Stories from My Travels #1: Gyorgy’s Lament

Hey everyone,

This will hopefully be the start of a series of prose and short stories inspired by people I’ve met and stories I’ve heard while I was travelling. Or simply inspired by new places. I shall call this series Stories from My Travels, because that’s what it seems to be. Please bear in mind they are not in any way completely accurate accounts of people’s lives, merely my imaginative expansions of what I hear and see. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave comments!

 

Gyorgy’s Lament

Rejected. For the fifth time.

It’s not true, what people say; failure doesn’t hit you like a brick wall. It’s more like trying on new glasses. The first few days it feels a bit weird and you might get dizzy; those are like the first failed audition. Then slowly, you get used to it, and in time, they become your eyes. They become part of you, and you’re not you if you don’t see through the lens of the glasses. Still, you just might see the world a little bit clearer, the world for what it is.

Every time I missed my name on the candidate list for the second round, I wondered if I had actually learned from my past experience. I wondered if I had worked hard enough, or if I’d really taken heed of the previous adjudicator’s comments, or if I’d ever progressed since the day I left dance school. Every time, it seemed, I was back at square one. I had never gotten better.

Don’t worry, a voice inside told me. You might’ve just missed the quota. Maybe you were only one behind the last one they chose. Dancing is subjective; another adjudicator might have chosen you. But when a voice has repeated its words in the exact same way four times, it begins to lose its ability to convince.

I am a dancer. That’s what I tell everyone. A simple, one-word answer that invites looks of admiration and murmurs of approval, that satisfies. Them, and myself. It convinces me that I am someone who can express myself through graceful body movements, who receives applauses and standing ovations every performance and possibly brings home a different girl every other night. Truth is, I’ve been performing the same show for over six months now, and have reached a point where I can detach from my body, look at myself on stage mechanically moving from point A to point B then back to point A and wonder what the fuck I am doing with my time. The worst part is, I haven’t received a single word of criticism from the choreographer. I don’t know how to improve.

And thus I have decided to move to a different theatre company. My current one isn’t good enough for me.

I’ve told my mom the result, over the phone. She told me exactly what the voice inside had. I nodded and said thank you. I really meant it. It’s been four years since I left dance school, and she’s still supporting me through every audition, suffering all my tantrums and rants about depression, telling me she’ll be there no matter what.

That’s the worst bit. I am incapable, financially and emotionally, to pay her back. Her love will always be greater than mine, and she’s put me in debt with her unconditional love. Sometimes I wish she could just give up on me and tell me to go scrape a living on my own. That’ll force me to “face the real world” (as they say) and stop mulling over my failures as an artist. But no, she keeps telling me to chase my dreams, because she was never able to chase hers. Never once did she tell me how hard it was on her, especially after the divorce dad filed against her. I owe her too much to deserve her love. Maybe I should just leave her, relieve her of all her responsibilities toward her son.

Shut up, Gyorgy.

And yet it’s too late to turn back. All I’m good for is dancing. All I want to do is dance. All I can do is dance. I’ve received too good a dance education to justify working in a supermarket, or behind a reception counter. I’ve always believed that I am better than any normal person I pass by the street. Because I am an artist. Because I can express myself with graceful body movements. I am not fit for a nine-to-five.

Look around you, Gyorgy. You’re lying on the top bunk bed of a four-man room, in the cheapest youth hostel in Aix-en-Provence. One of your roommates is a homeless man who smells of no-shower and lies in bed all day. You’re scrolling through Facebook, letting it guide you through its chain of suggested videos. Don’t deceive yourself: you’re not an artist. Pack your bags, go home and get started at the bottom of the social ladder before it’s too late to climb.

I could hear myself talking. I could hear myself justifying to the boy at the bar that what I did was artistic, that the crossover between contemporary and classical music I have dedicated my time to was avant-garde. Those words echoed around the empty beer glass I stared into. I could hear him telling me to keep trying, that one day I would succeed, that an adjudicator would like what I did. I smiled at him emptily. He returned a strained smile, and we said no more. There was nothing to be said. Hollow words filled the silence, but it was still empty.

Even an artist didn’t understand my art! What am I doing? What is all this anyways? Why don’t I just admit that I’ve been living in delusion, that my dancing is just a primal urge to move that craves someone’s pretentious criticisms, because I’ve spent so fucking long working at nothing?

I wonder what I was angry at. The adjudicator? Myself? My art? Art? There was a time when, still a kid, I would jump around in the bathroom, naked, pretending I was dancing to an audience of a few hundred in one of the big stages in Paris or London. Hell, the Royal Albert Hall, maybe. And when I was a teenager in dance school, reminiscing at my silly behaviour, I told myself I was different from the others. I had passion. I had a dream. I didn’t want to be a lawyer or an engineer for the sake of earning money and living a steady life. I wanted to make it big. I was willing to work harder than anyone else, in something others didn’t believe in.

Now I’m twenty-five and all I can think is that maturity came late for me. I enrolled into dance school simply because I was immature, because I was such a happy boy I didn’t have to think about saving money and getting a job. Maybe that’s what artists are. People who don’t realise how privileged they are until they’ve ruined themselves and everybody who has supported them.

I should pack my bags. I have an early flight to catch tomorrow, and if I make so much as a slight creak early in the morning I know my roommate will start shouting at me in French.

I don’t want to see my mom. Not because I don’t want to go home a disappointment, but because I know her voice, and not my own, will convince me to believe in myself, to take another chance at Art, and I will listen.