Dance While You Can

by Shirley Maclaine

  Science had been teaching us that because we are self-aware, time was the concept by which we could define and gauge ourselves. Yet time didn’t actually exist. It was only a concept. And now life had gotten to the point where we were governed by our own invented concept. Time: the clock (even by its own definition round and timeless). The clock itself was unmoving. Only the hands moved and they had no destination, set to measure the endless circadian rhythms of the sun and our planet.

  A clock was truly the representation of its task—an expression of infinity. It embraced the past, the present, and the future in its hands all at once. If the past and the future existed simultaneously, then what role did our concept of time play? It served to limit us, it seemed to me. It served to make us anxious and worried.

  At our places of employment, we were measured daily by how much time we put in, when the coffee break would occur, how long we had for lunch; and finally the addictive clock-watching enabled us to at last call it a day. Something was wrong with that.

  Instead of focusing our attention on the task at hand and getting lost in it, we focused on how long it was taking. So our measurement of time stunted us, as we constantly tried to squeeze our feelings into whatever minutes or hours we perceived as ours. Why couldn’t the workplace be a place of creativity where fulfillment on many levels was possible? If the task itself was sterile, or dull, why not take the time to make relationships at work more meaningful? Instead we were categorized by fragmented expectations, beating and cheating the clock whenever possible, deceiving ourselves and our creativity in the process.

  And why did we decide that the age of sixty-five was the “time” to retire? Who said so? There were societies, unlike our economy-motivated “civilized” societies, where age equaled wisdom and knowledge and respect; therefore, retirement was not a concept anyone in those cultures had to cope with. Age did not loom as a threat, but rather as a time of peaceful participation in the lives of family and community, a time of valued contribution and continued self-respect.

  In the West we worked according to the hours we put in, rather than the depth to which we experienced pride or joy in what we were doing, or the degree to which we achieved a positive exchange with the people we encountered at work. Why couldn’t our values include simple respect for work well done, engendering self-respect no matter what the job? The product and creativity would improve one hundredfold. Our contributions, no matter what the age, could be measured by the tasks we accomplished, rather than the time they took. Time was not an accurate yardstick for contribution.

  I had learned that when I was unaware of time and totally lost in work, or in contemplation, the quality and the quantity of what I was doing improved. With no time limits, I was happier, probably because I could allow myself to feel the “infinite” scope of everything. This certainly was not a factor of age. It was something anyone could do, at any age. Age had no meaning when one ceased to measure time.

  When I gazed at the stars, for example, I found myself lost in time, because I knew the light of the stars I was seeing belonged to the past. I was enjoying the past in the present. If I could see past light, why couldn’t I see future light? And if I could see future light, why was I a slave to time now.

  Time, as we measured it, was a limited concept of the infinite—the infinite being too broad in scope for us to take in at one gulp. So we limited infinity to the parameters of our own puny capabilities of tolerance.

  I had made time totally relevant to myself to the extent that it dominated every moment of my days.

  I was flying faster than I needed to from continent to continent, so that I could become even more slavish to time when I arrived. My attitude toward time created a physical response that denied the body’s natural rhythms. My body responded to the artificial parameters. If I felt there wasn’t enough time for rest, I was tired—not enough time for love, I was lonely—not enough time for reflection, I became harassed. And my physical self reflected my time deprivation until there were periods when I almost felt that I had no time to exist. So my body also reacted better if I ceased to measure time.

  I began to realize the equation was really very simple. Consciousness of time equaled stress, equaled emotional and bodily distress. And now a new form of time lapse was catching up with me, creating its own sense of urgency. The infinite vistas that stretched ahead when one was seventeen were no longer there. In my questions regarding old age, I was reflecting not only the desperation of having lost control of my own use of time but of its inexorable passage. I was still measuring myself by achievement against time, instead of achievement for its own sake.

  So in all senses—emotional, spiritual, and now very much physical—I needed to radically change my attitude toward time.

  CHAPTER 4

  Motor Home

  I sat in my motor home thinking about how much “time” it would take before they called me to work. How many motor homes had I waited in over the years? This one would be my retreat and sanctuary for privacy for the next three and a half months. I loved the idea that there was a kitchen, a bathroom (complete with sink, tub, and shower), and a bedroom where I could lie down between shots, plus a living room in the middle with stereo, chair, table, couch, and portable telephone. And all of it was on wheels and could move from place to place. I always felt a little bit happier when I knew that something I considered home could move.

  As I sat down and looked around, I saw my wardrobe hung around the trailer on racks, as though I had been invaded by a department store dedicated to making me look like the character I was playing, instead of myself. The colors of the clothes hanging were parfait, light blues, peach, pink, pale yellows, and tinted whites.

  I walked over to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Inside were bottles of Evian water and containers of nonfat yogurt. I guess the people in charge of my motor home thought I was a health food addict.

  There was a television set on a ledge and a built-in stereo softly playing FM symphony music. I retrieved some water from the refrigerator, took a few sips, and sat down on the sofa.

  I closed my eyes, crossed my legs, put my forefinger and thumb together, and began to let thoughts drift across my mind like clouds on a lazy summer sky. Such a lilting feeling, I drifted deeper into myself. Suddenly there was a knock at the front door. A pleasant, dark-haired, mannish-type woman dressed in blue jeans and boots opened the door and came in.

  “How are you feeling now?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes. “Oh, I’m all right,” I answered. “I’m not sick anymore and I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m Myrna, the first A.D.,” she said. “Really nice to meet you. I’ve admired you.”

  I nodded and thanked her.

  “Would you like us to call in one of the other actors and give you a few more hours to rest?”

  “No,” I answered quickly. “I couldn’t bear the thought of not reporting when I’m supposed to, and I’m all right, really.”

  She looked at me a bit hesitantly and I said, “Honestly, I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Just wanted to make sure.”

  “Well, tell me,” I said, “are you ready for me?”

  “No,” she said casually, “not yet.”

  “Well, when will you be?”

  “Soon. I’ll let you know,” she answered. “Talk to you later.” She opened the screen door of the motor home and left.

  “Hurry up and wait,” I thought to myself. There it is again. That’s the way it is. Scurry, scurry, scurry to be on time because they made it so pressing and so necessary, and almost never were they ready when they said they’d be.

  I shut my eyes and began to meditate again. “Maybe I’ll align my chakras,” I thought to myself. So I placed my mind at the bottom of my spine and visualized that I was twirling and spinning a red ball that corresponded to the energy center of the first chakra. “Fear and survival,” I thought. “That’s what this chakra deals with. It’s a good one for me to spin this mo
rning.”

  Just as I began to spin red light, another knock came on the door. “Can I come in?” asked a cheery voice.

  I opened my eyes. “Sure.”

  In walked the wardrobe girl. “Hi,” she said. “I hear you weren’t feeling well.”

  “No, I’m all right now,” I answered.

  “We’d like to try on this dress,” she said, “and see how you like it. We never had time to get to this in the fitting room.”

  “No, I guess we didn’t,” I answered. “Okay. What does Mike want me to wear?”

  “Well,” said Sarah, “he’s not real sure. He thinks he might want you to wear slacks, but it’s a process shot and you’ll be sitting down. So they won’t really show. The top will, we have to decide on that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s put on the top.”

  I got up and went to the bedroom where I took off my street clothes and slipped into the top. Back in the living room Sarah handed me a pair of slacks that she retrieved from a hanger. I wondered what size they were. I wondered if I was thinner now. I was standing in my underwear, one leg in the slacks, when there was another knock on the door and in walked the motor home driver.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m here to see that you get what you want for your motor home. Is there anything I can stock the refrigerator with?”

  I quickly grabbed a towel and put it in front of me, which didn’t seem to deter him at all. “Oh,” I said. “I’ll let you know what I want later. I’m not as pure an eater or drinker as you probably think.”

  “Well,” he said, and he had a long list in his hand which he began to read from.

  “Uhm, what’s your name?” I inquired.

  “Tony.”

  “Okay, Tony. Can we go over this later, because I think I’d better do this fitting now?”

  “Oh, okay. Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be outside if there’s anything you need.” Tony turned around and left.

  I dropped the towel and put my other leg in the slacks, hiked them up, and was glad to see that I could close the size 10 without too much trouble.

  I turned for a moment in front of the mirror. Sarah nodded. “Good. I think they look great,” she said. “Can we try another pair, just in case you get out of the car and they show?”

  “Okay,” I said, unzipped the slacks and waited, standing in my underwear, for her to hand me another pair. Again, there was a knock on the door. In walked a delivery boy.

  “I have flowers and a fruit basket here,” he announced. “Where should I put them?”

  Again I whipped the towel in front of me. “Over there,” I said.

  “These are from the studio,” he said. “Looks like you could live on this fruit basket for the next month.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He looked at me—not at my body, but at my face. “Sure did enjoy you in The Apartment,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ve done about thirty pictures since then.”

  “Oh,” he said, “well, I saw that on television last week, and that’s the one I remember.”

  “Okay. Thanks very much,” I said. He left. I dropped the towel and put on the second pair of slacks. They fit too.

  “Good,” said Sarah. “Well, we can choose either one of these.”

  “I wonder,” I said, “how long I’ll be able to get into these, knowing what’s out there on the catering table.”

  Images of my passing the catering table and taking a bite of something each time drifted across my mind as one of the joys of making a picture. There were doughnuts, muffins (six kinds usually), M&M’s, peanuts, blue corn chips, avocado dip, chocolate candy, cheese and crackers, fruit, cookies, and whatever specialty the caterer had made the night before while dreaming of how he would please the crew the next morning. I always began a film five pounds lighter than when I finished, simply because of the agitation of waiting, which produced in me the craving to eat.

  I tucked in my stomach as I took the second pair of slacks off. I was already beginning to feel agitated and impatient at having to wait for them to call me.

  “Here, Shirley,” said Sarah, as she handed me a terrycloth robe. “Maybe you’d want to sit in here and wait wearing this.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it out of her hand a little too brusquely. “Wonder how long it’ll be?” There it was again. I couldn’t relax, because I was waiting for Time to dictate its wish.

  “Who knows?” she said. “But we’ll be able to get a rhythm on this film pretty soon. I’ve left the rings here, the watches, there’s some costume jewelry. Why don’t you nose around and see what you think. I’ll leave you alone now and come back later.” Sarah smiled and left my motor home.

  I began to pace up and down the newly vacuumed carpet. “Oh, God,” I thought, “the number of times I’ve paced in a motor home waiting for the A.D. to call me: the number of times I’ve rushed onto a soundstage only to be met by the crew and other technicians, while the “above-the-line creative talent” tended to mysterious things in the solitude of their own trailers. The creative people on a film included many echelons of expression—no echelon more important than the other, no one individual more important than the other really, except for the fact that the actors are the ones with whom the audience identifies. It is the actors up there who enable each person in the audience to lose the trials and tribulations of their own lives and hook into the drama of what has been created on the screen.

  During the rehearsal period of this film, I had attempted to allow myself to accumulate all my past experience as an overachieving female star, stirred the mess around in the pot of my own conscious mind, and let it come out of me as a light soufflé—but with depth of feeling about what it is to play a movie star after having been one. Somehow it never mattered how much experience I had had. It was always, and ultimately, a new anxiety each time.

  I remembered overhearing a director of mine at a rehearsal and photo shoot, during which the press had been allowed to come in. I had said something about wanting to stand aside and not be next to a much smaller and thinner actress, when I overheard this director say, “She wrote the book, you know,” referring to me.

  I never felt that I had “written the book.” I never felt that I had really, finally and definitively, nailed down my cumulative experience in a way that enabled me to relax and be confident in the command of my own craft. I wasn’t overly anxious (nausea was not my usual way to start proceedings), yet I somehow never felt that I completely knew what I was doing. That would have to wait until I was so caught up and involved with a scene that I could forget everything that went before in my life, or how I would step aside and watch myself in judgment in the future. And even as I thought of these things, pacing now in the motor home of yet another adventure, I was aware that perhaps my purpose in this business was not to succeed in being successful, but rather to work through and overcome the personal obstacles that movie work tended to magnify.

  I didn’t like to be kept waiting. I didn’t like to be afraid of being fat. I didn’t like to be unprepared. I didn’t like to feel self-conscious. I didn’t like competition. I didn’t like insensitivity. I didn’t like destructive criticism. And I didn’t like the priority that technology held on a movie set. All of the above were feelings that were necessary for me to overcome if I was going to be a happy, contented, “well-centered” person. “How funny,” I thought to myself, “that I’m still working on those issues, seemingly the very same ones that plagued me forty years ago.”

  Did this mean that I hadn’t really resolved them, or did it mean that I was just working on a higher octave of tolerating them? So many times lately I had realized that for me the movie business wasn’t about the business, it was about using my “reel” life to understand my “real” life, and insofar as the business of making movies was based on creating the illusion to become real on the screen, so was my life based on the creation of what I would make of it day by day.

  What was the difference
really between acting in a scenario on the screen and acting in a scenario of my life? I was creating both. Each seemed as real to me as the other. Structurally, a good screenplay had three acts, and I was probably now edging out of the second act and into the third act of my own life. I was going to work in the reel experience with characters that I would learn from to enhance my real life. There would be comedy, insecurity, achievement, and gnawing anxiety in both. And, to top it all off, I was playing a movie star who had a daughter who wanted to succeed but was plagued with her own insecurities. Why had I drawn such a script to me, and what did I have to learn from it?

  The people I had “created” to work with were the most talented our business had probably ever produced—a costar, who was acclaimed as the best actress of our time, and a director who could do anything. Both were equally accomplished and adept at comedy and drama, and both were exquisitely available to their own anxieties and demons.

  How would my mechanisms of professionalism and command of craft stack up with theirs? I had been schooled, conditioned, molded, and sculpted by Hollywood/West Coast values. They had been formed by New York. Did that necessarily mean they would be cynical about our forthcoming experience, or was I the fundamentally cynical one with many more years of experience but of an inferior quality.

  I thought I had found my character in rehearsal and was beginning to come to the conclusion that parts of her were not unlike myself. I was certainly not playing Debbie Reynolds, but our experiences had somehow been similar. I liked her and found her honest and direct, tough but tender. She had been a part of my past and somehow now, at this juncture, it seemed as though so much had led to this moment, which was not really about making the movie but getting on with the rest of my life.

  “You’re going to have to risk being yourself in this,” Mike Nichols had said during rehearsals. “You’re going to have to let yourself touch your own fear and your own conflicts,” he had said. I knew what he meant. I would have to have the discipline to throw away my experience, my mechanical craft, and my tricks, and just feel—“feel” my life instead of thinking about it—“feel” the character instead of conceiving it—“feel” me instead of analyzing myself. The mystery of self had always been an adventure to me—my self, as well as others. I loved questions about people’s selves—their underlying reasons for behavior and attitude. I never ceased to be interested in the subconscious, the unconscious, and now the superconscious.