushed myself, but my stupid privileged muscle memory keeps thinking that $500.00 is a decent price for a dress or a jacket. And it should be a decent price, provided I could afford it and the people who made it got paid fair wages. The saddest part of my weekend, and I mean saddest as in I feel sorry for myself even feeling sad, was running to a window at a shop to see a pair of sunglasses that was simply fabulous just to see the price tag and knowing that I was nowhere near being able to afford them. They were one week’s worth of work. Damn. I’m for sure happy with the $5.00 shades I bought on the street during black friday, but I can’t help thinking how long or why have I been ok without shopping much lately? I receive this e-mails from my favorite stores, they’ve had some great deals, like 40% off and 60% off, and I can’t even afford the discounted products. It’s embarrassing. But c’mon, obviously I don’t need anything else! I have clothes, I have a home, I have foodstamps, what else could I possibly want?

Financial burden. What? And then I receive those emails with deals on flights. I see an incredibly great deal on a flight to where my family lives. Well, can’t do it. Except, of course I could, instead of redistributing my check among my financial responsibilities. That’s when it all becomes really dehumanizing. That my financial responsibilities must take over my…oh no, wait, people don’t really have emotional responsibilities to themselves or their loved ones.You can totally disappoint yourself or someone else, and there is no real consequence for that, so we, of course, do it all the time. But you can’t fall behind and disappoint the bank or the government, or else… Well, I might lose the bank but at least I’ll still have a family to presumably love me, hopefully.

I guess this year has been harder than I expected simply because this “burden” has caught up with me. I can’t afford this lifestyle but I live it, and I am yet to figure out what that means. I of course do not live by any means near to the standards I was used to only a few years ago. This has nothing to do with translating economically into NYC (which of course demands that [almost] everyone adjusts to some extent), this has to do with me not having the means that I was used to have, this has to do with the choices that I have poorly made for myself for feeling entitled and trusting every promise made to me.

Financial burden. I remember taking that mean survey that your borrower demands from you when you are about to graduate.

Financial burden. I still don’t get, until I find myself crying inconsolably as I receive my paychecks just to distribute them among all my pending bills. I still don’t get it. Sorry dear, you still can’t get a real mattress, you still can’t get a comforter, why are you even thinking about how much you’d like to renew your wardrobe? I’m so sorry you don’t have a decent pair of classic stilettos. No baby, you can’t afford to visit your family.

 

OK let me go out and drink my few spare bucks away.

 

What do you want to do with your life?

Why won’t your fancy private school degree make your life better already?

 

Because you haven’t even paid for it yet!

 

Think of why you decided to study art.

You always thought (very romantically) you would rather be poor but make art. But be honest, you never really believed you would be poor. But no. You are not poor. Poor would be a person who has just a little bit of money. You are below that. You will be poor the day you have paid off your debt, and then you’ll have the chance of growing out of poverty…right?

 

I haven’t figured out anything yet. I often feel lost in how to approach my own situation. I don’t even have to pay anything for my loans, but the number keeps growing. If only my income would grow at a 6.8% rate day by day. If only I would’ve been money-smart instead of book-smart.

Still, I don’t regret having given myself the opportunity. I don’t regret and I wouldn’t change the friendships that I’ve made, the lessons I keep learning, this experience of incomparable vulnerability that I am going through. And maybe slowly, but I know I’m beginning to figure it out. I just need to trust my dream.

 

Katy would tell me I’m just doing “entitled bitching,” and it is true, because I can, because yes I bitch but also I apply for jobs, while working 3 jobs, submit proposals to festivals, get rejected, I find time to work on my art, also to support my friends’ art, I make time for meditation, for taking care of my body, for fun, for my internship, for rehearsal. I’m not just sitting here bitching.

I originally wrote this text on February 26th 2014, with the intention of posting it on this blog. But then, for some reason, I didn’t post it, until today. A lot of this was incorporated in The SM Cabaret Script, I realize now. Well, my life is in such a different situation than it was a year ago, or even 5 months ago. More of that to come next.

Students who say ‘no’ to £50,000 of debt

It is crucial to see the global picture in terms of student debt. Signing a loan might get you a degree, but a degree is no guarantee of a job, or worse, enrollment in an institution does not guarantee a high quality education. This seems to be a problem all around the world.

October 6th 2014: Insofar as I can imagine, I will be fine.

From Imagining O. Photo by Marina Levitskaya @ The Alexander Kasser Theater

Insofar as I can imagine, I will be fine.

I am most recently dueling with the withdrawal from the last show I was involved in. And by involved, I mean as involved in a relationship with about 20 people that became my artistic lovers, siblings, and mentors. Artistic in the same quality of life. After 7 weeks of what one could only taste in dreams, of exchange, of inspiration, of rage, of love, of pain, of confusion, of growth, of clarity, of politics, of physical, emotional and intellectual stimulation and exhaustion: what now? I am back to the question that has haunted this blog from its very beginning a year ago. What now?

But I prick myself deeper with the question: what now what? What should be or happen now?

Now being both the time and place I live in, does not realistically paint a pretty picture to me. I don’t need it to. If in anyway this recent experience has marked my life is in restoring my hope in the limitlessness of my mind, of my creativity (and everybody else’s!). Insofar as I can imagine, I will be fine.

Imagining O, the production I am processing about (nor writing nor talking seemed enough to describe what I am doing here), was all about, well, imagining. And not really all just about that of course,* but imagining was obviously so central to it that its title takes on it. And it is in my experience of imagining through Imagining O that I want to make a/some/no point here.

A couple of years ago I found this book called Environmental Theater; it would shape the rest of my career, more, the rest of my life. Not only did I recognize in it many of the ideas I have been exploring and struggling with through my somewhat traditional undergraduate training in the theater, but it revealed an exciting world of possibilities that had been in the making since long before I was even born. How come I never knew of this other world and boundless way of creating? I found my privilege in finding this world myself.

Was it not a challenge, reading this book? It was! I wanted to agree with it all and yet I couldn’t, but as I read through its pages the lessons taken from its author’s experience in creating this other kind of theater, I kept imagining myself as a part of this wild all-encompassing process. This book gave me something to pursue both artistically and intellectually (if I decide that those two are separate things), but not just this book, its author did. I decided I needed to learn more about these artists, these ways of creating, so that my own creations could be richer than whatever otherwise they would be. It was a moment in which I was truly disappointed in art and the world. It made sense at the time that academia would save me; but not academia in the traditional sense, academia in the sense that the author of this book who is both an academic and an artist had coined in the shape of what is Performance Studies (to him): a field, a methodology that “must refer to, come from, and refer back to embodied behavior” and that has “no fundamental” so that “any list of established text or performance must be revised and changed.”** And so I dived into getting my Masters in Performance Studies, romantically seeking to be saved.

I was probably more troubled than ever before in my life through my grad school experience, not to mention it is at the very heart of my financial headaches and the parent of this blog. Yet it has saved me in many many ways.

Not longer than a year after graduating I was sitting in a dance studio in New Jersey with my scene partner by an awkwardly large table, 2 porcelain cups filled with coffee in front of us, and in the presence of the director and his assistant. We were rehearsing.

 

“You have the talent, you just need the courage” tells me Richard Schechner, creator and co-director of Imagining O, author of Environmental Theater, and founder of the Performance Studies department at NYU. He tells me not in one of my preposterous sentimental dreams, but in that dance studio, 8 weeks ago.

 

And he tells me over and over again in my head as I now walk in the now of the “show is over” and “now what?” I do need the courage, we all do, and nobody can give it to us, it is only from within that we may build it or find it. I knew right away what I needed my courage for, and it was for imagining, and not for imagining just for myself, but for him, for my scene partner, for the entire company, for my family, and ultimately for the world. Throughout the process of Imagining O, we were constantly reminded of how harmless and fruitful it can be to just let one’s imagination run. There’s a pleasure and a horror in going there, so what? Just about two years ago I was imagining myself in the middle of a workshop for an environmental theater piece, and there I was just a couple of weeks ago diving in slow motion into my own death at the last performance of Imagining O, which according to Richard is “the most environmental piece” he’s ever done. And while I had imagine these moments wildly, more often than not the actualization of those fantasies exceeded any dreams I could have had about them. The immediate feel of trust among the company, the generosity with which we all arrived to our first rehearsal-workshop, the love that we shared, the intimacy we created, the inspiration we exchanged, is incomparable to anything I might have imagined would happen. Now I have more to imagine. The piece is about our collective imagining of the characters, authors, and texts that we explored; our collective imagining: from the designers, to the directors, to the production team, to the cast. So, with higher standards for imagining, now I imagine more, and I know, I will be fine.

 

 

I originally wrote this text on October 6th 2014 with the intention of posting it on this blog. But then, for some reason, I didn’t post it, until today. Maybe I just needed the courage.

 

Insofar as I can imagine, I will be fine.

 

 

*More about Imagining O: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/theater/richard-schechners-imagining-o-at-montclair-state.html?_r=0

**From: What is Performance Studies? Interview with Richard Schechner http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/003305515.html

 

Wanting vs. Contentment for Creatives

Many events and feelings have been coming to a head. My absence on this blog has been in part due to a creative paralysis. That’s what I want to explore tonight. Why it happened? How it happened? How I felt? And how can I move forward? Which brings me to a larger question. HOW CAN WE HEALTHFULLY AND SAFELY BALANCE THE DESIRE TO PROGRESS WITH CONTENTMENT?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this question and what the possibilities mean for the human psyche – especially when it comes to climbing towards a major career goal.  With job openings low and personal debt (with fluff degrees) high this is a pertinent question of the times. You can only apply for jobs for so many months before being left completely drained, depressed, and with an overall sense of worthlessness and low self-confidence. I would characterize myself as fairly confident, but over the last three months I couldn’t say that without crossing my fingers behind my back. When the paralyzing feeling of wanting happened I began to settle. Not because I was content with where I was. I’m not okay with being a server and not creative – but I was just exhausted and feeling low about the whole thing. Its not even the act of job applying, or the feeling of rejection that got to me. The larger beast was the constant feeling of wanting, or looking forward, wishing my life was something else than where it is at present, not being present, just wanting more every second of the day. Each job I applied to became an image of what could be – followed by the contrast of where I am. It’s the power of consumerism and capitalism that got to me. The emptiness you feel for not having this or that. I needed a break – there’s only so much you can take before being positively driven becomes having a breakdown. I have never felt this way of being stuck in limbo (in the wanting phase) and I needed a sense of peace, of contentment just for a second if I could get it. So I just chilled for a bit and tried to be happy with where I was at the moment.

So… I essentially did nothing at all. I stopped networking, stopped applying for jobs, stopped writing, auditioning, and blogging because I thought that I was doing all these things in hopes of achieving something that I didn’t already have. Quite frankly, I gave up. That’s what I thought I needed to gain breathing room. At the time I didn’t see it as giving up, but rather: allowing myself to be happy with the present. I viewed art-making in a consumerist sense (which I’ve learned can be dangerous and healthy). Maybe its what happens when you try to make a financially- sound living off of a creative field that you love. Anyways, back to the initial point. Now here I sit and I still feel a sense of longing. Go figure, I’m longing to be involved again, to be making something beautiful and expressing, creating, dreaming. You’re damned if you and damned if you don’t eh? The thing with artists is that the craft and the dream are so personal that when you’re out there trying “to make it” it can be heart-breaking if you view the process as “trying to make it.” The healthier trick perhaps is to think of it is “I’m making it.” That means you’re living in the present. To just do something – go to a dance class, write a blog post, sing a song, paint, draw, write a haiku – just do anything that transforms your wanting into doing.

Balancing contentment with the present and planning for the future has been a daunting task since I finished grad school. You go to grad school with big dreams and big “wants” out of life! You hit the grounds running and it can quickly get out of hand in this economic situation. Every time I try to wrap my head around my present circumstance it quickly becomes an endless list of everything I don’t have – no retirement, no savings, no benefits, no vacation time, no job in my field, no property, no marriage, no kids, no car, etc. etc. How can you be content with the cards stacked like that? The sentiment that goes hand in hand with these thoughts is “I need savings, I need retirement, I need a house, I need to be married, etc.” What’s more, when you focus on what you think you need, you have no energy to count your blessings and feel gratitude for what you have. More aggressively speaking, you completely bury what you do have with everything you hope to have in the future.

At present, I’m feeling another wave of getting back on track creatively. This time around, I’m going to focus on the day to day projects and creative expressions. What can I make each day without feeling overwhelmed by looking at the road ahead. Yes, I have larger career goals, but starting small and focusing on the day to day is the building blocks of an artistic career. Instead of “I want this, I need that,” let’s try “Today I’m DOING this and MAKING that and that is just enough for me today.” Looking back at the months we spent developing our cabaret and first play, I realize that even then I needed a retirement plan, a savings, and a 401K but I felt entirely full. I felt like I had everything and relished in every moment – I wished not a minute away. This is because when we’re in it, we’re in it. And when we’re not then we’re wanting it in the distance and left feeling hungry. Funny how it works, I feel a little more fulfilled already after writing this post. I conversation I had with a friend tonight and this poem I saw subsequently on Facebook lead me to this point.

The maximum IDR amount of $1184/month.

“Based on the information you provided, you’re no longer eligible for a reduced IDR payment and your payment will eventually increase to the maximum IDR amount of $1184/month. Review your payment schedules for the exact date your payment will increase. If your financial situation changes, you can check your eligibility and renew here at any time. If you want to leave IDR and select a different repayment plan, please contact us. ”

What is funny is that in a matter of a couple of weeks I will be so unemployed (as far as I know; I mean I might start playing lotto and attending church for divine help).

What next? What now?

Happy Halloween!

Take a second to reflect on the really scary things. And then go out for a drink (or two or three…).

A-Quick One-Act Some-History of-Education (Inside-My-Head)

Characters

Person of Power 1

Person of Power 2

People-Students

Act 1- Scene 1

(An office, in the past past past, People-Students are heard protesting right outside )

POWER1

I don’t think education should be a right, sounds too dangerous that way. Let’s keep it a privilege.

POWER2

You are right. But, these people are revolting because they want it.

POWER1

Hmm… let’s just give them some “pretend education system,” and they’ll shut up.

POWER2

Done

(People-Students cease protesting).

POWER2

(Looking out the window)

Hey! Look! They seem to really like it.

POWER1

(joining POWER2 at the window)

They do…are you thinking what I am thinking?

POWER2

Yes! let’s make it a little more expensive.

POWER1

And they won’t be really able to afford it, so we can lend them money, and we’ll make even MORE money!

POWER2

Done

[…]*

(Protests start again)

POWER1

This again?

So annoying.

…

Ok, Why don’t we get rid of a couple of them to scare them a bit.

POWER2

Done.

(Protests cease)

POWER1

Just keep those prices rising. Easiest business ever!

POWER2

What about the quality of education?

POWER1

What about it?

POWER2

Nah, nothing.

To be continued…

*Insert/improvise some conversation about breakfast.

 

And while you are here, please check out this article from the HuffPost about the movimiento that has started in Mexico due to the disappearance of 43 students and the appearance of dozens of mass-graves with unidentified bodies:

Mexican Government — Tell Us the Truth — Where are the Ayotzinapa 43?

 

We must come back.

We must.

Ok girls, we took a break, I get it; it was hard to deal with the blues of our last performance of The SM Cabaret and we slowly faded out in our duty to this platform.

Now what? We must come back. Re-build our momentum. Continue to write our way through this. Or: move on. Of course not all of us will stay through this forever, maybe none of us will. That is also OK!

So, here is my proposal:

Get back on your posting schedule, or write a final post, or just don’t write anything and someday maybe come back.

And if you aren’t already part of TGPB but would like to be, please let us know!

The action we came up with during the Student Movement Convention should kick off soon…not to forget that November 21st is less than 2 months away…

There’s much to be said and done, so I hope to hear from you soon.

you will hear from me,

G

 

 

Oh Republicans…

Oh Republicans…

As this Mother Jones article points out, our country’s priorities are terrifying.