My Brain Reads Like a Cafe Gratitude Menu…

July 29, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I am pure, undiluted joy.

Honestly, you could culture my blood for Potions class.

There was an impromptu dance party.

I left an incoherent bubbling message on my mom’s voicemail,
and called my brother, too. Who told me I’m awesome. And who I told back that
he is, too.

For those who don’t follow my Facebook feed, I found out this morning that I got the
role of Morticia in “Addams Family: The
Musical.”

The one I don’t even know how I found the audition call for.
The one I auditioned for this weekend to my own mediocre reviews. The one I was
called back for, to my own mediocre reviews.

I’m sensing a trend here: What I think, and what reality
tells me, may be two very different things.

And, here, for the better.

The astounding thing to me is this is the second lead role
I’ve been offered in as many months. From, “you know your height gets in your
way” to “please join us” … Wow.

There’s a quote that called me to sit for a moment in
silence on my bed, breathing heavy from the fist pumping, Elaine-thumbs-out
dance party:

Don’t forget to pause a minute and thank G-d for
everything.

Thank you. Thank you, Universe, for conspiring for me. Thank
you, Molly, for showing up even though you’re scared and doubtful. Thank you,
FRIENDS, for receiving those phone calls and texts that ask you to send me love
and support. Thank you, friends, for sending love and “likes” and hope.

I need you way more than you know.

And you always show up, which is marvelous – like, something
to marvel at. Really.

The play will run mid-September to mid-October. This means
that I will spend my October 7th birthday in performance.

I spent my 30th birthday with fondue and friends. I spent my
31st in a hospital bed, saying, “Next year: Brunch, huh?”

I celebrated 32, indeed, at brunch with a dear friend and her two
kids whose laughter is part of my salvation.

And, god willing, I will spend 33 in pursuit of a dream I
have let languish in a faded costume closet. The clothing of another woman in
another life.

Life moves and shakes, it do.

And part of my work is to accept that these costumes, these roles, these friends, this love, this life … are for me, too.

Let’s throw open the doors, pull out these moth-eaten
dreams, and hold them up to reality. They may be more solid than I’ve wanted to
know.

Thank. You.

ambition · band · commitment · decision · destiny · dreams · faith · hope · performance · perseverance · self-worth · singing · tenacity · work

Dream Girls

July 2, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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If we can pass others on the street and think to ourselves,
“There, but for the grace of G-d, go I,” isn’t it possible that others can pass
us and say the same thing?

I spent last evening at a Queen concert. It was balls-out
amazing: the talent, the showmanship, the technique and the bravery to stand
out there, bounce around a stage and invigorate a crowd of thousands.

I had a moment while watching Adam Lambert, who was filling
Freddie Mercury’s shoes pretty darn well, when I realized that only the slightest
differences existed between the two of us.

Go with me here. A plane takes off for New York, but the
compass is one degree off. You end up at the Nyack mall instead of JFK. One
degree. Completely different destination.

If there is just the “grace of god” between me and the
person I see huddled under the freeway gathering up their belongings as the cop car pulls two
wheels up on the sidewalk to shuffle them along to another temporary spot, isn’t
there just the “grace of god” between me and Adam Lambert? Or that woman I saw
perform at Yoshi’s a few years ago: She wasn’t perfect. Her pitch wasn’t always
on, but she was a performer. She had the
crowd completely, she enjoyed herself, she was proud, vivacious, and seen. And
she wasn’t perfect.

I don’t even remember who she
was, except she was the singer of a bluesy/jazzy band, and she was fierce. She
was a large woman with a large smile. And as I watched her, I thought to myself
that I wanted to do what she did; get up there and perform, without needing to be perfect – because if that were the case, I
don’t think any of us would ever do anything, including Adam Lambert.

Over the last year, I have adjusted my compass to be bringing me closer to that
point on the map. I am not so far away in the Canada hinterland, but perhaps
flying somewhere over Buffalo by now. (Can you tell I grew up back east?)

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way that it isn’t talent that creates success; it’s
tenacity. It’s being a dog’s fierce jaw chomped around a toy rope, refusing to
let go.

The guitar player, Brian May, dazzled the crowd with a
10-minute long epic, cacophonous solo. It was like a safari inside of music
itself: strange, elegant, mystic, and ancient. I said to my friend, That’s what
happens when you spend 40 years doing only one thing.

That’s what happens when you decide that you love one thing,
that you’re good (enough) at one thing, that you want others to know you do this thing: You become great.

Here’s to finding—or claiming, rather—my thing.

action · despair · dreams · fear · friendship · god · miracle · perseverance · persistence · spirituality · surrender · theology · trying · vision

Men at Work.

June 25, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2/17/09: G-d Jar Projects:

– My band

– my mural

– the play or musical I will be in

– the songs I write

– the essays and poems

– the bass I play

– the vacation I take to Hawaii

– the sketches I make

– the painting I do

– the creative job I am making

At the time I wrote this list, none of these were true or in my life. Today, of this task list I wanted “God” to complete, all except two have come to fruition.

It would be a year from putting this list in my “g-d box”
when I would apply to graduate school for creative writing in poetry. It would
be two years from then when I would take my first oil painting class at that
college and start writing my daily blog.

It would be 4 years from putting this list in the jar when
my friend would become a flight attendant, and ask me if I wanted to escape winter and my chemo treatments and go to Hawaii for cheap.

A few months from there, a year ago, I would finally accept
the invitation to be a part of the band my friend had been asking me to join
for years, and actually use the bass I’d bought for $5 when I was 19. And not
long from then, I would begin auditioning and taking acting classes, and eventually be cast in a play.

The only items on this list that haven’t come to fruition
yet are the mural and the creative job.

The mural seems less important than it did 5 years ago, though
it would still be very cool to do.

The creative job “I am making” (whatever that means!) is still in
flux, in process.

Astonishing, isn’t it, that things I had no idea how they
would come to pass have all come to
pass? I could never have imagined when I wrote that list that I would actually be in a band, or be able to go to Hawaii. Those were
the gifts and “rewards” of successful, other people. But, some part of me has
always believed that I can be one, or they wouldn’t have been in the box.

I love looking at this list. It is so concrete. I can check each off with a stroke of joy and elation: I
painted! I wrote! I acted! I vacationed! WHOOP! Look at me, enjoying a life (in spite of my self).

We all know what I’m going to say: If everything else on the
list has come to pass except the last one, then there must be hope that even
that can come to pass as well.

I am not sure I’m exactly an optimist, but I am a believer
in the efficacy of asking for help, not doing it alone, but doing it. Eventually.

Because, I should mention that going to school has saddled me
with nearly $90,000 in student loan debt and sent me into a recovery program
around my relationship to money and scarcity. I should mention that my airline
friend offered me the trip to Hawaii because I needed a break from cancer. And that I only finally reached back out to my
friend with the band as I was sitting alone and bald in my apartment, listening to a CD,
and busted out crying because I wanted to be a part of something like that –
because I didn’t want to be taken from the chance to have that in my life.

It’s not as if this list got checked off according to the
“easy way,” is my point. It took a lot of work, help, reaching out, despair,
action, pleading, and god damned willing it to be.

I would not have
chosen this route to getting these items checked off, and yet, here I sit
elated that so many of them have been. They say that it’s the journey not the
destination, but these journeys sucked. The routes to getting here, to crossing
off these accomplishments that have brought me joy, were really horrible, scary, and
painful.

It’s a strange dichotomy to sit with: The immense gratitude for being where I am, and the questioning
of the benevolence and efficacy of the path that brought me here.

So I guess what I sit with now is whether I want the road
to crossing off the last item on this list – “my creative job” – to be as
arduous as the roads before it. It is true that sometimes we don’t have a
choice, and choices are made for us, but I feel today that I do have a choice
on whether I want to struggle toward this final goal, whatever the
circumstances, or if I want to acquiesce toward it. Maybe not even “acquiesce,”
but move with joy. I mean I have a whole list of accomplishments to buoy this
part of my journey, right?

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

dreams · faith · fantasy · fear · hope · loneliness · love · reality · scarcity · vision

Mystery Man.

June 22, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There is a conceit that we can only have in our lives that which we can imagine. As the saying goes, “If you dream it, you can do it.”

But, what if you can’t dream it? What if your ability to
dream is hampered, and you can only see the smallest of your dreams, the tiny
parts of a big picture?

Because there’s also the phrase, “Beyond your wildest dreams.” So if something is beyond what we can conceive for ourselves, then the entire
point is that we can’t dream it. Right?

Yes, we’re getting a little metaphysical this morning.

Because, maybe a year ago, a friend sent me a link to the
Oprah and Deepak free 21-day meditation challenge. I’d seen others “sharing” it on
Facebook, and I thought, what the hell.

Since then, I’ve done these “challenges” on and off, and I
also continue to receive little “gift” meditations in my email here and there, like I did yesterday.
So, yesterday, I sat with one, and today, I searched back through my email to
find a different one to do, and I clicked on the one entitled, “Intentional
Me.”

We are asked to envision one of our dreams, in vivid
Technicolor, fleshing it out. I’ve written here before about this one I have of
me in a white kitchen, I’m like 50, there’s an art/music studio detached in the
back. It’s an open floor plan kind of place, that you can see the kitchen from
the living room.

What happened for me this morning was that I added an
11-year old boy to the picture. After yesterday’s birthday party for a friend’s
11-year old, I felt that desire. (In fact, I’ve been feeling more clearly a desire to spawn my own offspring, which surprises me as much as it worries me.) But, – I love boys that age. They’re feisty, but
still sort of willing to listen to authority. They’re not too pubescent to be
very unsure of themselves and therefore super defensive. They’re funny, sarcastic, and full of energy. I love
spending time with kids that age. In fact, I’d taught kids that age a few years ago at
Sunday school.

So, into my vision of my “dream” for myself, now there’s a
boy, a son, perhaps, perhopes.

And then I tried to envision the partner, because I do want that. My partner, my
husband, my beloved (gag). And I have a really hard time doing this. It was like a person flickering in my vision: sort of there, sort of not. I begin to remember my Dad and
my parents and how so very awkward their own interactions were. So forced and
strange.

I can’t keep a solid image of a man in the kitchen to help
me as I chop some vegetable at the center island. I can’t believe in a vision of a partner
for myself. Even in a daydream.

So, I have to wonder: Can I hold an intention for myself
that I can’t really see?

Or is there work to be done to allow myself to have that
kind of love and joy even in the confines of my brain?

Which I suppose, the answer is Yes.

I have very few models of happy married life, but I have two
that I thought hard about this morning, trying to see if I had any at all.
There was the family I babysat for down the block growing up. A married couple
who were symphony musicians, and their three sons. They seemed happy. Who
knows, but to me they arise as a model for familial contentment.

I mean, even last year, when I went with my brother to visit
our old house in New Jersey, there was the dad, older and grayer, but with the
same winning smile and generous spirit, installing a flower box via a
jerry-rigged pulley system with his youngest son. Who was about to go off to
college that Fall. I remember taking care of him when he was 6-weeks old.

But here they were. I heard about the other two, and this
one, about to go to school for musical theater in Texas. It was pleasant, this
whole scene. It felt nice and right, and they live in a small house on a
tree-shaded block in one of the most pleasant areas of the state.

The wife wasn’t there, because she was in New York, playing
with the Philharmonic. But his eyes told me they were happy, they were
satisfied with how their life was turning out. This was their vision.

The second couple are my mom’s friends from my growing up.
They’re sort of like my second parents in some ways, and we’ve become closer
the older I’ve become. Their life hasn’t been easy, but it has been happy on
the whole. And they love one another like … well, like we all hope to be loved.

So, I suppose I do have models for what I want for myself.
And it will be about remembering them fiercely in the face of “I don’t know,”
and “Not for me,” and “How can I?” that come up. In the face of scarcity and fear and
deprivation, I am going to have to be diligent about calling on these models
for hope and health and change.

Because I have some vegetables to chop, a partner to laugh
with, and a son to make faces at.

aspiration · dreams · faith · perseverance · theater · trying

Voice of Dreams Past

February 18, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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When I left South Korea in February 2004, my neighbor and
Canadian co-worker gave me a journal as a parting gift. I didn’t realize til
later on the plane back to America that he’d written inside, “Good Luck on
Broadway.”

I just searched my blog to see if I’d written about this
segment of my life earlier, and I have, but it’s worth revisiting today.

When I left my ESL teaching post in Korea, my first “real”
job post-undergrad, I had the idea I would come back to the States and “break
onto Broadway,” that I would work my way through the underworld of New York,
the clichéd waitress by day, actor by night.

As I was applying for jobs, I went to get my nails
done—because surely that’s a priority to someone looking for food service
work…? I was in the salon, and began to chat with the woman next to me. I
told her about where I’d been, where I thought I’d be going, and she said
something that infiltrated. To paraphrase: You know you have to start in
community theater, right? It takes years to do anything worthy of note. You don’t just
start at the top.

Her words, combined with a moment of clarity about my
ability to cope with life on life’s terms, led me to abandon my dream, drive
west, and set up a new life in California. You can read about that story here.

But.

Last night, I went to my first rehearsal for the new play
I’m in. It’s a staged mock-trial about the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese
during World War II. It’s not a Sam Shepard, or Shakespeare, or Kushner. It’s
not something I’ll actually advertise to my friends to come see, because I
believe there will be more plays, with better scripts and an actual plot that I
will want to encourage you to see me in. But, it’s a start. And, as I wrote
earlier, I’m happy to be in your bad plays. And really, I am.

But, this thing happened while I was waiting for my table-reading rehearsal to begin: I heard voices.

Specifically, I heard a woman, probably a young woman, as
the rehearsals are at SF State, singing operatically, and there was a chorus
behind her. When I heard it, I stopped short, and followed the sound.

I stood on one side of a wall, the theater on the other. It must have been the scenery shop,
with spray-painted borders on the walls and floors, immense pieces of mirror
and wood. The sort of haphazard array of items you think of in any work-shop. I
stood there, and I listened to them sing. To the accompanying pianist, the voice
of the director, telling them something I couldn’t quite hear. She lit up the
whole place, this disembodied voice.

And I remembered that part of this whole thing for me. That
part of the motivation, that part of the dream.

Because, as you may have (or maybe I should have) gathered by now, this theater thing
and this singing thing are related.

I do know enough to know that what that woman in the nail
shop said was correct. That it does take years. But what my 24-year old self
wasn’t able or willing or balanced enough to say was, So what? Yeah, And?
That’s what I’m doing here, lady—I’m beginning.

I could look around the room at the director and my fellow
actors and report that they’re all 10 years younger than me.

I could stand in that hallway listening to the voice of my
own aspiration and wail I should have studied theater in undergrad.

I could comb through my neglected childhood,
and poke a finger into the wound of not being encouraged to pursue my talent
and my dreams.

But, Julia Cameron wrote something very significant to her
naysayers (internal and external) in The Artist’s Way when she began learning to play the piano in her
50s.

“Do you know how old you’ll be by the time you actually get
proficient at this thing?”

Yes, the same age I’d be if I didn’t.

I saw my friend Matt onstage last week. He’s been working in
the theater industry since his 20s, went to school for it. He’s 50 now. He’s not famous. It’s his first SF play. But he’s
working. Always working. And he loves it.

And isn’t that the damned point.

acting · clarity · commitment · consistency · dreams · growth · perseverance

Get Real.

February 12, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Blogger lets you see what posts are being read, how many
times, and where in the world the reader is (HELLO! Those of you in Poland, Germany & Israel…whoever you are!). This morning, I saw that someone had read
“Pulling a Carmen,” my first blog-a-day in November of 2011. I haven’t stuck
with it daily, but fairly enough.

Amazingly, a) it’s the same things I talk about now (wanting
to act and perform; letting myself be in a relationship; owning my dreams), but
b) it also shows me where things have
changed: I have been a bass player in a
band – I certainly wasn’t in Winter of 2011 when I wrote that; I wasn’t until Spring of 2013.

In that blog, I write that my
relationship with others is reflected in my relationship with myself: how am I not committed to myself and my goals? And here I am present-day, whittling down my goals to only theater, finally.

This week, I
wrote the lead singer in the band I play bass in that I can’t be in the band
anymore. It’s sad, but I know it’s ultimately for the best. It’s a pruning
game—like a bonsai. Or fichus. (cuz who doesn’t love the word fichus). And I
think it will ultimately help me in my attempts to focus on and even achieve
anything at theater.

I write about all the same things that I write about now,
but I do think I’m at a different place with them. I mean, I guess I write
about the same things all the time: relationships, healing, self-care,
self-derision, past experience, authenticity, perseverance.

Perseverance. I’ve written a bunch about that before, but
without one goal to head toward, the whole thing becomes dispersed, scattered,
and ineffectual.

Yesterday, I put down a deposit for real headshots.

The friends I’ve had who’ve helped me out over the years
produced incredible photos, artistic, fun, and fun to shoot—but they’re not
“acting headshots.” And there just is an industry standard. I’ve been trying to get the name of someone from an actor
friend of mine, but her voicemails are all garbled, and somehow it hasn’t been
working.

Enter Yelp. Yesterday after some searching and
clicking and emailing, I sent half of the $350 fee to this woman in Berkeley.

Later that day, I got emails back from my other inquiries,
friends, who would be willing to do a much reduced rate, or photos in exchange for
babysitting.

I cursed myself (mildly) for being so impetuous and
imprudent, for not being patient and thereby “wasting” money.

And then, I looked at these friends’ websites, and I said,
ya know, it’s worth it.

As Maybelline says, I’m worth it. (or is it clarol?)

Because, after hm, 3 years of headshots that I felt either
okay, or less than okay about (fine photos though they were), I’ve been being prudent and cutting corners and trying alternatives–It’s time to put
my money where my mouth is. And I mouth about being an actress.

Does this mean I’m suddenly an actress? No. Does it mean
that I’m taking myself seriously enough to invest in myself? Yes. Does it mean
that I can focus more on what I’m showing the auditors rather than what I’ve
handed them, or emailed them? YES.

Because it IS my calling card, my first impression. And if I
want to be a professional, I get professional help. If I want this to be real, then I get real.

I could look at that first blog and laugh/lament that I’m
talking and writing and working on the same damned things 3 years later. And a
little bit, I do. But I also recognize that big things have shifted since then,
too. I’m glad to have this kind of record to mark my progress. Even when
progress looks circuitous and labyrinthine.

The last line in that first blog is that maybe there’s a
tall attractive employed funny Jewboy who is looking for a
“writer/singer/actress…bass player.” At the time I wrote that, “bass player” was only a
vague hope and notion, a funny, last second, “doorknob comment” throw-away, because you shouldn’t really know that it’s important to me. Today, I get to own that mantle. I am a bass player. I
play bass, I’ve been in a band. And I am now hoping to own the mantle of
actress.

If you glue it, they will come.

acting · change · confidence · dreams

Hunger Games

January 14, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I attended the Theater Bay Area General Auditions on Sunday
as a volunteer, which meant I got to see a lot of headshots, a lot of nervous
milling actors, and some of the auditions.

What I got to observe was that I probably fit somewhere in the
middle of that pack – I’m not worse than the worst person, and certainly not as
good as the best, so that means… I have a shot, right?

The General Auditions bring together all of the casting companies from around the Bay in one
room, like a cattle-call. There are about 5 auditions every 15 minutes, and it
goes on for 3 days. I can only imagine what that must be like for the auditors!
But, you never know – they can’t blink, because they might miss something, and
if you falter, you’ve just faltered in front of everyone you’ll ever audition for.
(all hail hyperbole!)

The other thing I got to see was how hungry all the actors were. It didn’t matter the age, or
experience, there was a rabid manic energy about the whole place. The guy
sitting in the lobby mouthing the words to his monologue, the slight look of
lamb at slaughter of a few, and the general awkwardness of the others standing
around their competition, sizing one another up, if even glancingly.

Because there isn’t enough. That’s the grand and great mantra
of things like this. It reminded me of the day laborers who stand outside of
Home Depot, waiting for someone to pick them. All they want to do is work. That’s
it – just give these people an opportunity to do what they know how to do best.
Just let them work. It’s a very different idea about the hungry artist, to me
at least. The idea that the hunger isn’t necessarily about pride, prestige,
fame, but just about getting the chance to do that which you’ve been trained to
do – Let Me Work. That’s what these
actors are saying, in their fidgeting, their primping, their priming.

And this Saturday, I will do the same. I will say the same
thing: Dear CCSF Director, Please let me work.

It’s a strange interview process; so much more intense than
“regular” office interviews, where it’s a dialogue (hopefully). This is just
you, presenting what you have to offer, sans feedback. There’s no riffing, no
improv, no charming self-depreciation or affable witticism. There’s just what
you can give in 1 minute – what you can bottle and nutshell in one minute of
the macrocosm of who you are and what you can do.

It is a lot of
pressure!

But. I’m up for it. I have to be. I don’t really have the
option to shirk my dreams anymore, or shrink from that which enlivens me. I mean…
I do, but, “all things considered,” I don’t. Life is short, dearies.

I also am getting to observe my lovely monkey mind as it
compared my list of acting credits to those on the resumes I was handing to the
auditors. I don’t have an MFA in Acting.
I don’t have a BA in Theater
Arts. Hell, I don’t even have one legitimate credit at all. And, yet, (I’m
talking to you, monkey mind) So, the, fuck, what. ? So what?!

Do you not make a new recipe because it might fail, and
therefore never eat again? Do you not refuel your gastank because it’s empty
and futile to continue refilling it? Do you stop talking to people you’ve never
met before because your name hasn’t been in lights, on a program, on Buzzfeed?
Well, I hope not.

Essentially, Life would be pretty awful if it meant only
doing the things you knew how to do. Where is the joi de vivre in that?

So, I’ll own the joi. I’ll de vivre. I’ll feed my monkey
mind banana chips and positive affirmations. I’ll practice the shit out of my
monologue, and I’ll mouth words silently, and I’ll appraise my competition, and
I’ll remind myself there is enough and I am worthy, and I’ll believe it and I
won’t believe it, and I’ll try again next time.

Because, I woke up with Lose Yourself in my head this morning — Eminem wants me to work, too.