How did Richard Armitage know? Or did he not know, and just do it anyway?

As I was driving away from the café where I usually write, these are the thoughts I was thinking. I’m probably going to regret having said this but if I don’t ask now, then when? I apologize in advance. I’m sorry I can’t show you the audition but I’m sure some intrepid pirate or giffer will have it available for you soon. I have to say this now before I lose the courage to ask the question of myself–

I look at that audition and I think, wow, rough, and there are still things here that he’s trying that are unrealized, and some clear inner turmoil there that’s hard to assign either to Armitage or to the Incipient Thorin who’s emerging, but —

I look at that audition and whatever I think about whether he’s constituting a believable Thorin or not, or whether Lucas North is still there, or what dwarf role I am mentally assigning to him in my head (or not), I think —

what power, what a gift, there is nothing this man should be doing other than this, nothing

he’s going for it with every breath that makes up his being

this man was made for just this

to be acting for just this camera, to be putting just this character together, to be just this technician of the human condition, to be seen just by me, by us

to be the person he is, putting together the characters he plays, for the people who will watch him and cry and laugh and learn and ask questions, for the people who will be irrevocably changed by watching this

***

and I wonder, as I watch his first steps toward the biggest triumph of his career so far, will I ever find that thing?

how does he know when he’s doing it, how does he find that space?

how did he get there?

and yes, I know what he’s said about it, his visit to Stratford as a student, his reaction to various things in his career, but I’m not asking about the steps here

I am asking about the feeling — about that feeling that is so strong that you just know, you know there’s nothing else?

does he have that?

how does he get it?

or if not how does he motivate himself to (metaphorically) throw himself over the cliff?

***

There are essentially four things I’ve been more than average to exceptionally good at. I hope lightning does not strike me for saying that or for the four paragraphs I’m about to write about myself.

I was an excellent clarinetist. I started playing when I was nine and I was always good and got better quickly. The best one in the state in 1987 by one important measure. My professional teachers were enthusiastic, I could have been a pro, they said, I lasted two semesters in the music major. In the end, I didn’t feel it when I was doing what I was supposed to be doing — I felt it alone at times, and in performance very occasionally, but that promise of the feeling that this is what I was made for, it never fulfilled itself.

I am an excellent teacher and I’ve been teaching various things to various groups of people since I was thirteen. If I understand something, I can put it together in a way to make it understandable to you. I’m not a perfect teacher, no teacher ever teaches every student successfully, and I’m often discouraged, but I know how to define a subject, put together an interesting course, get you to come to class, make you listen and process and work while you’re there, practice while you’re away from it, come away with new skills and new understandings and I can also make it pleasant for you the whole time. I can teach you to argue or write or think, I can teach you history, or piano, or basic mathematics, or language, or cooking (some of the things I’ve taught in the past). I love to teach but it is so frustrating when nothing comes back to me from it, and I am guilty of giving too much in unredeemable situations. I think that sometimes I have had that feeling of “I was made for this” but I also see myself while I am teaching and think, as much as they may be enjoying this you are are burnt out.

In college, I learned that I have an excellent mind, I’m a great researcher, a creative thinker, a skilled presenter, and an original intellect. I see things other people don’t see, I penetrate deeper, I excavate more. I worked hard on the tools. I mastered several languages, I can read quickly and for depth, I am analytically sharp, I can find original sources and explain them in new ways and my research has reached a modest group of scholars. I was hired at an important research university because I was thought to be a promising mind. And that learning, yes, the process of learning is something I enjoy and I sometimes thought what I had to say was valuable, but it seemed often to me that I was simply not good enough. I feel that way as a musician and a teacher too but I feel that way more often as a scholar.

And then there’s writing. I can’t always write easily, but I always *want* to write. It’s hard to figure out the words and I puzzle over the rhythms of the sentences and I want to get every single word right. Sometimes the feedback says I’ve communicated really well and sometimes not, but I always want to write again and when I can’t it’s like an disease. When it’s working I’m in flow, I feel connected to the entire universe in a way that I didn’t as a scholar (except when I was writing) and when the words pour out and I feel they are good I don’t need anyone or anything, just the words and the feeling and the connection to this stream of something — what?

If there’s a something I was made for — if that is a meaningful way to think about my life path at all — what is it? People have told me, you will be a great musician, you are a gifted teacher, my therapist in the last city said, I’m sorry, I’ve lost objectivity on the question, you are a born professor, and now sometimes people tell me that my words move them in significant ways …

I have never known, I’ve always been way too uncertain.

I know if I write I have to do it for me but I don’t even know how to see myself clearly.

Is it that, if you’re doing the thing you’re made for, you always want to be better, but you don’t care if you’re good enough?

These have always been things other people saw in me, never things I was able to see in myself. To really believe in, when it came to the decisive step — the step where you throw everything into it that you can, the step where you move up toward that camera and show every emotion you can, the step where the way you see your inner world becomes the way that other people see your outer world, and in turn, influences the way they start to interpret their lives — I’ve never really believed that way in myself, no matter what I did, no matter what I was trying to communicate

Never been able, either to believe that way — or else to throw the questions overboard and simply —

do the thing I was made for.

***

Is this what I’m made for? To write? Is this the thing I was born for?

Is this the thing that I’m supposed to get up and do again and again and again?

Is this the thing that I’m supposed to protect everything else for? To do this?

Is this the thing that I’m supposed to go for? Like Armitage goes for it in that audition?

And if I don’t at least try — if I don’t at least give it everything I have — what then?

If not now, when?

***

See what you call forth, Armitage? I know these things are somewhere, I know I can put them together, when I watch you, you give me hope, you provoke me to ask, at least.

~ by Servetus on October 24, 2013.