I'm sorry I didn't call you.
I'm hanging around LA and perpetuating the cycle of something I find myself criticizing, that being the way people are friends out here. Lip service - I think that's what someone said. LA folk give lip service to one another - their associates, their agents, their potential collaborators - you never know whom might be the one to with that special vibe that will become a partner in your artistic and business visions. So you give lip service to everyone. I forgive LA folk for giving lip service.
But I can't forgive myself for not calling you.
When friends give lip service, well ... the friendship stays in the shallow end. Where I grew up, in a farm town in southern Michigan, then residing in that dirty clean midwestern city Chicago, people say what they mean and since they are generally good folk, what they mean is generally good. So people say good things to each other because they feel it. They are real. And the ones whom you take on as friends are the ones whose realness matches yours. Not the ones who might help you produce your next show. Likely necessarily, that is.
And when I met you that nite it was evocative. Images of my twin soul haunting me for weeks. You were so gorgeous and it was like looking in a mirror. Your instincts, your locks, your movement was like mine. I was seeing myself and she was not a supermodel and would never fit the cookie cutter and she was the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen in my life. And that woman is you. And you are me.
I thought about you for weeks. I assumed you were busy as LA folk uncannily are. I assumed maybe you weren't one of the standard Hollywood industry type and you had fulfilling friendships with deep people in real time. And I of course, was so concerned about being someone that would establish myself as someday one of your received admirers, that I never called at all.
I haven't lost site of you, but I fear I have surrendered your consideration of me. Sometimes it seems LA is lip service or no service at all.
Consider Me
Hollywood, CA
Hollywood, CA
April 13, 2007
4 Comments:
I must admit ... your pain of dealing with unreal connections is one I know far too well myself.
It is why I crave connection so much through my work and even talking to you - because there are so many lip service relationships we can have with others. I think that other people have them and don't really realize what is possible, the deeper, more profound connection. They just see the superficial and think it's all that. They're not hurt when they get brushed aside.
But for us, who experience the world truly, madly, deeply, such a thing is painful. We assume, in our hopeful innocence, that everyone else feels that connection as we do. We jump off the cliff and land within another and we imagine that we are holding their hands as they jump into us.
However, it's like we're only holding onto the hands of ghosts. Phantoms. Sometimes I wonder how people can live such an illusionary existence, with lip service friends, phantom friends. It makes me sad, sometimes.
But what can we do? People are as they are. We can only take stock in ourselves and say "I am not like that and for that, I am thankful." - for all the pain it can bring.
I just caught an episode of "Who wants to be a Superhero." Never seen it before. Are you or were you really an auto mechanic? Just wondering. Shannon.
Hey, Shannon! Where do you live that "Who Wants To Be A Superhero" is airing? It aired the first season on the United State's SciFi Channel in July of 2006. I ask because recently I've gotten a few fan responses from Argentina, Peru and Equador - how cool is that!?
Anyway, you might call me a reluctant wanna-be mechanic. As you might know, my car runs on waste vegetable oil and like it or not, no matter how commercial your custom conversion is to run vegetable oil as fuel, you will end up becoming an auto tinkerer as well. Luckily or unluckily, my transient status keeps me from stowing the tools that would actualize my official mechanic's lisence:-)
And Cailean, my friend from yet another far off country, which makes this discussion on lip-service even more prodound, I gotta tell you that in Los Angeles, it's almost like promising to call or even create are together is as habitual as saying goodbye. In fact, people never just walk away from each other on goodbye. Instead they say, "I'll call you and we can get together to ... insert amazing business/art collaboration here ..." But that's not the point. The point is, I don't feel uncomfortable just saying goodbye so I do usually. Unless I really mean that I'll call you. And then I really call you. And care if I don't.
All in all, I value real person relationships and always want to respect their importance in my life. The internet is a God, but real life human relationships are truely the random factor to personal growth.
Hi Tonya
I'm currently in Montreal and it is or was airing here. I haven't seen it yet, but saw a commercial for it just a couple weeks ago.
Hope you're doing great.
Matthew
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link