Why Did That Happen?

At a time between 1973 and 1976, the Administrative and Technical Services Department was in a crisis of poor self image in the shipyard.  The company was very old, had a great reputation and employed about 30,000 people in jobs that ran the full gamut of responsibility.  The heroes worked on the big ships, the underdogs supported the heroes and that was the rub.  The division unfairly assumed a subordinate rank.

The company produced a public relations piece that was superb.  It told the rich history and achievement of the company over its long history.  When I saw it on public TV, I was duly impressed by it and a light bulb went off in my head!

I was the person to whom the Admin and Tech Services division reported.  This represented a fine opportunity to let all of the people working in it, about 350 souls, just how important they were to the operation.  So I organized a showing of the film in the Apprentice School auditorium and in several shifts ushered in all of the people to see it.  I delivered a prologue introduction and epilogue reinforcing their role in the operation.

It had the desired effect.  The division transformed into a much more enthused group of people.  Oh, there were those who would never be of a positive mind but, by and large, the attitude was to be much more proud of working in this division in this company.

Shortly after the event I was summoned to the office of the VP of Human Resources.  There I was harshly criticized for having done this.  It seems that the union was now pushing for the entire shipyard to get to go to see the show; a demand that wasn't met.  My own boss, VP of Engineering and Administration, simply said to me, "That was dumb."  I wanted to argue my point but was silenced with a raised hand.  I was also left to figure out for myself why that idea wasn't very good.

It took a long time but I finally came to some conclusions.  The biggest lesson was that in a large organization, or even family, one should get some advice and input from trusted advisers who are a bit removed and can offer objective observations before doing something affecting the rest.  It delays the decision but sometimes a lost opportunity is better than one taken without regard for the effect on others. 

Ground Hog Day

Living with someone who has memory problems is a lot like the movie Ground Hog Day.  The same situations keep coming up and are resolved, only to reappear a little later as if never addressed previously.

There seem to be two categories of memory lapse.  One is not remembering what transpired and the other is not remembering that we already talked about this; both combined with a marked deficiency in imagination.

There is a need for me to keep my perspective and not remind her of any of this.  Although sometimes I simply say, I’m not going to tell you the answer to that again, I've already told you three times.  This sounds unkind but at the same time it is accepted as fact and we go on.  It also defends my sanity because after the third time it begins to freak me out.

It is important for us both to have some outlets for social intercourse.  The inclusion of others in our activities and the exclusion of each other in some activities allows for resetting the counters to zero in the patience department for both of us.

What worries me most is the lack of outside activities in which she is willing to participate.  After Xmas and the departure of the family, she became reclusive to the point of causing me some real concern.  If we go out, and we often do, it is always together to an event that I have suggested.  Rarely, if ever, does she suggest something.

Finally, after much encouragement, she ventured out to the wellness center and joined it to go to the therapy pool for exercise twice a week with some friends of hers.  This, in my opinion, was a big step forward in the process of getting out there.

The fact that she forgot that she drove the car to the wellness center and didn't discover the lapse until she came home with others to an empty garage didn't help any.  It was quite a shock to her.  In an unrelated accident she broke her shoulder and the aerobics went away for four months and is only now restarting, slowly.

It is my opinion that part of the problem is knowing that she has this memory deficiency frightens her and has led to a crisis of confidence.  She will have to overcome this in order to function independently and I think she knows this and is willing to give it a try.

It requires a lot of patience to see and hear this and not react to it except to ignore some or go back over what was done or said so she is reminded, over and over again.  This isn't difficult but has an effect on my ability to function.  There are times that I doubt my own memory of things but I’m reassured when I check it.

Where do we go from here?  “For better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, until death do us part” That is the deal.  We will stay here as long as we can.  I've seen the care in residential facilities for people who have to be there and it will be a last resort.

When mom had to have rehabilitation, she went to the best one in town and they almost killed her.  She was constipated so the weekly doctor visit resulted in instructions to give her a laxative.  This caused diarrhea and the nurse kept giving her the laxative!  

The food was way too much for her, so we brought hot soup and other nutrition to her on our own.  I swore then that she’d never go back to the hospital or a nursing home no matter what because they would only succeed in killing her.   I am of the same opinion still.

My strategy is to deal with it, one day at a time.  I am smart enough, objective enough, and caring enough to make the decisions that are necessary when they are necessary and not before.

This house is a masterpiece of convenience and livability.  The neighborhood is safe and the community is mixed both in age and ethnicity.  There is no reason to leave it except for the transportation aspect of it.

The next big hurdle will be when we lose our driving privileges.  That will be a shocker and may cause us to move out of this house.  That will come later because there is no age limit for a license, only capability to drive, i.e. see, hear, drive, and obey the law.

Who knows, there may come a time when mobility may be enhanced with cabs, shuttles, and mass transit being linked from the neighborhood, say the lodge, and a nearby shopping center providing a link to the rest of the city but there is much to be done for this to happen.

We are on our own, there aren't many, if any, others here that we can count on in any continuing way but paid assistance is available..  There are many that I can call upon for a favor here and  there but none that can come in on any regular basis should that become necessary and I don’t think it will.  And this is OK for the present and for the foreseeable future 

It would be to our great advantage to expand our social support system.  The women of the sorority are there for Carola.  If, and it is a big if, we could find a church to join that would not be onerous to me; that would be a big help.

There will, however, come a time in 15 years, or so, when neither of us will be able to take care of the other.  It is at that point that we will have to call upon the kids.  The timing is about the same as it was for my mom and dad, age 85 for them, but it will probably be a later for us.

So for planning purposes, there is nothing to be done at present except, of course, to maintain the health and vitality of this brain-body.  There are considerations for the future but they will be handled in due course.  Then the further out future will have to be addressed at some point—down the road a ways.

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.