Imitation of Life

One thing an actor learns in Chicago is that it’s harder to get fired from 5 small gigs than one full time job. In this regard, our schedules are completely fucked from one day to the next. You might be required to start your day at 6am on Tuesday, 10:30pm on Friday, you don’t work Wednesday, but someone called you to fill in for six hours on Thursday which may or may not happen but they’ll let you know by 11 tomorrow morning. Waking up at the same hour on two consecutive days is rare.

This week I have the unprecedented situation of working the same gig – at the same location – 5 days in a row. It’s an earlier day and a longer commute than most things I do, but it’ll be a solid paycheck in a week or two. And the work is rewarding; that of a standardized patient, an acting-adjacent job which helps medical students practice their communication skills with the sick and injured. We portray the patient, memorizing a list of facts and doling them out when the right questions are asked.

The down side is that it’s a very repetitive job. Getting asked the same questions and giving out the same answers every few minutes reminds me of every cashier job I ever had. It can get a little monotonous, but keeping it fresh is vital to their education; a reminder which helps us to push through.

Each day we get interviewed by up to 10 students, 15 minutes at a time, portraying the same symptoms over and over. After a while we might take on some of the characteristics of the patient ourselves, so something like a persistent cough starts getting harder to control. The mind and body starts getting convinced it really is getting sick, and starts acting like it.

This week is harder than most. I’m portraying a patient who suffers from random attacks of his racing heart and rapid breath, each time afraid it’s going to kill him. Turns out to be panic disorder, though it doesn’t occur to him. If the students dig deep enough they make an connection to a major event one year ago in the patient’s life, the anniversary of which is the likely culprit for why I’m sitting in an emergency room now.

This case hits awfully close to home.

It was a year ago now that my depression started to peak in a way it hadn’t in years. It had been building, but it finally hit a point that I knew I needed professional help. Rarely have I been to a therapist and never had I been medicated before, but this time I started both. It took months to unfuck myself back to functionality.

But here I am again. Same time of year. Same sort of life situation. And now up to ten times a day I spend fifteen minutes describing a panic attack and facing my mortality, neither of which are unfamiliar to me. I really hope they’re getting something out of this, because this case needs more than a paycheck to put me back in order.

Just a few more days to get through.

Play Hurt

I have almost always been connected to music; not as an artist, but as a listener. “What a shit statement," you might say. "Everyone listens to music." And yeah, sure, of course that’s true. Where I draw the distinction is the place where needing music around me at all times becomes a compulsion. Without music, something feels off. Something’s wrong. Silence is a slight odor of smoke in my apartment when nothing should be burning. A humming sound from my car’s engine which only presents when I’m driving fast enough to know that a sudden issue would be catastrophic.

Silence is uncomfortable. Turn down the volume, and take away my security blanket.

A neurologist named Oliver Sacks researched a condition and called it Musicophilia. Usually it happens to people who have suffered some kind of brain injury, but I don’t remember one. Well – there was that one time a television landed on my forehead, but I think my compulsion started before then. Maybe? Whatever.

What I do remember is one of the first presents I got from my parents: headphones. There was a stereo in the dining room, and I would use it constantly because it had the best speakers in the house. From my earliest memories until I was through college the most common phrase I heard was “turn it down.” Yeah, it doesn’t just have to be on. It usually has to be loud. The headphones weren’t so much for me as they were to protect the rest of the family.

That’s a trend which continues to this day. Everywhere I go the music is playing, and it’s only gotten more convenient and more constant. My phone connects to a Bluetooth speaker when I’m getting ready to leave the house, to my headphones as I walk to the car, and to the car stereo as soon as I crank the engine. The song never breaks, and the playlist never ceases.

Music keeps me on track. Without it I stop moving, can’t complete a task. I operate at my best when I connect a particular album to a particular chore. American Idiot gets me through the grocery store. Turn the Radio Off folds laundry with me. The discography of Stone Temple Pilots up to 2008 cleans my apartment, and the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack holds my hand while I write something. Pavlov wasn’t wrong.

When I mention this, someone will point out that some people just can’t handle silence. This is usually accompanied by a superior tone fueled by a self-perceived strength of character. Their ability to sit quietly with nothing but their own thoughts must be some kind of superpower. Well you know what fucko, some people don’t have legs; no reason to get haughty just because your brain isn’t tied in knots and you have toenails to trim.

Okay sure, so I’m bitter about the fact that some people don’t need it. In addition to being easily distracted, I’m also regularly anxious or depressed. A quiet environment is a still one. The more still my body is, the faster my mind moves in useless swirls. Repeated fragments of half-developed sentences, ancient arguments with people I never talk to anymore, my obelisk of a to-do list, they’re all warring for my attention at the same time and all of them are winning.

Putting on music is like putting out the bumpers on a bowling alley. My thoughts can’t stray too far because music keeps them bordered, and my focus on a particular task remains until the task is complete. If I’m doing something simple like walking or driving, music fills in the dark places where uncomfortable thoughts would otherwise breed.

Somewhere in there is a lesson about my overall mental health. I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as I have a way to keep it under control.