I’ll Always Have Paris
I performed for a full house last week. I exited the stage and stood outside the door, listening to the applause before taking my curtain call. Just at that moment I thought “Can this applause sustain me for a week?” “Will it feed me when I’m down or encourage me to stay up?” What keeps us going? As James Dean once said “ Being an artist is the loneliest thing in the world”.
Not long ago, I was in a real funk. Living in isolation. Watching the world happening around me and secretly panicking that I was somehow being left behind. I’d watch lots of foreign films, especially French ones by geniuses like Jean-Luc Godard, reviling in the “joie de vie” with which these zestful Parisians lived. Whether they were walking down the Champs-Elysees like Jean Seaburg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in “Breathless” or whether they were line-dancing in a bar in “A Band Apart”…these characters seemed to be feeling so much, drinking in life.
Anywhere in the world seemed better then my small life in Los Angeles. Yes, I was depressed. And yes, I felt helpless. And then a miracle happened. I attended a meeting I almost wasn’t supposed to be at, met a producer, met a writer, got a script, got a director, and got on stage. My one-woman show saved not only my career but my life. It was time to leave my Parisians behind. It was time to find the “life” in my life. Some nights I still want to crawl into bed and cross-continents and be with those people. It’s okay every once in a while. I may never have the glamour I pine for, I may only feel traces of it when I flip through a Vogue magazine or splurge on a meal at Le Petit Bistro.
Whatever makes us feel alive is worth pursuing. I find what’s going on in North Korea and other parts of the world to be extremely threatening and depressing. I even fear I may not be able to travel freely one day and wonder if now is the time to take a hiatus and see the world. Maybe some day there will only be my movies. Stop Rachel. Listen to the applause. Remember what is good. Hold on to the happiness. No matter where it comes from. It’s yours.
Written by Rachel Bailit