The Road Not Taken
A calendar trivia question about Joaquin Phoenix got me to remembering one of my teenage loves... his big brother, River. It's interesting to read anecdotes that I knew when I was 16 - to see mention of the Seventeen Magazine environmental editorial he wrote and know exactly what it looked like - because a 14 year old me had it lovingly pinned to my wall. I'd forgotten his middle name was Jude. I'd forgotten he was only 23.
Reading about my adolescent Hollywood sweetheart got me to thinking about the road not traveled - the one where I packed up all my things and moved to Hollywood the moment I flew the nest to pursue my acting career. How different my life would have been had I chosen that path. Would I have gotten caught up in the world that ultimately claimed River's life? The one that Lindsay Lohan seems to flit in and out of a lot, though more in than out lately. Would I have actually "made it" as an actor? Los Angeles never really held me in her powerful gaze for very long - I just couldn't fathom going there and being among all these wannabe socialites, struggling to make a name for myself in a world obsessed with, not the art of the actor, but celebrity. Perhaps that's why the path of my life isn't that of an Oscar-winning actor today. Perhaps my love for acting just wasn't strong enough to overcome my distaste for LA. Whatever the case - in the end I tell myself that I may have been a casualty of "the scene" down there, and died in Hollywood very unglamorously, just as my late actor-environmentalist love did... My will to resist temptation has never been very strong, and obviously neither was his. I've always thought of River as my kindred spirit - as an example of what might have become of me on that untrodden path. The City of Angels has been the birthplace of many a supernova, but I can't help but wonder if they'd removed themselves from the volatile world of Hollywood, if they'd have burned perhaps not quite so bright but for much longer in the end.
Have I chosen a slightly less incandescent life with much greater longevity? I like to think so, and I'll take that over premature annihilation any day. I can't help but wonder if in hindsight River would have as well.
Reading about my adolescent Hollywood sweetheart got me to thinking about the road not traveled - the one where I packed up all my things and moved to Hollywood the moment I flew the nest to pursue my acting career. How different my life would have been had I chosen that path. Would I have gotten caught up in the world that ultimately claimed River's life? The one that Lindsay Lohan seems to flit in and out of a lot, though more in than out lately. Would I have actually "made it" as an actor? Los Angeles never really held me in her powerful gaze for very long - I just couldn't fathom going there and being among all these wannabe socialites, struggling to make a name for myself in a world obsessed with, not the art of the actor, but celebrity. Perhaps that's why the path of my life isn't that of an Oscar-winning actor today. Perhaps my love for acting just wasn't strong enough to overcome my distaste for LA. Whatever the case - in the end I tell myself that I may have been a casualty of "the scene" down there, and died in Hollywood very unglamorously, just as my late actor-environmentalist love did... My will to resist temptation has never been very strong, and obviously neither was his. I've always thought of River as my kindred spirit - as an example of what might have become of me on that untrodden path. The City of Angels has been the birthplace of many a supernova, but I can't help but wonder if they'd removed themselves from the volatile world of Hollywood, if they'd have burned perhaps not quite so bright but for much longer in the end.
Have I chosen a slightly less incandescent life with much greater longevity? I like to think so, and I'll take that over premature annihilation any day. I can't help but wonder if in hindsight River would have as well.