At 10 o’clock I was lying in bed reading a book and laughing out loud. Six hours later I was awake, blinking in the darkness, feeling anxious about some professional and personal matters. What happened in between was a mystery. Happily for me the anxiety passed rather quickly. I suddenly became more interested in how I could go from laughter to anxiety in such a short time, when nothing, but nothing, had circumstantially changed. Ironically, this shift of focus away from anxiety towards curiosity was the root of the matter, but there’s that forest-for-the-trees phenomenon that seems to get us with nearly the same frequency as the Charlie Brown-Lucy-football phenomenon. (Sigh.) Read more…
I would like to get every job I meet for. In point of fact, I would like to get everything I want, and I would like it handed to me on some kind of ceremonial serving dish, preferably delivered by beautiful people, all of whom tell me how great I am. This is not possible. Not during waking hours, anyway. But as I remind myself, the Buddha taught us that suffering exists, and my profession has more than its share. (He didn’t actually mention acting in the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path, but please read on…) Read more…
Two things. One, I spend a lot of time on subways. Two, I believe in “choice of focus.” Anything can be looked at from more than one angle, and we make choices in what we choose to focus on. So as I drifted along one day, deep underground, and I felt frustration set in at being in some dingy metal can for the fifth time in five hours, I put my own belief to the test. What could be good about this? What am I not seeing that’s right in front of me?
Wow.
These are just a few examples. Click for larger views.
Karl Malden was once asked about being a “Method Actor.” Presumably the question was asked of him because he was a member of The Actor’s Studio, which had produced a system of training and preparation based on the idea that an actor must dig deep into his psyche to produce “real” emotions. Malden replied that his method was “whatever worked.” This is my belief as well. There is no one way, and over the years I’ve developed my own method of creating characters that can involve research in the library, choosing music to listen to, wearing certain shoes, copying somebody else’s body language, whatever. I’m happy to toss in the kitchen sink if I think it will help. I don’t feel any allegiance to any one school of thought. Read more…
The original “apology” was written for Socrates. After he was found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens with this crazy little thing called curiosity, his student Plato decided to speak up. Socrates wanted people to push the boundaries of human knowledge, to question, and by extension, I believe, to feel. If his was a a sin punishable by death, then everybody that works for a tabloid should be shot out of a canon into a sea of molten lava, to be rained on by anvils. But what’s lost in Plato’s apology for Socrates, called “The Apologia Socratis,” is that it wasn’t an apology at all. The Greek word, in fact, is closer in meaning to “defense” than what we think of today as the modern mea culpa, where we prostrate at the feet of those we’ve offended and beg forgiveness. Either way, I’m not sure either approach is ideal, but we work with what we’ve got. Read more…
