The MCA Days - Silence Is Not Golden

I thought immediately upon signing that I would be none stop;all systems go but  it couldn't have been further from the truth. I am sure there were meetings about me but I most certainly wasn't at them. Instead I spent the next few months, spending my hard earned cash...hmmmm hardly hard earned, I was barely out of School.

The first thing on the agenda and as instructed by my Manager was to buy an apartment in London and relocate. I spent 3 months looking at property all across the City and Suburbs and finally settled on a bijou conversion in Willesden Green, NW2 (well I had to keep my northernness somehow). Plus it was easy for Mom and Dad to get to,straight off the M1.

London was alluring and exciting,  I had always said to Mom and Dad that I would move there...well, before my planned, dramatic migration to the USA which was going to happen once I'd racked up enough sales and the movie directors were calling.

However, although the label was there, my future was there and my beautiful new apartment was there; which I was now paying for, it took months before I could pluck up enough courage to uproot and leave my friends and family behind.To be honest if  it wasn't for the fact that my Parents at that time were going through a very rough patch, I'm not sure I even would have.

In typical 'Rebekah Ryan' fashion there had to be some sort of heart ache to send me fleeing for sanctuary, although still to this day that's never benefited my emotional well being. You'll soon start to see the repetitive cycle of flight or stay that clung to me like the plague for the next 10 Years of my life but we'll get to that.

I can honestly say that I was shocked by the absence of music and performance in my Life at this crucial time of my artistic growth. It felt like the label had banked me...I was doing nothing for months. I had gone from gigs to auditions to theater performances to the studio and then to zilch, SILENCE! I honestly couldn't get my head around it and slowly the frustrated artist tantrums became frequent occurrences.

Before my signing I had met a wonderful Acting Agent called Jenny who I had met at the TV Studios whilst filming 'Pot Of Gold'. Jenny had taken an instant liking to me when people thought that I was her daughter at the studio and had worked hard since our initial meeting to kick start my acting profession; securing me an audition for a Major film and getting my professional acting head shots done.

Jenny was a wonderful, warm glamorous lady with a wealth of contacts that had high hopes for my acting ability and I really trusted her judgment.

It was about this disappointingly quiet time that Jenny approached my Manager and asked if they could work together on developing my career, she handling the acting side and Brian the music side. Consequently after their only meeting, I never saw or heard from Jenny again...my first taste of the disastrous decision making that would be made on my behalf, with no logic or explanation.

Yet another clear example of how my own ideas and dreams meant nothing.