Turn And Face The Strange
Changes:
The quiz
Last semester: Spanish class: 10:10 am: tears streaming down my cheek: blank quiz. Constant academic panic.
This semester: Math class: 8:45:am: heart racing: blank quiz: literally fuck you math. I don’t give a fuck about math.
The audition
I've always been a private actress. I am a private being, I am an actress (?), and I'm especially private about being an actress. In highschool I would skip school for auditions I would rarely get, but even on the off chance I did land something, it was all better kept a secret. Everything I do is in an effort to avoid vulnerability, and there was nothing more repulsive than the thought of relaying repeated rejection to eager ears.
There is no number I can suggest for how many auditions I’ve been on. They were made up of such discomfort- the strangest mix of sincerity and delusion that I opted to allow them to blend together. Some have been really good and some have been heartbreaking and some have been laughable, but most of the time, I’m not sure how they went. There is a certain masochistic perversion to auditioning, you must be a slut sometimes.
This past week I had the first audition I’ve had in months. I still have no idea how it went but I know I was not embarrassed to act.
The painting
Switching out my Wyeth for a Rothko. I slept beneath Christina's World for a semester. It’s an iconic work of incredible detail by the great American painter Andrew Wyeth. It was one of my first decorations in my new apartment, a work that intrigued me but I had not spent enough time with. Christina, a cripple, is wearing a beautiful pink gown with a slimming black belt and she lies in the fields of the failed american experiment, longingly gazing towards a distant shelter. I slept beneath Christina’s World for so long that instead of simply inhabiting the World of Christina, Christina and I eventually became one and the same. I, too, wore pink and black and was immobilized by the dull Americana ahead of me. When the family in A Separation had the piece in their living room, it was not a cameo for Wyeth but for me, my debut, if you will.
I put up a Rothko this week instead after finding it on facebook marketplace for just 20$ and just 2 blocks away. I sprinted, Rothko’s intrigue me but I have not spent enough time with them. Rothkos are known for their entrancing colors and formless compositions that are supposedly peaceful or profound? This semester I will be getting high on prozac and sleeping beneath some abstract expressionism.
All That Jazz
It is so fun when you watch your favorite movie for the first time. I have seen it five times since. It is perfect.
