History's Horizon
I could have been a history professor--engaged and enthusiastic, at least for a few years. I would have told history like a story, used the present tense, injected my classes with humor, tried like hell to get my students to understand how close humanity is to its history, how everything we do and everything that happens is not only history in the making, but also ripples from history gone by, another link in a chain of events that started before all things.

I could have made a fortune in advertising. I could have ridden the most recent wave of funny commercials to a successful career selling whatever I was told to sell.

I could have been a minister. I could have gotten ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and moved back to New England for long, intellectual conversations about Not-God. I could have preeched around Not-God for my congregation every week, and counselled them one-on-one every other day about all things Not-God.

I could have been a filmmaker. I don't know if I would have made a penny. But I could have used my credit cards and my connections to spend favor time making movies. I could have written and taped my material with actors and actresses eating bagels for lunch because that would be their pay for the day, and the rain would pound against the windows of my friend's apartment creating a sound problem, and my arm aching from lugging equipment would be around my sound man in the corner as we quietly asked each other "what should we do?" And my mind would not be on my day job, where I would be due early the next morning.

Instead I became a Neo-Futurist, which is a kind of playwright, a kind of performer, a kind of director, a kind of community member, a leader, a follower. Our aesthetic defies easy explanation. And we gather on weekends for long meetings and get frustrated by our slow progress and meet over beers sharing anger and hurt over projects failed, over balls dropped by staff members paid by tickets sold to people who come to see us, not them we say, us. And we're told we should be lucky. And we're paid more than most. And we're approached by people in bars who point to our shirts and say I've heard of you guys. You're supposed to be awesome. And we're tired. And we all work other jobs, most of us wondering how we got here, some of us wondering why we don't leave. And we travel to Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, or even Europe and we're treated sometimes like rock stars, or treated sometimes like another dying theater company who can setup in the corner. You can setup in the corner. No one's on the books for tonight. Do you need anything?

And the crowds scream laughter, or stare intently--I've got them--and applaud longer than you thought they would. They loved us. And every weekend they keep coming, lining up around the block, new faces and old faces.

And we are an ornery group of opinion-makers. We are jealous of where we could go and angry that we are not there. We are close. We are distant. We sleep with each other. We dream about sleeping with each other and wake up confounded. We hate each other. We love each other. We are family more than friends--somehow less than friends, somehow more than friends. We are always proposing and remembering failed proposals and fearing conspiracies or resenting misunderstandings. We can know each other's dark secrets without knowing each other intimately.

We are the neighbors who hear everything.

This is the life I have lived for almost five years. I am setting about changing this life partly because I want more money. I think I deserve to be paid more for the crazy amount of work that I do. And I want kids. And they'll want to eat, I'm sure. I am also changing it partly because I want to do more, because I am a man who can put up with so much after so long. I am a change man, changeable and a force of change.

I could have been anything, and I may be anything yet.

Diana was making fun of me the other day. She said "you've been quitting since you joined." She was exaggerating but essentially she's right. I've been in the company for five years, but on my wait out for three. Every time I get close to leaving, someone pays me a compliment, tells me that they love my work and my voice and would hate to lose me. It's always a new person whom we've just cast and they haven't yet gotten to the point where they stop complimenting others because they're so worried about their own work and whether it's good enough.

And I hear this compliment and suddenly I feel like I have a place again. I wonder to myself if I could put in another year. Maybe the pain would be worth it.

And the thing is, it is always worth it. I have lived an exciting life in this company that I'll always remember fondly and miss. I will likely not leave burned and bitter.

Some people try like hell to make it in a business like theater, only to give it up for a day job along the way and they remember their time in all those auditions and productions with more pain than pleasure, more regrets and insecurity than celebration and pride.

But I have lived a life here, complicated and beautiful. And our children will say tell me again about that theater group you guys were in? And Genevra and I will look at each other, smiling, and ask without asking do you want to start or should I?

Sometimes we need to stop making decisions based on what's easiest and simply ask ourselves what kind of person do I want to be and what kind of career do I want to have? How do I want to shape my life? We ask and then we answer. We answer and then we act. We act and then we move on.

We act and then we move on.