Sad Song Saturday: Josh Ritter - The Bad Actress (Acoustic) (download)
Send your sad song suggestions to Raizin(at)gmail(dot)com.
Sorry this song is late. I am in the midst of a VERY IMPORTANT PROJECT THAT I WILL NOT TELL YOU ABOUT BUT WILL INSTEAD SPEND SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS HINTING ABOUT VAGUELY. Enjoy.
One day you might discover that you’ve written something. And you might send it to your manager, with a note attached that says, “Hey, is this something? I don’t know; it might be nothing.”
And your manager will call you and say, “Oh yeah, this is something. But maybe it could be a little more something. This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. What if… instead of three friends… you make them triplets?”
So, you’ll write another draft (about triplets this time), and then another one, and after more notes from your manager, and from your friends, you’ll write more drafts, and when your manager thinks it’s ready, he’ll send it to his boss, and then he’ll give you notes and you’ll make more changes.
Then maybe some studio will read the something that is now about ten times removed from the first something you wrote, and they’ll say, “Hey, we kind of like this. We might want to make this something. But we don’t know yet. What if we gave you enough money to make a short something that’s kind of like this other something so that we can get a taste for it?”
This would be very exciting. So, you get started writing a short something that’s kind of like your original longer something, but it’s difficult because by this point you’ve kind of forgotten what was funny or interesting about the something to begin with. But the studio has hired a producer and a director and they’re giving you lots of great notes and locations are being scouted and actors are being hired, so there’s no turning back now!
And you might start to think, well this is an awful lot of other people’s time and money being spent on this stupid little something that I wrote. You might wonder to yourself, is this is all a set-up? Am I the victim of an elaborate prank? Or am I the perpetrator?
Because secretly, you’re not even sure the thing you’ve written is all that good.
In a few weeks, you’re flying down to L.A., and you’re still several drafts away, and you said you’d get them new pages a few days ago, and everybody’s waiting on you, and you’re so so sure that no matter what you do now, the whole project is doomed, it’s going to be a disaster, but there’s nothing you can do now to stop this runaway train, and worst of all, this is exactly the kind of opportunity you’ve been hoping for. All this attention, and pressure, and anxiety — this debilitating terror — this is what it is. It’s not going to get any easier than this.
And you might discover that success is much more terrifying than failure, because of all the grander future failures it implies.
And if all this happens to you, and you feel lost and confused and humbled and anxious and pretty much just about worthless — well, if that happens and you need some advice, you give me a call, because maybe by that time I’ll know how the story ends.
