Trading Souls

In each of our lives we make choices, we make sacrifices and decisions which cost us to varying degrees. As we grow older we contemplate these moments, these decisions, these varying veins through which we flow in our lives. For me, these recent hard times have caused me to turn very much inward, to ask myself tough questions about where I have succeeded and where I have failed, and about the circumstances and chances which led to each. Deep searching. I am asking myself the meaning of what I have done, of my life's work, of my loves and triumphs and stumbles and breaks. I wish that I could say that it is all becoming clear and I am brushing through the wilderness and breaking through to the light. I wish that were true, but I can only claim a few moments of clarity, small rays of illumination which speak to the possibility of joy in my future. In all our lives some value must come from work and I have sincerely been questioning the value of mine. Not just because it seems to have all fallen apart, but also because I desire to walk through the back half of my life and take true pride in what I do, to take joy from the merit of what I have earned.

I have complained loudly and quietly about the twisted logic of the career path that I have chosen. Certainly I questioned it far less when it seemed to bend to what I believed was my fated path, when all things confirmed what I knew to be my destiny. But as I contemplate the possible end of this path I really see that, although there were many considerable highs, I have begun to wonder if the flats and depressions between them has been worth the cost. I realize now how much sadness I have endured at the whim of this business which thrives on making us all believe that we are somehow less - in fact, that is the currency of the business which I naively chose. It is the business of the movies, and of television and magazines to make us feel a lack in ourselves - for how else can they sell us things? And look, this is in many ways a neutral thing, since we all must make choices about what we value. For me, I was never able to square all the spiritual work I had done to escape the notion that how I looked was the sum of me, that how much money I had or flaunted or pretended to have was the sum of me. And today, I had a real moment of clarity about what else has long bothered me about the way the deck is stacked in this business.

It was an audition like many others. A pretty standard cop show. A few pages, small guest star...beggars these days cannot be choosers (yes, I see the irony) and these days all actors are beggars. At first I looked at it and saw nothing, no way into the text where I could feel my heart for it; a woman who killed out of jealousy and sadness. And then I found it, lying smack in the midst of a fear which sits greatly upon me these days. Of course, I haven't spoken of it nearly at all; some of my closest friends do not even know, but I am expecting my second child in the midst of this chaos. And as a woman of 38, I know how the numbers stack up and I am scared. I have found it enormously hard to come to grips with this pregnancy, not least of all because I am sick and worried and nauseated and, frankly, scared of the whole notion. But what plagues me most in the now are those numbers, those stats that stare out at me in harsh black numbers from the genetic counseling pamphlet that is obligatorily given to women of 'my age'. So right now I wait for those tests, watch the days click by slowly until we can know some numbers, have the nuchal translucency ultrasound. I hold to positive as best I can, but I know that the chances of this child having serious issues are greater because of my age and it is a terrifying prospect to me.

And that is what I found to use.

In simple terms, we actors who work this way call it 'substitution'. As one might guess, you substitute something from your reality in order to connect to the material at hand with the hopes of creating real emotion and synchronicity with the role. I've worked this way since the beginning of my career, have traded on my own pain countless times. But today I used it for a somewhat middling part that I may or may not get. I tapped into the fact that I may have to make a life and death choice about the child in my belly and in one of those moments of clarity I saw something - I saw one of the things that I think has made me most want to leave this business. Because every time you do emotional work like that, whether it is 'successful' in the moment or not, you trade a piece of yourself. I have dealt tiny pieces of my truest soul for so many years and I wondered today if any of it has been worth it. And I especially wonder that in contrast to people whose success has come because they had their boobs done, their faces lifted, fucked the right people, gone to the right parties. To me, that is trading in simple currency. But to trade in currency like this, this wrenching emotional choice...for some small part to pay the mortgage...I wonder, truly -- is it a fair trade? Do I want my career and my success (perceived or otherwise) to come from a place where trading in the currency of the soul weighs less than the currency of plastic surgery and good managers and publicists? Now I am not saying that only people who do the latter succeed or that those who do haven't otherwise deserved success. But I do believe it begs a very serious question, and I think it is a question which can be extrapolated to the ethos of the society in which we live - in what we value as people, as mothers and women and feminists and artists.

And though I had a moment of clarity, I cannot say that I am any closer to answers. I know that when I think of applying to the midwifery program, when I think of a career where I put my energies into empowering women in the most visceral and vulnerable moments of their lives, I feel a sense of honour and joy and peace and hope that I don't think I have ever felt as a woman in the film industry. I don't know if that is the true path for me and only time will tell. But I do certainly think that once that notion has come to mind, selling my soul to say two lines on a cable show for 'Scale -50%' and a middling buy-out seems far less worth it than it ever did before. I don't care anymore who knows my name. I think I am much farther than that on my spiritual path. I am grateful beyond measure for the successes I have had, for my travels and journeys and the many perks I have enjoyed. But I think now I am truly focused on what will give me joy in the purest parts of my psyche, the places one find when one digs deeper than the facade, deeper than the lines that have begun to mark my face, the places where I see my youth has begun to fade. I want to be a powerful woman again, I want to own my own vitality, my own empowerment. I want to own my joy in a way that no amount of rejection can tire, no disappointment can truly kill.

And I'm pretty sure this isn't it.