This post is about my work, people I work with and for, my life and how thankful I am for all of it.
It's all mixed up together. my family, my work, and my life reflect each other. Together they equal my art my reason for living, my calling.
A few months ago my husband told me I had to stop working on a project. Essentially he fired me.
It felt like a punch in the stomach. I didn't know what to do which way to go. Why to wake up in the morning. You see to me a story untold, unfinished, unborn is like a stillbirth. It's like that raisin in the sun that Lorraine Hansberry lamented. Does it explode? No it rots inside and that's far worse.
When I don't get to finish a project that I start (which has only happened to me once before) it feels like I've been dumped. Fired. Broken up with in the most humiliating of ways. Publicly disregarded. Rejected. A dangerous tailspin of deep depression is something that a responsible mother, wife, cannot afford to risk.
After much talk I saw that perhaps the husband was right and we should leave the project unfinished. But where did that leave me?
Looking very lost.
I was lost. LOST.
So I went on a quest to find out what we should do next.
And this is why I am thankful for my work and my clients because that is what got me through a very long period of not knowing.
I wanted to take some time off a sabbatical. A trip to nowhere. To stop and think. To meditate. Stretch, fast and renew. But that was a fantasy. And unrealistic one at that. I'm not Alice Walker, I'm Roz Coleman. I don't have a MacArthur Genius Grant.
I didn't stop. I slowed down.
What I did was take a class. And then another. I had already committed to doing a play and teaching a new acting class at NYU and continuing at SUNY Purchase. Other than that my husband supported my time to learn, listen, and not know. New clients and acting opportunities kept creeping into my life and I saw them as my teachers as my guides through this time.
The quote that culminated this time came last week while I was on set coaching a creative genius. Let's call him Prince (As in the artist who made Purple Rain) because I don't want to disclose his name but he is a director, actor, artist, musician on that level. As I observed him step into his greatness, using his own body as a canvas for his work. He was playing with his food between takes on set. The actress who is acting opposite him, who although is more experienced in acting is admittedly not as free as he is, jokingly said to him "don't play with your food." He replied in a serious tone "why everything in life is meant to be played with."
Full stop.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Enjoy.
Below.
The work of the students.
More to come...