I respect you, actors and actresses.

You try and capture life and play it back.  And while a writer or an artist do the same thing, we don’t actually do it.  We don’t reenact the moment itself.  We experienced something.  We vomited it back out on to paper or canvas or wireframe.  But you take the most intimate human moments, moments that sometimes only one other person will ever witness, and recreate it for the gazing crowd.

I can try to write pillow talk that aches and breathes, but you make it ache.  You breathe it out into our faces.

I can try and write a speech where the protagonist screams at his dead father in a rainstorm.  You actually go out into a field of rain, screaming and crying until the muscles in your face hurt.

I can write a scene where a man eats raisin bran alone.  His hair is unwashed.  His clothes are no longer meant for the real world’s eyes, just sightless milk jugs and dirty dishes.  You actually sit there.  You eat the raisins and the bran flakes.  We watch you.  And so it is real.

As opposed to me, who may have never spoken to a girl and pillows, may have never screamed at the rain, may have never eaten unwashed.  Because if no one sees it, it never happened.

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