The older I get, the more I think that the times I've been really alive have been when my behavior has appeared perfectly licit--but I've done whatever I really wanted to do.
The prologue from Alan Arkin's An Improvised Life: A Memoir--
Some years ago I did a film with Madeline Kahn. A lot of it was shot on location, and one day we found ourselves at a particularly beautiful spot overlooking a panoramic view of the Hudson Valley. During a lull in the shooting, while the cameras were setting up, we went out onto an extensive lawn and sat there for a while, lost in the scenery. While we were musing and chatting, I found myself thinking about Madeline's many gifts. She was a fine actress, an excellent pianist; she had an exquisite operatic voice with impeccable technique and she was also a brilliant comedian. I asked her which of her talents she considered to be her primary focus. She thought for a while and couldn't come up with an answer. I don't think she'd ever thought about it before. "Well, what did you start out wanting to do?" I asked. "What was your first impulse? Was it acting?" She shook her head "no," but didn't seem sure.
"Singing?"
"No."
"Playing the piano?"
"No."
"Did you want to be a comedian?"
"No, not really."
"Well, what was the first thing you thought of doing? There had to be something."
Again she tried to thread her way back to her childhood ambitions. "I used to listen to a lot of music." She paused, trying to find the words for what she was thinking. "And that's what I wanted to be," she finally said.
"I don't know what you mean," I said.
She answered, and it sounded as if she'd never formulated this thought before, as if it was news to herself.
"I wanted to be the music," she said.
It was a revelatory and somewhat disturbing moment. With that one statement I realized that what she'd said about herself was the impulse behind all of my own interests, all of my needs, all of my studying, compulsions, and passions, and had I been aware of that idea when I was starting out, had I been able to assimilate it, live within it, I would have saved endless years of frustration and work and confusion because that thought was at the very bottom of what I was looking for. So much had been invested in craft, in externalization, in looking for something solid out there that would fill the void, create a sense of flight, of getting out of the oppression of self.
We don't want to do it; we want to be it. Only we don't know it. No one tells us.
This is dedicated to everyone who wants to be the music.
THAT is why I write.
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