But in my television show, I alter the way I see things--no matter how boring or frustrating my life may get, I find a way to make it more entertaining or more dramatic in my mind. I make the frustrations mean something, even if they don't actually mean anything at all in reality. Some people would call that neurosis, but I tend to think it's just my way of constantly writing. I tend to make my life something I would rather see than what may actually be in front of me and because of that, I find no boredom in my life--every day is worth living to the fullest. The only problem with my method is when the lines between reality and my reality get blurred. And it happens to the best of us... the blurriness that is. It may not be a TV show in your mind, but we all have the things that we come to believe are true and they don't happen to particularly align with reality.
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One of my favorite, most recent scenes that I play in my head happens every morning on the way to work. I recently found the song Underneath Your Beautiful, and I start it once I get off the escalator at the Metro Center subway stop.
If Shonda Rhimes has taught us anything about modern day television, it's that every powerful scene is best if accompanied by an equally powerful song. But as I transfer from Metro Center to Chinatown, the song grows in intensity, and once I get off the train and exit the turn stall and approach the summit of the final escalator, the song crescendos then grows silent. Sometimes I stop and watch the characters, slightly positioned cater-corner from the metro. There's the guy, and he says to the girl, I don't want to be your choice because you're not my choice. A choice means you have options--that there's a selection to choose from. A choice means that someone else matters enough to be considered. You're the only thing that matters to me. You were never just an option. And then he pauses, and they look into each other's eyes. I don't want to be your choice. And then I realize that I'm blocking the metro exit, and I wish that I knew how to screen write because that's good stuff. But I don't know how, and I'm now running forty-five seconds behind, so I walk on to work.
If Shonda Rhimes has taught us anything about modern day television, it's that every powerful scene is best if accompanied by an equally powerful song. But as I transfer from Metro Center to Chinatown, the song grows in intensity, and once I get off the train and exit the turn stall and approach the summit of the final escalator, the song crescendos then grows silent. Sometimes I stop and watch the characters, slightly positioned cater-corner from the metro. There's the guy, and he says to the girl, I don't want to be your choice because you're not my choice. A choice means you have options--that there's a selection to choose from. A choice means that someone else matters enough to be considered. You're the only thing that matters to me. You were never just an option. And then he pauses, and they look into each other's eyes. I don't want to be your choice. And then I realize that I'm blocking the metro exit, and I wish that I knew how to screen write because that's good stuff. But I don't know how, and I'm now running forty-five seconds behind, so I walk on to work.
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And that's when the perception is over. I may be the guy who has come up with multiple seasons of a fictional television dramedy, but I do understand when it's time to come back to the real world, and at times, it's a refreshing feeling. The image of the fake couple at the metro is perfect and eloquent and sweet, but it's just an image--at least for now. And when you can realize that it's just an image, it's almost as rewarding to be able to come back to reality and respect that story and that scene and those characters for what they were in the moment. It's similar to falling in love, or rather, falling out of it.
A little over a year ago, I was in love with being in love. I've come to believe it's a college senior year phenomenon as life is about to make a giant change, and if you can find something to place you in the moment, it may take your mind out of the future for a while. And it did, because for a while, I loved everything I was doing. I loved having someone to make out with, and I loved having someone to talk to. We had a song and inside jokes and mornings where we'd wake up in the same twin-sized college bed, and it really was amazing. And then it wasn't.
I've never been good at lying about important things, and once the new wore off, it became increasingly evident that the fairy tale I had produced in my mind was not what the reality seemed to be. But in too many cases, we waste time because we would rather believe that what we have is what we've come to perceive it as. So in the months before graduation, I tried to make it as fantastic as I wanted it to be. I knew what I wanted it to be, and more than that, I knew that I was the only one that wanted it that way. I was reaching for something that simply wasn't, and in a way, that's more painful than the whole thing being over. But then after too many walks and long conversations and disagreements about what the future might look like, I ended up sitting outside on a windy April unsure of exactly what I wanted to do. The conversation just wasn't happening--like, literally--it wasn't happening. So we sat there in silence for a while, and finally I said, I don't think we need to do this anymore. And there were tears, but for once, they weren't from me. I closed my eyes and leaned in for a final kiss because that's how all the best romances end, but when I opened them, I didn't really recognize the person that was sitting in front of me. And that was when I realized that I had fallen out of love. Or maybe more accurately, I had fallen out of love with trying to be in love. Like the image I see some mornings outside the metro, the love I had so strongly believed in had suddenly vanished once I realized how truly not there it was. It didn't mean that I didn't love the idea of it or love what I once believed was there. It was just the moment when you come to realize that a mirage is simply not tangible.
One of our greatest flaws as humans is the notion that we've ever understood what we need. In terms of the basics, I suppose we've gotten that down: the food, the water, the shelter bit. All of that seems pretty obvious. But where it gets complicated is when we try to figure out what will make us complete--you know, after the basics. It honestly doesn't take a lot to keep a human alive, but the struggle comes when we try and figure out what makes a human feel alive. And that's where we step in with our notions and presuppositions. It's just our normal reaction, even sometimes going so far as to try and make those decisions for others: an issue I had a year ago, and one that I've essentially imposed on a ton of fictitious characters. We try and make life what we think it should be with little regard to the idea that maybe life works itself out without our imposing hand.
But the learning process is difficult, so I stick with primarily forcing life decision on to the people who live in my head instead of the people who live... well... with me. I think, at least for me, part of it has to do with being impatient and the other part has to do with having control over something. Television is planned out beautifully, almost to the point that it's predictable. You have the season opener, then November sweeps, then February sweeps, and then the finale. You may not know exactly what's going to happen, but you have a pretty good feeling when it will happen. You have character development, and on the up and up, everyone can fall in love and experience the depths of life (with the aforementioned musical background). And as for my life? There's hardly anything scripted about it--it's about as close to reality TV as you can get. And when it doesn't follow script, all you can do is wait for the next scene and look back and say, Maybe it was never supposed to go that way at all.
One of our greatest flaws as humans is the notion that we've ever understood what we need. In terms of the basics, I suppose we've gotten that down: the food, the water, the shelter bit. All of that seems pretty obvious. But where it gets complicated is when we try to figure out what will make us complete--you know, after the basics. It honestly doesn't take a lot to keep a human alive, but the struggle comes when we try and figure out what makes a human feel alive. And that's where we step in with our notions and presuppositions. It's just our normal reaction, even sometimes going so far as to try and make those decisions for others: an issue I had a year ago, and one that I've essentially imposed on a ton of fictitious characters. We try and make life what we think it should be with little regard to the idea that maybe life works itself out without our imposing hand.
But the learning process is difficult, so I stick with primarily forcing life decision on to the people who live in my head instead of the people who live... well... with me. I think, at least for me, part of it has to do with being impatient and the other part has to do with having control over something. Television is planned out beautifully, almost to the point that it's predictable. You have the season opener, then November sweeps, then February sweeps, and then the finale. You may not know exactly what's going to happen, but you have a pretty good feeling when it will happen. You have character development, and on the up and up, everyone can fall in love and experience the depths of life (with the aforementioned musical background). And as for my life? There's hardly anything scripted about it--it's about as close to reality TV as you can get. And when it doesn't follow script, all you can do is wait for the next scene and look back and say, Maybe it was never supposed to go that way at all.
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