I always wanted to be an actor, but I always loved design, and

Host: The evening light filtered through the tall windows of a converted warehouse, now a small design studio filled with the scent of paint, wood polish, and the faint hum of an old jazz record spinning in the corner. Golden dust motes floated lazily through the air, catching in the light like drifting memories.

Jack stood by a cluttered workbench, his shirt sleeves rolled up, staring at a half-finished wooden frame. Jeeny leaned against the doorway, her arms crossed, holding a cup of coffee that had long gone cold.

Outside, New Orleans breathed — the soft echo of a trumpet somewhere down the street, a child’s laughter, the low rumble of the river unseen but ever-present.

Jeeny: “You know, Bryan Batt once said — ‘I always wanted to be an actor, but I always loved design... I would decorate my little apartment in New York over and over again.’”

Jack: (grunting softly) “Yeah. Sounds like someone who couldn’t make up his mind.”

Host: The record crackled, an old Louis Armstrong tune sliding through the room like a ghost from another century.

Jeeny: “Or someone who didn’t want to choose between two kinds of beauty.”

Jack: (looking up, his grey eyes distant) “You can’t have both, Jeeny. Life doesn’t work that way. You pick a lane. You specialize. That’s how the world rewards you. No one wants a man who’s half actor, half decorator. They want experts, not dreamers.”

Jeeny: “But what if the world’s wrong? What if the point isn’t to specialize, but to stay alive through many selves?”

Host: A faint breeze slipped through the open window, stirring a stack of blueprints. The pages fluttered like restless wings, as if even they longed to become something else.

Jack: “You talk like identity is a costume. Put one on, take one off. But that’s not life. That’s fiction.”

Jeeny: (smiling softly) “And what is life if not the fiction we choose to live? Bryan Batt found meaning in both acting and design. Maybe it wasn’t about identity — maybe it was about expression. Different tools, same soul.”

Jack: (picking up a small chisel) “Expression doesn’t pay rent. Discipline does. Look at those who scatter their focus — they end up with unfinished dreams and empty wallets. You think the world will applaud your creative ‘range’? It barely applauds survival.”

Jeeny: “That’s because people like you make survival the highest art form. But there’s a difference between surviving and living. You think Bryan cared whether people called him a designer or an actor? He just created. He found joy in color, in fabric, in character — he built worlds, whether on stage or in a living room.”

Host: Jeeny’s voice was soft but fierce — a kind of quiet conviction that filled the room like music. Jack’s jaw tightened; he wasn’t angry, not really — just haunted by the thought that maybe she was right.

Jack: “You sound romantic, as always. But the world doesn’t reward joy, Jeeny. It rewards mastery. You think Da Vinci could survive today? He’d be called unfocused. No one funds a man who paints one day and dissects bodies the next.”

Jeeny: “And yet, Da Vinci did. And that’s exactly why his name still breathes five hundred years later. Because he didn’t fit. He expanded.”

Jack: “You think everyone can be Da Vinci?”

Jeeny: “No. But everyone can be whole.”

Host: A pause settled between them, tender and weighted. The jazz shifted into something slower — a song of longing, of time that passes but never truly leaves.

Jeeny: “I remember your old apartment in Brooklyn. The one with the cracked wall and the broken lamp. You kept redesigning it — painting, shifting furniture, sketching ideas on napkins. You called it ‘practice,’ but I think you just wanted it to feel right.”

Jack: (chuckling) “I was just bored.”

Jeeny: “No. You were searching for harmony — the same thing you do when you write, or when you argue, or when you fix something broken. You design too, Jack. You just don’t call it that.”

Host: He looked at her for a long moment, the way a man looks at a truth he’s not ready to admit. The lamp light caught the faint lines near his eyes, tiny etchings of regret and memory.

Jack: “Maybe. But I envy people who know what they are. Who wake up every day certain of their path. Bryan Batt… he sounds like he lived between worlds. That must have been exhausting.”

Jeeny: “Or liberating. Why do you think so many people in this city live like that? Musicians who paint, chefs who dance, poets who fix engines. Maybe the real art is in refusing to be trapped by one definition.”

Jack: “And how do you measure success, then? How do you know when you’ve made it?”

Jeeny: “When you don’t need to measure it anymore.”

Host: The words hung there, luminous, like the faint glow of the city lights flickering through the blinds.

Jack exhaled, long and slow, as though something heavy had just been set down.

Jack: “You know… when I was younger, I wanted to be a musician. I’d sit on the porch with a cheap guitar, play for the streetlights. My father told me, ‘You’ll never make a living doing that.’ So I studied finance.”

Jeeny: “And you’ve been building furniture and sketching designs every night since. You think your father killed the artist in you. He didn’t — he just buried him in a suit.”

Jack: (laughing quietly) “And what, you think I should dig him out now?”

Jeeny: “I think he’s already trying. Every time you make something with your hands, every time you question why you’re doing what you’re doing — that’s him, Jack. That’s your actor, your designer, your hidden self asking for light.”

Host: Her eyes shimmered in the lamplight, soft but unyielding. Outside, a streetcar bell clanged, its sound fading into the night like a memory passing through time.

Jack: “You ever think maybe we over-romanticize this stuff? Maybe people like Batt just got lucky — found a way to make hobbies profitable. Maybe the rest of us just have to be practical.”

Jeeny: “Practicality is important, sure. But if you only live by practicality, you end up decorating a cage — not a home. Creativity is how the soul breathes, Jack. For some, it’s acting. For others, it’s building, painting, arranging a space until it feels alive.”

Jack: (quietly) “And you think that’s enough? That loving something is enough to make it real?”

Jeeny: “It’s the only thing that ever has.”

Host: The record reached its final note, a long, aching trumpet cry that seemed to hover in the air, then dissolve into silence.

Jack: “You make it sound easy. Just do what you love, and somehow the rest falls into place.”

Jeeny: “No. It’s not easy. But it’s necessary. People like Batt remind us that passion doesn’t have to choose a form. You can love the stage and the structure, the performance and the design — it’s all storytelling. The walls tell stories too, Jack. You just have to listen.”

Jack: (looking at the half-finished frame) “Maybe I’ve been building stories without realizing it.”

Jeeny: “Maybe you’ve been living one without permission.”

Host: The silence that followed was gentle, not awkward — the kind that happens when two people finally hear each other through the noise of years.

Outside, the river wind carried the distant sound of a band warming up in a nearby bar — a slow blues rhythm rolling through the streets of New Orleans.

Jack: (after a long pause) “Maybe I’ll finish this frame. Hang something inside it — maybe not a painting, just… a mirror.”

Jeeny: “Why a mirror?”

Jack: “So I can see who I’m becoming. One day, maybe that’ll be enough.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Then maybe you’ve already started reinventing yourself — not by changing what you do, but by remembering why you loved doing anything at all.”

Host: The jazz started again, a new song now — soft, patient, full of hope. The light from the window touched the edges of Jack’s workbench, revealing the careful lines, the unfinished wood, the promise of something yet to come.

In that quiet studio, beneath the hum of the old record and the heartbeat of a living city, two souls found something fragile and infinite — the kind of beauty that doesn’t demand to be understood, only to be lived.

And somewhere in that silence, between the actor and the designer, between the dream and the doing, the world felt — for just a breath — perfectly designed.