Patience
Ramblings on this foreign concept
In 2013, bored and frustrated in my carpeted, cookie cutter LA apartment, I took out my then-boyfriend’s guitar and attempted to write a song. It was called Patience. I never really finished it. I guess I ran out of the song’s namesake.
From time to time I still strum the main chords that I came up with, and hum the few words that I wrote, because the lyrics still resonate with me, 7 years later-still frustrated-in another LA apartment, although this one with hardwood floors.
Patience/Patience is key/Patience/Patience is killing me.
Pretty basic. But what I liked about singing those lines was that the “killing me” part modulated from a minor to a major key, offering some kind of…resigned hope. Or rather, hopeful resignation. Are those two different? I don’t know. The latter seems a little more pathetic and that’s the tone I’m going for here.
My whole life I’ve been told to be patient. All kids are. Though it was said to me during college and even into my adult years. Understandable. I’m a Scorpio, we’re super impatient people. What I have chosen to do with my life requires a David Geffen yacht amount of it. I won’t go into the micro and macro of how an actor’s patience is tested daily, because that would be like trying to explain the electoral college to a moderately educated American, or the Dow Jones to a rhino: It’s not worth it and both sides end up angry. But please believe me and any actor who’s not Reese Witherspoon or the kid from Young Sheldon that more often than not we’re left never knowing why we didn’t get the part, or why we didn’t get the audition at all. Which is why you’ll often see LA people wailing in their Priuses. “Be patient, the right role will come to you when it’s meant to,” preaches the motivational speaker you decided to listen to that day. You idle forth in traffic, and the guy behind you shakes his fist in the mirror.
The boyfriend whose guitar I wrote that song on is now my fiancé, and we were supposed to get married this weekend. But the Big Bad Covid came and put civilization on hold for the indeterminate future so we’re postponing until there’s an available vaccine or injectable detergent. So. We wait.
You know that lyric in Rent, “How do you measure a year in the life?” (Okay if you don’t know this lyric, stop reading this and for the love of quarantine, please go listen to the original cast recording instead of watching an episode of Nailed It). Well, to that group of pandemic struck bohemians, it was in sunsets, midnights, and cups of coffee. A 2020 version of that song would be in toilet paper, zoom calls, and glasses of wine. Add some sourdough starter in there and you got another Broadway smash hit baking in the oven.
In sneezes, in six feet
In Charmin, in Cuomo’s briefings
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In Zoloft, in Zoom
In curbside pickups
I wonder what Mimi and Roger would have to say about that.
My fiancé and I decided –rather hastily– to rescue a puppy. A hashtag Quarantine Puppy as the kids on Tik Tok are saying. He’s an inappropriately cute lab mix and we named him Miró because…surreal times, man. Overall, it’s awesome having a furry friend whose face I melt looking at every time he gives me his paw, or jumps on the bed in the morning, or follows me literally everywhere, but there have also been many times a day the lil’ guy has busted our chops. He wasn’t house trained when we got him, so for the last month its been trial and error placing pee pads around our 600 square foot priso-I mean apartment- to get him to learn the difference between wood and grass. The ads on my Instagram feed have all turned to doggie merch like nail clippers and booties, while all the recommended clips on Youtube are Cesar Millan “How to get your dog to pee outside” videos (the guy really is a dog whisperer). But, one problem Cesar hasn’t tackled is that Miró is just plain nervous around people. Probably because right now people are nervous around people. Seeing humans stand unnaturally far from one another wearing bras on their mouths and repeatedly spraying a substance on their hands doesn’t exactly invite a 5 month old puppy to say hi. “Just be patient, he’ll gain more confidence!” Other owners keep telling us. Well, Miró’s in luck, because we like him a lot, and we’re in it for the long haul.
The entertainment industry has halted. My fiancé’s TV show stopped filming in the middle of an episode and they sent everyone back home. There are no in person auditions, no studio recording sessions. No one is working, except the capeless heroes in essential places, like CVS and our weed dispensary. Calling the unemployment office is a part-time job now. It’s also probably the best way to get an alcoholic to relapse. Sorry to say but it’s true. My father’s best advice when calling a customer service number is “you pour yourself a glass of scotch, and wait for them to pick up.” That’s what I and 36 million other people are doing; with a stress ball in one hand, and old fashioned in the other. Waiting. For an over-worked and underpaid EDD employee to tell us the 13-week extension “will kick in eventually, but we don’t know when.” To be “patient while we figure it out.”
Maybe I should go back to my song and try finishing it. It’s taken on a different meaning now, though. It seemed like a way bigger deal in that carpeted apartment in 2013, when I was sad about not getting auditions. But now I view patience like those cups of coffee… or hand sanitizer. It’s a metric by which I’ve measured time, and its weight has changed.
I feel okay. There are so many worse off than us. And I’m resigned to the unknown anyway.
We’ll wait for Miró to learn to pee outside.
We’ll wait for someone to answer the phone.
We’ll wait to get married.
We’ll wait for Hollywood.
Because humans have patience. And that’s certainly not what’s killing us.
