Mixed Tapes

"When you get home, Carol, listen to the tape."

I am in my early 20s crying my face off in acting class. For the past few months I have been working on a monologue, struggling with it ... a deeply emotional piece, raw dialogue that is so foreign to me, my mouth contorts to form the sounds.

In this class, we "work" every other week: The class is divided in half. Each session, half the class presents a monologue as though it were for an audition, with no feedback from the teacher or class aside from possible applause. The students in the other half of the class present their monologues, and then get a half-hour to explore it textually, emotionally, applying various techniques from the teacher's eclectic background.

We all bring cassette tapes to record our work.

This is my "audition" week. No feedback.

The week before I had worked into tears (and this was the kind of class where, if you didn't cry, it wasn't "good work"), but it still felt wrong. I could not find the character, the voice. It was strangled and dead. The tears were more for myself, my inadequacy, rather than borne of the character.

Over subsequent days, I said the lines again and again, embedding the language in my tongue, just reciting them blandly. Then I did emotional work, finding a parallel situation, bringing myself through a meditation to reach directly into the memory. Gave me nightmares.

When it came time to present the monologue in class, I was sick and shaking. I don't even remember starting. I barely remember a word coming out of my mouth, but I remember feeling OK. I remember feeling ... something. And I remember ... when I stopped....

There was silence.

No one clapped or even smiled, just nothing. I was devastated.

I went back to my chair, still shaking and holding back tears. I kept them back for two hours, until class ended, and as the others gathered their things, I collapsed in a puddle.

"What on earth is the matter?" the teacher asked, putting an arm around me. I squirmed away. "Nothing. It's nothing." I cried harder.

"Now I will not let you leave until you tell me," the teacher demanded.

"It's just... it's just," I gurgled, "I worked so f*cking hard on that monologue... you have no idea."

"I know!" she beamed, "It was wonderful!"

"What?" I blurted, "Well you're the only one that thinks so!"

"What do you  mean?"

"Well, when I was done -- the class, they just ... they just sat there! And don't give me some crap about 'stunned silence' -- if you like something, you clap, right?"

"Um... Carol ... You need to listen to the tape. That's all I'm going to say." She handed me the cassette with one last pat on the shoulder and walked off.

For three days I could barely look at the tape, much less listen to it.

But finally I shoved it in my boombox and gritted my teeth.

The voice was mine, but different. The character sounded .... real. I knew the words by heart and had listened to all the tapes from the other times I'd worked on it. But this time, it was almost like I'd never heard it before. Very strange.

And at the end. There was silence. For about 5 seconds you could hear a pin drop.

And then ... there it was.

Applause.

Lots of it. For maybe a minute. A few little cheers too.  And I had heard none of it.

Stanislavsky says that when an actor delivers a good performance s/he usually won't remember much in detail, only a general feeling of "rightness." I had heard actors say that very emotional roles can create an "out of body" experience -- an altered consciousness akin to being on drugs -- but this took the cake!

And it frightened me a little.

I was glad that I did good work, that I had finally brought the piece to where it needed to go. But how was this possible? How did I space out on a full minute of applause?

The strong emotion of the piece probably had a lot to do with it, as well as my anxiety over having worked on it fruitlessly for so long. But lurking underneath all that were, I realized, very deep, rancid feelings of unworthiness: I did not deserve applause, appreciation, kindness, warmth, and so I could not receive it; I could not even perceive it.

In the New Age world, much is made of the "Law of Attraction": that you get what you focus on. But even if you don't believe New Age hocus-pocus about mystically attracting to ourselves whatever is in our minds (I sort of do, by the way, but that is for another essay), here was proof positive that at the very least our thoughts can effectively filter our realities to be what we expect them to be.

It is daunting and humbling to think that our perceptions are so fragile, but they are -- and if you show me someone who thinks they aren't, I will show you someone who is in powerful denial.

In Signs of Intelligent Life, Lily Tomlin says, "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch."

And I like that definition, because it allows each of us to have our own realities (which, in my case, was one where I was unappreciated), but also begs us to open our reality, be flexible to the perceptions of others.

Now, in this case, I had a tape recording, which offered pretty irrefutable proof that my perceptions were off. Stuff on video or in writing is equally valuable for this, but even in those cases, there can be differences in perception -- or in the meaning of what is perceived, since two people might agree on the facts of an event but assign completely different meanings and motives. And the assignment of meaning and motive will generally come from our underlying belief system, whether we are aware of it or not.

So awareness is key.

In this particular case, I did not realize how strong my feelings of unworthiness were. But by learning irrefutably how they had affected my perception, I began look for when and how they were coming into play, to constantly question whether or not my perceptions were valid.

Now, this can leave one feeling out-to-sea -- because even a disheartening view of one's self and the world is "safer" than an uncertain one (which is probably why we are often unwilling to challenge our belief systems). But in the end, it has served me well.

I've come to look more squarely and honestly at what really happened in experiences that seemed to support my negative feelings. And I have been very lucky to find friends who have helped me in this, who will tell me their perceptions honestly regardless of what they think I want to hear.

And while, often enough, I will perceive rejection or lack of appreciation when it isn't there, other times it will be there (heck, even paranoids have enemies!), but my friends help me put that in perspective too. And I do my best to return the favor to them.

Most important, though, is to retain a measure of self-doubt, and pepper it with optimism; try to focus on those encounters and experiences that are more encouraging, give less weight to the other stuff (but be careful not to ignore it altogether).

And always, always be open and flexible to new versions of reality. It is not the easiest or "safest" way to live, but it can prove the most rewarding.