Anniversary

"Time keeps flowing like a river..."

-- "Time," by the Alan Parsons Project

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Not sure how this escaped my notice here, but I moved to Cincinnati a year and three days ago. I was driving a different car then, and living in a different house, but despite all the changes (some would say progress) not much has changed. For one thing, I'm still acting, continuing the experimental dream. And for another, I'm still dirt-poor, pinching my last few possessions from the curb. But below the poverty line is the best place for a self-proclaimed artist to live. Once you get paid exorbitant fees for seeing the world a certain way, the balance of life and art goes to shit. Art supports life, always and always it works that way, with life at the summit and art struggling at the cliffs. Art supports life, be it through entertainment or money or lyrics or meals. It's gotta be that way.

We do not watch out for art, though we think we do. We must watch out for life, and grasp at the feathers it drops as it zings by. There is nothing else worth watching out for but life, and all art really does is prove this to us over and over.

A year here has taught me that, if nothing else.

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I'm still staying up late, that also stays true. I read or I think or I type; therefore, I stay up.

I get more of my meals at home now, and I tend to my food in a way I only pretended to before. Last night, I had one of the best chicken breasts of my life, pan-fried in butter with garlic and onion, and it was not in a restaurant.

I can type "Cincinnati" very quickly now. That feat has taken several months in itself to accomplish.

And of course, the work has changed. I am closer to a nerve center, a staff worker in a theater's office, with duties beyond memorizing lines and conferring with teachers. I have a work email, something I've never had before, and I use it probably as much as my private email. My input, however small, has far-reaching results, and my titles have longer names. But the trade-off is less performing, at least in quantity of shows and roles. It is in quality, though, that I find my solace, and that is always better.

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Not to say that any of this makes my life particular or particularly great or anything like that. This blog, after all, is not my life, just as no biography is the man, no memoir the memory.

It's just an assessment. I see where I've come in a year's time and it makes me feel good about my decision to live and work here. It's good to have a hold on the past as you reach at the future, and that, if anything, is what this blog helps me to do. The placing of events into narrative form gives life structure and meaning, as action on a stage needs a plot to justify it.

I understand that the word anniversary comes from the Latin meaning "returning annually," or "the turning of every year." This year turned, and it turned out beautifully. Just like a perfectly seared chicken breast.

So it's been a year. Act one. We are into act two, and tomorrow The Children's Theatre begins its Big Move. Here's to the next year in Cincinnati.