What and Why

A few weeks ago, I put down the question, “What am I doing right now, and why?”  This has had some surprising results.

The first, and perhaps expected, result is that I have often stopped whatever I was doing and did something more productive.  An example of this would be asking the question while looking at Google Maps for the fun of it.  Then stopping same and doing something more pertinent to my aim, such as looking at monologues or practicing pool.

A second, and somewhat surprising, result has been reflection on that question.  Taking a look at what I am doing over a longer span of time, say a day or week or even several.  Looking at what I do and asking, “Why?”

My actions seem to fall into categories.  One is the maintenance of this brain-body for health and fitness and include, primarily, eating and exercise.

A second category is the development of a desired image to display to the world.  Activities in this category include grooming, dress, interpersonal contact, and getting out into the community.

The third is doing in order to get a feeling of significant accomplishment.  These include accomplishments in acting, riding, pool, golf, cooking, and the French language. 

The fourth is to fulfill promises and take care of responsibilities.  I do what I am supposed to do and when I say I'll do something, I generally do.

Then there is a fifth category that has provided much satisfaction and that is philosophical or thinking about life and living.  The John Lina blog contains much of that thinking, expressed in essays on various aspects of it.

I have spent a lot of time on this category since the mid-nineties and even before.  The time before was spent thinking without writing it down, it was in the 90’s that I began writing it out and that was after making serious notes on my reading and exploration of the 4^th Way.

Aside: Aha!  The 5^th Category is the Fourth Way.  The 4^th Way is described by Ouspensky as being different from the other three ways, i.e. the ways of the monk, the yogi, and the fakir.  It is working on becoming permanent.

Now that this realization has been made, i.e. my five categories of activities, it is important to reflect for a while on how appropriate it is to continue along these lines.  At first blush I don’t see any compelling reason to change.

Certainly the activities that maintain health and fitness are important to my well-being.  Paying attention to my fitness and what I eat and drink is paramount to avoiding the distractions associated with aches, pains, and sickness.  If the brain-body is fit, then I can pursue the other activities with less distraction and fatigue.

The maintenance of a personal and public image are important to me as well.  If one could see the way I sit in the privacy of our home, one would not think there was much importance placed on image but in fact there is.  I assure that my hair is cut and combed, my nails clipped, check my reflection in the mirror, and critically assess my movements when I can see them on video.

My wardrobe is appropriate for any occasion that may arise from black tie to jeans and a T-shirt because I am in the world, interacting from time to time with others.  I have an underlying need to feel that my appearance is appropriate to the location and activity in which I am involved.  In stage-talk: that my make-up and costume fit my role.

Fulfilling responsibilities and promises, which by virtue of being made become similar to responsibilities, is what allows others to rely upon me to do what I am supposed to do, including what is legally required.

Thinking about life and living is my way of trying to make sense out of this lifetime.   I've expressed many thoughts on this matter and will continue to let my thinking evolve.  This is another way of saying that this activity is one that I feel is important and will be continued.  Since permanency is a possibility, as a servant of Master I am doing what I can to progress towards it in this lifetime.

That leaves the category of accomplishments.  It has been part of my psyche for as far back as I can remember.  My imagination gets tweaked by being made aware of it, whatever it is, and lo and behold decisions are made to get it or achieve it.

Getting some item or object is fairly easy, one need only use his personal and physical assets and his connections to get in the position of acquiring it, then ask for it and voila!

The other category, i.e. achieving it, is a bit more complex.  When the desired is a skill, not an object, the acquisition is more difficult.  What is desired is to be able to perform a process that will produce a desired result and be confident in that performance.  Ideally it is something that I enjoy doing and that others can vicariously enjoy, or even envy, when they observe me doing it.   

One can readily conclude that I know what I’m doing and why; what is missing is doing for others.  There is no provision for losing oneself in the service of another person, animal, place, or thing.  I don’t know if this is good or not; in any case it is not part of the activities list. 

There are those who devote their lives to others, it is apparent that I am not, have not been, of that frame of mind.  Even when caring for another I have put myself first. 

Observing me, that is what I see.  Is it good?  Is it bad? I don’t know but my conclusion is that it is what it is and that’s that.

Nothing is absolute and at this late stage of this lifetime I doubt if much is going to change.  I am, however, open to change and if Master were to make a different direction apparent to me, I would take it because I am the servant of Master.

A Pearl

Currently I am doing a one-on-one coaching session with a Voice over expert.  He has a proven track record in town with advertisers and with other voice over talent that I know.  We just finished session two and it is impressive; what a difference it makes to follow his direction and technique. 

Then next month I am enrolled in a workshop for acting and auditioning, a major part of acting.  What will my approach be?  One thing for sure, my coursework has led me to the conclusion that preparing a monologue is best accomplished if one gets into character first and then takes on the lines as that character.  Coupling this with the techniques from Radio Joe should bring some better results.

I am still disappointed with the results of my video auditions.  I don’t believe the auditors when they say, “Great.” Or “That’s a good one.” I simply don’t agree with their assessment.  It isn’t from an unrealistic and idealistic standard being applied but more objectively assessing what I just did; if that’s even possible.  On the auditors’ side there’s the fact that they aren’t there to coach me or develop my auditioning skill but to take the info and send it on.

The only way around this conundrum is to do what I’m doing and add video recording of faux auditions here at home.  Who knows I may even post some of them on face book when I am satisfied with them or post them as a video blog on John Lina; that’d be cool.

There is no better time to begin this process than right now; so I’ll plan out a time and place to do it and what the heck do it and see what happens.  I may even keep them in files that would allow me to see the difference now and then.  But then that is counterproductive and only serves to feed the ego, or devastate it.

There are so many talented people who don’t perform because of a lack of strength in the self image department.  It seems to me that one has to have an almost indestructible self-image and self-confidence; to have walked naked down the street and suffered the cat-calls and insults of the spectators, the unflattering photos in the news, the reviews that call for him to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him, and persevere.

I think the biggest mistake an actor can make is to put any importance in anything anyone else says, good or bad, about his performance.  There's the story of the actor who, upon being booed for his portrayal of Hamlet said, "Don't boo me, I didn't write this stuff."

The only people he has to satisfy are the audience.  He gets help from the director, his scene partner(s) , and his sense of who the character is and how he portrays him.

To avoid an audition for any reason other than honestly not wanting to be a part of that theater company or that production is professionally destructive to the actor.  I’ll audition for any role except zombie horror movies.  I've done none of those and avoided them.

My Voice over coach has two axioms: (1) The second most difficult thing to do in the arts is to discover a system or process.  (2)The most difficult thing to do in the arts is to trust that system or process once you’ve discovered it.

This is good advice for any of my endeavors and I adopted it without seeing or hearing the words in several of mine and am searching for that which works in the others.  Trusting it once found is not easy, as the saying goes, but critical to success. 

Then understanding that the technique evolves and, hopefully, improves as one continues to pursue the skill, it is equally important to be aware of that improvement and call upon it when applying it.

Each of my endeavors has an elusive set of skills.  There are layers of technique that have to be mastered in order to consistently perform well.  My approach to some has been helter-skelter.  Just seeing the above advice has allowed me to begin the reversal to a more orderly approach to them all.

But then, almost every endeavor that I pursue or have pursued in the past has had an elusive process for success.  Once found, the allure of the pursuit often vanished and so did my desire to continue in that endeavor.  There seems to have been a hunger for accomplishment which was somehow satisfied and then I moved on to the next challenge.  My current endeavors still have the allure.

Every skill seems to have a fundamental set of processes that when provided or followed ensure success.  Artistic skills involve the emotional participation of the artist in his performance.  When these processes become second nature and the artist is emotionally involved in the pursuit of the endeavor, the results are excellent without exception. 

No longer are accolades necessary because the excellent results are routinely achieved.  Thus when the character is alive, a ride flawless, a rack of balls run, par after par achieved, the words evocative, a meal sumptuous and the spectators, in awe of the performance, are moved to emotional appreciation, the performer merely smiles and says, “Thank you.”

Audiences appreciate this level of perfection because they see themselves performing, vicariously feeling the success of the performance, the thrill of the moment.  Each member of the audience knows in his heart that he cannot do it but feels that he is while watching the artist perform.

The performer does it because he understands this and loves the feeling that a good performance has for him as well as for those watching. The secret of success for the performer is to share the accomplishment with those watching.

On Science and Drama

I am wrestling with a couple of notions at the moment.  One of them has to do with paleontology and astronomy, and the other has to do with the assimilation of desired performance.  These are two disparate topics but may be suitable for one thousand words or so.

Often one reads that remains have been found of some hominid or dinosaur and along with that discovery comes a whole scenario of new and different ideas on how things were then and their effect on us now.  Then astronomers will find hundreds of earth-like planets circling “nearby” stars and reach conclusions about them and their ability to sustain life as we know it on this planet.

With all due regard to the length of time they've thought about it and the depth of understanding that these people have, one must remember that they are voicing an opinion of what they think the new findings represent.   And we all know about opinions: they are like anuses, everybody has one and they all stink; except of course one’s own.  So I am going to keep mine out of sight.

There is a theory that petroleum was rained down upon the earth as some other cosmic entity passed nearby and that that petroleum obliterated some forests causing the vegetation to become coal; that that petroleum drained into places on the earth and sat here undisturbed until humans found it and a use for it.

This theory is like so many others; improvable and seemingly far fetched.  But one has to ask, what about gold, what about other mineral deposits, why are they concentrated on only certain portions of the earth?

Then there’s the origin of the Earth-Moon combination.  One recent article claims that there was a planet somewhere near where this combination is now and that an intruder, smaller but still of substantial size, and this planet collided in a plastic collision, i.e. not like billiard balls but more like two blobs of custard.  The smaller split off toward oblivion but was caught in the gravity of the larger, which had adjusted its orbit around the sun to suit its new mass.  Thus we had new and different planets, one orbiting the other and both orbiting the sun.

OK, so we have all of these theories thrown at us by scientists and we love it.  It gives us something to occupy our minds and make us feel smart.  There are scant few instances where this type of knowledge is useful on a day to day basis but it’s fun.

It is a good thing when scientific inquiry leads to results.  There have been many advances in understanding the Earth and environment, the ocean and the air, the effect of harvesting from the earth and the sea, the effect of burning millions of tons of carbon based fuels.  There may be a price to pay for living an artificial life, creating an environment that is controlled.  Right now it is like our national debt, looming out there but we put off dealing with it for the present because of what it will take to do so.

On the other topic: my coursework, in my personal course on acting and plays, is making me aware of new aspects of theater and film, new to me.  My appreciation of good films; scripts, acting, directing, lighting, sound, and editing has likewise taken a leap forward.  The course will have had me view 25 films, some of which will not be for the first time, either before or after reading the author’s criticism, positive or negative, about them.

A few of these have little redeeming value.  Audiences have a way of overcoming marketing hype and either recommend it to others or not.  Marketing is vital for the opening and for some time thereafter but the opinion of the audience quickly takes over and a film costing $95 million may only gross $15 million or less.  This was the case in three of the movies reviewed so far. 

While another, which didn't get marketed actively for a variety of reasons, won several Academy Awards for many aspects of it.  Not a loser in a commercial sense but a huge winner in an artistic sense.  The actors were not well known, except for the male lead, and neither was the director but the performance they produced was remarkable.

My approach to learning lines has changed already.  It is still somewhat mechanical, by rote, but with the added aspect of allowing the character to come through much earlier in the process.  Not only come through but to learn the scene in its entirety right from the start of the process.

The words as written by the author are still inviolable but they are not separate at any time during the assimilation of the script from the dramatic situation that they are describing.  The character has to be allowed to think in terms of his action, conflict, and subtext as well as that of the other characters in the scene with him.  

In all of the study of the course materials, the same underlying principle comes through; the actor becomes the character.  The more completely this happens the better the performance.  Thus the character learns the lines, not the actor.

The effort required to become the character is well spent before any of the other preparation steps.  But, just like real life, the character’s take on the situation can change as his understanding of the others in the scene deepens or changes.  The character is not static, not fixed, not a statue but a real, living human being (in most cases) and subject to the emotions, vulnerability, and reactions of others.

The successful actor becomes the character during all phases of preparation for the role and allows the character to develop on his own, not at the behest of the actor portraying him.