Guest Blogger - @jesimieljenkins - Moving to LA (Part 2)

If you guys may recall, my friend Jesimiel wrote, a couple of weeks back, about why he chose to move to LA in pursuit of his dreams of working as a host in the entertainment industry. Below, my dear friend elaborates one what he's learned in the last six months since he's been there. It's an eye opener and I think for all artists hoping to make it in LA, or any major metropolis (read: NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo, Rio... etc), you can learn a lot from his experiences.

Three things I’ve learned so far:

A career in the entertainment business is EXPENSIVE. 

-You must be willing to make a sizable investment in yourself to be taken seriously

            -This means paying for really great headshots

            -This means enrolling in ongoing acting classes at a good studio

            -This means buying great clothes that make people notice you when you walk into the audition room

Many people in LA want to be successful but few want to work for it.

-Many people want THAT life, that Beverly Hills life, but few will invest in themselves and work for it.

-It’s important to consistently work towards your goals in a sprawling city like LA and do things that you’re passionate about

-You don’t want to end up another embittered and angry artist serving tables and waiting for Steven Spielberg to walk in and notice you- take your career and your life into your own hands

Drugs are very very real

-I had a very sheltered upbringing in the suburbs of Virginia. I knew what drugs were but they were a very distant reality

-In LA, drugs are a close reality

            -Seriously, keep your drink close at bars and don’t go to an “after-party” with someone you don’t know, there will probably be drugs there

None of the families in Wilkerson’s book aspired to grace the big screen, they just wanted higher wages for their families and to live without threat of racial violence.  However, as I near the end of Wilkerson’s book, I am humbly reminded that I stand on the shoulders of giants and that I am not the first to take this journey.  Though my experience dims in comparison to the present and blood-drenched reality my ancestors lived in the south, I take pride in their bravery as they, like I, made the courageous decision to act upon their dreams.       

follow him @jesimieljenkins on Twitter

Guest Blogger: @jesimieljenkins - Moving to LA - Part 1

Jesimiel and I met during the year I lived in Philadelphia working as an Education Fellow at the Wilma Theater, a Teaching Artist for Philadelphia Young Playwrights, and developing my craft as  a performer and writer. Jesimel recently moved to LA to pursue a career in TV hosting. When I remembered the fascinating discussions we had about being African American, intellectual, and creative, I thought he'd offer a fascinating perspective. Featured below is Part I of his journey to LA. He's brutally honest and I dig it. 

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I’m reading a remarkable book right now.  In fact, so remarkable that it seems to mirror my life at the moment.  It’s called The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and could easily be hailed as the first major work of nonfiction concerning the Great Migration, the period between 1915 until 1970 when black families uprooted from the south to make new homes in urban areas of northern cities.  They were drawn by increased wages, a better quality of life, and mostly less discrimination.  Wilkerson chronicles the lives of three different families from the moment they left the south up until the book was completed.  The title is from a poem by Richard Wright:

I was leaving the South

To fling myself into the unknown…

I was taking a part of the South

To transplant in alien soil,

To see if it could grow differently,

If it could drink of new and cool rains,

Bend in strange winds,

Respond to the warmth of other suns

And, perhaps, to bloom.

I started reading this book before I decided to move to Los Angeles back in January.  I’d spent the last three years in Philadelphia working at an art museum and dispassionately auditioning for theatre roles here and there when something came along that I actually liked.  Much like the families in Wilkerson’s book, I was fed up. I felt that there was a glass ceiling for minority actors in such a small theatre market and my dreams were waiting for me somewhere up near Jupiter. I decided to move to Philadelphia with the hopes of padding my resume with good roles but after months of auditioning and being looked over for someone far worse than I and seeing lackluster and lifeless productions of wonderful pieces of theatre, I realized I was in bad soil.  So, after some soul-searching and after losing my dad in 2011, I decided to hitch a U-Haul to the back of my Nissan Rogue and traverse west for a new life, more opportunity, and more fertile soil. I needed the warmth of other suns.   

Side note: I totally had a nerd moment when I read that he'd been reading "Warmth of Other Suns" because the book was the basis for work I did in a class I took while in graduate school on self-generated work. Some of the best creative writing I've been able to do. 

To reach Jesimiel you can follow him on Twitter @jesimieljenkins or email him at jesimieljenkins@blallywood.com.