Rejection is not a feeling. Rejection is the place where you were standing in when it happened, it’s geography. It’s the auto you were riding in when the text says you didn’t get the part. The room you were standing in with that view from the window, of the lady feeding her child from the steel plate standing outside her doorway pointing to invisible birds when the director on the line tells you the producer wants a big name to shoot the feature.
It’s the voice from the hospital in a noisy birthday party carrying the results that you were dreading. It’s that spot on the floor your maid was mopping in your living room when you open that mail with the rejection letter from the editor. It’s the empty seats in the theatre on Friday morning.
The memory related to rejection is a place, a face, maybe an insert shot of an extreme close up of a mouth moving very slowly saying ‘You Lost’ if you want to get cinematic but it’s always, always the place.
Reason to cry
Do you know why people cry at award functions? It’s because they remember all these places in one flash; they may forget the time, date, year, but not the places. This combined with the people who believed in them, those kind faces with kind words that cheered them on—now that’s a lethal combination.
Even the stone-hearted cynic would cry. Throw in their mother and it’s waterworks all the way. The award is the middle finger to all those rejections and statue proof that the people who believed in you had reason.
Why does Fountainhead strike a chord with every person who chose the path they believed in? The story of Howard Roark always appeals to artists. Not just because his story is overridden with rejection and pain, but it’s combined with single-minded passion and grit. And victory at the very end.
In life, the book keeps coming back and playing out. You see the Peter Keatings getting the jobs that belong to you. But you still hold on to the belief that you are a Roark, a maverick, a fighter and you will build that skyscraper one day.
That the everyday rejection you feel from the silence of your phone, the unanswered unreturned phone calls and emails, the two blue ticks but no replies don’t chip away your enthusiasm.
You save lines from survivors and try to form a routine to keep you away from hardcore drugs and the psychiatrist’s couch. Happy pills, no thanks, I have yoga. When you lift those weights in the gym you feel you have the keys to the universe briefly.
Roy Schneider forced his eyes open every morning and said to the mirror ‘It’s show time folks’ in All That Jazz . You are the non-debauched version.
Hitting rock bottom
Rejection is sometimes the extra round of drinks. The tears in your voice that only some people catch when they ask you what you are working on these days. That point of view shot from their eyes, and it looks like you are staring down the barrel of a gun.
So save those coordinates, the letters from the editor, remember the names of the films you didn’t shoot and the calls people didn’t answer. Hold on to the feeling. It will help when you make that speech on stage.
She rose above the broad panes of shop windows. The channels of streets grew deeper, sinking. She rose above the marquees of movie theatres, black mats held by spirals of colour. Office windows steamed past her, long belts of glass running down... The line of the ocean cut the sky. The ocean mounted as the city descended. She passed the pinnacles of bank buildings. She passed the crowns of courthouses. She rose above the spires of churches.
Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.
—Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
The writer is a cinematographer, the non-bearded variety, and is called ‘Cameraman Madam’ on the sets.
