Leslie Marie Collins

I sometimes wish I could film a movie in my mind. The visions come to me on the way home from the city late at night.  My mind seems to be the most alive and creative on the ride home.  OK, ok… it’s usually after I’ve had a couple but nonetheless, my mind is an exciting place to be.  My dreams and visions are so vivid and somehow it is always brought on by the subway ride home.  Maybe it is because I see so many crazy people on a daily basis, and as a New Yorker I’ve just learned to look past it, not stare and save my thoughts about that weirdness for later.  But you see, this is when it all comes out and your brain allows you to process all the crazy shit you saw all day long.

Tonight I was especially inspired by the song “Telephone Line.”  A friend of mine brought this song to my attention a couple of years ago.  I never knew the song. Tonight on my way home I listened to this song over and over again.  I was dressed in bell bottoms and I was living in NYC in the 70’s, ya know back when everything was brown.  The walls were brown, the sky was hazy, the refrigerators were mustard colored, cars were like land yachts, everyone was smoking and the roar of the train screeching to a halt could be heard for miles.  I am dressed in a denim pantsuit.  I am singing this song in a smoke filled club with sweaty guys with lots of chest hair staring at me from the wings.  I don’t know why there were sweaty guys in the wings, maybe it was a gay club and their act was up next?  Oh by the way, there is a fine line between things being gay and just the 70s in my mind.  I guess I just associate the 70s with Freddie Mercury and that’s why I always seem to have really gay visions dancing around in my head when it comes to remembering the 70s.  It’s either really gay or it’s like the extremely wholesome “The Lawrence Welk Show” 70s.  I can’t explain it, but that’s just my brain. 

Anyway, I put the people I ride home on the train with into my visions.  Sometimes in weird situations.  Thank goodness my dreams aren’t broadcast to the world either, or perhaps some of these people might be upset. It got me to thinking…. I like the dirtiness of the 70s. 

Late night ramblings…. Just sharing.  Now I share the song with you.  Now you tell me your 70s visions.

      So, on my way home tonight I replayed this song on my iPod for 30 straight minutes.  I got to thinking, “why do I love this song so much?”  Well, I guess it is a little complicated and I guess I am too.  When I listen to this song, I have visions of dancing, more specifically two stepping to this song with a cowboy.  Stupid, right?  But, I have discovered that I am stupid and OK with that assumption. 

      I was born in the biggest shit kicker state of them all… TEXAS.  After 15 years in NYC, I still have my license to prove my Texan heritage.  This song makes me reminisce about my youth.  Every time I hear it, it sends me back to the 70s in Texas.  Back to the sun soaked brown vinyl seats of my mother’s station wagon and the radio playing this song and other hits by Conway Twitty and Charlie Pride. It sends me so specifically to a quitter time in my life, a simpler time in my life and also back to a time where I didn’t know anything existed except things in my little world.  You see, every year it gets further away from my memory.   Let me paint a picture in your mind of what this songs makes me miss.

     We grew up in the city.  We had a normal mid sized house in a normal neighborhood with normal people.  No one wore boots or hats.  My parents were and still are the best parents in the world and my grandparents on both sides were also a huge part of our lives.  My grandfather bought a 600-acre ranch in east Texas and every weekend my parents, my sisters and I would load up the station wagon and head to the country.  We were country on the weekends, when country wasn’t cool.  We were just on the cusp of the big boom of Cannonball Run movies and Urban Cowboy.  Every time I watch Urban Cowboy to this day, I can smell the ranch somehow or the ozone in the air after a thunderstorm.  Not that John Travolta could ever be country, but just for me to see the wood paneling on the walls behind him in the movie sends me back in time.  We would spend the whole weekend with my cousins wearing boots and shorts because it was so damn hot.  There was always a constant fear of scorpions in the ranch house or rattlesnakes in the grass, so there was actually a practical purpose for the boots.   We would all play together that first night and crash hard around 10.  We would all sleep (my cousins, sisters and I) on two couches pushed together in the living room.  It wasn’t much of a ranch house either, but we didn’t know it back then. There were 3 small bedrooms. One bedroom was for mom and dad, one for Mammaw and Pappaw and one for great-Grandpa Collins (who you avoided because he was just so grumpy).  My aunt and uncle lived close by so they would always just go home and leave my cousins overnight. 

     We’d wake up the next morning with excitement and stickiness from hot nightly temps. and little A/C.  But my grandmother would cook up potatoes and onions, biscuits, bacon and sausage from Rudolph’s Meat Market every Saturday morning and fill up for the day.  I still know that everyone in my family loves the smell of potatoes and onions in the morning for this same reason.  I am not much of a morning person, but I’ll get up for that smell for sure. We’d eat breakfast and be out the door without a shower and barely a brushing of the teeth.  During the day we’d play all day in “Collins’ Cove” which was a green oasis alongside one of the many creeks on the property.  We’d catch minnows from the stream and my sisters would push me down a hill to reenact the opening credits of Little House on the Prairie.  We’d dig in the dirt and play “Superman” as well, which was a game that consisted of just launching my cousin Chris into the air and watching him crash back down to the dirt.  Our parents just said, “tell us where you are going and come back by dark.”  We would, all five of us, just run around a rattlesnake infested ranch all day and hope to not kill ourselves.  We even drove the big blue Ford truck around the ranch.  Yes, a bunch of kids… the oldest probably 12 at the time, a 10 year old, 8 year old and a six year old (me) drive a truck around the property.  There were a few stiches along the way (mostly on my cousin’s forehead), but overall we didn’t kill ourselves, which is amazing in retrospect.  We’d come home at the end of our day smelling like the outdoors and pockets full of souvenirs from our travels (such as fossilized seashells).  We’d watch some TV… or try to.  There was a huge wooden console TV stacked on top of another console TV in the living room, which barely got any channels.  My grandfather would always be coming in from the garden about this time stinking to high heaven of body odor.  I loved him but he always stunk and if you hugged him, you would always have his stink on your shoulder afterwards.  We’d eat, crash again and before you knew it, it was time to go home.  I loved that place as a kid, but as teenagers we all got too cool for the farm and fought my parents to not have to go every weekend.  One of saddest things I wish I could change about my past now.  That and piano lessons.   If I money, I’d buy it just to be able to go back. 

     It was just a simpler, quieter life.  Cliché, I know.  But I can still feel the heat of those vinyl seats of the station wagon on our way back to Dallas late Sunday afternoon as we begged to stop by Dairy Queen on the way home.  I can still see the wood paneling and hear the quiet of a world before even a Casio digital watch was invented.  That fact sometimes makes me feel old.  The only sound on the way home was either sportscast radio or country music like “Rose Colored Glasses” by John Conlee. 

     Years passed in the big city and I left that country girl behind for the most part.  I remember going to high school back in Dallas and learning how to two step though.  I guess I wasn’t the only city kid with some country roots.  It was a big thing back then and somehow my city high school had a lot of redneck in it, so we all learned how to partner dance.  The two-step or triple-step is what we did.  That was the dance to learn, especially for the fall barn dance.  So we began to learn it then, stumbling mostly but finally as a senior you had a handle on it.

       It was after I graduated that I went with a group of girlfriends to Billy Bob’s over in Ft. Worth.  Billy Bob’s is a world famous country bar/honky tonk.  Anyway, I had my boots and hat on and I remember being in this football field sized bar with a rodeo in it (true), a huge dance floor in which couples were whirling around almost like on a huge circular track and a stage far enough in the distance you couldn’t see who was playing.  I think somebody like Willie Nelson was playing but the dance floor crowd treated him like a DJ.   They were there to dance and we just happy as long as a song was playing.  Well, it didn’t take long for all of us girls to be asked to dance.  Men just came out of nowhere and asked me to dance.  They were confident too.  I loved it!  Even if the guy wasn’t all that good looking or he didn’t seem all that into you, he just wanted to dance with you and we all said yes to that.  It wasn’t all that romantic, but definitely exciting.  I didn’t even mind that their backsides were all sweaty from a night of dancing.  They didn’t care either.  When you stopped dancing with one guy, another one asked you and you were off. You never had to even talk.  I remember some had chew in their mouths, so they couldn’t really talk!  It just seemed like they just wanted to hold on to a girl and I just wanted to be held on to.  They hold you differently too when they dance.  The man puts his arm around your upper back and your arms around his waist.  Weird, but it actually makes sense.  In the end, it’s ladies choice of how you want to be held when you dance though.  I prefer the other way though.  They were great dancers!  All of them.  We danced to fast songs, slow songs and turned on every corner. I believe I danced to “Rose Colored Glasses” that night too.  It was sensational.  After that night, I guess I’ve never danced in my boots like that again. 

      Life brought me back to NYC and I am amazed to say I haven’t been two stepping again probably since that night.  Maybe a time or two but not like that night.  Over the years, I lost my accent and hid the fact that I liked to do that kind of shit kicking sort of stuff.  And now, I find myself in a place of wanting desperately to dance like that again.  But alas, where am I going to find a guy to dance with me?  Sounds stupid, but you kind of have to have the boots, hat and upbringing that I did to be able to do it.  I fantasize about going back to Billy Bob’s and two stepping with some anonymous cowboy.  I fantasize about these memories from that sweaty night at Billy Bob’s years ago and wonder to myself… what does this mean?  So, as I was listening to this song, I found myself shuffling inconspicuously to a two-step on the subway platform at Lexington Ave. wondering if any man will ever take me up on this song again.  Where’s a cowboy in NYC when you need one?  So, if you see me shuffling guys… you’ll know what’s on my mind!

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Hey people… come to see me perform with Borealis at 8 pm this Friday night.  The festival is hot!  So many awesome groups performing.  You won’t want to miss this one!!!! 

So, I feel good that 2011 is over and 2012 is starting up.  Seems like 2011 was another year that I felt a little stalled in life.  Just sitting in idle at a traffic stop.  But I think someone nudged me through the light in late summer and now I am driving, with a little more momentum each day.  I still have the habit of sitting on my hands all day, so I never get things done, but this year… that’s gonna change!  It has to change!   I am saying that out loud.  This is the year I do what I am gonna say I do.  I’m gonna be loud about it!  

Things I did this last year that were good for me…

Teaching…

I started teaching this last year which was really eye opening for me.  Now I have to know my game because people expect me to be good at what I teach.  I had to find my confident side and actually say I know what I am talking about.  The confidence was in there, but it sure took a lot to get me to bone up and get aggressive.  I feel like maybe I got more aggressive when I was super comfortable with who I was playing with.  Now, I am still working on the aggressiveness when I don’t know my fellow players well.  It has nothing to do with who I play with, just me… so I am still fishing though how to not care and just be myself onstage all the time.  

So, I feel far more confident starting out this year, as far as improv goes.  I feel like I do know about improv.  I thought I didn’t understand it all for a long time and I just got lucky when I’d have good scenes, but I think I do know what I am doing.  Not all the time but more than I used to.  I may not always make good decisions when I play, but after all that teaching and coaching, I can definitely analyze scene work from the back line better. That’s been an amazing part of teaching… it made me a stronger player… I think… there’s the confidence thing again.  Seeing my classes graduate and be hilariously funny was icing on the cake.  They were doing it!!!  They improvised and I taught them how!  That was so cool. 

I started performing musical improv…

I starting performing on a house team at the PIT over the summer and really had no idea of how to do musical improv.  It was frustrating to not know the basics when many other people did.  I also hadn’t taken a class in anything anywhere but the PIT, so I took a class at the Magnet and LOVED it.  Musical improv was a perfect fit for me.  Still learning a ton and can’t wait to take my level two this winter.  I made some new friends too!  It puts all that musical theater career I used to have together with all this improv stuff I do now.  It’s awesome.  I think if you quit learning, you quit.  I like learning new things and this has been one of the coolest new things to learn how to do.  I am an addict now.

I started online dating…

It’s certainly not perfect and there sure are some total weirdos out there, but it was worth it.  I might be considered a weirdo to someone else too, who knows?  Someone did send me a photo of his junk which was oddly intriguing yet offensive at the same time.  He looked completely normal to start out with too, so I got past that “don’t judge a book by it’s cover/profile pic.”  But anyway, internet dating helped me meet a really nice man and gave me lots of material to write about. Dating is funny.  I also figured out that I was given the gift of gab by my mother and even if I didn’t like someone, I could always talk to them and usually have a good time… except the Italian gentleman who only wanted to talk about Fiats.  But whatever, it wasn’t horrible and in the end, I learned a lot about Fiats that I didn’t know before.   We’ll see!  

I started doing yoga…

I love it.  Love it. Love it.  I just wish I could do a class everyday.  I started talking a Vinyasa class at the LIC YMCA with this groovy teacher who always has wonderful chants and mantras to recite in the beginning and the end of class.  She plays great music and leads a pretty awesome class.  That 5 minutes at the end of class is the most relaxed I have ever felt.  I take the class for that 5 minutes of total relaxation.  Also, the quieting of my mind throughout the class is awesome.  

I started being OK with aging…

It’s happening and this year I saw it even more.  Not entirely happy about it but surprisingly, I don’t think I obsess about it.  I kind of accept the fact that beauty fades and we all can’t be 25 forever.  I got smarter with my age and I think that’s more important than beauty in the end.  Wit is way more attractive than beauty.  I know this because really gorgeous model type people I know are not usually funny. *Disclaimer, I know very few models but the ones I met are boring… pretty but boring.  Plus, I am surrounded by some friends who are my age and older who look awesome with a little gray in their hair and their beards.  These people (who are all about my age or slightly older) are so good at stuff.  Sounds vague, but it’s true.  They all have these other passions like playing the guitar, drawing, cooking or writing that they have been working on for a long time.  They also just know more about everything because they’ve been around long enough to experience it.  But I also know this pack of late 30s to 60 yr olds are all big kids at heart and that’s why I love them.  I feel like I’m in good company.  They are wearing age very well and if they can do it, so can I.

I got lucky enough to finally get a manager…

His name is Rick and he’s my personal cheerleader.  He’s awesome in many ways, but for once I had someone see me do what I do best, believe in me and then introduce me to some big players in show business.  He certainly doesn’t sugarcoat anything for me though and I guess that helped thicken my skin a little (which I needed).  But it was such a sweet moment, maybe one of the top five, to go to a meeting and have someone know who I was before I walked through the door.  I spent a lot of years walking in a room with no confidence and waiting for someone to tell me they’d heard enough of my song.  I had been beaten down by the audition process and all I ever wanted was for someone to remember me.  But most of the time, I was just a number and that’s what beat me down and I quit.  But, to do my solo show and have someone see what I wrote and performed and then believe in me enough to help take me to the next level, was one of the highlights of my career.  He believes in me and this guy is legit!

So, all in all that was 2011.  I can’t say there was much happening before the summer time, probably because I was just stalling.  But this year is different.  Mainly for one reason, and I’m saying it out loud.  I am gonna be me.  That’s it.  It’s not like I’ve been walking around as someone else or anything but I always had a wall up.  I wanted to be everything to everyone.  So, in a nutshell, I’m gonna stop that.  I realize that people get hired for just being themselves right and left.  Those people are successful because they know how to walk into a room and just be OK with themselves.  So, this year, I’m not gonna try to be perfect for everyone or be something I think someone wants to see… I’m just gonna find the real me and be it and be OK with me.  I feel that with the momentum of 2011, I’m ready for 2012!