#NerdsUnite: The Ramblings of A Raconteuse ("Liberal Arts" Helped Me Find Myself Again)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Helenna. We met on twitter not too long ao, and she's totes mcgotes one rad chiquita banana with a flare for all things flair! That's right, Helenna here is what we call an artsy fartsy nerd. She's a poet, into all things dramatic arts, and she's going to come on board to write each week about her love of said drama. Well not like actual drama drama, like some cat fight shit - but you get the idea. I only have one thing left to say ... HIT IT HELENNA!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Helslevy

Something happens when we become adults, when responsibility and bills and the whole sobering reality of the world kicks in.  At least for me I always thought that the older I got the more I would grow into my true self.  And while that’s true, I’ve also found that in many ways I’ve strayed from the “me” that I used to be, and now I’m meeting her again.

I watched Josh Radnor’s film “Liberal Arts” the other night and it transformed a part of me that has been stuck for some time now. It’s felt like there was a vacancy inside of me that I didn’t know how to fill. Something that got lost inside my iphone, television…in the vortex of technology.  What was it? Well, in part…my relationship to paper. To the written word. To the me before social media and Hollywood and worrying about time running out, expectations not being met, debt being paid off, having savings in my bank account…

Sure, I’m an adult and I have real responsibilities: a mortgage, a career path, a job that pays the bills and allows me to pursue my passions.  But wait.  My passions.

I am passionate about so many things, but somehow I’ve really been tunnel visioned and looking at those passions as things that can be “branded” in this new corporate social media driven “klout” filled world, where our attention spans are seven seconds long and entertainment is often one giant commercial.

If I really strip things away to their very core and the center of my heart, what are my deepest loves?  What really truly feeds my soul and makes me the most happy? What are the things I love that at the end of the day, I could never do without?

Not surprisingly it’s the simple things that I loved when I was in the BFA Program at the University of British Columbia, my “Liberal Arts” world, at a time when I barely ever texted or emailed.  When my life wasn’t so hooked into the web of the inter-world…

I am an artist.  A true creative.  Pure and simple.  I’m also a connector.  I like to connect people together and create community that I am a part of.

I took time off this year from creating any new projects because I was so bloody exhausted from the rat race I’d been running, and focused more on myself, on #projecthelenna. But as each month has gone by I’ve been feeling more and more empty.  Until last night I couldn’t figure out what had been missing.

I’m a creative who hasn’t been creating, a connector who hasn’t been connecting.

Now the key for me is that the things that I’d been creating and doing in the past were things that I genuinely liked, but I didn’t love.  They weren’t fulfilling me artistically.

Now granted, the hardest part for an artist is finding joy in the marketing of the thing you created, because the reality is that, that is a huge portion of what being a creative is all about in today’s world.  At least, if you want to gain notoriety for your work either monetarily or in accolades.

But, watching “Liberal Arts” brought me back to the things I really love, and what I really want to focus on going into 2013.  The things that really truly make me a happy well rounded person.

There are so many things that I have shared about myself in this blog and online in my day to day, but there are a lot of things I haven’t shared that are big part of who I am.

I’m a poet.  I have been since I was little.  I need to write, and not just blog.  I need to get a pen and paper and let words and thoughts and ideas just start flowing.

I’ve also been wanting to write a coming of age story for forever.  I kept thinking I had nothing to write, nothing to say.  And then last night, I remembered that I have a novel that I started working on in Creative Writing 401 in university that is the seed of an idea, something that I can develop into a screenplay or a novel or both.

I am a lover of the “art house film.”  I think I’ve watched Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” at least a hundred times.  I used to play it repeatedly on VHS. “The Dreamers” as well is a gorgeous piece of his brilliance.

I love really obscure theater, performance art, anything that really really challenges the viewer and makes you feel emotions so intensely that you feel like your body has been invaded.  This is one of the reasons I became in an actor.  I wanted to be in the middle of that emotion, or at least be the one that helps the viewer find that emotion within him or herself.

I love art for arts sake.

I am not one thing. I am multifaceted. I have many loves.  But what is important is that I don’t lose the core of who I am when in the middle of the pursuit, and of this great journey.

I am an artist and I need to feed that in myself.  Sometimes I really don’t need to think about branding, or marketing, or the industry, or other people’s expectations of me.  I just need to allow myself to be and breathe and feel.

I had an old boyfriend who once told me “your life isn’t a movie Helenna.”  I think he said this because I always felt emotions so deeply, and he made fun of me for talking like I was in film that you’d see at Sundance, or at the art house on the corner with only 3 people in the darkened audience.

But you know what? It is.  All our lives are.

I am the director, the producer, the gaffer, the grip, the lead actress, and the extras, and I decide what the story is I’m telling. And right now, that film is cinematically stunning and intricately scored, full of complex beautifully written characters.  And most of all, it is about an artist finding her way back to herself. Finding her way home.

#xoxo hels

tweet me at: @helslevy

browse me at: helennasantoslevy.com

email me at: contacthelenna@gmail.com