The tricks of time

I remember when I was a kid listening to grown-ups talk about how time starts to seem to go faster and faster as you get older. It’s not that I didn’t believe them. But I think that’s the kind of concept that doesn’t really hit you until you experience it.

In high school I used to be an actor. I was in many school and community productions. I loved it, the entire process from the first read-through to the final production.

When I started to get serious about acting, I started playing a game with myself. Sporadically throughout the rehearsal process, whenever I found myself alone, I would careful examine how I was feeling, and how well I knew my lines. Anything I could think of I would mentally note. I would try to do it in the same place every time. After I did that, I would try to imagine how I would be feeling on the day of the performance. Each time I did this I would have a slightly different idea about how I would be feeling.

I would try to place myself in that moment; I would take myself through the entire thing. I’d be standing in the same place, wearing my costume. I would try to visualize the audience, feel the makeup on my face and the bright lights in my eyes.

Finally the day would come, and I would smile, having thought about it so much, I was very prepared, feeling almost like I had experienced it already.

Tomorrow is the first day of my senior year at NYU film school. With every single word that I am typing, I am feeling closer and closer to the end. Everything in my life has prepared me for this. It was never an issue of whether or not I would graduate. But it always seemed so far away.

Today I realized that it isn’t. The end is very much in sight and the big unknown that has forever loomed in the distance doesn’t seem so mysterious. I try to visualize where I’ll be in a year and it’s getting clearer and clearer. My guess is that that’s time speeding up.

It’s hard for me to track time the way that it is normally broken down. I don’t think in days, months or years. I always have to ground those things in knowledge. What I knew or didn’t know at a certain time. I think about coming to school and not knowing my way around the city, not knowing much about making films and not knowing how to live by myself. And then I can see a progression, and these things help me ground myself in time.

I am conflicted about this coming year. I am ready and not at the same time. One thing that school will be is less hectic than what I’ve been doing for the past three months. It almost feels like I am going on vacation. I am very removed from school.

Recently I have been taking time off from working as a production assistant. A group of my friends and I shot a music video for an up-and-coming band about to the signed by a major record company. It has been the biggest thing that any of us has ever done, shot in glorious 35 mm with a professional crew and B-list celebrities.

I worked as the assistant director during the shoot and now am in the process of editing the footage into the final product. The project has taken up just about every hour of every day for the past month and a half. It’s been quite the learning process. If I judge time by what I am learning, the summer, like the last few years, has flown by.

In looking forward, part of me wants to make this senior year last, treasure every moment of the freedom that I’m experiencing. The other half wants already to be in the future I see more and more clearly.

Even so, I’m still standing backstage, thinking about it.