“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure”-Joseph Campbell
Since my arrival in Chicago, I have been trying to fall in love with this city. It was easy to fall for the alleys, and the reflection of light bouncing off of the puddles after a summer storm. Riding my bicycle down the Lakefront path. Building and collaborating on shows with my company. Teaching performance programs in the city schools. Exploring art, music, and sudden friendships in a fertile, if random, ground of influence and opportunities. I had believed to have committed myself fully to the quest for love of this city, despite the fact that one foot was always poised in either retreat or advance. Perhaps I had truly committed myself to falling.
The first time I visited Chicago was in 1994 for a Women’s Studies conference at Depaul. I was brought in as an actor to play Virginia Woolf in a play that had been written by another Wooster student, and had won some kind of award. I didn’t think much of Chicago-it reminded me of Cleveland, which, at the time, wasn’t a horrible association. Cleveland had been in a resurgence and beautification decade. Jacob’s Field was still new. Tower City was still current, and the Flats still had an array of clubs. Cleveland was a little bit pretty. The area of Chicago we were being housed in was seedy, so I didn’t have a huge impression of Chicago, necessarily. We didn’t even drive through downtown. I don’t remember Lake Michigan any differently than I know Lake Erie. Chicago=Cleveland, which was fine. No harm, no foul. I knew Cleveland, and was fond of Cleveland. Chicago didn’t offer anything new to me. I was at a conference. I didn’t feel that I had an opinion.
I did form one. It was while watching Saturday Night Live in the hotel room with Blind Melon as the musical guest. Shannon Hoon loped up to the microphone and mumbled, “This is for Kurt Cobain.” awkwardly. My first thought was that he was being snide and playing off of the common tone in the grunge days of calling another musician a sell out, or Kurt Cobain was dead. I couldn’t figure it out. It was clearly one or the other.
Kurt Cobain was dead. I had another association with Chicago. It was in a hotel room, and watching a television screen, confused and hoping for sarcasm, rather than remorse.
Years later, as an actor traveling and exploring residencies and contracts, meeting new sudden friends and cohorts, I heard about the storied potential of Chicago. Many of my friends aspired to live and build a career there, and it was presented as a wonderland. I was already based in NYC, a city I loved, and had no interest in Chicago. If I left New York, it would be for Los Angeles. In my mind, New York had theatre and Law and Order. Los Angeles had film and television. I grew up in the Midwest, and had no interest in returning. I had New York waiting. I had Los Angeles looming. First things first, especially while still in my 20’s.
At 26, I began planning my move from NYC to LA. I took a year to canvas, establish contacts, save money, and transition my tone. I wasn’t unfamiliar with LA, as my grandparents lived in Long Beach, and from five years old on, I had spent many holidays and vacations out there. Many memories were built and fantasies borne of those trips full of Seal Beach, Marina Del Ray, 70 degree Christmas’, back yard lemon trees, and morning feedings of the neighborhood rabbits. As a child, Los Angeles represented the dream world I would one day own, posted in snapshots of palm trees and beaches amid my Sassy Magazine posters of Johnny Depp and Christian Slater that decorated my bedroom walls at my Father’s house. As I grew older, went to college, and accepted opportunities, I found myself in New York City, hopelessly in love, training at Strasberg, and surrounded by constant amazement. Childhood memories and palm trees didn’t stand a chance against swollen stories passing by, towering in architecture, rooted in the frames of the sheer mass of people ebbing along, aware and blinded by the atmosphere of Everything. The Chelsea Hotel. Leonard Cohen oozing from every pore of the city that begged to be explored and trodden.
When I decided to leave New York, the dream of California was clear, and waiting. I did have the anticipation of training, the desire to work in independent film and television, the fruition of a few friends from my traveling actor days, NYC, and other places along the way. I had even struck up a romance with a friend from high school. Most importantly, though, was the energy of starting anew-exploring the landscape and opening up my path to the cliff’s edge, all the while admiring the view.
My final trip to L.A., before actual relocation, was a two-week stint to find an apartment. Knowing I’d be living the La Boheme life as a n actor again, I had staggered my connecting flights in Chicago to spend the weekends of travel with my best friend from college, Heather, who had been in Chicago for a few years. The Chicago I found on the first weekend en route to L.A. was drastically different from the “It’s just like Cleveland” Chicago I remembered. Nights were long and oddly glamorous, filled with champagne, martinis, laughter and late night runs to the lakefront. Days were filled with brunches, music, hilarity and art. Sleep was minimal. New friends were immediate, to the extent that a group of newfound friends stole my keys on my last night, trying to convince me not to go out to Los Angeles and to stay in Chicago. It almost worked, as when my flight was scheduled to take off at 8:30 am, I was still searching for the hidden keys. Part of me hoped I wouldn’t find them. Luckily, the flight had been delayed, and I did not miss it. I slept for the entire weekend on that flight. In that sleep, I recognized something I hadn’t expected-I was completely infatuated with Chicago. Who knew? Chicago raised my eyebrows and pushed my pulse. But I had already put my plan in motion, so that city was to be nothing more than a “what if?”
I got to Los Angeles, settled myself into the Holiday Inn in Hollywood, immediately took a nap, and slept through a mild earthquake. I had plans to meet up with the boy I’d been seeing, but he was insisting I drive out to Burbank, which I was not intent to do, having not driven in five years, and didn’t know how to get there, and frankly, found his whole demeanor a little rude. I cancelled the plans and opted to do some writing at the hotel bar, where I quickly fell into conversation with the bartender. We spoke of New York, the business, and all of the typical stuff. Then we came to the subject of Chicago, and she kept saying, “You know, I wish I had known about Chicago.” And my heart twitched a bit with the wonder if I was making a mistake in considering only two cities in which to play. I guess that is what usually happens when you walk away from infatuation. You wonder.
I woke the next morning to my hotel phone ringing. I had assumed it was the boy, calling to apologize, but it was my friend Carrie, calling in tears, telling me to turn on the television. This is where this turns into my September 11th story. Sitting alone in a hotel room in Hollywood, watching the literal world I had just left crumble as it would in a big-budget movie blockbuster.
Dumbfounded. Helpless. Confused. Horrified. Alone. Really, really, really far away.
My phone rang again, and this time it was the boy. He was laughing, shouting, “Are you watching this?!?Fuck New York!” I never realized what a terrible judge of character I had been.
Devastated. Cut off. Alone.
I tried to call everyone back home, but my cell was out(as it would be for another week or however long it was). Luckily, there was a youth hostel next door with internet, so I was able to get in touch with friends and family that way, and account for everyone I could. But there wasn’t much I could do, that far away.
I’ll spare the rest of the story, as it’s another entry in and of itself. I hid in my hotel room for a few days, trying to make some sense out of anything, and eventually came to “live what you love.” “Follow your bliss,” It was the only thing that made any sort of sense, and the only perspective I could muster to take a terrible tragedy and tie a makeshift rudder of hope and direction to it. It happened. Now what?
I spent my two weeks out on the West Coast, half-heartedly looking for an apartment, but had already decided that I couldn’t stay out there with family in Ohio and a life in New York. I decided to take my staggered return weekend to find an apartment in Chicago, which was easy to do. Rather than move to L.A., I moved to Chicago, intending to stay there for a year, until things settled down, then either move back to New York, or go out to L.A. again. I was still jumping off of the edge of a cliff, still admiring the view. This one just happened to be a little chillier for 6 months of the year, and offered opportunities other than the ones I had been surveying. Adventure always wins.
I came to Chicago in an unexpected transition stumble. Chicago was a treasure- a worthy crush that lived up to its promise of amusement, discovery and wonderful distractions. I had moved into an industrial loft space in the West Loop with Heather’s brother Jaime, and his punk-rock-hairdresser-from-Seattle girlfriend, who was absolutely insane, and kind of wonderful. We renovated the entire space in a free-form artists loft over the next year. Old friends, whom I never thought I’d see again, began appearing everywhere. The music scene was amazing, vibrant and contagious. Amanda, a friend with whom I had toured with the Rocky Horror Show years back, had just started a theatre company(She will say it’s “Interdisciplinary,” but I think that is redundant-theatre is, by nature, interdisciplinary, and we were, essentially, putting on plays in the first few years-check us out now at www.stridinglion.org---plug,plug. Wonderful company!), Striding Lion, and I had signed on for “Cowboy Mouth” as the producer, costume designer, assistant director and understudy(starting up companies=many hats). Summers were amazing. Winters were long and brutal. Work was constant.
With “live what you love” as an impetus for discovery, I soon found myself as the growing artist that had twitched and turned in discomfort during my time as an “actor and that’s it,” which led to the “actor turned restaurant general manager with stable income and health insurance” that led to “actor turned general manager turned bar manger/teaching artist in Harlem and Washington Heights.” Chicago became a playground of building identity and taking earnest chances to explore what truly drives me . It was within this city that I was able to bridge the connections of wants, desires and tuggings of my 20’s and early 30’s into a perspective that broadened into a path that makes sense.
With the breadth of this path before me, the foot that has been poised for years is gaining weight and momentum to continue , strengthened by this city, and all that it contains. I may not have fallen in love with Chicago, but I am reverent to the honor and freedom to explore that this city has granted me. It is certainly a treasure.
