I love the smell of Meisner at night

There was a Meisner workshop happening that week. I wanted to go. I always wanted to learn the Meisner technique ever since I saw an obscure documentary on PBS many years ago. I couldn't understand a word Sanford Meisner said, Which is okay, because I still wouldn't have understood the Repetition Technique. This despite having taken a few classes from a self-taught expert on Meisner. In other words, she didn't have a clue what Meisner was about and had business teaching it. But that's another story for another day.

I had quit acting for good. Years had past since I gave it anything more than a passing thought. So, I kept talking myself out of it. And then I made a crucial mistake: I watched Apocalypse Now in 70mm. I saw Robert Duvall (the picture above is AI's idea of Robert Duvall) loving the smell of napalm in IMAX and I just had to know: How the fuck did he do that in one take? Helicopters, wounded soldiers, and surfing all in one take. There was no way around it. I had to take the workshop now.

But not without a fight! I convinced myself to leave the house just twenty minutes before the workshop. If I could find parking near the studio immediately after I got there, I'd still be ten minutes late. Of course, I couldn't find parking anywhere near the studio. When I found parking ten blocks away, it was already more than an hour into the workshop. "Oh, well. I tried." I was ready to go back home and party with a California burrito, when a voice inside told me to go to the studio. At least let them reject you to your face, it said.

So, I walked and I walked, and I walked and I walked. Okay, maybe it was more than ten blocks away. When I got there, the Chekhov class was winding down. Good thing, because on first glance that shit is crazy, yo. People running around the room acting like the wind, making noise like they're fire. I'm good, I thought. I'll just sit here and stare at the wall.

Lisa, the Meisner teacher, arrived. Part new age bohemian, part intellectual, Lisa has this soothing empathy. She knows how to just listen. And I would learn that's what Meisner is at its core: listening. She asked me a few questions, said I could stay and invited me up for a repetition. "Make an observation about your partner, anything." "Uh, his shirt is blue?" "Say it." "Your shirt is blue." "Your shirt is blue." "No, whose shirt is it?" "Mine?" She nodded. "My shirt is blue. Your shirt is blue. And the monotony continued on and on for what seemed like hours. I mindlessly repeated what my partner said and to my surprise, I felt an anger rising in his voice. Next thing I knew, my voice was rising. The exercise soon turned into a shouting match and Lisa ended it. What sorcery is this, I thought.

I signed up for the upcoming session. Two months of two acting classes that I had no genuine use for. I rationalized that I would quit once I stopped learning. I never did. I managed to finish the two-year course even through a pandemic, which I guess would make it a three-year course. And I re-entered the acting world. A Filipino man holding on to his forties. Great timing. My skin is more wrinkly and rougher than ever before. My hair is thinner than ever before. My waist is thicker than ever before. But I have two things that I didn't have before: experience and perspective. Oh, and a third thing. I simply don't give much of a fuck anymore. I love the smell of not giving a fuck anymore. It smells like victory.