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Enough promotion, now for my post. Lately folks (not in the arts) have been saying how wonderful it is that the arts are not competitive. For instance, at brunch today for an investment banker’s birthday. Once I finished snorting coffee through my nose, I thought about why this perception exists. My guess is folks in other professions want to believe there’s a world Over the Rainbow where work is always lemon drops and never sucks dead donkey dicks.

Personally, OMG I’ve found the arts to be HYPER-competitive because a lot of smart, talented, people fight for a tiny teensy slice of whatever financial or other carrot pie is held in front of our noses.

This makes me sad. At times, it makes me want to

1. give up
2. get out
3. grow up and get a REAL job

And then I come to my senses. Literally. Lately I’ve been taking “Perception Walks” (TM, no just kidding). I walk out the door and stop the words in my head like “tree”. This stops the march of judgments like “pretty tree”, “ugly tree”, “mediocre tree”. I wordlessly perceive. I notice when I name whatever and give it a pass. The words in my head are the enemy. Any words. I listen to the sounds, see the sights, taste my spittle, feel the biting wind. It’s goal-less, relaxing, fun and addictive.

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” Woody Allen from “Annie Hall”

I went to Writing Cabaret last night. After reading what I wrote about a character who…

1. breaks up with hyper-normal boyfriend
2. gets pregnant by a priest
3. murders a rapist
4. prays to be a nun
5. sees visions
6. throws a party with someone wild
7. runs away to NYC to be a painter
8. drops LSD and paints on the walls
9. falls in love with a heroin junkie

…several participants came up to me afterwards to sympathize about my “experiences”. They assumed I wrote memoir.

I write fiction.

I told fellow writer/performer Tiffany what I’d done.

She said, “Oh but fiction is so hard.”

Nope. So much easier… much MUCH easier.

My life is limited. Fictional lives, unlimited. Though I hafta say, it felt dirty. Like I was cheating, the same at a writer’s conference when I won the Mark Twain Lying Award, named after Mark Twain because he famously said, “Never waste a good lie. You never know when you might need one.”

But ya gotta shake what you got. So be it.

If I hear one more person say “persistence furthers” I’ll scream.

I need to know that magic word “how”.

HOW do I persist when my performance sucks, or 9/10ths of every sentence needs a make-over, or when America’s Next Top Model + carton of ice cream = no rehearsal?

Generally the day before a performance, I go into the DARK ZONE (and I do mean DARK). I declare, “This is it. I’m done. I’m toast. I’m through. No more. This is the last time I perform. This time is the last for sure. Really.”

Right? Have you been there?

My family’s heard me say this stuff so much it’s a joke.

To change this horrible state of affairs, I wrote on a 3 X 5 card every reason I wanted to do a kick-ass performance. Then I used it to remind myself why I really-really-really wanted to do a great performance.

Some reasons were petty. (I’ll show you Miss Rama, my evil fourth grade teacher who cast me in the chorus as Bookworm 1 instead of a glam role in “The Merry Bookmobile.”)

Some were the obvious reasons. (It’s fun to emotionally transport an audience.)

Some reasons were Berkeley-style socio-political. (Solo performance is a highly democratic art form. It makes the world a better place. It deserves our support!)

Every reason went on that card. It was fun. Like throwing a tantrum with a cookie afterward. And it worked. I read my card before rehearsing. It fueled my writing, rewriting, rehearsals, and performance. Most of all, it kept the light on during the dark zone.

If you try this method or other motivational methods, please share.

Next Tuesday I’ll write about permission slips and include one for you to download.