Home

 

That skyline behind me is someplace I think of as "home." That's New York City. I moved there at 20 when I was still in college for two internships. I had big dreams, some of which I accomplished, and some of which I didn't. I grew up there; I cried there; I learned there; I worked on the film musical of my dreams and met movie stars I'd seen on screen since I was a kid; I performed onstage at the Met; I helped create plays and musicals; I was cut from more auditions than I can count, including the same Broadway show about 16 times. I was turned into a Lego for a film trailer; I had my own stunt double for a Liam Neeson film on which I worked for three months; I was ghosted by casting directors for reasons I'll never know and offered creative jobs that never materialized; I got inflamed and rattling lungs with a bloody cough from two different film sets; I had a blast on said film sets, both of which were dreams come true; I danced in companies and music videos; I met people who became my closest friends for a run of a show and then from whom I never heard again; I made friends who will be in my life forever; I earned my Equity and SAG cards; I was disillusioned by the film industry and its games; I loved almost every minute I worked on set; I saw and worked on more theatre than I could have ever imagined; I was shoved on the sidewalk several times a day; I was dripped on by mystery sludge from skyscrapers countless times; I had countless episodes of noise and sensory overload; I wrote and produced my own short play; I wrote my first novel; I danced my heart out with the best teachers in the business any time I wanted to....

For the duration of my time in NYC, I struggled with the idea of "home." I didn't know where "home" was. After going back to my childhood home in the midwest for Christmas and holidays, I hated getting on the subway that first day back because it was so loud and dirty and stressful and I hated it. Surely that couldn't be home.

When I moved back to the midwest almost exactly a year ago, burned out on NYC and its games and expense, the idea of "home" was even more in the forefront of my mind. This didn't feel like home either. I was frequently on the verge of tears here, depressed, devoid of the rich cultural life, energy, and arts of NYC, and my life seemed empty to me. It has gotten fuller, oddly enough in large part because of quarantine. As life has moved online, my life has become richer, wider, and more connected—something I frequently feel guilt over as so many other lives become engulfed by the tragedies of 2020. I take classes in London and NYC and Chicago, many of them with the same NYC teachers I've taken for years, but I've also met people in cities I've never even been to. The energy and life has given me the inspiration to continue writing the novel I got stuck on when I moved. And then after a day virtually jet-setting and writing, I watch sunsets here and go to Lake Michigan to recharge. I don't exactly know where it is I'm living, but it's not fully in any one place. And that works for me.

But one thing has come into focus for me lately. Whenever I see the news with pictures of New York City, my involuntary thought is "Oh—home."  I watch NY1 (the local New York City news station) because it's comforting, even as things fall apart.  It's the images of an empty Times Square and Penn Station, or McCarren Park full of protestors, or small businesses boarded up, or Central Park being used as a makeshift hospital, or people playing in empty streets, that bring tears to my eyes.  I watched a new quarantine-produced Bon Jovi music video last night, "Do What You Can," filled almost exclusively with images of New York City. Almost every single shot is a place I know. I've stood on that ground. Times Square was my backyard. It's not just a place from movies and pictures to me; it's one of the places I know most intimately in the entire world. Seeing someone walk through the vacant TKTS stands is an emotional punch that resonates on a personal level, not just a distanced shock-value level.

And so I've come to realize that "home" can be different things. But it's not always someplace we choose. It's not always perfect, or even a place we have to always like. It's not always where we physically are. For me, in a way, it will always be the place of massive dreams and heartbreak, where ambition and creativity know no bounds, where life is filled to the brim and is a rollercoaster every day, and where people push and shove but also always find a way to persevere. And that is New York City.

"Meet me where the island ends"

One of the best things about leaving New York City is finally having the ability to rent studio space whenever I want. The freedom to just put on music and dance, without the confines of an apartment, is something I haven't had since high school. And it's my oxygen. It's my joy.

🎼: Ryan Star, "Where the Island Ends"

The beauty in the imperfect

I've always been drawn more to the things in life that are messy, imperfect, and evolving than the things that are pretty and neat and finished and tied up in a bow. I'll take the messed up globby chocolate chip cookies over the picture-perfect ones, the song sung with grit and emotion over one sung technically perfectly, a dance that comes from the heart rather than one where all the positions are perfect but it doesn't sing; and I like people who are becoming something, ambitious, working towards being better tomorrow than they are today, always growing from their mistakes, rather than ones who consider themselves complete and finished just as they are

Which is why I like my drawing of Ulysses S. Grant like this more than in its finished form. He never finished evolving. He was always growing, always learning from his mistakes, always using his failures to become better.

Do something today to become stronger, better, more full. Work out, call a friend, push yourself, learn something, take a stand, take a risk, jump, fall... and stand up again.

But never be complacent.