Stands to reason
some of the biggest "Journey Lessons" will end up
being locked - but I'll do my best to write this in a
way that it can be opened at some point in the near
future... it just can't be now.
So in the 35 days
I was waiting to get the contract, I was of
course searching for some sort of ballpark. What's the
precedent for how you pay someone for something almost
solely internet? Thankfully Charlotte had access to
people at the Writer's Guild, Screen Actors Guild,
access to pages and pages of scale minimums and was
able to give me a ballpark. In fact it was pretty
detailed on exactly what scale was. So when
I finally got the letter from Business Affairs,
I knew that it was quite lower (nearly 1/3) than
what I understood the minimum scale to be. So
I turned it over to Charlotte and went about my
business.
Then a few days
later in a conference call, the same people that loved
me in NY were "taken aback" at the audacity of the
counter-offer and here I am in the middle of it.
Welcome to Show-Biz. The particulars are irrelevant,
what matters (and where the lesson lies) is what you
internally have to go through when you are in my
shoes. You're completely fractured. You're completely
schizophrenic. You start to say: "On one hand,
I think this, but on the other hand..." ...and
then you realize you have 8 hands. We'll call it the
Octopus Complex.
What I'm balancing
of course is my fear. And I have to say, 5 years
ago I would've been a basket case. The best thing
that came out of the last 5 years is me truly,
completely and with all sincerity being happy with who
I am - without making it. And I don't mean
happy as a person, I mean happy as an
artist. In a line that made Charlotte's skin
crawl earlier this year I said I would be
happy if someone paid me to be a blogger and I could
go to different cities and write music, make videos -
and just chronicle it. Now it made her skin crawl
because she knows I have enough talent to do so much
more, and I know that too - but it doesn't mean
I wouldn't be happy. I love The
Journey as a canvas and it alone will keep me grounded
the rest of my life.
Of course I know
I can do more and for the first time in my life
(on this high of a level) I have the opportunity
to. So there's a part of me that is so goddamn excited
that someone even wants to talk to me from C...B...S
that my instinct is to take out a 2nd on the house and
pay THEM for any opportunity. Of course that feeling
is the epitome of fear and if you feed into that
you're doomed.
The problem is
emotion is always manic and logic is prozac. But you
have to choose your dose wisely and the only way to
choose your dose is to know yourself. I've decided to
use a heavy dose of logic when it comes to this
because I know damn well even a tiny bit of my emotion
will throw me wildly one way or the other. Charlotte
has been a huge help in all of this because she is
appealing to my logical side. This is actually the
perfect situation for us because although it requires
trust on my part... it's trust in already set
precedents that have very little grey area. My only
real internal struggle is that I even have the
audacity to think about something as trivial as money
when there is so much opportunity sitting in front of
me. That's the balance of life though. It takes quite
a bit of the old intestinal fortitude and a constant
process of re-evaluation. Simply put, it sucks
ass.
Worse? I have to
write the episode we're shooting...shit less than 40
hours away and my head is allllllll fugged up.
Impossible to be creative right now and I have
every pressure in the world on me. My hope is that
since these negotiations are on-going I can have
the pilot episode done and ready for them so they can
actually see what they're getting.
I believe once they see what I've conjured up in
my mind, their mind will be at ease. Of course, now
not only is the producer, make-up people, camera-man
and all the suits in NY at CBS depending on me to have
the product ready to shoot Friday morning... my entire
contract negotiation depends on it being funny as hell
to boot. Add-in the ever-growing stress of the locked
entry from the end of October and I gotta
say...
...I'm
doing AWESOME. Seriously. I am actually
alright. I believe in who I am, and
I'm alright. It is the eeriest thing man.
I have this sense of faith in myself
that I've never had. You just can't shake
my beliefs right now. No matter what the
outcome...I really am alright.
That
song
means more to me than it ever did when
I wrote it back in
September.
That really should
be the goal if you're jumping into anything
entertainment related...find a way to be alright with
who you are, right now. If you have the fire inside
you, you'll continue pursuing the "making
it" dream, but if at any point you've felt like
"you'd just die if you don't...(make it as a bass
player perhaps)" then you are setting youself up for a
disastrous fall. If you want to sing on broadway, sing
anyway on High Street. If you want to be in a rock
group and make great music, make great music anyway
and put together tinier projects that fulfill you as
an artist. Bottom line: don't be beholden to others to
be CREATIVE and produce your art. Do it naturally
every single day and that's what will allow you to
strive for more on that next level. It will also allow
you to not stress so badly over the bumps in the
road.
Now granted,
I am running at a high level of stress but it
simply isn't manic. And that's completely
thanks to accepting the worst outcome and saying: "It
ain't so bad...I'm alright"
I am indeed a
different person. I guess I was able to
chronicle "the change" I spoke about back in
2000.
