(...Location Location, I know.)
This installment is so delayed because it's the one on which I have the fewest interesting thoughts. Mostly it's personal stuff, without much room for philosophical explication. But I'll try.
I thought I was eligible for a visa in London, but the laws changed and I'm very much not. The day I got this news (not quite 2 months ago), I was devastated. The day after I got this news, I was over it. I hadn't been happy there. No career momentum, very few real friendships, and a general feeling that the Brits were not my people--most of my thoughts on representations of race, gender, and sexuality were dismissed as "precious," a word I have come to absolutely LOATHE.* While I rarely felt that I was being discriminated against because of my gender (which sped my blogging decline), I felt that my gender was discriminated against by the culture at large, and that this was going completely ignored by a complacent population--even by the cool, educated, artsy, liberal people with whom I was surrounded. I was planning on mining this for blog posts, but the ideological and social isolation was too great, and the idea was depressing. I didn't have a lot of friends in London, and there weren't even a lot of people I WANTED to be friends with.**
Moving to London the first time, eight years ago, was the scariest thing I've ever done. When I said good-bye to my family and got through security, as I was putting my belt back on, suddenly I was paralyzed. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how I would physically get myself to the departure gate. It was a strange sensation. I finally decided that I would move my left foot, and after that I would move my right foot, and then I would move my left foot again, and that if I kept doing that, eventually I would find myself on the plane. It worked. Moving one foot after the other, no matter what your brain is telling you, is now what I think of as adventure.
Moving to London this time didn't feel like adventure. To be totally honest, it felt like cowardice. Part of me knew I was stalling, that I didn't know how to start my career here in New York, that I had no forward momentum, and sticking myself in a grad program felt safe. I wouldn't have to worry about it for a year--and LAMDA's admissions process didn't require me to direct in front of a panel, which to me was a terrifying prospect. And London! I loved London! Theatre was more relevant there, and more accessible, and being a New Yorker would make me different and new! But it didn't work out that way. I got a pretty good (not great) education while I was there, and it was worth it in so many ways, but I wasn't building as much career momentum as I'd thought.
And to be totally honest, the guy situation was disappointing. The first time I lived in London, it seemed that I'd suddenly found the city where guys found me attractive. Looking back, it probably helped that I was a spirited 20-year-old girl, with the caché of being American. Or maybe acting students are less exciting. Or maybe it's that, the first time around, I mostly knew American expats, who inherently have a thirst for adventure--my amazing flatmate Lacey had a knack for making friends wherever she went, including the blues bar we frequented (we would occasionally throw barbeques, which would involve lots of old blues musicians bringing their instruments over and jamming on our roof); I randomly ran into a college friend, in a club, and fell in with his squatter friends that HE'D met at a club; I briefly dated an actual Brit (a DJ and musician I met at a club, when my friend Michelle came to visit), and he and I are still friends. But for whatever reason, the seven months I lived there were really hard and really fun and really special, and it was, in many ways, when I became an adult. The year-and-change I spent there just now was productive, and has set up good things for the future, but was probably the least fun year-and-change I've ever had. Seriously. Even years that have had more misery at least had fun parts as well. Fun is important to me--I need it in order to work as hard as I want to work, and to function creatively. Things weren't working out.
And then I found out I had to leave, and suddenly things were working out. I met a young American producer/director/actor with whom, as she puts it, I "share a brain." We've agreed to work together this summer--and then she's probably moving back to New York. Perfect. Also, I'd been having some great talks with an up-and-coming director friend who was her own company, and she made clear that if I came back to New York she'd help me get something started. And as for the guy thing...it's funny, because it's what you always hear: as soon as you stop looking, something turns up. And I was specifically not looking for anyone in New York this whole past year. I wasn't looking for casual hook-ups, so they found me***. And I certainly wasn't looking for a relationship, in this town where I no longer lived...and slowly started to realize there'd been someone wonderful right under my nose. So when I got the bad news about my visa, it quickly started to look like good news. And I stopped wasting time.
So, in the end, this was an important year. It made me realize what I want, in a lot of different ways. Perhaps I needed to view my life from a distant shore. I suppose I even recommend it.
*Also, there is no iced coffee and the city itself is hard to get around.
**Then there were the people I liked who seemed really into me, but could not be corralled into getting together ever. It occurred to me only recently that most of the people I knew thought of me as a Director...and thus not entirely as a Person. The vice-principal of the school once told me that Directing students were sort of halfway between student and staff, and that might have effected people's ability to see me as Potential Friend. This didn't hurt my flatmate, of course, but she's a fit blonde Nordic lesbian who sometimes fucks guys. Hard to compete.
***More on this soon.
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