This has been a long and very busy week. Still working every day on the odds and ends of the painting project, dealing with medical billings, and then a friend got sick and didn’t have an at-home Covid test so we took one over - and immediately ended up ferrying him to the local walk-in clinic.
It’s all fine. We have settled the last of the medical bills, and I will remind you once again that you can and should negotiate those out-of-pocket billings. The painting is down to a couple time-consuming tasks, and our friend didn’t require hospitalization and is recovering.
So, not a bad week.
I had several topics I have been noodling with for this feed, but something happened this morning that got me to thinking, and I want to share this with you. I hope it helps you see the possibilities around you, and encourages you on your creative journey.
Steve needs a little wind-down time each night before bed. Often that’s after I’ve gone to sleep - a holdover from the days when I had to get up for the day job but he could work late into the night if he wanted to.
One of his tactics is to watch an episode of some old black-and-white TV series, many of them well before his time, like Mr. Lucky, Secret Agent, or The Saint. The latest is Route 66, with Martin Milner and George Maharis. Often we will talk about the stories the next day, especially as they illustrate some social interaction that has changed dramatically in the intervening years.
This morning he was telling me about a story with Ethel Waters as the guest star. He said he didn’t know who she was, but he had looked her up.
Before he could continue, I said, “Member of the Wedding.” Then I paused for a moment. My brain was itching, and it took just a few seconds for me to blurt out, “I saw her live.”
I couldn’t remember when, but I was sure it was in Southern California when I was in school. But was it in high school? Or college? And how did I manage to see a live play? Neither my family or the guys I dated had the kind of money for live theater.
It took a few minutes of searching, but I finally found a reference to Ethel Waters performing at the Pasadena Playhouse in February, 1964. In Member of the Wedding. And the memories were all there: Waters’ magnificent performance, sitting in the magical atmosphere of a real theater, with a real stage, touring the classrooms where (a friend reminded me) Steve McQueen had carved his name into a desk as a student on the G.I. Bill after WWII .
Founded in 1917, at one time Pasadena Playhouse rivaled Julliard as a theater arts college. I was aware of its reputation, in awe of the illustrious alumni, and definitely star-struck. I longed to enroll there, to live that creative life. For a naive teenager, it looked like heaven.
It also looked entirely impractical, and as the eldest child in a blue-collar family practicality was high on my list of desired traits. I went to a nearby junior college, got a job, got married, and put all that creative nonsense behind me for decades.
In the meantime, the Playhouse hit some financial bumps, filed for bankruptcy, and was closed for several years. It reopened in 1986, and is a California State Landmark, as well as a thriving performing arts venue.
What does all of this have to do with creativity?
Well, it threw me into the world of “what could have been.” What could I have done if I had thrown practicality out the window and taken a shot at screenwriting? Or, with my interest in textiles, costume design? Or even (gasp) performing? Voice acting? It was all possible. It could have been glorious!
Or it could have been a disaster.
But (aside from tuition that likely would have been prohibitive-I haven’t been able to find any information on costs in 1964) it shouldn’t have been impossible. And yet.
I let my fears, my insecurities, put limits on my creativity. Yes, I can tell myself that teenaged girls in the early 60s had roadblock after roadblock put in front of them. But in the end I took the “safe” choice, that choice isolated me from my creative drive for several decades, and now I am left to wonder “What if?”
The lesson each of us needs to take from this is that we should give ourselves room to try new things. Give ourselves the chance to fail, because if we can’t fail, then have we really succeeded?
Right now, in our third acts, we have the space and time - and safety net - to take those chances we passed by earlier in our lives. We can seize opportunities, we can do the outside-the-box things that tempted us all those years ago.
We can be impractical - so that we don’t have to ever again ask, “What could have been?”