Mind the Yellow Line

Running longer distances on a more than a once-a-week schedule for about 15 years taught me a few things about life and living.  The one that I missed, in retrospect, was the effect of being twenty pounds overweight and still running longer distances.  The end result was a herniated disc and the end of running for me.  A word of caution to would-be athletes out there is to listen to your body.

 

I also figured out that weight and fitness are not related.  This was deduced after watching older, heavier runners pass me with impunity.  One can be overweight and fit; more so than a thinner person who is not so fit.

 

Also in retrospect, I was not a runner but a jogger, one who covered distances faster than at a walk but certainly not the three-hour marathon pace.  One needs some training insights from experienced runners to keep the pace.

There were, however, many enjoyable mornings and afternoons spent in the solitude of running and thought.  Many of the insights that shape my thinking about life and living were experienced while “on the trail” either running or, later, walking.

There was a phenomenon of note that deserves a few words.  It concerns drivers and the yellow line.

I ran along the edge of the road, facing traffic, and at most times there was little or no traffic on the road in either direction.  After many instances of meeting cars coming towards me, I began to mentally keep track of the drivers and their way of dealing with encountering a lone runner along the road especially when the yellow line was on their side of the center line.

Drivers came in two categories, male and female.  With no yellow line in place, the drivers would invariably move to the other side and pass safely giving me the runner a wide berth.

With the yellow line in place, more than 90% of the male drivers would still move to the other side and give me a wide berth; the female divers, however, were a different story.  More than 90% of them would not cross the yellow line, even if it meant me jumping the ditch to avoid being hit.  Why?  Rules are made to be obeyed without regard to common sense.

While in Neuss Germany on a visit to the plant there, my French companion and I were on our way back to the hotel where we were staying and it was about three in the morning.  I’m not going to tell why we were out so late, it has nothing to do with this story.

We were walking along the sidewalk and came to an intersection.  The light was red in our direction and the “Don’t Walk” sign, in German, was lit.  There on the corner stood a German man waiting for the light to change.  Michel and I walked on across the street because at that time of morning there was absolutely no traffic on the street.  The man dutifully waited for the light to change.  Why?   Rules are made to be obeyed without regard to common sense.  Michel said, this is the difference between the French and the Germans.

We are just coming off of a debacle in our club, there were some agreements made that weren't documented and it has caused a great deal of upheaval.  There are no minutes of board meetings for the past several years; an agreement was made, not documented, and then denied.  A principal to the agreement had a stroke and lost his memory.  No records, undocumented expenses, reputations besmirched, resignations requested, and still without minutes of board meetings.

Meanwhile, at a recent event there was a $20 expense for coffee that could have been reimbursed from the tips received at the event; and it would have been done with.  But we are now told that it has to be approved by the board of directors and a voucher and check have to be issued to cover the expense.

A petty cash item of $20 for coffee is being treated like the expenditure of $100’s of dollars for supplies for the club.  This determination was made by Madam President; she is not German but does drive a car.  Why?   Rules are made to be obeyed without regard to common sense.

There is no way of teaching common sense; it is something that is learned through experience if the person is open to it.  Some people, men and women, have little or no imagination, or have stifled their imagination to make it ineffective, and are then missing one of the main ingredients of making decisions.  The whole list is memory, imagination, reasoning, and decision making.

It is an iterative process that is confirmed or modified by experience and the loop is made again and again until the results are acceptable.  This may be why in many cultures age is revered, the older person has had the benefit of experience.

The yellow line, the “Don’t Walk” sign, the minor amount are all examples of rigidity in thinking that kill progress and innovation.  OTOH, there is the danger of rationalizing almost any action for the convenience of the actor. 

This is where morals and ethics enter into the picture.  One must have a good set of them in order to keep from making expedient decisions that don’t stand the scrutiny of hind-sight.

We aren’t talking religion here; religion prescribes a code of conduct that includes morals and ethics but adds eternal damnation to the mix for violating one or more of the rules.  This may be another reason: Why? Rules are made to be obeyed without regard to common sense.

More and more, I am reaching the conclusion that religion should be divorced from organizations that are not religious by definition and a good set of morals and ethics take its place.  The French enacted such a separation of church and state in 1905 based on the principle of laicite’.

Life is good and I appreciate having this blog to write my thoughts.  In a big way it allows me to get them out of my head without causing a lot of trouble for me with others.

We Are So Great!

There is a delightful man, Professor Rufus Fears, who does Great Courses programs.  One of these is Life Lessons from the Great Books in which he brings an everyday understanding of historical works that speak to us, are written in noble language, and have deep meaning for us.

It is precisely this course to which I am now listening and about which I have had some thoughts of my own.  Not that my thoughts are of any importance to anyone except me but then I write these little essays for me.

The first thing that comes to mind is that some of these great works were written so long ago, yet have come down to us in languages that are completely new to any used at the time of writing, or telling.  Even the Greek and Roman writings are now accessible to us in beautiful prose that we can understand but were written in languages that have since gone out of use, at least in the form used then.

I think this speaks to the scholarship of mankind, that some people would make a large part of their life’s work the assimilation and translation of an ancient language to the extent that they can faithfully translate the ideas given then.  Not just know the meaning of the words but faithfully express in a modern language the thoughts written so long ago by people living then.

Having these works available in words that we can understand also makes me aware of the depth of thought that has existed from the time when we, mankind, received the spark of intelligence that allowed us to express ourselves completely.

It can be argued that many animals communicate within their species and we don’t really know how completely this is accomplished.  Certainly when momma bear roars at the cubs, they get back to her immediately and we can only imagine the communication that takes place among ape and whale families.

We have had the remarkable advantage of having written words available to us, words written anywhere from 3000 BCE to now, in language that we can understand thanks to the work of scholars.

What/who decides what is worthy of posterity?  When one thinks of the quadrillions of words that have been recorded in the span of 5000 years, how is it that certain words are deemed worthy of preservation and others are rolled up like yesterday’s newspaper and put on the fire?

Professor Fears may say it’s natural selection; some may be due to flukes where this or that was found in legible form as was the Rosetta stone.  Thank goodness for that record because it allowed us to decipher the hieroglyphics.  One has to suppose that for all that have been preserved and handed down over the generations there have been millions and millions more that have faded into the gloom of the forgotten.

And we can recall the Egyptian, Greek, Roman civilizations, pre-Colombian American; the Jewish civilization that is still alive and well with traditions that go back thousands of years; Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other Asian civilizations that continue. 

Yet there are other great civilizations that have come and gone without leaving much of a record.  These were located all over the globe including Europe, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and Oceania.  Without a written record, civilizations disappear with only the trace of artifacts to give us a glimpse but the record of their thinking is gone.

With or without the written record, it can be seen that the modern person is at no great advantage, other than having much more data at his disposal.  The conclusions to which he comes are still governed by memory, imagination, and reasoning.  The record of history shows that the imagination and decision making capability of the ancients and the moderns are comfortably similar.

There is some advantage in the memory category because included in this is all the data that is now available to the decision maker; because it is stored and accessible it is memory.  Yet the decisions made are as alarmingly flawed today as they have been in the past.

Another aspect of technology is communication.  Imagine a great fleet of warships afloat in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, barely in sight of one another.  They are making a coordinated effort to find the enemy fleet and engage it while keeping their position on the globe as secret as possible.  One of these has the Admiral aboard who is directing the effort.  His commands are transmitted via shuttered lights blinking a coded message from one ship to the next until all are informed.  The enemy fleet, found and engaged, was destroyed.

It could have been a 1000 W light bulb or carbon arc, it’s not important, but it wasn't a satellite orbiting the earth after being sent there by millions of pounds of force from rocket fuel, after years of research and development to develop the technology to assemble, launch and operate it.  No, it was a shuttered light bulb no more than 80 feet above the surface of the water.

One can argue that communication is much better now; I would only admit that it is faster but not better.  Being faster; often there is less thought given to the message.  Wars have been fought with communication by messenger and telegraph.  The successful side was the one with the superior strategy and intelligence, not the faster communication. 

Yes, we've come a long way but in essence we are the same human beings we have been since the great spark lit us some 200,000 years ago.  Our senses gather data, our reasoning melds memory and imagination to reach conclusions, and our decisiveness leads to taking an action.  Memory and imagination play a significant role in the equation; they, along with emotions, provide the color that would otherwise make us robotic.

We have children and they are not quite us but are heavily influenced by the genes passed along to them and how they are raised.  In the 200,000 year history of our species, we have arrived to the same point as every other generation before us, now.  

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.

Psychic Disease

The recurrence of what we call Evil in the world is worth some exploration.  Throughout history we are given accounts of extremes often ascribed to a person but more often the extreme was supported by those around them.  Some examples are Nero, Caligula, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution, Napoleon, Hitler, Hussein in Iraq, the current Iran regime, the current Syrian regime, Al Qaeda, Venezuela’s Chavez, and I am sure that one can come up with many more examples.

Those listed above achieved the extreme on a grand scale and in more than one way.  There are many who achieve it on a lesser scale.  The movie Wolf of Wall Street is a story about a man who engaged in extreme self indulgence.  Because the details of Bernard Madoff are not as yet revealed, one can only imagine his lifestyle.  It is safe to say that most people who amass a fortune and then spend it satisfying their own appetites and those around them are examples.

“Of what,” you may ask.  And the answer is excessive (and you fill in the blank.)  We see examples of this in what people own and have on, where they live, and in how many places they maintain residence and there is a fine difference between getting along comfortably and being excessive.

In our society, that is the set of legal and ethical rules that we as a nation have adopted, the only arbiter of the situation is the person making the decision as to how to spend his resources, resources converted into money for spending.

There is now a mentality being expressed by the current president that the government should step in and manage this set of affairs for people; this isn't new, income tax was among the first such movements.  The extent to which he and his administration, including the sympathetic members of Congress, are successful in managing the distribution of wealth remains to be seen.  The majority of thinking people will decide that in future elections.

This is not, however, a political essay.  It is an attempt to pose the question: is there such a thing as psychic disease? 

In thinking about it as I write, I am inclined to think along the lines of Aristotle and perhaps agree with his philosophy of “the mean.”  I can’t quote chapter and verse but the sense of it is that going to excess is harmful or, perhaps, excess is a psychic disease.

Using the word disease as it is defined in a dictionary, i.e. a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, one could come to this conclusion.

Another expression of this same idea is the seven deadly sins, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.  It can be seen that these are all extreme excesses of basic virtues. 

There is a direct parallel between diseases of the body and the psyche.  Such a disease can be self induced, inherited due to the influences of family, one can be infected by a culture that supports it, or it can be passed along from another who is infected or is a carrier of it, much like  polio  or tuberculosis.

It can get to epidemic proportion such as that which affected revolutionary France, Germany after WWI, or the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.  These psychic diseases were exploited by megalomaniacs to the point of chaos and stopping the spread of it/them was only achieved with the resolve of those who recognized them for what they were.This is where we are today with religious extremism. 

The conclusion is that there are psychic diseases that breed in dissatisfaction and misery in the emotional sources of individuals and that they can be controlled but not eradicated.  

Winter Woe

This is a winter of discontent.  We have been hit by yet another winter storm that added ice to the already existing snow on the ground; it causes me to hunker down and write.  

Our activities are different when we're cooped up like this; appointments were kept yesterday because the storm didn't come through until later.  Two big ones were cancelled, however, and they will be added to the calendar to be made up.

It gives me a chance to be circumspect about matters that by themselves may not be worthy of a thousand words.  One of these is the matter of fear.  

The other day, when looking at the schedule coming up for performing, i.e. auditions and classes, I was gripped with a bit of anxiety that could have been fear.  So I took a longer, closer look at what I was feeling and decided that yes, it was.  But in taking this closer look I realized that while fear does enter into the picture, what we do when experiencing it makes all the difference in the world.

To be afraid is a normal response to an experience looming with which we have not dealt in the past.  We have many of these all the time but when they are scheduled, planned, and we are supposed to be prepared for them, the importance of our performance is magnified and the possibility of not being successful exists.  What we have here is a fear of not living up to our own expectations.

Be advised that fear has not held me back.  I have been in new and strange situations for most of my adult life.  I have not backed away from any of them regardless of my state of preparedness.  But this fear of not living up to expectations  is a factor with which I must deal each time; it is real.  Preparation will somewhat allay the fear but I have found that no amount of preparation is enough; the only way is to push through the performance, whatever the outcome, and it works.

Performing on stage or in film is a little different.  There is a script and there are rehearsals for performance and these tend to prepare one.  In performing, this fear is experienced at the audition, not on stage during the run.  It is the fear of not living up to what is expected of me.  This is quite interesting to me because until now it wasn’t all that clear just what it is that causes this fear or anxiety.

Having discovered the root cause may allow me to deal with it more successfully than in the past; or perhaps I need to simply reduce my expectations. 

A second matter that bears a few words is that of conversation.  I recently read a book about dialog and was made aware of an important observation on it, that conversation is a power struggle among those participating in it as one or more attempt to maintain control of thoughts being expressed.

Observations of me and others in conversation bear this out.  All too often one will change the subject in an attempt to redirect the conversation to one of his choosing, or will put a spin on it to shift it to more align with his mode of thinking or expression.  In fact he is all the while attempting to subordinate the other(s) to his thinking.  This is the power struggle that can occur in conversation if the participants are not consciously aware of it.

It is interesting to note that one who is exerting his influence in the conversation at present may have been more passive until now and may again be passive later; and so on around the circle.  It seems that assertion and passivity are directly related to the amount of psychic energy available in the individual at the time and when it is spent it is gone until it again is replenished in some manner.

The relative placement of the participants in a hierarchy is also a determinant of whose is “in charge” of the conversation.  This is especially true in political situations where the power structure is not defined by a charter.   

It is the rebellious subordinate who attempts to wrest the power of leadership in conversation and exert his position; an astute leader must then deal with this rebellion.    The more experienced and accepted the leader, the easier it is to deal with a rebellious subordinate.  There are, however, subordinates who will not be silenced; a great example is Corporal Napoleon Bonaparte.

A third idea to be expounded is that of personal course work.  It occurred to me that my formal education has given me the necessary ability to formulate courses of instruction that I can follow without going to a place such as a school for material structured by someone else.

Some of my endeavors require more knowledge before I can get the results for which I am looking; two of these are Actor and Playwright.  To this end I went the library, which has an extensive collection of books on the subjects, and selected three that seemed most aligned with the direction I want to take.

It follows that to spend between one and two hours, three times a week for the fifteen weeks studying the contents of these, and other books, and doing the work described by the authors in the forewords, prefaces and introductions of their books, I would be completing the equivalent of a college course.  So that’s what I’m doing.

A fourth issue is that of video auditions.  I did one yesterday and I’m not happy with the results even though I haven’t seen them.  The format was the same as all the many before this and I am not encouraged to think that it will be successful.  

If I was comparing me and a more polished actor, I would choose him.  I must do something about this and aside from recording “selfie” auditions I don’t know what that would be.  Help!