Fame, I Wanna Live Forever

It was like I was dropped in the middle of Fame…no, not the David Bowie song (although I love that), the movie. I was just sitting in a building, still busily working on the edits for my second manuscript and young people were leaping, singing, over acting, I mean the energy was so high and so confusing.

     Well, it was confusing and irritating at first for me. I wanted to be those kids growing up. I had so much creative spark, ideas, desire, and lots and lots of fear.

      When I was finally able to separate my lived experience from what was actually happening in front of me, I began to enjoy. No surprise that the people watching/listening was just so fabulous and my writer’s heart was on fire!

      Then, I began to notice, the kids hanging back. They had the required gear: dance shoes, scripts, instruments but walked alone in the back of the gaggle of their peers who never turned off the performance mode.

     Would they be heard? Would they be seen? Would they shine, because I could feel their desire, I knew their want and need to express themselves and also intimately felt their discomfort in their own skin. Their desire to be true to all parts of themselves, left them…alone, walking behind, holding back as the extroverts totally dominated the scene.

     I wanted to go up to each of them and say, “Shine, not show off, just shine.” My hope, is that behind the closed doors of each of the stages (and there are many in that building) that my fellow introverts were coming alive on stage, but, I doubt they were.

      The overwhelm of people who never stop performing is so off putting to those of us who do not need to, do not want to always be “on stage.” I was pulling for each of those kids, also recognizing that the “constant performers” were just as insecure, just as needs driven as the quiet kids. But when you’re the “quiet kid” all those others look so sure of themselves. They’re not.

      How sublime to be in that atmosphere and utilize all that energy for my own creative output. I have finished the first round of edits on my Rom Com. Now comes the part where I type them all into the original piece.

     When I return to that building on Monday, I will be typing, not handwriting, and the Fame crew will be gone. What will happen to each of them? Which path in life will they choose?

      It took me a long, long time to get out of my own creative way to become a “Late in Life Writer.” Yep, there’s a category and I’m in it. “I sing the body electric.”

     Thank you for reading my piece today. You know I love your stories too! If you feel like it, drop me a line below and tell me something. Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t post anything last week. Grief got the best of me.