There are bad days. Two steps forward, one step back days.
Then there are the worst days. One step for man, one mothertrucking leap to square one at escape-velocity speed, a leap straight out of the influence of All Things Good and an ejection towards Never Never land.
On the bad days, you’re in over your head.
On the worst days, you’re an imposter, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Sweat trickles into tear ducts beneath the mask, keenly aware that everyone in the elevator sees through the shined up kicks and pressed white shirt as the numbers climb tick tick tick to the beat of the Musak, towards your destiny of cracked leather chairs and arthritis inspiring keyboard, despite its ergonomic intentions.
The question, “What made you think you were special?” Sonic Booms! in ear drums on the worst days. Thousands flock to Los Angeles, the Hajj of the entertainment industry, and they’ll devote years of their lives to the crusade, giving up friends and family and dates and poker nights and beaches and sunsets to make it. You think you’ll climb even a mole hill while you’re here? Yes, talent rises, but if you don’t realize there are at least hundreds of people more talented than you, if you think you gots the biggest talent in all the land, then you’re spending time with the wrong people. Even artists with talent oozing from their pores may never make it to the top, as there’s only so much square footage to go around. You want your piece, you have to take it: throwing bows and Tony Jaa knees strikes in every direction. Forget claws; get an Adamantine skeletal frame and hide so tough, it’ll make Captain America’s, federally endorsed, Nazi-crushing shield look like a single-ply toilet paper. And if you hear “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” one more time, you might donkey punch that person right in their sardonic mug.
Trying to make it Los Angeles changes how you view the world. You see it through a rotating kaleidoscope, where values and morals and truth and lies shift with the slightest breeze. It changes you; changes you precisely in the manner you scoffed at before, back when you thought nothing would change you, that you’d stay true no matter what. The worst days whittle down that resolve like a sharp knife and rough hands groping a block of putty. Straight-shooters might make it in this business, but they certainly don’t make it easy on themselves, and who’d notice if you cheated an inch here, took an iota advantage there?
The loneliness aches like a dull pang on the worst days. Countless meals-for-one while you create your own hustle 3,000 miles away from anyone familiar, the people you want in your life as they love and cry and marry and hold concerts and make art and make mistakes and do what made you love them to begin with. Meanwhile, you try forging new relationships in a climate where throwaway friends are as common as Astroturf roll-out lawns, and just as fake. Everyone’s playing the game, and at some point you realize there’s no way to turn it off, no reset button to push.
But even if the day stretches itself out like Gumby downing muscle relaxers on a hot day, the day ends; even the worst days end. And when it does, you’re still living in Los Angeles, driving down Sunset Blvd to go home or go drink or go commiserate, and this is something no one can take away. No matter the abuse or the belittlement or the loneliness, you’ll have this: you could be anywhere in the world, and here you are, making it on your own initiative and own hustle, getting paid to work your own hours, to create something unique for the world. You’re getting exactly what you signed up for; no more no less. All it took was the willingness to risk everything, which for the great majority of people, amounts to nothing at all.
Photo Credit: Ted Fu
