The Uses of Envy

I was a drama geek in high school and college, and I loved it.  I am a trained soprano (lyric coloratura, to be technical), and I loved that, too.  I haven’t acted or sung (except to myself, usually in the car) in a decade, and yet I don’t really miss either.

I get the occasional wistful feeling, especially when I sit in the audience at performances of the Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company, but I think that has more to do with the tendency of the G & S culture to create its own family, united by Patter Trio allusions and “How did you manage the ghosts in Ruddigore?” exchanges.

No, I have acted, but I’m not an actress, and I have sung, but I’m not a singer.

I am a writer.  Unfortunately, I’m not proud of the way I know that.

Play me a Kiri te Kanawa recording, and I rejoice.  Show me Meryl Streep inhabiting Julia Child, and I will laugh and marvel.  But let Steven Moffat end “A Scandal in Belgravia” with five simple words (“When I say run, run.”), or let Neil Gaiman make his return to Doctor Who with an episode titled “Nightmare in Silver”, and I turn green.

I want to have written that.

The longing is particularly acute in the Gaiman example, since titles are usually the hardest things for me to write.  There’s so much pressure on a title: genre, tone, theme, plot...it has to be everything.  In half a dozen words or less.  When that title popped up on iTunes, before I saw anything else, I felt a tiny thrill, a certainty that this episode, at least, was in good hands.  The “written by” credit only explained what I already knew.  So, being the mature person that I am, my interior dialogue immediately commenced: Boy (growl), it must be nice to be Neil Gaiman (snarl, hiss), with all that stinking talent and all (growl) - great, I can’t even come up with a synonym for ‘growl’...

This tends to continue, without synonyms, for an appreciable time, and with the resulting fodder for confession.

But if sin is an emptiness, a lack, then perhaps I can, at least, let it focus me on what I actually do lack.  First, I need to clarify for myself that I am not Neil Gaiman.  That is not the lack, because that is not what I was made to be.  There’s already somebody doing a darn good job of being Neil Gaiman, after all.  I need to focus on what Neil Gaiman has done that I can, and should, also do.

He has done the work.

That’s it.  That’s what I can emulate.  If I want to have written, I first have to write.  I will never measure up, but if I am doing my work I will have less time to measure.  And maybe I can turn envy into inspiration.  Or simply into gratitude.

As for that G & S nostalgia, it’s turning into a neat screenplay.  I even have a title.