I am Leslie's friends

I was talking about hobbies with the girls who live with me, one of them said she has failed at having hobbies because she tried to monetize every single one she had. I realised my hobbies have turned into my callings, my passions, my hopeful professions. I have never made money from any of them.  Art is a rich person’s hobby anyway, I texted a friend the other day. I learned that the hard way.

Growing up, my play pretend was a rehearsal for adulthood. I honestly wanted to start the Brazilian Spice Girls, and I didn’t understand when my friends said they wanted to be vets. Whatever I liked turned into a career straight away.

I started taking dance classes from an early age and between 12 and 18 I was obsessed with jazz. Thanks to my teacher and friends I spent hours consuming musicals. I used to watch a VHS of Cats on repeat. I still know the steps to Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer - and most of you probably have no idea what that is, but at some point in my life, that’s what made me tick. In the list of professions, I never once came across ‘dancer’ as an option. And maybe I wasn’t that good, didn’t want it enough. That wasn’t my parents’ world, and I had nobody in my life who had become one. See it to be it, and all that jazz.

Films somehow felt closer to my reality. My father had made one, friends of the family taught it, studied it. I did courses and turned into a teenager who looked for Jacques Tati DVDs. I remember excitingly telling my Godfather I wanted to be a filmmaker and his reply was, ‘you want to starve?’ Despite his disapproval, I studied it, I worked hard, I moved abroad to pursue it. I made films and won awards and haven’t spoken to him in ten years.

I still I find it difficult to call myself a filmmaker though, because I haven’t made a film in so long. But I have a writing partner, and we write scripts, you know what I mean?

I moved to writing prose and essays on a whim, a friend’s suggestion that ended up sticking with me. I joked that I’d write a book and make a film based on it. There was a freedom to not needing a crew and a budget. The stress attached to the craft had been lifted, but a different sort of pressure arose from it. Words on page, words that made sense, words that others would like, words that would be published and read. The endless rejections, emailing agents and never hearing back from them. I write, I say to people. It’s not what pays the bills, I quickly add.

I always put aspiring or wanna be in front of these titles, like I don’t deserve to be in the same category as the ones who make a living from it. It’s the pay check, that’s what it is. The stamp of approval to validate one’s artistic pursuits.

‘You want to starve?’ He asked.

There is a wonderful scene in ‘Serpico’ where Al Pacino attends a party, and his girlfriend Leslie introduces her friends:

‘Larry is a poet, but he works for an advertising agency, and Sally is an actress, but she works for a photographer,’ and then she introduces him ‘Paco is a Policeman,’ and he says, ‘I work for the Police Department.’ Later he asks, ‘How come all your friends are on their way to being somebody else?’

I am Leslie’s friends.

Though these professions, these passions are not who we are, they are what we do, and we can do many things. That’s the beauty of it.

My friends have not become vets, and I am not a pop star – who would have thought? But I have food in my fridge and ideas in my head. I have projects, I write every day. I made it, I want to tell him.

I don’t look at options on a list, I know it’s much more fluid than what we are taught it is.