Delusions of Grandeur

Last night I had the privilege (so I learned) of volunteering my time to serve food and wine at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey. I’m a sucker for live theater and by volunteering I could get 2 "free" tickets to any show this season… so I volunteered.

It was opening night for the production “The Importance of Being Earnest” but as the night passed I had learned a lesson in the importance of social equity.

I am glad I volunteered at this event for 2 reasons: first, because I got to take home a bottle of Merlot (the nectar of the gods), and second, I learned something very important about how social equity is earned in New Jersey (and the east coast, more generally).

Social equity is earned in two ways. First, you can earn it by purchasing it… literally. They call it “equity”. There is a wall in the lobby of the theater with head shots of various actors, which was divided into 2 sections labeled – “Equity Actors” and “Non-Equity Actors”. A girl (well, a woman technically – but barely) was standing next to me by this wall and said, “I wonder if you can audition for these shows without equity. I almost have enough.”

“Almost have enough what?” I asked.

“Equity!” she said, surprised I hadn’t heard of it. “You can’t audition for these shows unless you have enough equity. You earn it by paying for a certain number of classes and I almost have enough.”

“Oh.” (East-coast lesson #1: if I want to audition for a show, buy some “equity” first.)

The second way to earn social equity is, well… you don’t. You just have it. This kind of social equity is called “old money” (money that’s been sitting around for too long, being put to no good use).

I also learned that social life out here revolves around “theater” because of the proximity to Broadway in NY. People are unimpressed by Hollywood and use it as a lesson of what not to become – “an actor for TV” (God forbid!).

So, you have equity earners and equity payers - the people who pay outrageous sums of money to watch the earners put on a show. Like Shakespeare putting on shows for the queen, there are two kinds of people on the east-coast: the performers and the patrons. I am a peasant. I don’t have ‘old money’ and I certainly don’t want to act.

In Los Angeles your social currency is earned by your level of connection to “the industry”, not necessarily your participation in it, although that doesn’t hurt. For example, someone might say in casual conversation, “Yea that reminds me of last year when I was having dinner with Ozzie Ozmond… (blah, blah, blah)”. By dropping that name, this person’s social net worth immediately increases significantly based on the authority that Ozzie’s name commands. And even if you don’t know anyone in the industry you can at least look and act like you do.

This accrual of power by association reminds me of the folk Islamic notion of baraka, which (to some degree) is the idea that power can be passed on from an object or person of power to a second party, based on proximity. (This idea is not unique to Islam but exists in every religion to some degree.)

I think the word that comes closest to Baraka that we use here in the West (although it has African origins) is “mojo”. Mojo is the social currency that you can accrue and spend on the west-coast, but watch out! No amount of mojo can increase your social currency in the caste system of the east-coast!

Having had the recent privilege of crashing at many generous homes on my way across the country I’ve decided…

...middle-America is the least likely place you'll find delusions of grandeur.