The near diversion was college radio. I can't remember if I have described how it all happened in these pages. No matter. A repeat then, if I did. One of my girlfriends, Ginny, had a crush on one of the guys who worked at the student station. They had a corridor of their own, capped at both ends by doors, and if I remember, a sign that suggested non-radio types must not traverse. She did not want to go up there alone, and she needed a pretense. The pretense was that we were going to try out to be classical music announcers for which they were auditioning. So off we went. Ginny spent her time talking to the young man. I auditioned. And I got accepted. For one year, all I did was to do the station break, "This is WFUV, radio voice of Fordham University" and then after persistence, and a broken tape that required me to cover and be on air in doing so, my equity increased and I became a full on member of the staff. Ginny did not get that guy, but she did end up working with us on a situation comedy about college life.
That several years' experience interjected another desire in my heart, and caused me to double major in communications as well as political science. I got an internship at WOR television, and I was hoping as some of my other friends did to get inside one of these stations. I did not get that, but another friend who was music director of 99X (Then WXLO) hired me as the Assistant Music Director. What I realized was that it was nearly impossible to get on the air and the money for the average DJ (not in a major market) was little and less for someone behind the scenes. And when I nearly caused my dad to hyperventilate upon announcing I might take a rip and read job (in those days you would on some stations literally rip the copy off the AP or UP machines and read to the public) in some little station in Lakewood, New Jersey I was offered, I decided that my original plan for law school just made more sense.
It turned out not to be easy to get that job after law school in New York. And I used that as an opportunity to make my one and only adventurous life move (so far) cross country to the fair climes of California. And here I made my legal career and obtained my long time job, which, if you have been reading this blog, you know became ephemera in July as a result of an organizational shake up.
And so, merely days after my late severance from my prosecution career, I decided that it was now or never to look into those things that I had to leave behind, all for good reason, but with a reluctance, all those years ago. And add them back into the repetoire.
I went to a well recommended (by other aspirants and practitioners) place, Kalmenson and Kalmenson, or rather, I AM going to this place. And let me tell you folks. As much as I hope to break into this business of voice over acting, and it is every bit an actor's job, let me tell you, the amount of enjoyment I am getting almost is enough. Almost, I admit, but it is a large almost.
I have always had boundless energy and it clearly allowed me to move up in ranks as an attorney. But it was all focused in my head and it could not be nearly as freewheeling a creative act as using one's voice to convey things about a product, commercial or so social. I find myself opening up physically and emotionally in a way that always seemed (perhaps my own doing, but so be it) impossible in the formal, although confrontative area of the law. Yes, I am seriously seeking to learn this field. But I can enjoy the learning in a way that frankly I never did as a law student and even, when I studied it, psychology. I am not sorry about those experiences, never never never! But, it almost seems that all that work, all that development, was intended in some odd way to bring me, here, back to the creative things that I had to forego in order to make a living (or so I thought). It is as if I am again at the fork in the road, a little older, a little battered, but a lote wiser, and now I get to go down that other road. Whether it is days, or months or years, I am blessed.
And there are other things I am getting to do as well, to write, so many types of things, as well as keeping in the legal field. I have been a secretary, a lawyer, a prosecutor, a trainee therapist (for two years while I studied psychology which I left "all but dissertation" and orals), and now, a voice over artist!
Will I succeed? I don't know. But it does not matter. I am doing it. I am multi-tassking. I am going down that road of discovery.
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