SHOUTS & MURMURSLUCI GUTIÉRREZ
A
t twenty-three, Oprah was fired
from her first reporting job. This
is the beginning and the end of the
things you have in common with Oprah.
Dance like no one’s watching. No
one is watching. Your YouTube chan-
nel has zero subscribers.
The most important things in life
aren’t things. They’re the feelings you
get when you can aford to buy things.
In improv, as in life, the answer is
always “Yes, and,” especially if the ques-
tion is “Are all of your friends looking
for reasons they can’t come to your im-
prov show?”
Shoot for the moon. Even if you
miss, who cares? You were just day-
lighting as a moon hunter to pay the
bills until your script gets optioned.
Never, never, never, never, never,
never, never give up your parents’ health
coverage.
“There is nothing to writing. All
you do is sit down at a typewriter and
bleed,” which is exactly what happens
five to eight days out of the month.
You miss a hundred per cent of the
shots you don’t take. And, if you’re any-
thing like Wayne Gretzky’s loser son,
you also miss a hundred per cent of the
shots you do take.
Some people see things as they are
and say, “Why?” At night, you dream
things that never were and think, This
is the breakthrough idea I’ve been wait-
ing for! But when you wake up in themorning you find, written in your Notes
app, something incomprehensible, like
“Keanu Reeves decides puppy murder.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger” is a line from a song by Kelly
Clarkson, who—judge her all you want—
has achieved more commercial and artis-
tic success than you could ever imagine.
No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent, but you just spent
your afternoon trying to turn that say-
ing into a B.D.S.M. joke for your
eighty-seven Twitter followers, so...
I don’t know, man.
No person on her deathbed ever re-
grets having spent too much time at
work. What she might regret is hav-
ing spent two years of her life making
a video short called “Drunk Dave Goes
to the Car Wash.”
There’s no “I” in “team.” But there
is an “I” in the question “Is anyone going
to come to my one-woman show en-
titled ‘Pearls Before Wine’?” And the
answer is no.
At twenty-eight, J. K. Rowling was
a single mother living on welfare. You
stopped reading the “Harry Potter” books
when they got too long. Also, married
or single, you would be a terrible parent.
Remember that just when the cat-
erpillar thought the world was over she
became a beautiful butterfly. Which is
to say, we can’t pay you at this time,
but, in a way, doesn’t the exposure more
than make up for it? ENCOURAGEMENT FOR
STRUGGLING CREATIVES
BY RIANE KONCA
18
ph