Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
*******************
Hello Arlene
*******************
I used to remark that all those self help books began with Chapter Two. Chapter Two is entitled "You can have whatever you want out of life if you really want it" or something similar. Chapter One, which isn't in the book, says "You can know yourself well enough to know what you want out of life." If you don't know what you want from life all those self help books are useless. Eventually some books were written which addressed the topic.
I also used to think that the purpose of improving myself was for other people, due in part to my life as an entertainer where how I appeared to others was crucial to my work.
Lately however I have learned to turn the other cheek on myself and find the flaws, my failings as a human being and the ways in which I don't come up to my own standards. The smack on the cheek comes because we aren't as aware as we ought to be about the things that cause us to drop from those standards. We go through a wrong door and wonder how we got where we did. We make choices without considering the consequences. We respond impulsively and not from thought. We simply may be fooled by something or someone. We do dumb things and think we will get away with them.
Maybe some people will spend their whole lives and never take stock of themselves. But I think those people will live worthless, wasted lives, as a life lived in a pit of shame and self disrespect never noticing it. Pity them.
Only the man or woman who is willing to look at themselves with stern objectivity can measure aright the person they see and thus compare with it the person they could be. To change, to improve, to become better than yourself is a noble task for the benefit of yourself. As Janis Joplin said "Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
Along the rocky road of existence stumbling is inevitable, but it won't matter if the steps you take are sincere: not acquiescing to the wrong, not answering folly with folly, avoiding immoral circumstances and people, testing every thought and theory against the touchstone of your own standard, seeing the hills and valleys of your life as only part of the journey, approving of yourself and congratulating yourself for every victory over selfishness. "In the way of righteousness is life." (Proverbs 12:28)
It's a simple journey, one step at a time. But the destination is a worthy life.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Showing posts with label William Faulkner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Faulkner. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Monday, April 5, 2010
Give Me Three
Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
*****************
The Easter Bunny hopped in here and helped me fill out my tax form. Shall I send him over there?
*************************
Ahhh!! Self satisfaction. The great temptation. One of the Seven Deadly Sins. Do we file it under Sloth or Pride? Or both. I'm not sure.
The wheel is a great tool and very popular, it always sells. So I'll just go on reinventing it for the rest of my life and everything will be fine.
One of the rules I lived by as a performer was "It can always be better." Some actors I knew hardly ever opened their scripts after opening night. I guess they thought the work was done and there was nothing left but to repeat themselves night after night. I admit to having the same attitude the first few years of my career. But early on, through observing the work of older actors, I realized that the work never stops even up to the last performance. There was no noticeable alteration in how they performed their roles. It was the same dive into the drama and ideas of the play and the characters, but the dive kept getting deeper. It was necessary to respond to that increased artistry, so I had to do my own diving.
I found the rule "It can always be better" very helpful in recording studios. I had worked for many recording directors, Some were very good and some were awful, particularly one blue ribbon bitch in the studios of Mutual Of New York who had no idea what she was doing and so had to bully everyone to cover up and compensate.
One director I worked for many times had a special and very effective way of working. After I finished the recording he would say "Give me three more just like that." He might make a few adjustments and then ask for three more, and then, maybe, three more after that. He was getting as much work out of me as he could so he could take it all into a studio and do the editing to come up with the best possible version of the piece. I appreciated that. After all it was my voice, my work that was going to be heard and wanted it to be the best. Not only that but, unlike some self satisfied directors, he would ask me what I thought. If I said "Well, it can always be better" he would say "Okay, let's do three more." I would go anywhere at any time of day or night to work for a director like that.
I say don't sell yourself short. You may find a formula that works and have success with it. But will there come a time when you will realize you sacrificed the person you might have been for the easy road through life?
The great conductor Leopold Stokowski used to end his orchestra rehearsals by saying "Tomorrow we do it better."
Acting on the stage or in front of a camera, playing music or baseball, taking photographs, building a garage or cooking a pot roast, it can be done better than it was yesterday The effort is what's needed and the knowledge that it can always, ALWAYS be better.
DB - The Vagabond
*****************
pacifica62 I still don't know who you are or where you are but I sure appreciate your excellent comments. Thank you.
**************************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
Only 3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
William Faulkner
*****************
The Easter Bunny hopped in here and helped me fill out my tax form. Shall I send him over there?
*************************
Ahhh!! Self satisfaction. The great temptation. One of the Seven Deadly Sins. Do we file it under Sloth or Pride? Or both. I'm not sure.
The wheel is a great tool and very popular, it always sells. So I'll just go on reinventing it for the rest of my life and everything will be fine.
One of the rules I lived by as a performer was "It can always be better." Some actors I knew hardly ever opened their scripts after opening night. I guess they thought the work was done and there was nothing left but to repeat themselves night after night. I admit to having the same attitude the first few years of my career. But early on, through observing the work of older actors, I realized that the work never stops even up to the last performance. There was no noticeable alteration in how they performed their roles. It was the same dive into the drama and ideas of the play and the characters, but the dive kept getting deeper. It was necessary to respond to that increased artistry, so I had to do my own diving.
I found the rule "It can always be better" very helpful in recording studios. I had worked for many recording directors, Some were very good and some were awful, particularly one blue ribbon bitch in the studios of Mutual Of New York who had no idea what she was doing and so had to bully everyone to cover up and compensate.
One director I worked for many times had a special and very effective way of working. After I finished the recording he would say "Give me three more just like that." He might make a few adjustments and then ask for three more, and then, maybe, three more after that. He was getting as much work out of me as he could so he could take it all into a studio and do the editing to come up with the best possible version of the piece. I appreciated that. After all it was my voice, my work that was going to be heard and wanted it to be the best. Not only that but, unlike some self satisfied directors, he would ask me what I thought. If I said "Well, it can always be better" he would say "Okay, let's do three more." I would go anywhere at any time of day or night to work for a director like that.
I say don't sell yourself short. You may find a formula that works and have success with it. But will there come a time when you will realize you sacrificed the person you might have been for the easy road through life?
The great conductor Leopold Stokowski used to end his orchestra rehearsals by saying "Tomorrow we do it better."
Acting on the stage or in front of a camera, playing music or baseball, taking photographs, building a garage or cooking a pot roast, it can be done better than it was yesterday The effort is what's needed and the knowledge that it can always, ALWAYS be better.
DB - The Vagabond
*****************
pacifica62 I still don't know who you are or where you are but I sure appreciate your excellent comments. Thank you.
**************************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
Only 3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Friday, March 26, 2010
Get Up
The basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
*******************
One of the biggest and fiercest demons to face in the struggle to survive is not wanting to.
I, like millions of other people in the world, have become adept at the fine art of surviving on nothing. It probably has to do with my boyhood. My father died when I was 4. He went believing that his army pension would take care of his family. He was a war hero and had been decorated by General Patton. But because he wasn't on active duty when he went the government declined to grant my mother his pension. She had a nervous breakdown. But she didn't die. In fact she went on to live another 40 to 50 years.
Within two years of my father's death she sold the house and we plunged into terrifying poverty. I can't even remember some of the places I've lived. My mother had been an actress, she had no other skills, She went off to a typing job everyday with arthritic fingers. She was tough.
I know an actor, talented and reasonably well trained, who refuses to give up his night time office job to engange in an acting career. He would rather lose sleep and take roles in small productions for no money than face the fear, that deep knot in the stomach, over financial insecurity. Unless you're a soap opera actor, financial insecurity is the game. We all face it. We learn to live with it.
During the depression of the 20's men who had lost everything leapt to their deaths out of skyscraper windows. Some men were seen sleeping, mid day, in their blue suits on the grass in Bryant Park. Other men found something else to do. There were a few who sold their wife's strawberry jam from door to door.
In this last depression CEO's found a faster way to go by stepping in front of fast moving trains. The fear of loss, of having nothing left, of not knowing how to survive on nothing has caused a lot of death and destruction. It is a terrifying state for anyone to be in. But FDR said it clearly "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Those men died because of a base fear they couldn't face and death seemed to be the best alternative.
I have faced that fear myself many times and came close to thinking that the best thing to do was to pull the plug on myself. But I kept in mind a quote from Shakespeare, "There's place and means for every man alive." But to find that place and means you have to be alive.
It is said that the Donner Party when stranded next to a frozen lake in the Winter while trying to reach California chewed on bark. In my story Brian And Christine, when lost in a frozen wilderness, they also chew on bark just to stay alive. Brian, Christine and the Donners eventually made it out to safety. Some would have given up and died.
Someone once said that success is getting up one more time than you fall. There's no question that falling is a precipice of fear and getting up again is a big struggle.
Does heaven give us any reward for getting up? Probably not. And does the falling and getting up go on in an endless chain of events? Maybe. But as angry, depressed and fearful as I get, I wish to shake my fist at failure, laugh and go looking for the strawberry jam.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
William Faulkner
*******************
One of the biggest and fiercest demons to face in the struggle to survive is not wanting to.
I, like millions of other people in the world, have become adept at the fine art of surviving on nothing. It probably has to do with my boyhood. My father died when I was 4. He went believing that his army pension would take care of his family. He was a war hero and had been decorated by General Patton. But because he wasn't on active duty when he went the government declined to grant my mother his pension. She had a nervous breakdown. But she didn't die. In fact she went on to live another 40 to 50 years.
Within two years of my father's death she sold the house and we plunged into terrifying poverty. I can't even remember some of the places I've lived. My mother had been an actress, she had no other skills, She went off to a typing job everyday with arthritic fingers. She was tough.
I know an actor, talented and reasonably well trained, who refuses to give up his night time office job to engange in an acting career. He would rather lose sleep and take roles in small productions for no money than face the fear, that deep knot in the stomach, over financial insecurity. Unless you're a soap opera actor, financial insecurity is the game. We all face it. We learn to live with it.
During the depression of the 20's men who had lost everything leapt to their deaths out of skyscraper windows. Some men were seen sleeping, mid day, in their blue suits on the grass in Bryant Park. Other men found something else to do. There were a few who sold their wife's strawberry jam from door to door.
In this last depression CEO's found a faster way to go by stepping in front of fast moving trains. The fear of loss, of having nothing left, of not knowing how to survive on nothing has caused a lot of death and destruction. It is a terrifying state for anyone to be in. But FDR said it clearly "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Those men died because of a base fear they couldn't face and death seemed to be the best alternative.
I have faced that fear myself many times and came close to thinking that the best thing to do was to pull the plug on myself. But I kept in mind a quote from Shakespeare, "There's place and means for every man alive." But to find that place and means you have to be alive.
It is said that the Donner Party when stranded next to a frozen lake in the Winter while trying to reach California chewed on bark. In my story Brian And Christine, when lost in a frozen wilderness, they also chew on bark just to stay alive. Brian, Christine and the Donners eventually made it out to safety. Some would have given up and died.
Someone once said that success is getting up one more time than you fall. There's no question that falling is a precipice of fear and getting up again is a big struggle.
Does heaven give us any reward for getting up? Probably not. And does the falling and getting up go on in an endless chain of events? Maybe. But as angry, depressed and fearful as I get, I wish to shake my fist at failure, laugh and go looking for the strawberry jam.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
3 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Facetious Foolishness 5/06/09
A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.
William Faulkner
***************
Hello. Anyone there?
--------------------
SNOB: n. a person who believes himself to be an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding his field, as in "a musical snob." (Webster)
I don't like snobs and I stay clear of them as much as possible. A snob is like a spider who considers himself near or at the top of the food chain as far as all other insects are concerned in his little patch of the forest. One of the unfortunate traits that characterizes most snobs is that they have no sense of humor about themselves, nor about anything else, as far as I can tell. And some of them are incapable of understanding how a lower class street kid, like myself, could possibly know anything about or appreciate fine music. We're just not intelligent or sensitive enough. Right?
I worked for a time at a major market classical music station. We certainly had our share of snobs perched in their various trees, listening, waiting for something to disturb their webs. The radio station published a magazine listing the programs and containing articles about music and musicians, Whichever personality was on the air when the commercial for the magazine came up was asked to ad lib a one minute sales pitch for it. When my turn came I would talk about the articles and how much information could be gleaned from reading the magazine, A few times I ended by saying "It will even make you a better snob,,if that's what you really want to be."
Naturally the phone would ring and some irate listener would complain. The complainers, I soon found, were the snobs out there whose little tender toes had been stepped on. I remember talking to a few of them. One tried to correct my pronunciation of an Italian opera title. He was wrong, but wouldn't listen to me. He told me that he knew better because he was a Physics professor at the local University. What Physics has to do with opera titles escapes me. Another tried to inform me that when pronouncing the name of the German city Munich I should give it the German "ch" as in "Ach." When I told him that in German the actual name of the city is "Munchen" he hung up on me. He was not pleased. But that's okay. I had just helped him become a better snob.
I don't hate snobs. They have their place in the world. For one thing, they generally support the arts, I just don't want to associate with them. I'm too much of a vagabond. I'll just leave them alone, at ease with their own cobwebs.
DB
******************
******************
I'm saying where are you to too many people.
William Faulkner
***************
Hello. Anyone there?
--------------------
SNOB: n. a person who believes himself to be an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding his field, as in "a musical snob." (Webster)
I don't like snobs and I stay clear of them as much as possible. A snob is like a spider who considers himself near or at the top of the food chain as far as all other insects are concerned in his little patch of the forest. One of the unfortunate traits that characterizes most snobs is that they have no sense of humor about themselves, nor about anything else, as far as I can tell. And some of them are incapable of understanding how a lower class street kid, like myself, could possibly know anything about or appreciate fine music. We're just not intelligent or sensitive enough. Right?
I worked for a time at a major market classical music station. We certainly had our share of snobs perched in their various trees, listening, waiting for something to disturb their webs. The radio station published a magazine listing the programs and containing articles about music and musicians, Whichever personality was on the air when the commercial for the magazine came up was asked to ad lib a one minute sales pitch for it. When my turn came I would talk about the articles and how much information could be gleaned from reading the magazine, A few times I ended by saying "It will even make you a better snob,,if that's what you really want to be."
Naturally the phone would ring and some irate listener would complain. The complainers, I soon found, were the snobs out there whose little tender toes had been stepped on. I remember talking to a few of them. One tried to correct my pronunciation of an Italian opera title. He was wrong, but wouldn't listen to me. He told me that he knew better because he was a Physics professor at the local University. What Physics has to do with opera titles escapes me. Another tried to inform me that when pronouncing the name of the German city Munich I should give it the German "ch" as in "Ach." When I told him that in German the actual name of the city is "Munchen" he hung up on me. He was not pleased. But that's okay. I had just helped him become a better snob.
I don't hate snobs. They have their place in the world. For one thing, they generally support the arts, I just don't want to associate with them. I'm too much of a vagabond. I'll just leave them alone, at ease with their own cobwebs.
DB
******************
******************
I'm saying where are you to too many people.
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