Oscar Acceptance Speeches are my time travelling machine and my dreaming portable devices. Oscar acceptance speeches makes me think of La Mamma and makes me want to dream big.
La Mamma always says that dreaming is what keeps us vivos. That without dreams life loses every meaning and its not worth fighting. That without them life is just one unbearable piece of nada. So she taught me to dream, it was almost like and imposition, like a homework I had to get done and in which i couldn´t be a mediocre. Hay que soñar grande Malita, she always says.
I remember once I told her I wanted a car, a Twingo. I liked it because to me it looked like a toy car made by Fisher Price. She absolutely hated the idea, more than that, she was furious. ¿Un TWINGO? No Amalia, ¿acaso no te he enseñado a soñar grande? Piensa en un Volvo, un Mercedes, pero un Twingo jamás.
Sometimes (or most of the time) she is quite exagerada, but I know in her heart she doesn´t wants me to settle for less than the best.
In this tradition of imposed dreaming, I started young. When I was 8, I had three major dreams in no particular order and wanted them all really, really bad. The first of them all: I wanted my name to be in the index of Encarta 98 (or Encyclopedia Britannica, or any other Encylopedia as a matter of fact). I wanted to be important. I wanted to be a part of la historia. Making it to Encarta 98 was my measure for succes. It wasn´t money, nor fame, nor having your autograph asked for in the street. To me, being indexed in an Encylopedia was the biggest thing one could ever aim to.
My second dream was being a versión colombiana of Anne Frank. Anne Frank was like my biggest hero EVER. I felt like we were soul mates from a different era, like she was my sister from a different mother, a Jew-hiding-from-the-Nazis-in-the-World WarII -mother. We liked the very same things, like writing on a journal, eating strawberries jam and collecting photos of Hollywood movie stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I thought Anne was the best writer ever and I wanted to be just like her . I even renamed my journal after her journal, Kitty, obviously. I liked to dream that one day, my house was going to turn into a museum just like hers, so I did´t let my mother rearrange ANYTHING in my room or throw away toys or other important stuff that the future visitors of The Amalia Andrade Museum would appreciate.
Also, Anne Frank wanted to be an ultra famous and gorgeous movie star in Hollywood, JUST LIKE ME. Being a movie star was my dream number three. I remember spending all ridiculous amounts of time daydreaming about being an actress. I wanted it soooo bad. Sure I liked the glam and the lifestyle but that wasn´t what attracted me the most, it wasnt the masions on Hollywood Hills or the Chanel gowns (ok, maybe I did longed for the Chanel gowns just a little). It was the idea of being REALLY good at it. I wanted to be la mejor actriz del mundo, ever.
It came easy to me because I´ve always been a Drama Queen, ever since I was born, so I thought this was a sign of natural talento. I remember spending endless amounts of hours in front of the mirror practicing my Oscar acceptance speech.
“I want´t to thank mis amigos, and my mother and my little brother Santiago, Santi: I know I like to make your life miserable but that is just a way for hermanas mayores to say I LOVE YOU. I had always dreamed of this in a tiny town in the middle of Colombia, where no one ever thought I could make it this far………”
This could go on forever. I was never out of this dream. If I was at school I was thinking on how one day they would make an E! True Hollywood Story of my life and the producers would have to come to that very same classroom to shoot my early years. When I was with my mother, doing some groceries shopping, all I could think about was: I need to be nice to this cashier lady because one day when Im famous she´s going to say she was my cashier lady and that I was always very nice. This was the same with the doorman, my teachers, and even people who were mean to me. Being a famous actress was going to be my venganza on them.
In one word I spent most of my childhood dreaming. I did my homework well. I wasn´t a mediocre and I din´t let La Mamma down.
Curiously, I still want to be an actress in some extent, i definitely think being indexed on an Encyclopedia would be sweet, and Im writing this because I obviously want to be writer just like Anne Frank.
However, whenever I feel lost or hopeless, or when I think Im the worst writer ever (which happens a lot), all I have to do is look for a really good Oscar acceptance speech, which are my-own-personal portable dreaming device that works just like a time traveling machine.
