Those words don’t taste right rolling off my tongue.
I recently took a major step and submitted my poetry to a publisher. Of the twenty-five writers asked to submit a full manuscript, I was not. On the list of writers who were almost considered, I was not.
That sense of rejection and the fleeting questions that followed, regarding what I am doing with my life and what I have accomplished in my first thirty years on this planet, spawned this blog entry.
My brain is a steal trap. I remember more details about random things than I probably should. The storage capacity of the human brain irks me. Just the other day I clicked a shortened URL that brought me to Perez Hilton's blog, which I have not visited in well over a year. It was on his hot-pink website where I learned that the song <em>Telephone</em> was originally written for Britney Spears and that Britney had in fact recorded a version of the song. I, dumbstruck by curiosity and overcome with gossip-induced delinquency, listened to a few seconds of the demo track. Needless to say, I did not need to know this information, but now, I do. And my brain will store this information somewhere and I will pull it out during some random rendition of <em>Trivial Pursuit</em> after which I’ll be mocked heavily for knowing such worthless data.
In high school I befriended a lad by the name of John Persia. I'm not sure what ever happened to John, where he is or how he is doing, I wish him well, but I do remember that he was a very talented musician. I remember that at one point during our senior year, John was putting together an album and he had a vivid idea for the cover art. The album was to be titled <em>Rejected</em> and the cover art, he'd explain to me with great enthusiasm, was to feature a reproductive egg at the center, personified with a cartoon-like arm reaching outward. The egg would be surrounded in a circular pattern of sperm swimming away from the center rather than swimming towards it. This was John's vision and if I recall correctly, on that day in study hall, I am pretty sure I helped him draw a draft version of the picture.
Oh, the triumphs of Catholic school education.
The idea of rejection is one that resonates pretty frequently in Los Angeles, mostly amongst those auditioning to save their lives and amongst those who have ever tried to date in this city. I’m not sure how most of my friends do it; the constant preparation, memorization and the build up they endure on such a regular basis, mostly to be turned away. I have many talented friends who deserve so much for how hard they have worked to stay in this town, but when you get to thinking about the endless array of actors and actresses that arrive in this city each month… well, I guess the idea is that to survive you can’t think about the endless array of actors and actresses that arrive in this city each month.
I don’t have that genetic code that has been commonly labeled as confidence; at least not the brooding, sales pitch type of confidence. And thus, I’m an anomaly in this place. I’m a writer turned actor turned director turned improviser turned laid-off struggling citizen of planet Earth.
It all goes back to an audition I had at Salem State College. David Allen George was casting his production of Neil Simon’s <em>Broadway Bound</em> and I gave what is probably the best audition I have ever given. Then, in typical Frankie fashion, I completely blew my callback. David would set up a meeting with me later that week and he would give me a lot of productive feedback and criticism. Among the many things he said, one tiny cliché stood out above the rest, when he commented on the many hats I was wearing at the time as a performer, a writer, a stage manager and a director. He told me that if I weren’t careful I’d become a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Sure enough, that is where I am right now. More than seven years later and his words ring loud and clear. As do my father’s.
When I graduated high school in 1998, it was my father who wanted to ensure that the education I received from college was something that would carry me through. He was never all that content with my desire to major in Theater & Communications. I found some way of assuring him and when I transferred out of Salem State and over to Columbia College Chicago to study Film with a focus on Screenwriting, he was overcome with a wild sense of pride; the kind of pride that I had not really ever seen from him.
Alas, my education and my life experiences have taught me a lot, but after working my way up a corporate ladder for a mere three years, working myself out of a mail room and to a place where I was interviewing musicians and writing for a radio network, to suddenly find myself laid-off and struggling to find solid work is a tough blow.
I have no regrets and I am taking each day as it comes but somewhere in there I can’t help but know that my father was right. A degree in business or computer technology or medicine or any one of a number of fields would do me so well right now. The problem is that I was part of a generation that was raised to believe we could do and be anything we wanted. We took that advice seriously. On top of that, I have always had trouble deciding. Even when I was younger and my friend’s mother hosted a Halloween costume party that was career-based, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be, even for one night of make-believe.
Now here I am in Los Angeles trying to be a writer, playing around with improvisational theater, toying with my Photoshop skills, working out the kinks in my poetry, inevitably trying to choose a focus rather than continuing to be a jack of all trades.