What story do you have that you can tell better than anyone else? It doesn't have to be a good story, it just has to be told well. The stories have all been told. Now you just have to go for style points. For effect. For reaction. For results. Try to tap dance, and gnaw on those precious few nerve endings that are still exposed. Because, dammit, it’s been too long since I’ve cried. Or really laughed. And I’ve needed to. Emotion seems to have taken the form of long distance phone commercials, CNN, Meredith Baxter-Birney, and flag-waving. And that's pathetic. It just shouldn't be like that. It shouldn't. I want to believe in Humanity, I really do. And I want to believe in art, but if you don't believe in humanity, what, exactly, is the point of art? Keith Herring said "The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint." But I just don't know if I can agree with that. Or, rather, I do agree with that and have a serious personal motivation problem because of it. I don't really know what I like doing. I don't do stuff for me. And that's a huge problem. I think I've always done stuff with a hope of changing the world, making it a little better. And yeah, that was probably a little naive. And yeah, I'm tired of beating myself up for seeing things in that way. But I don't really know how not to. You know? This world is depressing. Infuriating. And I try not to care, because when you don't care you don't get dissappointed. But that only works for so long, and then you get dissappoited anyway. And that feels even worse. At least if you care, you get hurt and angry, and that at least feels like resistance. It doesn't feel good. It feels futile, but at least it feels like something. I remember when I was around 17, and it was after a show that I had just acted in, and I was talking with people who had been in the audience, and this woman struck up a conversation with me. She asked me where I was going to go to college, and what I was going to study. I listed off some schools I was thinking about, and said that I wanted to study advertising. She looked at me with like this whole soothsayer/gypsie thing going on and she said in a soft serious tone "You have the heart of an artist. You can run from it, but it will always bring you back." I got away from the woman rather quickly. I don't have the slightest clue of who she was. I wish I did so I could track her down, and let her know that she was pretty much right on about that whole art heart thing, and then to beat the crap out of her for it.