Oct. 2018
I haven’t made anything in a long time. When I was a teenager I considered myself a creative. I started art classes when I was really young when other kids were starting soccer, and ever since then I thought that was “my thing”.
When I was a senior in high school I was having a hard time stomaching the idea of an art degree but I had supportive teachers who encouraged me to follow my interests. Oops. Even still, I couldn’t decide what to pick as a major. I decided that fashion design was far too competitive (it is) and that graphic design was a cop-out (tell that to my former graphic design peers who are making more money than me).
Film was always my primary choice. In high school I hosted documentary movie nights at my house and made really bad ~art house~ videos in Windows Movie Maker with — gasp — my flip phone camera. But I also thought a film degree was silly. I didn’t want to learn how to use a camera or editing software. I had already taught myself those skills (re: Movie Maker, flip phone). Then a letter arrived in the mail from a Good school with a convincing note about a liberal arts program that no one had ever heard of. It described itself as a mix of social sciences, a steadfast favorite of mine, with a focus on the arts. I went for it. Then boom, I was in. Except, I wasn’t. I was put on the waiting list.
My college essay, I shit you not, began with “I knew I was born this way before Lady Gaga told me so” and I’m not gay. It was an essay about how my parents were artists therefore I must be too. A whimsical quirky girl, so unique she was. It’s no wonder I was rejected by the University of Michigan and Oberlin College, the only other schools I applied to. That, and the fact that my test scores were atrocious and that I stopped taking math and science classes when I was a junior in high school because fuck that shit.
When I was in college I got really smart, the kind of smart that makes you an asshole. Suddenly, everyone around me was stupid and annoying. I even bullied my grandma into not going to church anymore, convincing her that if she thought critically enough she would come to the realization it was just a dog and pony show. Yikes. But I wasn’t that smart. When I was writing my senior thesis (three years into college because I couldn’t afford four), my advisor told me my writing sounded like a “liberal white girl” and I couldn’t comprehend why that was a bad thing. In my last year, I was surrounded by incredibly smart and well-rounded professors and students, and the cockiness I had garnered from freshman year quickly turned to self-loathing. I finished quietly and eventually felt okay with what I produced. But what I produced in college was nothing like what I thought I would do.
I took a lot of film theory classes. But it saddened me that I hadn’t made any film; at least not anything good. There was a point when I storyboarded a breakup scene and asked my ex to play himself in the short I was making. And if that doesn’t make your skin crawl, then great, there’s plenty more where that came from, let’s chat.
I signed up for two filmmaking courses while I was in college. The first was a 101 course that would teach us the basics of shooting and editing. I dropped out ten minutes in, when I learned it was our responsibility to purchase hundred dollar external hard drives. Then, I took Screenwriting 101. No hard drives required. Each week we were to write five page shorts. Each week we casted the shorts and the class read the scripts aloud. No one ever casted me for their scripts because I was shy, fine. But when no one, including my professor, ever had anything good to say about my script for the week, I grew increasingly upset. Sure, did I write the scripts the night before they were due? Yes. “So what,” I thought. This was supposed to be my thing.
I even scheduled an appointment with the professor. “No, like you don’t get it, I have stories to tell and this has got to be the way I tell them.” Only to be met with, “Maybe you should start a blog.” That was some soul shattering shit.
‘No tea, no shade’ as the kids say, but that professor wrote for soap operas. I doubt that was his goal. If he thought I should start a blog, perhaps he was only protecting me from the cutthroat world of screenwriting. And for that, I’ll thank him (at least for now, until my therapist and I can sort this out.)
I’ve been out of school for three years and I still have no idea what I’m doing. Which isn’t abnormal. I’m not going to insert a Gaga lyric here. Theoretically speaking, I work in the field I want to, but I’m in a position that is more grueling than satisfying and has only caused me to lose myself further. Alienation grâce à capitalism, baby.
More recently I started taking sketch comedy writing classes and other writing workshops. When I think about the next steps in my life, I think, “I’m going to meet a writing partner and then we’re going to make things together. Clearly, I’m not making things now, because I need that extra nudge. And maybe I’m just a team kind of person anyway.” But I haven’t met that person. And to be frank, I may never meet that person. I don’t think there’s such a quick fix.
We live in this bizarre space online where we either see those who are thriving or we see those who have decided to quip about how utterly miserable the world we live in is. I don’t think either is wrong. I think my personal problem, is that I think whatever I end up doing or making should match the attention of the self-deprecating tweets or get the same recognition of the Vine stars of years past. If I weren’t as lazy, maybe I could figure out the algorithm and make that happen, but that’s not what I want either. I should just make things because I like to and want to.
I don’t have anything motivational to say, nor do I have much of a conclusion. I wrote this to write something and I’ll be able to report in Tuesday’s therapy session that I actually did something. I once heard Ira Glass in a viral Facebook post — likely shared by all of your moms — about the importance of practice. It made me recoil. “For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not…And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.” The thing is, I don’t even know how to start doing this “work.”
So here’s a blog post.
Candice Chantalou 