Connect your mind with your heart...

Summer of '99. I am crazy, twelve years old, insecure, unsure, the picture of adolescence. I take a four-week acting class with Jamie Gannon, that I can't even begin to recount here. I've tried to write about it several times and never quite capture everything it meant at the time, and everything it has meant since. Perhaps this is a disparaging thing to say as an aspiring writer, but maybe some things aren't meant to be fully explained by prose, poetry, dance, music, or paint brushes. Sometimes, life is better. Living the moment was the real art. To capture it in another medium would be a poor replicate.
Jamie sent me an email today. It's been a long time since we've corresponded. Although after nearly a decade since seeing one another, I think we've done pretty good. Whenever we do connect, I recall those fleeting memories of the sticky theatre rooms without air conditioning, the creak of the rehearsal room floor, the smell of the foyer, the plush of the lobby seats, the sound of the harmonica as I lay on the stage. I remember what that summer, what theatre in general, did for me.


I remember being on stage and not being worried about a world that seemed to be crashing down around me. Sure, some of it was silly adolescent nonsense, though that didn't make it any less real and painful at the time. And some of it was more... much more. Theatre was an escape from it. Jamie taught me the art, I made it the escape. His words echoed back to me later, reminding me that it wasn't meant as an escape. I needed to start living my life again. And I did. Without theatre. He made me ask that tough question, and even worse, answer it honestly.

"Mary-Margaret, you have to ask yourself if you can be happy doing anything else besides theatre. If you can, if you even think you might, you can't become a theatre professional. It's that hard and that demanding. So, can you do anything else?"

When I said I could, it hurt. Moreover, it was terrifying. What the hell else could I do?
I sent Jamie an email telling him what I was up to, I guess all of the things I never thought I could not do because they were not theatre. And although the moments are fewer and farther between than ever now, I always wonder what would have been. As always over the past decade, he said exactly what I needed to hear, without prompting, without me even bringing up those feelings.
"Rock on with your social activist self! I think it's wonderful that you find so much fulfillment in helping others; you wouldn't have found that as a professional actor or director, I'm fairly confident of that."
Isn't it sad and strange how sometimes it takes others to tell you, to remind you, that you are to some degree, fulfilled?
The last day of the workshop nine years ago, Jamie had one piece of advice for each of his students. He spent hours on this, thinking of just the right thing for each of us, the one thing he needed us to know. He told me, "Connect your mind with your heart."
Each day I find that what I think about is what my heart is feeling. Sometimes they stray, do their own things, but I'm working on it. And a man I haven't seen for nearly a decade, who lives thousands of miles away, is still a guiding voice in my heart and mind. I'm sure that will never change.