Thursday, April 08, 2004

Getting Caught

Today I have my second of four voice-acting classes.  Last week’s kickoff session was a lot of fun, very similar to the two other classes I’ve taken there.  We started with introductions, which is actually pretty important if you are going to try to get into anything emotionally honest with people.  The teacher asked us all to include in our introductions some mention of something that really scared us, explaining that it would help her understand our blocks as actors, and help us relate to each other better. 

One of the others, who spoke before me, started describing his fear - but I really only heard him start to talk. His first words scared the hell out of me.  Even though he went further into a more complex area of his psyche, admitting to the fear of getting caught as a talentless hack, I was stuck at those first two words: “Getting caught.”

I realized, hearing that, that I’ve had this fear my whole life, sometimes even desparately running and hiding in my own house for no reason other than a pounding frightening sureness that, if I were seen, by anybody, I would die - or worse yet, disappear as if I’d never been.  I don’t think I typically do things at which I should reasonably fear getting caught, but this is not a matter of rational responses - it’s just a deep, marrow-chilling fear, and it rides under my skin whether I understand what it’s doing there or not. 

I did a creditable job for myself during class - made some reasonably bold choices, took direction without whining, listened carefully, maybe even learned something.  We’ll see.  But for sure, once I got back on my bus home at 10 o’clock at night, my mind rolled like a marble in a funnel right to the notion of getting caught and getting scared.  I didn’t understand it any better, but I could sense it more fully without the distractions of the classroom.  And this is what resulted of those cogitations:

Without admitting anything
let’s say that what they say is true -
It isn’t like they know my life
or like it’s something they don’t do
Extenuating circumstances
forced me to commit those acts;
this path, I’ve never chosen freely;
you just need to know the facts.
It happened as if I were dreaming,
just a plaything of the fates;
I tried to get out with my honor,
tried to navigate the straits.
I looked in from an outside window,
watched myself fall through the glass,
excited past the point of reason,
thrashing into the morass…

It’s easy now to say I shouldn’t
say or do or be or not
but I suspect you’d change your tune
if you had been the one they caught.

That is really fantastic, Dan. I love that you’ve taken your strong emotions and turned them to produce such a wonderful piece. You have a true artist’s heart - one that is able to channel emotion into a thing of beauty. Well done.

Very late at night when it’s really quiet, I remember my fear of someone (thing) waiting for me the other side of the bathroom door....

I never realized my fear of getting caught was irrational or blown out of proportion, until I began to feel it on a regular basis despite the fact that I was doing nothing wrong.

The reason I do things that are rebelish is for the thrill of eluding ‘being caught’.
Performing some sneaky, childish act knowing that at any minute I could be ‘caught’.

beautiful dan.  how is that you can take something sitting in the back of a mind, unspoken, unrealized even (except in the subconcious), and bring it to life so?
excellent work.

Oh that was just wonderful...as Kim said, you truly are an artist! I often wonder how many of us constantly feel that at any minute we will be “caught” or “found out” in some fashion.

I just remembered that it’s been a while since I told you how great I think you are.

Consider it said.

hee :D .. not in the same league as yours of course, but i felt the need to comment with this…

This tune you say I’d change
Can you hum me a few bars?
An explantion exists,
extenuating facts.
Perhaps.
However, I beg to disagree,
it’s not one bit easy
to say you shouldn’t say or do
or be or not,
without watching you once again
commit those acts.
Pray tell, kind sir, where is that window
from which you looked?
And is there a bench, a ladder or a stool?

You understand, of course, I merely watch
so that I may tsk and whatnot.
For I’d never do such things
and will therefore never be caught.

i spent at least 8 of my 11 years of off-and-on graduate work convinced i was a fraud and an impostor, that if i opened my mouth to contribute to a discussion in a seminar someone would realize just how much i didn’t belong there.  now i have the damn degree and ain’t nobody can take it away, and even if i AM an impostor, there’s nothing quite like being able to say “that’s DR impostor to YOU.”

to echo everybody else, you’re awesome.  this was a very thought-provoking post, and i thank you for it.

i was going to say something *kind of* like what DR. romy said—that fear of being discovered to be a fraud.  your piece made me have to catch my breath, dan.  wonderful.