reading rilke

"find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. this most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must i write?"
-- rainer maria rilke, letters to a young poet

this passage stopped me dead. i thought about it, turned it over in my head, and i am terrified, because i'm not quite sure what my answer is. for writing, anyway.

so i asked myself: must i act? i haven't been in a show or in a performance-based class this semester, and i haven't exactly been longing to get back into it. i understand that a lot of things are different at this current juncture in my life, and one of those things is no acting, and i'm okay with that. but i'm not okay with being okay with it.

there are people in our department that have so much passion -- they aren't necessarily the best actors, but they know this is what they want to do, and they won't let anything stop them. at the end of my first year here, when they were cutting people from the program, i was at a total peace. i thought 'if they cut me, then i'll know this isn't what i'm supposed to do. i'll go do something else'.

i'm not really sure why i'm studying acting in the first place. i guess it's just something that i'm pretty good at, so i keep doing it. but i if i were 'forbidden' to act, as rilke posits ... i'm trying to imagine how i would feel in that situation, and i'm not sure. if i could never do any kind of performance ever again ... that would ... upset me. i'm not doing anything right now, true, but i know i could be. and i keep myself doing some form of theatre, regardless of whether i get cast or not, like chaos and touché. so maybe i don't have this vibrant, burning passion that other people have, but something quieter. something inside me slowly, continually, edges me towards theatre projects.

and back to writing, its the same thing. i'm not writing all the time, but there's usually a project on the back burner, or i'm getting ready for a timed event, like nanowrimo.

thinking of that, my insides go: 'oh, god, he's not really going to do that again, is he?' but i will. because i'm crazy, and it's visceral and exciting. and if i keep doing it then i must love writing. i must. it's how i figure things out, it's a process of discovery, finding out where things go. it's like being an explorer into the self, the void, the imaginary. for me, those are the 'roots' rilke is talking about. that is why i love it. yes, yes!

i feel so much better now.