The Shelf Life of Success
Or: if you fall off that bike you’ll never forget how to get up and ride it again right off a cliff.
Every business has a shelf-life, and performance art is no exception. In fact, it pretty much exemplifies the rule. In an industry where one is routinely valued against the rest of the playing field one has to know the most recent and newest in “thing” to be rewarded with work.
To be clear, the shelf-life problem isn’t with talent, which is something inborn, but with training, which everyone needs. Many people make the mistake talent for the short road to success. If you have a natural ear for music you should be an instant rock star. If you’re talented enough to be told “You should be an ACTOR”, then you should rocket right to the top of the LA film industry.
Unfortunately, as all the valedictorian learn when they get to Harvard, there is talent and then there is skill. Talent is that thing inside you that sets you apart from everyone else that isn’t talented. Skill is what sets you apart from the group with talent. And there are more talented people out there in the world than you’ll ever know and they all want your job.
It’s a shock, to be sure. Plenty of PAs come from small towns or isolated grouplets where they ruled the roost. Unfortunately there aren’t too many rap fests in East Bumfuck, Nebraska, so merely being able to rhyme an I with an eye might be enough to set you apart there. Get to New York without training in your mad skilz and you’ll get laughed right out of the Bronx. Or wherever in New York you crazy kids are rappin’ these days.
Living with a musician, I can tell you that the shelf life for trombonists is about three days. My husband can go about 72 hours without practicing before he starts to feel his muscles atrophy and gets hives of anxiety. Playing a musical instrument, acting, whatever kind of performance art a person does, is an intrinsically physical activity and if you lose your chops, you’re sunk.
Think it takes less physical shape to play an instrument than to run a marathon? Try it. Pick up a pipe at the local Home Depot and blow air down it. Now, hold it straight out in front of you, with your arms parallel to your shoulders, wave them around frantically, and blow down that pipe for six hours. Hell, just stand there and hold that pipe at mouth level for six hours. Go on. I’ll wait.
Occasionally people ask me why I’m not still performing, and while I’ll talk about why I gave up the crack later, I can tell you why I’m not going back to performing. The shelf life of a trained actor is five years. An actor comes out of school in tip-top condition; at the top of her game; a veritable Tiger Woods. Then, as the years go by and she doesn’t keep up with her thickspace or her gibberish skills, as she becomes lax about memorizing random items and lets her subscription to PerformInk lapse, she loses her edge. Approximately five years out of school an actor reverts to basically a pre-training stage. She achieves a low level of skill that is not at all indicative of all the years spent studying and working.
I graduated DePaul University in 1997, so I’m eight years out. Too long to go back unless I’m up for rebuilding what once came easily to me. And that, my friends, is heartbreaking. If you were once a singer, and you haven’t sung a note in eight years, and you go to sing in a choir and your voice cracks horribly, that’s often enough to silence anyone. I can handle not having talent at random things, for example the only tennis game I ever won was when the other team didn’t show up, but having a skill, being a person in the top of my league, and then losing that skill, can be heartbreaking.
If you are a performer, take my advice now: Don’t let this happen to you. Practice. Practice practice practice.
What sort of work do you do? What do you think is the shelf life for that work? Have you let a skill fade in your life and then regretted it? Have you ever rebuilt a skill you once had?
2 Comments
After witnessing several people unsuccessfully try to learn to trombone, I think it is one of the most difficult and demanding instruments out there.
This is a very sage post. For many years while growing up, I was told that I had tremendous musical talent. But I never had the passion to practice diligently and my fingers have now turned to jello. I feel sometimes that all those years were a waste, but maybe they won’t be if I ever get the chance to play recreationally again.
Krissy, I didn’t know you went to DePaul!
Great school! My company’s created most of their marketing brochures for the last 20 years or so. Great post. (I sing in the choir, btw. And you’re right, practice, practice, practice.)