Last night, the moon hung so low, so close to the earth, that I lost sight of it as I drove through Encino on Ventura Blvd. It dipped behind the squat minimalls, this deep orange moon, some omen for the Valley.
Anyway. I found a good quote by a French mime (yes, very ironic), Etienne Decroux, about the importance and superiority of quality. I will share it with you: “One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes.”
I have been thinking about this quote for weeks now, because I keep getting to this point, where I am now, that it becomes clear that almost everything I do is to learn the difference between pearls and potatoes. It’s embarrassing even to think about the long list of abandoned projects that sounded like a good idea at the start but ended up being duds (Err… spuds? Sorry).
Today, I don’t feel any closer to a pearly existence, instead still worrying constantly that I am devoting my energy to a long string of potatoes. I may have the problem of premature potato-identification. That is, sometimes I determine a thing is lame before it truly proves itself a waste of (my) time. Sometimes that thing feels too big and the payoff too small. Sometimes the thing is actually not lame at all but still big, and the payoff is huge, but I feel too much of a potato - too small and not talented enough - to take it on.
One thing that has helped me with all this recently is reading. More specifically, reading about people who are famous and successful and once felt like potatoes themselves. One of these people is Steve Martin, who started his life doing magic tricks. Now he is very famous and very successful and I respect his work ethic, even if his recent film, Shopgirl, really creeped me out. His memoir, Born Standing Up, is not a riveting read, but that is exactly what makes it a reflection of his process of becoming himself - he did the thing he cared about over and over and over again, learning and refining along the way until he became a success. He worked in obscurity for a long time and could have quit any time, but he didn’t.
It’s an extremely powerful thing, self-determination. At the same time, what happens if you choose something to do over and over and over again, and do that, but then realize it was the wrong thing? What if you don’t really know what you like? What if the thing you like… you never become good at? A necklace of potatoes.
These are the things I think about at 2 AM, when I’ve spent all day and night miserable with an illness that feels like Bubonic Plague Lite. Suffice to say, I am short on NyQuil.
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