Our family took lots of road trips together, because my daddy loved to drive and my mama loved to sightsee. One trip took us to New Orleans, where even as kids, my brother and I had a really good time, enjoying the spicy cuisine and the thick summer humidity, with its mosquitoes, the size of hummingbirds.
One night mama and daddy took us to a fancy restaurant because they loved to eat well and were training us to do the same. I was maybe six years old, maybe seven. Out in the lobby was a swamp scene cleverly staged by some southern designer, lending the restaurant, a certain kind of moist charm and wild elegance. I was so intrigued that during dinner I snuck out to the lobby to look at the stuffed alligator again. I ran back into the restaurant and at the top of my voice yelled “ mama daddy, there’s a real live stuffed alligator in the lobby”, at which point the entire restaurant, full of people burst into laughter!
At that moment, a monstrous little star was born, and I was hooked on getting the love and the laughter from any audience I could possibly get in front of.
I made a career of it, and also a very good living, because I understood my heart needed to speak out loud and make people laugh or cry or feel anything. I could possibly make them feel so of course I became an actress…. for me, an audience meant a chance to be loved, and I was never ungrateful for the love they showed me.
But aren’t we all each other’s audience? don’t we all want to have an effect on each other, to make each other laugh or cry maybe both at the same time, as long as a line of communication is opened between us? Isn’t love Simply a free and open sharing of space , of language, of experience? Don’t we all just wanna share our alligator stories while we eat delicious food around the table together?