Either run with the big dogs or stay on the porch.
Big Mark
*******************
Hello Val
******************
There's a tradition among farmers that calls for yoking a young inexperienced ox with an older ox so that the young one will quickly learn the routine of plowing. They don't send the young ox to college. They just tether him to the older ox and that's that. The young one learns fast.
When I was studying drawing at the Art Student's League I always tried to sit next to someone who was better at it, to learn from them by observing.
There are real problems connected to learning a new task, a new job or a new career. Most people don't do it right.
Here's an example. I was hired at a radio station and my first day of work the boss put me on the air at the busiest time, the morning drive time, before I knew which switches did what or what problems I was going to face with news and weather reports and phone calls. The boss thought it would be good to put me there so I would get the full effect of the job. He was wrong. It was a nightmare. But by noon I was a big dog. I had to be. At a different station I broke in on the all night shift which was much simpler and enabled me to learn all I needed to know to handle any on air shift at that station.
Approaching this topic from a much different angle there are those who come into a job situation thinking they know how it's done when in fact they don't. I'm sure that happens in many enterprises but I have found it to be quite prevalent in the theatre business, the one I have spent my life in.
No doubt the glamorous nature of what actors do attracts many people to the trade but why should anyone decide to be an actor without knowing what it entails or, worse, assuming they know. I've seen too many youngsters and others jump in with the big dogs when they should have stayed on the porch.
I partly fault the kind of education some people get. Acting is an art, but it is also a trade, a craft, and like any craft it has it's rules and it's techniques. I have worked with too many recent graduates of important Drama Departments and Academies of Art who were not taught those techniques. I don't know what they were taught or who taught them and I don't want to know. Those new to the trade didn't know they needed to stay on the porch and watch the big dogs run.
There is a highly regarded drama department at a well known college in the
East. I have yet to work with a recent graduate of the school who really knows acting. After many years away from that school I had to give one graduate a lesson in voice placement. I wondered how he could be a drama major with a BFA in Acting and never have been taught that.
It's worse when they are arrogant. They know what their teachers told them or didn't tell them and they believe it's the way without discussion. I had to give one young fellow a lesson in how to be a stage manager. He laughed at the rules until the other members of the cast threatened him. He got back upon the porch.
I have experienced this type of faulty training first hand. I was asked to perform a scene for a directing class at a very important film school in the Northeast Not only did that teacher ignore talking about the directing, he tried to correct the acting. He didn't know what he was talking about because he didn't know what acting is. I felt sorry for the students. If you're a college professor of something you don't do yourself, don't take an actor with 25 years experience in stage, film and TV and give him acting lessons. Stay on the porch.
I write about theatre and acting because that's what I know. But I'm sure the same circumstances apply to any important endeavor. Don't assume you know what you do not know. Watch out for people who think they know but don't. And always find an older more experienced ox to hook up next to if you can. Otherwise stay on the porch.
Dana Bate - The 1.840th edition of Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*************************
Showing posts with label acting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acting. Show all posts
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Discover Thyself
No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.
Jessica Savitch
********************
Hello Stuart
********************
In the early days of my acting career, when it became cold water obvious that I was not going to be an overnight sensation, with a Hollywood contract in my pocket too young to know what I had. I, at least, wanted to do more acting and less temp work. So one of the things I did was to keep a journal, a diary which recorded my experiences both working and trying to get work. One of the things I found was that it took me on average 10 auditions to get a job. "Well," I said in my boyish wisdom, "The answer is quite simple. Get more auditions."
That's not as easy as it sounds but I solved the problem by saying yes to everything. I went out for things I would have turned my talented nose up at, things I probably wasn't right for and things the heavy duty actors were trying out for. I was initially just trying to get more auditions but there were some surprising results.
For one thing I lowered the ratio to 6 or 7 auditions per job. And for another I was beginning to establish a reputation for myself so that even directors who didn't cast me would recommend me to other directors who did. Twice in my career I auditioned for someone who didn't cast me but then did a year later in a different production without an audition.
Gradually, as the years took their places on the string of my life and I was making a living as a performer, I began to think seriously about what entertainment was and how it fit in to the world of art. I knew other actors, of course, and singers, dancers and musicians, and we all had something in common. We were performing artists. That probably doesn't mean much to someone who isn't one, but to me it was very important.
From that level of acceptance I faced a vacuum. I needed to know more about art as a humble but cosmic adventure. So I began to take instructions in drawing and painting. I once described it as opening up a room in my house that I didn't know was there. I wish I could go back and learn sculpture and graphics. But I discovered myself as a painter
About 10 years ago I also began to write and now have written 2 novels, a bunch of short stories and this journal, Vagabond Journeys, which now has over 1,700 issues. I have discovered myself as a writer. And that is the point of this whole tome.
Some wise one said "If you keep doing the same thing, you'll keep getting the same result." It's alright to achieve success in some field and congratulate yourself for it. The reverse side of that coin is that your success has defined you, not just to the world outside, but also to yourself. And you will know that when you move on and "set your sights on" other levels of achievement and experience to reach for. Not only are we all capable of more than we do there is also more to us than we think there is. People are proving that every day.
Your achievements may make the papers, or strike you rich, but those are not what's important. Self discovery is what's important.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*************************
Jessica Savitch
********************
Hello Stuart
********************
In the early days of my acting career, when it became cold water obvious that I was not going to be an overnight sensation, with a Hollywood contract in my pocket too young to know what I had. I, at least, wanted to do more acting and less temp work. So one of the things I did was to keep a journal, a diary which recorded my experiences both working and trying to get work. One of the things I found was that it took me on average 10 auditions to get a job. "Well," I said in my boyish wisdom, "The answer is quite simple. Get more auditions."
That's not as easy as it sounds but I solved the problem by saying yes to everything. I went out for things I would have turned my talented nose up at, things I probably wasn't right for and things the heavy duty actors were trying out for. I was initially just trying to get more auditions but there were some surprising results.
For one thing I lowered the ratio to 6 or 7 auditions per job. And for another I was beginning to establish a reputation for myself so that even directors who didn't cast me would recommend me to other directors who did. Twice in my career I auditioned for someone who didn't cast me but then did a year later in a different production without an audition.
Gradually, as the years took their places on the string of my life and I was making a living as a performer, I began to think seriously about what entertainment was and how it fit in to the world of art. I knew other actors, of course, and singers, dancers and musicians, and we all had something in common. We were performing artists. That probably doesn't mean much to someone who isn't one, but to me it was very important.
From that level of acceptance I faced a vacuum. I needed to know more about art as a humble but cosmic adventure. So I began to take instructions in drawing and painting. I once described it as opening up a room in my house that I didn't know was there. I wish I could go back and learn sculpture and graphics. But I discovered myself as a painter
About 10 years ago I also began to write and now have written 2 novels, a bunch of short stories and this journal, Vagabond Journeys, which now has over 1,700 issues. I have discovered myself as a writer. And that is the point of this whole tome.
Some wise one said "If you keep doing the same thing, you'll keep getting the same result." It's alright to achieve success in some field and congratulate yourself for it. The reverse side of that coin is that your success has defined you, not just to the world outside, but also to yourself. And you will know that when you move on and "set your sights on" other levels of achievement and experience to reach for. Not only are we all capable of more than we do there is also more to us than we think there is. People are proving that every day.
Your achievements may make the papers, or strike you rich, but those are not what's important. Self discovery is what's important.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*************************
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Mime It
Sometimes talking is just too much. Sometimes just showing is enough.
Marjane Satrapi
*********************
Hello Marty
*********************
Over the last 5 decades I have had some remarkable experiences as an actor in theatre, memorable times when the play and the role seemed to take over my mind and my emotions and play me as an instrument. Those are the times which every performing artist hopes for. Thy are magical. And they are particularly luxurious when they are accompanied by a lesson, a gain of wisdom in the art, a gift of learning.
Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright, wrote two short plays which contain no dialogue whatsoever. Under the title "Act Without Words" They are Mime For One Player and Mime For Two Players. I was involved in productions of both of them but it was the Mime For One Player that was the most exciting. I forget a lot of plays and performances but I will never forget that one.
The play takes about a half an hour to perform. A man is thrown into a room. He tries to leave and is thrown back again. The third time he is thrown in he stays. He looks at his hands. He frequently looks at his hands as if he wasn't quite sure what they are. In the room are two blocks, one a foot square and another larger one.
As he sits there a bottle of water comes down from above on a cord. He tries to take it it but it's pulled up out of reach. He stares at it, then notices the blocks. He places the smaller one under the bottle, stands and tries to reach it but it's still too far away. He places the second larger box on top of the first one then climbs up. He reaches for the bottle but the larger box topples over to the floor and he falls. Then he gets the idea of putting the smaller box on top of the larger one. He climbs up and is about to take the bottle when it is pulled up out of sight.
He sits back down on the floor and looks at his hands. A large pair of scissors descends from above on a cord. He reaches for it and takes it. He examines the scissors and finds that the edges are very sharp. While he is examining the scissors the bottle of water descends again. He gets the idea of cutting the cord holding the bottle. He stands, takes the scissors and grabs the cord. But the bottle starts ascending again and he can't hold on to it as it rises out of sight. He sits, looks at his hands. holds the scissors, feels the sharp edge and with frustration and a sense of hopelessness he decides to use the scissors to cut his throat. Then the scissors are pulled up out of sight. He looks at his hands. Curtain.
I did one performance of this play in Northamton, Massachusetts. During it I became so involved with performing those actions it was one of those magical times when the play seemed to be playing itself. I lost all sense of space or time. I even forgot there was an audience watching me. I was only reminded of it once. I had a slight action of surprise when I saw that the handles of the scissors would separate. I heard a short chuckle from someone. Otherwise I was all by myself.
When it ended I was surprised. I literally had a slight shock of realization of where I was. There was applause, I bowed and left the stage to think about what had just happened. And what happened was that after the scissors disappeared and I was left, sitting, staring at my hands, I was thinking that if I couldn't have the water and couldn't kill myself what could I do. In other words even though the play was over I kept acting it. So that the ending, when the lights went out on me, was an abrupt interruption into my own personal experience.
That was the lesson, the gift of wisdom. When I am on stage at the end of a performance I will keep working mentally, as if the life of the character continues, until the lights are out or the curtain is closed. Since then that bit of artistry has served me very well in many other performances, even in auditions. And not a word is spoken.
Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
********************************
Marjane Satrapi
*********************
Hello Marty
*********************
Over the last 5 decades I have had some remarkable experiences as an actor in theatre, memorable times when the play and the role seemed to take over my mind and my emotions and play me as an instrument. Those are the times which every performing artist hopes for. Thy are magical. And they are particularly luxurious when they are accompanied by a lesson, a gain of wisdom in the art, a gift of learning.
Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright, wrote two short plays which contain no dialogue whatsoever. Under the title "Act Without Words" They are Mime For One Player and Mime For Two Players. I was involved in productions of both of them but it was the Mime For One Player that was the most exciting. I forget a lot of plays and performances but I will never forget that one.
The play takes about a half an hour to perform. A man is thrown into a room. He tries to leave and is thrown back again. The third time he is thrown in he stays. He looks at his hands. He frequently looks at his hands as if he wasn't quite sure what they are. In the room are two blocks, one a foot square and another larger one.
As he sits there a bottle of water comes down from above on a cord. He tries to take it it but it's pulled up out of reach. He stares at it, then notices the blocks. He places the smaller one under the bottle, stands and tries to reach it but it's still too far away. He places the second larger box on top of the first one then climbs up. He reaches for the bottle but the larger box topples over to the floor and he falls. Then he gets the idea of putting the smaller box on top of the larger one. He climbs up and is about to take the bottle when it is pulled up out of sight.
He sits back down on the floor and looks at his hands. A large pair of scissors descends from above on a cord. He reaches for it and takes it. He examines the scissors and finds that the edges are very sharp. While he is examining the scissors the bottle of water descends again. He gets the idea of cutting the cord holding the bottle. He stands, takes the scissors and grabs the cord. But the bottle starts ascending again and he can't hold on to it as it rises out of sight. He sits, looks at his hands. holds the scissors, feels the sharp edge and with frustration and a sense of hopelessness he decides to use the scissors to cut his throat. Then the scissors are pulled up out of sight. He looks at his hands. Curtain.
I did one performance of this play in Northamton, Massachusetts. During it I became so involved with performing those actions it was one of those magical times when the play seemed to be playing itself. I lost all sense of space or time. I even forgot there was an audience watching me. I was only reminded of it once. I had a slight action of surprise when I saw that the handles of the scissors would separate. I heard a short chuckle from someone. Otherwise I was all by myself.
When it ended I was surprised. I literally had a slight shock of realization of where I was. There was applause, I bowed and left the stage to think about what had just happened. And what happened was that after the scissors disappeared and I was left, sitting, staring at my hands, I was thinking that if I couldn't have the water and couldn't kill myself what could I do. In other words even though the play was over I kept acting it. So that the ending, when the lights went out on me, was an abrupt interruption into my own personal experience.
That was the lesson, the gift of wisdom. When I am on stage at the end of a performance I will keep working mentally, as if the life of the character continues, until the lights are out or the curtain is closed. Since then that bit of artistry has served me very well in many other performances, even in auditions. And not a word is spoken.
Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
********************************
Monday, December 5, 2011
Your Own You
Whatever one's role in life is, we all have our own particular style, our own particular character.
Jim Capaldi
******************
Hello Rose
******************
There is always a narrative involved, always a story. Whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a song, a novel, a legal document, an essay in a scientific journal. a play or a life, there is always a story involved.
Some people tend to tell their life stories, in bits and pieces, by writing it out in their blogs. I had a conversation today with someone who mentioned a man she knew who said that he thought a second person, disinterested or not, should edit our blogs. Well, I thought, that might not be a bad idea if you are unsure of things like spelling and grammar. But if someone takes it upon themselves to be editor and critic of my blog I'm going to say "Mind your own business."
I enjoy reading other people's blogs because they are all different. Every one has a style and purpose of it's own. The character and personality of the blogger makes it what it is, and any editor should take that into consideration if they are called upon to read and make corrections or suggest changes.
The world is full of critics. Everyone, it seems, is a critic. Some people actually make a living as critics. Most of them, alas, do more harm than good. New York City critics are infamous for destroying a perfectly good show or gallery exhibit by doing nothing more than expressing an opinion. The artists, hopefully, will survive it, many don't. But the critic will generally be forgotten. The composer Jean Sibelius put it succinctly when he wrote "There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic."
Critics love to analyze artists. 99.99% of the time they don't really know what they are seeing or hearing. Actors are particularly vulnerable to that kind of misplaced energy because it is the actor's own person that is the canvas, the musical instrument that is being played. The actor is the one upon whom the story is being told. And a good actor never forgets that. His first obligation as an artist is to tell the story.
Those who observe and comment on actors come in three types: those who are helpful, those who are abusive and those who seem satisfied. The helpful ones are those who can make good suggestions because they can recognize what the actor is doing and how to enhance it. Those who are abusive are usually the most ignorant ones.
I ran into one of those idiots in a directing class at a major New York City film school. I played a scene for the class and after it he immediately began tearing apart what I was doing. It was a directing class but he was trying to teach me acting. I had been an actor for many years.
What he couldn't understand was that as an actor I had made a choice and was acting on that choice (and doing it well, let me humbly add). If he didn't like the choice then as a director he could ask for a different choice or suggest one. I had worked with many good directors in my day. That man was not one of them. I pitied the kids in the class. He wasn't teaching them to properly direct a scene. He was teaching them how to abuse actors.
No two actors will play a scene the same way. The important thing is to get the story told. I can't live your life, and you can't live mine. We both have our stories, and how we tell them is what makes us unique in personality, character and style. That uniqueness should be respected, and not abused.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
HEAR YE, HEAR YE
With the holidays coming up I'm going to risk it all and ask for some guest bloggers to enter my journal with special thoughts on the holidays. So be thinking about it. Beginning tomorrow I'll state the specifics. Admission is free. All are welcome.
DB
****************************
Jim Capaldi
******************
Hello Rose
******************
There is always a narrative involved, always a story. Whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a song, a novel, a legal document, an essay in a scientific journal. a play or a life, there is always a story involved.
Some people tend to tell their life stories, in bits and pieces, by writing it out in their blogs. I had a conversation today with someone who mentioned a man she knew who said that he thought a second person, disinterested or not, should edit our blogs. Well, I thought, that might not be a bad idea if you are unsure of things like spelling and grammar. But if someone takes it upon themselves to be editor and critic of my blog I'm going to say "Mind your own business."
I enjoy reading other people's blogs because they are all different. Every one has a style and purpose of it's own. The character and personality of the blogger makes it what it is, and any editor should take that into consideration if they are called upon to read and make corrections or suggest changes.
The world is full of critics. Everyone, it seems, is a critic. Some people actually make a living as critics. Most of them, alas, do more harm than good. New York City critics are infamous for destroying a perfectly good show or gallery exhibit by doing nothing more than expressing an opinion. The artists, hopefully, will survive it, many don't. But the critic will generally be forgotten. The composer Jean Sibelius put it succinctly when he wrote "There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic."
Critics love to analyze artists. 99.99% of the time they don't really know what they are seeing or hearing. Actors are particularly vulnerable to that kind of misplaced energy because it is the actor's own person that is the canvas, the musical instrument that is being played. The actor is the one upon whom the story is being told. And a good actor never forgets that. His first obligation as an artist is to tell the story.
Those who observe and comment on actors come in three types: those who are helpful, those who are abusive and those who seem satisfied. The helpful ones are those who can make good suggestions because they can recognize what the actor is doing and how to enhance it. Those who are abusive are usually the most ignorant ones.
I ran into one of those idiots in a directing class at a major New York City film school. I played a scene for the class and after it he immediately began tearing apart what I was doing. It was a directing class but he was trying to teach me acting. I had been an actor for many years.
What he couldn't understand was that as an actor I had made a choice and was acting on that choice (and doing it well, let me humbly add). If he didn't like the choice then as a director he could ask for a different choice or suggest one. I had worked with many good directors in my day. That man was not one of them. I pitied the kids in the class. He wasn't teaching them to properly direct a scene. He was teaching them how to abuse actors.
No two actors will play a scene the same way. The important thing is to get the story told. I can't live your life, and you can't live mine. We both have our stories, and how we tell them is what makes us unique in personality, character and style. That uniqueness should be respected, and not abused.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
HEAR YE, HEAR YE
With the holidays coming up I'm going to risk it all and ask for some guest bloggers to enter my journal with special thoughts on the holidays. So be thinking about it. Beginning tomorrow I'll state the specifics. Admission is free. All are welcome.
DB
****************************
Monday, November 28, 2011
Play The Job
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
Warren Beatty
********************
Hello Beth
*********************
There once was a young man in the neighborhood who at the age of 14 discovered he had an amazing talent for dealing with animals. He was too young to be a vet or to go to veterinary school but he would go after high school to help out at the local veterinary and animal shelter.
All the creatures there took to him immediately. Those who could would come running up to him and he could pick them up and carry them around, even the nasty ones like the goose. One of the local papers did a story on him, with pictures of him and certain happy beasts.
I'm sure he has gone to school. got his degree and is practicing somewhere because he clearly loved all those critters.
Acting can frequently be very hard work (in spite of what some people think) and yet we refer to it as playing. We put on a play. We play. Even the objects on the stage are playing. "Where does the telephone play?" "On that table over there."
A friend came to see me perform Big Daddy in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" by Tennessee Williams. Afterwards he said "I don't know how much they're paying you, but it's too much, because you're having too much fun."
Imagine being paid for having fun. Imagine being paid for doing what you love to do. There are tricks to turning any job into play to one degree or another. But the real secret is to find what you love to do and do it all the time. It's a lot easier to sell if you are having fun.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look for the joy of your life and capture it.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***********************
Warren Beatty
********************
Hello Beth
*********************
There once was a young man in the neighborhood who at the age of 14 discovered he had an amazing talent for dealing with animals. He was too young to be a vet or to go to veterinary school but he would go after high school to help out at the local veterinary and animal shelter.
All the creatures there took to him immediately. Those who could would come running up to him and he could pick them up and carry them around, even the nasty ones like the goose. One of the local papers did a story on him, with pictures of him and certain happy beasts.
I'm sure he has gone to school. got his degree and is practicing somewhere because he clearly loved all those critters.
Acting can frequently be very hard work (in spite of what some people think) and yet we refer to it as playing. We put on a play. We play. Even the objects on the stage are playing. "Where does the telephone play?" "On that table over there."
A friend came to see me perform Big Daddy in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" by Tennessee Williams. Afterwards he said "I don't know how much they're paying you, but it's too much, because you're having too much fun."
Imagine being paid for having fun. Imagine being paid for doing what you love to do. There are tricks to turning any job into play to one degree or another. But the real secret is to find what you love to do and do it all the time. It's a lot easier to sell if you are having fun.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look for the joy of your life and capture it.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***********************
Sunday, November 6, 2011
The Actress
Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it.
Oprah Winfrey
******************
Hello Frosty
*******************
Her name is Lisa.
I was in a production in the South. It was a large theatre with almost full houses for every performance. One day a request was put up on the call board for actors who would be willing to talk to a group of high school students. I always enjoyed doing that so I put my name down right at the top.
It was a Monday afternoon, a day on which there was no performance, when another actor and I went over to the high school where we found a small group of bright, polite and energetic high school seniors. I asked them if they all saw the play and they nodded so I said to ask us questions and make them as hard as they wanted. And they did.
What followed was a very lively discussion about theatre, art and personal histories. Sitting at the end of the row was a quiet girl, a pretty brunette who finally asked something about life in the theatre.
Our conversation went something like this:
Are you interested in being in theatre?
Yes, but...
But what?
I don't know if I could make it.
Why not?
I don't know if I'm good enough.
What makes you say that?
I don't know.
Have you done any acting?
Yes. School plays.
Did you enjoy that?
Yes.
Did anyone tell you you weren't good at it?
No.
Then why don't you think you aren't good enough?
I'm just not sure.
You're not sure of yourself?
Yes. I guess so.
I looked at the other actor, who nodded his head. I said to him "I'll take this."
I picked up the folding chair I was sitting in and moved it over to right in front of her and sat down. I asked her her name. "Lisa" she said.
I took her hands in mine and stared into her eyes for a long minute. In them I saw timidity and uncertainty, then softness, distant sparkles reflected off of water, then colors surrounding a deep pool of light, cool fire.
Then I spoke, very quietly and very slowly. "Never......Doubt......Yourself."
She smiled and then I said "Promise me." She nonned with a big smile.
I let go of her hands, picked up my chair and went back to my place to finish the discussion with the others.
Good luck Lisa. Break a leg.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give up
***************************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 5 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answers.
DB
********************
Oprah Winfrey
******************
Hello Frosty
*******************
Her name is Lisa.
I was in a production in the South. It was a large theatre with almost full houses for every performance. One day a request was put up on the call board for actors who would be willing to talk to a group of high school students. I always enjoyed doing that so I put my name down right at the top.
It was a Monday afternoon, a day on which there was no performance, when another actor and I went over to the high school where we found a small group of bright, polite and energetic high school seniors. I asked them if they all saw the play and they nodded so I said to ask us questions and make them as hard as they wanted. And they did.
What followed was a very lively discussion about theatre, art and personal histories. Sitting at the end of the row was a quiet girl, a pretty brunette who finally asked something about life in the theatre.
Our conversation went something like this:
Are you interested in being in theatre?
Yes, but...
But what?
I don't know if I could make it.
Why not?
I don't know if I'm good enough.
What makes you say that?
I don't know.
Have you done any acting?
Yes. School plays.
Did you enjoy that?
Yes.
Did anyone tell you you weren't good at it?
No.
Then why don't you think you aren't good enough?
I'm just not sure.
You're not sure of yourself?
Yes. I guess so.
I looked at the other actor, who nodded his head. I said to him "I'll take this."
I picked up the folding chair I was sitting in and moved it over to right in front of her and sat down. I asked her her name. "Lisa" she said.
I took her hands in mine and stared into her eyes for a long minute. In them I saw timidity and uncertainty, then softness, distant sparkles reflected off of water, then colors surrounding a deep pool of light, cool fire.
Then I spoke, very quietly and very slowly. "Never......Doubt......Yourself."
She smiled and then I said "Promise me." She nonned with a big smile.
I let go of her hands, picked up my chair and went back to my place to finish the discussion with the others.
Good luck Lisa. Break a leg.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give up
***************************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 5 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answers.
DB
********************
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Right Answers
Sometimes creativity is a compulsion not an ambition.
Ed Norton
***********************
Hello Mark
**********************
One day I had lunch with a young actor who wanted to pick my brains about acting. We went to a restaurant where he bought me a pizza. It was a good pizza. I told him I would ask him one question and that if I didn't get the right answer I was going to talk him out of it.
The question was "Why are you an actor?"
The answer was "Because I love entertaining people."
That was a good answer so I talked for the next hour or so about acting: the job, the career, the techniques, the artistry. While I was speaking and answering his questions I realized something I didn't usually think about which was how much I loved acting, the theatre, the opportunity and process of entertaining people.
In my late teens I had several opportunities open to me and a few skills in other trades. But when I realized that I was an actor I put all my other talents in the shed and never looked back.
I've had occasions to encourage other younger actors as time went by. I remember talking with one who said he loved performing and rehearsing but he hated auditions. I turned his head around about that when I told him an audition was a chance to put on a show and entertain people.
I have known artists, painters and writers who lost sleep and did not realize it because they had to finish what they were working on. I have known ballet and modern dancers for whom discipline was such a constant way of life that they exhibited more of it than any one else. And I've known actors who were more alive on the stage than any place else. I finally realized one day that I was totally at home on the stage, that I was more comfortable, confident and capable of life the moment I stepped out on to a stage. I loved it.
Learning lines is one of the tasks of an actor. It's tedious, hard work, but the more you do it the easier it gets. I got some excellent advice from Helen Hayes who said that she memorized something every day even when she didn't have a play to work on, just to keep her memory skills in shape.
For an artist there are simple terms to describe cosmic things. Some call it the Muse, to others it's a compulsion, or a desperation or the thrill of living and expressing life. Everything you write, a novel, a history, a short story, a poem, a journal entry, becomes a part of the unbelievably limitless world of the written word. It's the same with a painting, No matter where it's hung or not hung it is part of the genius of visual art.
From the grandeur of ancient Greek and Roman theatre, through the rag tag Commedia players moving around through the Middle Ages, to the authority of European theatre, to Broadway, Hollywood, TV drama and an occasional work of quality on You Tube, actors have been entertaining people with the portrayal of real life and the glamorization of ideas for centuries.
Is there any bad art? Of course. But the people who produce it should have been asked the question I asked the young actor years ago. And if the questioner didn't get the right answer he should have talked them out of it.
Great works of art have been made, are being made right this instant and will continue to be made by artists, just as long as they are compelled by love and the right answers.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
****************************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
3 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
********************
Ed Norton
***********************
Hello Mark
**********************
One day I had lunch with a young actor who wanted to pick my brains about acting. We went to a restaurant where he bought me a pizza. It was a good pizza. I told him I would ask him one question and that if I didn't get the right answer I was going to talk him out of it.
The question was "Why are you an actor?"
The answer was "Because I love entertaining people."
That was a good answer so I talked for the next hour or so about acting: the job, the career, the techniques, the artistry. While I was speaking and answering his questions I realized something I didn't usually think about which was how much I loved acting, the theatre, the opportunity and process of entertaining people.
In my late teens I had several opportunities open to me and a few skills in other trades. But when I realized that I was an actor I put all my other talents in the shed and never looked back.
I've had occasions to encourage other younger actors as time went by. I remember talking with one who said he loved performing and rehearsing but he hated auditions. I turned his head around about that when I told him an audition was a chance to put on a show and entertain people.
I have known artists, painters and writers who lost sleep and did not realize it because they had to finish what they were working on. I have known ballet and modern dancers for whom discipline was such a constant way of life that they exhibited more of it than any one else. And I've known actors who were more alive on the stage than any place else. I finally realized one day that I was totally at home on the stage, that I was more comfortable, confident and capable of life the moment I stepped out on to a stage. I loved it.
Learning lines is one of the tasks of an actor. It's tedious, hard work, but the more you do it the easier it gets. I got some excellent advice from Helen Hayes who said that she memorized something every day even when she didn't have a play to work on, just to keep her memory skills in shape.
For an artist there are simple terms to describe cosmic things. Some call it the Muse, to others it's a compulsion, or a desperation or the thrill of living and expressing life. Everything you write, a novel, a history, a short story, a poem, a journal entry, becomes a part of the unbelievably limitless world of the written word. It's the same with a painting, No matter where it's hung or not hung it is part of the genius of visual art.
From the grandeur of ancient Greek and Roman theatre, through the rag tag Commedia players moving around through the Middle Ages, to the authority of European theatre, to Broadway, Hollywood, TV drama and an occasional work of quality on You Tube, actors have been entertaining people with the portrayal of real life and the glamorization of ideas for centuries.
Is there any bad art? Of course. But the people who produce it should have been asked the question I asked the young actor years ago. And if the questioner didn't get the right answer he should have talked them out of it.
Great works of art have been made, are being made right this instant and will continue to be made by artists, just as long as they are compelled by love and the right answers.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
****************************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
3 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
********************
Sunday, August 21, 2011
No Rules
The artist needs to be possessed of a good disposition as well as a moment of inspiration, because whatever is made according to instructions and rules turns out to be spiritless.
Immanuel Kant
************************
I used to say, half jokingly, half seriously, that I reinvent that art of acting with every role I get.
One of the best directors I ever had the privilege of working with is Charles Hensley. He came into rehearsal the first day of the first play I did with him wearing a button which read "There are no rules." Immediately I knew there was a man I could work with. He is a director who understands one of the basic principles of good theatre and how to achieve it: "Direct the Play, Not the Players."
I have known too many actors and other artists who waste their time (and other people's) looking for a path of instruction, a list of duties, in short, rules. When they find them, or make them up, their work becomes assembly line and uninspired.
The making of rules to work by, for an artist or anyone, is just as dangerous as doing something a certain way because "we've always done it that way." I used to know a world class flutist who told me that he once played with an orchestra whose conductor had a strict method for playing the music and would allow for no originality. He didn't play with that orchestra again.
The creative experience is just that, an experience. It isn't something the artist makes up. It exists in the mental realm of imagination, appreciation and discovery. Inspiration, when it comes, is a gift. But the artist must put himself in the way of it by an openness which doesn't come out of a rule book.
In my opinion, which I will defend with unarguable facts, any time, any where, 2 of the worst things a director can do to mess up the rehearsal process are 1 demand a performance level at the first rehearsal and 2 ask for improvisations before anyone knows the story. I've been through both and can attest how just plain stupid they are. In both cases they delay the creative process instead of adding to it.
I have a friend who is right now involved in a production of a Shakespearean comedy. At the first rehearsal the director wanted the actors to be up on their feet, walking around, speaking up, speeding up and relating to each other. In other words he wanted a performance. It doesn't work that way.
I was in an Off Broadway show where the director wanted the cast to improvise before we had a chance to investigate the script. As a result we improvised ourselves off into a fog. It doesn't work that way either.
On the other hand the actor who was trying to give the director a performance on the first day directed me in a Chekhov play. We spent a long time sitting around, reading and discussing it, learning about Chekhov and about life in Russia during the time of the play. Rich, excellent background work. When we got up on our feet the cast knew their parts very well. Then one day the director asked us to improvise the first act. That was one of the best experiences I ever had in the theatre. I faced and solved acting problems I might have just walked through, without knowing it, using only the Chekhovian dialogue.
And the aforementioned Charles Hensley, the "no rules" man, directed me in a Shakespearean comedy. We spent many days sitting around a table reading and talking about the play. By the time we got up to move around we were a tight ensemble company. Charley trusted us. And the performance that emerged was one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of being in. It was fresh, original, unforced, liberated, exciting and I reinvented myself again.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*******************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
15 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Immanuel Kant
************************
I used to say, half jokingly, half seriously, that I reinvent that art of acting with every role I get.
One of the best directors I ever had the privilege of working with is Charles Hensley. He came into rehearsal the first day of the first play I did with him wearing a button which read "There are no rules." Immediately I knew there was a man I could work with. He is a director who understands one of the basic principles of good theatre and how to achieve it: "Direct the Play, Not the Players."
I have known too many actors and other artists who waste their time (and other people's) looking for a path of instruction, a list of duties, in short, rules. When they find them, or make them up, their work becomes assembly line and uninspired.
The making of rules to work by, for an artist or anyone, is just as dangerous as doing something a certain way because "we've always done it that way." I used to know a world class flutist who told me that he once played with an orchestra whose conductor had a strict method for playing the music and would allow for no originality. He didn't play with that orchestra again.
The creative experience is just that, an experience. It isn't something the artist makes up. It exists in the mental realm of imagination, appreciation and discovery. Inspiration, when it comes, is a gift. But the artist must put himself in the way of it by an openness which doesn't come out of a rule book.
In my opinion, which I will defend with unarguable facts, any time, any where, 2 of the worst things a director can do to mess up the rehearsal process are 1 demand a performance level at the first rehearsal and 2 ask for improvisations before anyone knows the story. I've been through both and can attest how just plain stupid they are. In both cases they delay the creative process instead of adding to it.
I have a friend who is right now involved in a production of a Shakespearean comedy. At the first rehearsal the director wanted the actors to be up on their feet, walking around, speaking up, speeding up and relating to each other. In other words he wanted a performance. It doesn't work that way.
I was in an Off Broadway show where the director wanted the cast to improvise before we had a chance to investigate the script. As a result we improvised ourselves off into a fog. It doesn't work that way either.
On the other hand the actor who was trying to give the director a performance on the first day directed me in a Chekhov play. We spent a long time sitting around, reading and discussing it, learning about Chekhov and about life in Russia during the time of the play. Rich, excellent background work. When we got up on our feet the cast knew their parts very well. Then one day the director asked us to improvise the first act. That was one of the best experiences I ever had in the theatre. I faced and solved acting problems I might have just walked through, without knowing it, using only the Chekhovian dialogue.
And the aforementioned Charles Hensley, the "no rules" man, directed me in a Shakespearean comedy. We spent many days sitting around a table reading and talking about the play. By the time we got up to move around we were a tight ensemble company. Charley trusted us. And the performance that emerged was one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of being in. It was fresh, original, unforced, liberated, exciting and I reinvented myself again.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*******************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
15 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Connections
Man stands at the juncture of nature and spirit, he is involved in both freedom and necessity, he is both limited and limitless.
Reidar Thomte
******************
My uncle Stanley Bate was a successful painter. He lived and worked in the Hudson River valley, as did many other great painters. I learned an important concept from him, the art of visualization. It's the act of connecting the seen with the unseen, the fact with the fiction, of bringing together two realities, of telling a story by means of a story.
One of my favorite paintings of Uncle Stanley's is a picture of four empty chairs and four empty music stands grouped around in a semi circle. It's called "String Quartet."
Every work of art is limited by dimensions, materials and the craftsmanship of the artist. But there is attached to it something unlimited, something which exists in the artist's imagination. That something is the true story of the work of art. The art itself is merely a manifestation of what is really taking place. the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
I took that lesson and began to apply it to my own work. When a character enters a scene the actor has to know when to start in order to be in the proper place at the right time, or how many steps it takes him to get into place. He also needs to know why his character is entering the scene and where he is coming from. That's the objective reality of the moment. But the actor also has to know and bring on the stage with him the subjective reality of the character, a certain mentality, a remembrance of sights, sounds and aromas, a lifetime of experiences.
I also began to realize how important it was to visualize the life behind the words. Even in the case of master playwrights like Shakespeare and O'Neill there was more work to be done by the performer. Each speech carried the obligation to fulfill the words with the sights and sounds of not only the subject being discussed but the real life that surrounds the person speaking it. The words may evoke the image but the image is different for each actor who speaks them.
Miles Davis said "Don't play what's there, play what isn't there." Louis Armstrong said "What we play is life." An actor who doesn't know his words is lost in a jungle of confusion and uncertainty. Just as an actor needs to know his words, so a musician needs to know his notes. From that basis he can then play the visions and memories in his head, the stuff that "isn't there."
So when we look at a painting, watch an actor perform or listen to a piece of music we have the freedom and obligation to look beyond the facade to the super reality, the unlimited life of the artist and the art. To really listen to the music or the drama is listening instead to what the artist is saying which can't be said in notes and words. When we do that we can experience surprising results.
DB - The True Vagabond
Never give up.
***************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 14 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Reidar Thomte
******************
My uncle Stanley Bate was a successful painter. He lived and worked in the Hudson River valley, as did many other great painters. I learned an important concept from him, the art of visualization. It's the act of connecting the seen with the unseen, the fact with the fiction, of bringing together two realities, of telling a story by means of a story.
One of my favorite paintings of Uncle Stanley's is a picture of four empty chairs and four empty music stands grouped around in a semi circle. It's called "String Quartet."
Every work of art is limited by dimensions, materials and the craftsmanship of the artist. But there is attached to it something unlimited, something which exists in the artist's imagination. That something is the true story of the work of art. The art itself is merely a manifestation of what is really taking place. the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
I took that lesson and began to apply it to my own work. When a character enters a scene the actor has to know when to start in order to be in the proper place at the right time, or how many steps it takes him to get into place. He also needs to know why his character is entering the scene and where he is coming from. That's the objective reality of the moment. But the actor also has to know and bring on the stage with him the subjective reality of the character, a certain mentality, a remembrance of sights, sounds and aromas, a lifetime of experiences.
I also began to realize how important it was to visualize the life behind the words. Even in the case of master playwrights like Shakespeare and O'Neill there was more work to be done by the performer. Each speech carried the obligation to fulfill the words with the sights and sounds of not only the subject being discussed but the real life that surrounds the person speaking it. The words may evoke the image but the image is different for each actor who speaks them.
Miles Davis said "Don't play what's there, play what isn't there." Louis Armstrong said "What we play is life." An actor who doesn't know his words is lost in a jungle of confusion and uncertainty. Just as an actor needs to know his words, so a musician needs to know his notes. From that basis he can then play the visions and memories in his head, the stuff that "isn't there."
So when we look at a painting, watch an actor perform or listen to a piece of music we have the freedom and obligation to look beyond the facade to the super reality, the unlimited life of the artist and the art. To really listen to the music or the drama is listening instead to what the artist is saying which can't be said in notes and words. When we do that we can experience surprising results.
DB - The True Vagabond
Never give up.
***************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 14 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Don't Follow Me
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
**************************
From hand to hand the greeting flows,
From eye to eye the signals run,
From heart to heart the bright hope glows;
The seekers of the light are one.
(Longfellow)
Did the prophet Nahum, who wrote somewhere around 615 BCE, know that he was writing for Jews and others of the 21st Century CE? Did Nahum, whose name means "comfort," even know there would be a 21st Century? Did Nahum, who wrote "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him," even think about it? Doubtful. And yet there he is with his three chapters in the modern Bible to be read and considered by enquiring minds.
When read literally it prophesies the destruction of the Assyrian city of Nineveh. But an enlightened reader who can set aside the literal meaning and know Nineveh as only a metaphor will find a richly poetic prophesy of the destruction of evil in all its colorful forms and the eventual salvation of the human race from it.
I love to read. The better the writer the greater the pleasure. I enjoy it even more now since I write every day. And I'm learning an important lesson.
I have two books on the care and feeding of birds. They are both filled with interesting and useful information. One is well written, the other is not. What's wrong with it is that the author writes like me. I winced at the page I read yesterday and when I looked back over some of the journal entries I made in '08 and '09 I winced again. Now I'm timorous about rereading what I wrote last week or two days ago.
Great writers, many of whose books are piled up in the next room, are a source of inspiration and enlightenment but I doubt that any of them, or any good author who manages to get published is really thinking about what effect their words are going to have centuries down the line.
I'm learning a lesson I learned years ago as an actor. You don't go on the stage to impress the audience with your looks, voice, stage presence, charisma or acting ability. You go on the stage to tell a story. It's the story, the metaphor of the drama that affects people, or should, if it's done right.
Good actors watch other good actors for the same reason good writers read great literature. Not to copy but to take up the torch and pass it on just as Nahum did, just as Longfellow did.
So I promise myself, and I promise you, if I find myself not telling the story but trying to impress a reader with my vocabulary, diction, syntax or shrewd and splashy turn of phrase I will smack myself across the knuckles soundly with something that doesn't do much damage.
Thank you for reading my journal.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
****************************
It's Summer. Time to give over the answers to the SPRING QUESTION.
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
---------------------------------------------
12 diverse and interesting answers.
-----------------------------------------
Do I think that NASA should send a two person mission to Mars. Absolutely not. It would serve no useful purpose and it would put the lives of those two people in unnecessary jeopardy.
I would think that a mission like this would cost many millions of dollars and at a time when many states are going broke, there are deep cuts to infrastructure, education, health, and community programs. The taxpayers are already on the hook to the tune of about 250 million dollars a day to fund the war in Iraq. All of that money has been siphoned away from funds that might have been available to create jobs, house and feed the homeless, stabilize towns and cities across America and provide a better future for both young and old.
We are not good stewards of our own earth and we have caused more problems here than we have fixed. There is absolutely no need to be spending money we don’t have in order to be exploring other planets. We need to get our priorities back in order.
-------------------------------
When it comes to Mars, I think that it is innate for man to explore and want to extend his reach. I am all in favor of the project and they could get the money by stopping the useless wars and invest in NASA.
-------------------------------------------------------
Good question! Since a year on Mars is nearly twice ours --and
elliptical-- the two planets get within 7-month's journey only every 2
Earth-years. So our astronauts would have to stay a year longer on
Mars. On top of this protraction, they would run out of food and have
to eat each other up, which would probably strain their relationship
afterward. I don't think they should do it.
--------------------------------------------
An unpopular view I'm sure.
Trip to Mars is wrong on so many levels, even, perhaps immoral.
We need the expertise, money, dedication, time, here on Earth. Fix things here, make Earth a better place. Don't go chasing waterfalls.
------------------------------------
Sure! Why not?
The travel time will reek havoc in their lives but the six months there will give them a ton of information to share..and perhaps experiments can be performed! :)
I have heard that people accomplish a lot in scientific experiments out in space!thanks! Interesting topic DB!
-------------------------------------
I think man has screwed up earth enough that he should leave the other planets alone and use the time and money spent going to Mars fixing all the damage he's done here on earth.
------------------------------------
Yes, because the highest mountain in the solar system is THERE.
---------------------------------------------
why go to mars when you can grow squash in your back yard, or at least
some chives in a window pot. All you can plant on mars is a flag.
Unless to go from Mars to `=7,./[]}#2 where all will be virgin
---------------------------------------------------
The human race, if it wants to continue to exist, has to solve its housing problem. In several million years our sun will go supernova and incinerate, during its expansion, the planet Earth. Then, when it cools down to a grey dwarf, what was planet Earth will be a cold rock of ice. Not a good place to live or vacation. We have to start flying around the Universe a la Star Trek and find other inhabitable planets if we wish to continue our future existence as a race. They better find a better propulsion system and more sophisticated means to harness energy, hopefully without hardware and make use of Warp Space (which are only time tunnels or Worms) for getting around more easily. It’s all in Star Trek, we’re just catching up.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Spring Question: Yes. Our greatest advances have come from pure science and discovery missions. We need to keep the ball rolling.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm going to respond to this purely from a "seems right" standpoint; that is, I know nothing more about the situation than what you've told me.
Anyway, I suppose traveling to Mars could be an utter waste of resources--time, money and energy that could be channeled toward solving some of our own planets problems instead of involving another. But, to be honest, even if we relocated the time, money and energy it may take to send two men to Mars, I can't bring myself to believe that it would certainly go to something like, for example, improving hospitals in Dhaka. So with all of that aside, every part of my being is screaming, "Why the hell not?! Go to Mars!"
But none of that is what I've really wanted to say to you. What truthfully came to mind when I read your question was this whole concept of mystery and wonderment, and all of these cliche ideas that still make me feel brave and strange and beautiful, regardless of their tendency to be overused in cheap literary settings. Visiting a different planet entirely, a place that authors and dreamers and children have fantasized about; a place that's so unknown, sometimes I feel as though its mass is more daydream than it is anything else.
Given not only the ability but the willingness and eagerness to explore, it would be a grand opportunity to waste. And not just for the intellectual gain either, which is, of course, very important... but for the experiences of the astronauts, the engineers and the planners, the people tracking the progress the whole year and a half it's happening, and for the people who tune in right at the end. These could be the kind of experiences, I think, that lead to understanding, empathy, introspection and perspective... not that experiences like that are necessarily farther away than the backyard garden, but they're valuable nonetheless, and, I think, are well worth a trip to Mars.
The potential there, the possibility, all of it reminds me quite a bit of how I felt when I finished reading A Wrinkle In Time in third grade. Childishly excited, maybe, but sincerely so.
--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
Thank you all. Take a breath. SUMMER QUESTION is coming.
DB
******************
Matsuo Basho
**************************
From hand to hand the greeting flows,
From eye to eye the signals run,
From heart to heart the bright hope glows;
The seekers of the light are one.
(Longfellow)
Did the prophet Nahum, who wrote somewhere around 615 BCE, know that he was writing for Jews and others of the 21st Century CE? Did Nahum, whose name means "comfort," even know there would be a 21st Century? Did Nahum, who wrote "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him," even think about it? Doubtful. And yet there he is with his three chapters in the modern Bible to be read and considered by enquiring minds.
When read literally it prophesies the destruction of the Assyrian city of Nineveh. But an enlightened reader who can set aside the literal meaning and know Nineveh as only a metaphor will find a richly poetic prophesy of the destruction of evil in all its colorful forms and the eventual salvation of the human race from it.
I love to read. The better the writer the greater the pleasure. I enjoy it even more now since I write every day. And I'm learning an important lesson.
I have two books on the care and feeding of birds. They are both filled with interesting and useful information. One is well written, the other is not. What's wrong with it is that the author writes like me. I winced at the page I read yesterday and when I looked back over some of the journal entries I made in '08 and '09 I winced again. Now I'm timorous about rereading what I wrote last week or two days ago.
Great writers, many of whose books are piled up in the next room, are a source of inspiration and enlightenment but I doubt that any of them, or any good author who manages to get published is really thinking about what effect their words are going to have centuries down the line.
I'm learning a lesson I learned years ago as an actor. You don't go on the stage to impress the audience with your looks, voice, stage presence, charisma or acting ability. You go on the stage to tell a story. It's the story, the metaphor of the drama that affects people, or should, if it's done right.
Good actors watch other good actors for the same reason good writers read great literature. Not to copy but to take up the torch and pass it on just as Nahum did, just as Longfellow did.
So I promise myself, and I promise you, if I find myself not telling the story but trying to impress a reader with my vocabulary, diction, syntax or shrewd and splashy turn of phrase I will smack myself across the knuckles soundly with something that doesn't do much damage.
Thank you for reading my journal.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
****************************
It's Summer. Time to give over the answers to the SPRING QUESTION.
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
---------------------------------------------
12 diverse and interesting answers.
-----------------------------------------
Do I think that NASA should send a two person mission to Mars. Absolutely not. It would serve no useful purpose and it would put the lives of those two people in unnecessary jeopardy.
I would think that a mission like this would cost many millions of dollars and at a time when many states are going broke, there are deep cuts to infrastructure, education, health, and community programs. The taxpayers are already on the hook to the tune of about 250 million dollars a day to fund the war in Iraq. All of that money has been siphoned away from funds that might have been available to create jobs, house and feed the homeless, stabilize towns and cities across America and provide a better future for both young and old.
We are not good stewards of our own earth and we have caused more problems here than we have fixed. There is absolutely no need to be spending money we don’t have in order to be exploring other planets. We need to get our priorities back in order.
-------------------------------
When it comes to Mars, I think that it is innate for man to explore and want to extend his reach. I am all in favor of the project and they could get the money by stopping the useless wars and invest in NASA.
-------------------------------------------------------
Good question! Since a year on Mars is nearly twice ours --and
elliptical-- the two planets get within 7-month's journey only every 2
Earth-years. So our astronauts would have to stay a year longer on
Mars. On top of this protraction, they would run out of food and have
to eat each other up, which would probably strain their relationship
afterward. I don't think they should do it.
--------------------------------------------
An unpopular view I'm sure.
Trip to Mars is wrong on so many levels, even, perhaps immoral.
We need the expertise, money, dedication, time, here on Earth. Fix things here, make Earth a better place. Don't go chasing waterfalls.
------------------------------------
Sure! Why not?
The travel time will reek havoc in their lives but the six months there will give them a ton of information to share..and perhaps experiments can be performed! :)
I have heard that people accomplish a lot in scientific experiments out in space!thanks! Interesting topic DB!
-------------------------------------
I think man has screwed up earth enough that he should leave the other planets alone and use the time and money spent going to Mars fixing all the damage he's done here on earth.
------------------------------------
Yes, because the highest mountain in the solar system is THERE.
---------------------------------------------
why go to mars when you can grow squash in your back yard, or at least
some chives in a window pot. All you can plant on mars is a flag.
Unless to go from Mars to `=7,./[]}#2 where all will be virgin
---------------------------------------------------
The human race, if it wants to continue to exist, has to solve its housing problem. In several million years our sun will go supernova and incinerate, during its expansion, the planet Earth. Then, when it cools down to a grey dwarf, what was planet Earth will be a cold rock of ice. Not a good place to live or vacation. We have to start flying around the Universe a la Star Trek and find other inhabitable planets if we wish to continue our future existence as a race. They better find a better propulsion system and more sophisticated means to harness energy, hopefully without hardware and make use of Warp Space (which are only time tunnels or Worms) for getting around more easily. It’s all in Star Trek, we’re just catching up.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Spring Question: Yes. Our greatest advances have come from pure science and discovery missions. We need to keep the ball rolling.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm going to respond to this purely from a "seems right" standpoint; that is, I know nothing more about the situation than what you've told me.
Anyway, I suppose traveling to Mars could be an utter waste of resources--time, money and energy that could be channeled toward solving some of our own planets problems instead of involving another. But, to be honest, even if we relocated the time, money and energy it may take to send two men to Mars, I can't bring myself to believe that it would certainly go to something like, for example, improving hospitals in Dhaka. So with all of that aside, every part of my being is screaming, "Why the hell not?! Go to Mars!"
But none of that is what I've really wanted to say to you. What truthfully came to mind when I read your question was this whole concept of mystery and wonderment, and all of these cliche ideas that still make me feel brave and strange and beautiful, regardless of their tendency to be overused in cheap literary settings. Visiting a different planet entirely, a place that authors and dreamers and children have fantasized about; a place that's so unknown, sometimes I feel as though its mass is more daydream than it is anything else.
Given not only the ability but the willingness and eagerness to explore, it would be a grand opportunity to waste. And not just for the intellectual gain either, which is, of course, very important... but for the experiences of the astronauts, the engineers and the planners, the people tracking the progress the whole year and a half it's happening, and for the people who tune in right at the end. These could be the kind of experiences, I think, that lead to understanding, empathy, introspection and perspective... not that experiences like that are necessarily farther away than the backyard garden, but they're valuable nonetheless, and, I think, are well worth a trip to Mars.
The potential there, the possibility, all of it reminds me quite a bit of how I felt when I finished reading A Wrinkle In Time in third grade. Childishly excited, maybe, but sincerely so.
--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
Thank you all. Take a breath. SUMMER QUESTION is coming.
DB
******************
Monday, May 30, 2011
Creating A Role
He who strives will find his goals strive for him equally.
Euripides
*******************
Hello Kapalua Hawaii
**************************
Many years ago I saw a production of "The Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare. I didn't know any of the actors but I was particularly impress by the actor who played Petruchio. He filled out the role with strength, virility and a stage taking manliness. A few years later I met the actor when we were both hired to work in the same theatre company. In real life he was a young, short, gay fellow. It didn't matter. He had found Petruchio and played him brilliantly.
I auditioned for a Broadway show and was told by the director I could never possibly play the role I was auditioning for even though I had just played it in another theatre. That was his first mistake. Then he asked me to read for another part, a young man who falsely threatens to drown himself. The director began describing a horrible scene of me floating around in a river full of garbage and human waste. That was his second mistake. He didn't cast me but the show never took place. That was his third mistake but it's understandable considering his approach to the art of acting.
The man to find there was not the man who could jump into a fetid river but the man who could feel such a passion of self destruction that he could threaten such a thing.
There are two ways for an actor to depict a character on the stage: the right way and the wrong way, the creative way and the artificial way. Many actors fit a character around themselves like a suit of clothes. Sometimes they wear the suit, sometimes the suit wears them. But there is a principle of character development in acting that is almost mystical. It is best and only described as that at the same moment you set out to discover your character, your character sets out to find you. It sounds quite other worldly I know, but it actually happens, as Euripides must have known.
I remember two roles I played of men who were totally unlike me and how I found them. One was an official torturer for an unnamed South American dictatorship. The other was an older gay man being taken out for Christmas dinner by his young lover. Since I am neither gay nor could I ever torture anyone both these roles presented me challenges to find and portray these men honestly.
In the case of the torturer I didn't waste my time imagining applying electronic shocks to anyone's genitalia. There were no scenes like that in the play. He worked for the government. Torturing was his job. The play was about his relationship with his unfaithful wife and the sadomasochism that was part of that relationship. And when I began to search for the character on those terms he began searching for me. And one day I discovered him. I looked into the mirror and there he was looking back at me. We found each other. From then on I could play him, and he could play me.
Playing the gay man, on the contrary, required imagining things that weren't happening. Instead of eating the meal his young lover bought for him he drank wine and reminisced about his own youth when he was in love with his college English professor who eventually betrayed him and broke his heart.
Instead of sitting at a table in a three piece gray suit with an untouched plate of food next to him I imagined him as a young, sweater wearing poet, passionate about life, living again through all the sad and happy moments of his love affair. When I worked it that way the man showed up and sat right down in the chair with me.
Your goals may not be as far off the center of your life as mine were in those two cases, but the principle is the same. To imagine graphically is correct as long as it is appropriate. Floating in rivers and torturing people gets one nowhere, but to find the key that unlocks the door to your dream will set the dream on a search for you. You will know you've done it when the dream comes true. Then on to the next one.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Euripides
*******************
Hello Kapalua Hawaii
**************************
Many years ago I saw a production of "The Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare. I didn't know any of the actors but I was particularly impress by the actor who played Petruchio. He filled out the role with strength, virility and a stage taking manliness. A few years later I met the actor when we were both hired to work in the same theatre company. In real life he was a young, short, gay fellow. It didn't matter. He had found Petruchio and played him brilliantly.
I auditioned for a Broadway show and was told by the director I could never possibly play the role I was auditioning for even though I had just played it in another theatre. That was his first mistake. Then he asked me to read for another part, a young man who falsely threatens to drown himself. The director began describing a horrible scene of me floating around in a river full of garbage and human waste. That was his second mistake. He didn't cast me but the show never took place. That was his third mistake but it's understandable considering his approach to the art of acting.
The man to find there was not the man who could jump into a fetid river but the man who could feel such a passion of self destruction that he could threaten such a thing.
There are two ways for an actor to depict a character on the stage: the right way and the wrong way, the creative way and the artificial way. Many actors fit a character around themselves like a suit of clothes. Sometimes they wear the suit, sometimes the suit wears them. But there is a principle of character development in acting that is almost mystical. It is best and only described as that at the same moment you set out to discover your character, your character sets out to find you. It sounds quite other worldly I know, but it actually happens, as Euripides must have known.
I remember two roles I played of men who were totally unlike me and how I found them. One was an official torturer for an unnamed South American dictatorship. The other was an older gay man being taken out for Christmas dinner by his young lover. Since I am neither gay nor could I ever torture anyone both these roles presented me challenges to find and portray these men honestly.
In the case of the torturer I didn't waste my time imagining applying electronic shocks to anyone's genitalia. There were no scenes like that in the play. He worked for the government. Torturing was his job. The play was about his relationship with his unfaithful wife and the sadomasochism that was part of that relationship. And when I began to search for the character on those terms he began searching for me. And one day I discovered him. I looked into the mirror and there he was looking back at me. We found each other. From then on I could play him, and he could play me.
Playing the gay man, on the contrary, required imagining things that weren't happening. Instead of eating the meal his young lover bought for him he drank wine and reminisced about his own youth when he was in love with his college English professor who eventually betrayed him and broke his heart.
Instead of sitting at a table in a three piece gray suit with an untouched plate of food next to him I imagined him as a young, sweater wearing poet, passionate about life, living again through all the sad and happy moments of his love affair. When I worked it that way the man showed up and sat right down in the chair with me.
Your goals may not be as far off the center of your life as mine were in those two cases, but the principle is the same. To imagine graphically is correct as long as it is appropriate. Floating in rivers and torturing people gets one nowhere, but to find the key that unlocks the door to your dream will set the dream on a search for you. You will know you've done it when the dream comes true. Then on to the next one.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Don't Talk Of Bulls
It is not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring.
Spanish proverb
******************
Hello Centennial, Colorado
**********************
I can talk about acting because I have been on the stage. But I won't. Instead I will surmise that almost any occupation in life whether a profession or a hobby, is too often looked upon and thought upon as being much simpler than it is.
I'm not much of a sports fan but I will occasionally watch a baseball game. I enjoy watching the pitcher before the pitch because I know something about the thinking going on. It's a battle of brains between the pitcher and the batter. When the pitcher winds up to throw the ball a decision has been made. There is an agreed upon tactic between the pitcher and the catcher based upon observation, study, intuition and the character of the game up to that point. Many factors come into play with each pitch. But most people are probably totally unaware of the thinking that is going on. Don't talk of bulls.
If you go to a tennis match you will see everyone watching the ball. The heads all go back and forth, back and forth, great exercise for the neck. My head goes back and forth in the opposite direction, or more likely I look at only one of the players. I like to watch the thinking of the one who is receiving the ball because it doesn't matter so much if he hits it, it's where he hits it that counts. Don't talk of bulls.
I had a nasty neighbor once who said that I looked tired. I told him I was double shifting. He wanted to know what I did. When I told him I was a radio announcer he said "Oh, well, that's not hard work." I wondered if he had ever been on the air in a radio studio with many thousands listening and a minute and a half to fill with entertaining talk. I think probably not.
No doubt there are jobs that are harder than broadcasting but it sounds easy because we make it sound easy. Don't talk of bulls.
Ballerinas float effortlessly through the air on their toes. Have you ever seen a ballerina's toes? Don't talk of bulls.
A well kept garden is a beautiful thing, lush, fecund greenery and many colored flowers, delighting the eyes and offering sweet aromas to the air all the way down to the ground. But what's under the ground, where all the work is being done, only the flower and the gardener know. Don't talk of bulls.
One day a building on my block in New York which was still under construction caught fire. Burning pieces of the building were blowing off and falling to the street below. It was a tall apartment building about 50 stories of it had been completed. The fire was on the top floors. The only way the fire fighters could get to it was by the construction elevator on the side of the building. But that elevator stopped two or three stories above the blazing inferno. I watched in awe as those people jumped into the fire, at the risk of life and injury, not knowing what was underneath them, to put the fire out. Don't talk of bulls.
There has been a lot of talk about the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden. Too many people have opinions about what the Navy SEALS did or did not do, what they should have done or should not have done and so forth. All of those opinions come from people who were not there. Don't talk of bulls.
DB - The Vagabond
------------------------
Never give up
********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
,
DB
******************
Spanish proverb
******************
Hello Centennial, Colorado
**********************
I can talk about acting because I have been on the stage. But I won't. Instead I will surmise that almost any occupation in life whether a profession or a hobby, is too often looked upon and thought upon as being much simpler than it is.
I'm not much of a sports fan but I will occasionally watch a baseball game. I enjoy watching the pitcher before the pitch because I know something about the thinking going on. It's a battle of brains between the pitcher and the batter. When the pitcher winds up to throw the ball a decision has been made. There is an agreed upon tactic between the pitcher and the catcher based upon observation, study, intuition and the character of the game up to that point. Many factors come into play with each pitch. But most people are probably totally unaware of the thinking that is going on. Don't talk of bulls.
If you go to a tennis match you will see everyone watching the ball. The heads all go back and forth, back and forth, great exercise for the neck. My head goes back and forth in the opposite direction, or more likely I look at only one of the players. I like to watch the thinking of the one who is receiving the ball because it doesn't matter so much if he hits it, it's where he hits it that counts. Don't talk of bulls.
I had a nasty neighbor once who said that I looked tired. I told him I was double shifting. He wanted to know what I did. When I told him I was a radio announcer he said "Oh, well, that's not hard work." I wondered if he had ever been on the air in a radio studio with many thousands listening and a minute and a half to fill with entertaining talk. I think probably not.
No doubt there are jobs that are harder than broadcasting but it sounds easy because we make it sound easy. Don't talk of bulls.
Ballerinas float effortlessly through the air on their toes. Have you ever seen a ballerina's toes? Don't talk of bulls.
A well kept garden is a beautiful thing, lush, fecund greenery and many colored flowers, delighting the eyes and offering sweet aromas to the air all the way down to the ground. But what's under the ground, where all the work is being done, only the flower and the gardener know. Don't talk of bulls.
One day a building on my block in New York which was still under construction caught fire. Burning pieces of the building were blowing off and falling to the street below. It was a tall apartment building about 50 stories of it had been completed. The fire was on the top floors. The only way the fire fighters could get to it was by the construction elevator on the side of the building. But that elevator stopped two or three stories above the blazing inferno. I watched in awe as those people jumped into the fire, at the risk of life and injury, not knowing what was underneath them, to put the fire out. Don't talk of bulls.
There has been a lot of talk about the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden. Too many people have opinions about what the Navy SEALS did or did not do, what they should have done or should not have done and so forth. All of those opinions come from people who were not there. Don't talk of bulls.
DB - The Vagabond
------------------------
Never give up
********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
,
DB
******************
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Free Artist
Artistry is possible only for those who acknowledge necessity as a condition of, rather than as a limit upon, their freedom to act.
Aaron Ridley
******************
Hello Bermuda
********************
You might as well make a pot of tea because this is a long one. Of course, you could skip it if you want to. But if you do that I won't send you any more cookies.
----------------------------
"Why do I keep writing?" I asked myself in my journal a few days ago. Naturally, the answer is "I write because I have to." Every morning two vicious, sinister guys in double breasted suits show up here with Tasers wanting to see what I wrote the day before. If I can't show them something I'm in for a lot of trouble. One day I said I was tired and needed to rest. That earned me a smack across the back of the head with a tether ball paddle.
The two men in suits are known as imagination and humor. I write because I must, because the ideas flow. It's like breathing. If you exhale you have to inhale. Every time I exhale it's another vagabond journey. If you inhale you have to exhale, there is only so long I can hold my breath.
If you walked in on me you would probably find me sitting on my bed staring aimlessly into space. At least that's what it would look like. (My mother used to think I was dopey.) But that's where the inspiration is, in the silent breath of ideas.
Like the lungs, the human mind works by itself. But also like the lungs we can control its workings. I have a quote somewhere which says that the reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory. A long time ago I decided that since my mind was going to work, as long as I was continuing to think, I had a responsibility to myself to think as clearly and as originally as possible. One doesn't have to be a great thinker, a genius, to utilize one's intelligence intelligently. It takes a little discipline and some getting used to.
Another thing I decided was that I didn't want to express myself through grand old sterling silver cliches. Most of them were invented by Shakespeare anyway, like "wild goose chase" and "eaten me out of house and home." His was a good example. If he can make them up, so can I.
So now I look forward to sitting down at the keyboard after staring into space to discover what this senior citizen's imagination is going to hatch. And I don't hold my breath.
---------------------------------
It was the same with my acting. I may have told this story before. (What DB? You're repeating yourself? Warn the Google censors.) If you've heard it before you can talk among yourselves or go out for a beer.
I was doing "A Christmas Carol" at a New York State theatre. There was a quick change in the show, when Scrooge goes from his bed clothes into the winter clothes he wears to visit Fred's family and on the way buy the goose for the Cratchets.
The production gave me one minute to make the change. On stage was a small group singing a hymn. My dresser was a retired actress who had been the understudy for some of the most famous actresses on Broadway. Quick changes are things that have to be carefully designed and thoroughly rehearsed. The first time we did the change it took about five minutes. But we gradually worked it down to about a minute, and that's how we opened the show. But as time went buy we got even faster with it, and one night we did it in about 30 seconds. I went out and joined the singers.
After the performance my dresser said she was very impressed that instead of resting for the 30 seconds I went back out on the stage and it showed that's where I really wanted to be.
I was well into my career when that happened, but early on I learned that being on the stage was the place where I was the most comfortable, the most at home. I was free to work through the words of the great playwrights, to depict the human race to itself in all its disguises, to offer messages of joy, healing, fresh ideas and fresh expressions of standard ideas, to invite the people who saw me into the strange and wonderful world of human life through art. It was my necessity.
Now I write and I paint. If you do what you love you will do it even when you're tired. If you do what you love because you must, you won't even know you're tired.
Thank you for reading my journal.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Aaron Ridley
******************
Hello Bermuda
********************
You might as well make a pot of tea because this is a long one. Of course, you could skip it if you want to. But if you do that I won't send you any more cookies.
----------------------------
"Why do I keep writing?" I asked myself in my journal a few days ago. Naturally, the answer is "I write because I have to." Every morning two vicious, sinister guys in double breasted suits show up here with Tasers wanting to see what I wrote the day before. If I can't show them something I'm in for a lot of trouble. One day I said I was tired and needed to rest. That earned me a smack across the back of the head with a tether ball paddle.
The two men in suits are known as imagination and humor. I write because I must, because the ideas flow. It's like breathing. If you exhale you have to inhale. Every time I exhale it's another vagabond journey. If you inhale you have to exhale, there is only so long I can hold my breath.
If you walked in on me you would probably find me sitting on my bed staring aimlessly into space. At least that's what it would look like. (My mother used to think I was dopey.) But that's where the inspiration is, in the silent breath of ideas.
Like the lungs, the human mind works by itself. But also like the lungs we can control its workings. I have a quote somewhere which says that the reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory. A long time ago I decided that since my mind was going to work, as long as I was continuing to think, I had a responsibility to myself to think as clearly and as originally as possible. One doesn't have to be a great thinker, a genius, to utilize one's intelligence intelligently. It takes a little discipline and some getting used to.
Another thing I decided was that I didn't want to express myself through grand old sterling silver cliches. Most of them were invented by Shakespeare anyway, like "wild goose chase" and "eaten me out of house and home." His was a good example. If he can make them up, so can I.
So now I look forward to sitting down at the keyboard after staring into space to discover what this senior citizen's imagination is going to hatch. And I don't hold my breath.
---------------------------------
It was the same with my acting. I may have told this story before. (What DB? You're repeating yourself? Warn the Google censors.) If you've heard it before you can talk among yourselves or go out for a beer.
I was doing "A Christmas Carol" at a New York State theatre. There was a quick change in the show, when Scrooge goes from his bed clothes into the winter clothes he wears to visit Fred's family and on the way buy the goose for the Cratchets.
The production gave me one minute to make the change. On stage was a small group singing a hymn. My dresser was a retired actress who had been the understudy for some of the most famous actresses on Broadway. Quick changes are things that have to be carefully designed and thoroughly rehearsed. The first time we did the change it took about five minutes. But we gradually worked it down to about a minute, and that's how we opened the show. But as time went buy we got even faster with it, and one night we did it in about 30 seconds. I went out and joined the singers.
After the performance my dresser said she was very impressed that instead of resting for the 30 seconds I went back out on the stage and it showed that's where I really wanted to be.
I was well into my career when that happened, but early on I learned that being on the stage was the place where I was the most comfortable, the most at home. I was free to work through the words of the great playwrights, to depict the human race to itself in all its disguises, to offer messages of joy, healing, fresh ideas and fresh expressions of standard ideas, to invite the people who saw me into the strange and wonderful world of human life through art. It was my necessity.
Now I write and I paint. If you do what you love you will do it even when you're tired. If you do what you love because you must, you won't even know you're tired.
Thank you for reading my journal.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Over Do It
Every artists knows how far from any feeling of letting himself go his most "natural" state is.
Friedrich Nietzsche
*************************
Hello Bregenz, Austria
***********************
A wise man once said that he treats everything with moderation, even moderation. That word "moderation" is probably the most useless word in the world of art and artists. Unless we are "out on a limb" where most people consider it excessive, unless we are in those dangerous places of opulence, magnanimity and ripeness we can't make the discoveries and produce the marvels that are so beloved by the rest of the world.
Think of the lush paintings of Rubens, Botticelli and Rembrandt, the vigorous poetry of Shakespeare or John Donne, the novels of Dostoevski. There is nothing moderate about any of their works. If you say Tchaikovski, most people think of the 1812 Overture. Where's the moderation in that?
One day a colleague and I went to visit a class of high school seniors who had seen our play. Questions were asked and one boy asked what life was like in the theatre. I asked him if he was thinking about a life in the theatre. He said "Mildly." My colleague said "Well, if you're thinking about it mildly don't think about it." And that brought on a discussion of what it was like for professional actors, how there was nothing mild about it, how it was with us every moment, how it was a constant occupation and preoccupation of our thoughts and lives, as it is with any artist.
I explained that we were not addicted, obsessed or insane but that we were committed to it and that it ranked in our lives above any other activity. I told the boy he might stop thinking mildly about it and start thinking passionately. Or he may soon discover something else to which he knows he can honestly commit his life.
Every day I sit here and write a entry into the Vagabond Journes and I often wonder why I do it. There is usually some mud the computer wants to throw on my page. Tonight it's that some girl scout stole my cookies so I have to reregister for every place I want to log in to. But I also wonder about the seeming futility of what I am doing. Maybe 15 people out of the millions in the world read my journal and maybe I will get 2 or 3 comments. It seems unlikely that any words will reach the shores where they can do the most good, unless I publish, which I would love to do if I knew how.
So why do I keep writing?
DB - Vagabond Journeys
***************************
This Week's Contest
This is one I put up a few years ago and people seemed to enjoy it so here it goes again.
You are now ordered to take a famous remark, a cliche or otherwise and restate it in the most verbose manner possible. Example:
Night is an inappropriate time for the manufacture of animal feed.
(Make hay while the sun shines.)
Get it? Ken Riches won this contest the last time, so you're up against some heavy competition.
Good luck. The decision of the ornery, biased, curmudgeon is final.
DB
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Friedrich Nietzsche
*************************
Hello Bregenz, Austria
***********************
A wise man once said that he treats everything with moderation, even moderation. That word "moderation" is probably the most useless word in the world of art and artists. Unless we are "out on a limb" where most people consider it excessive, unless we are in those dangerous places of opulence, magnanimity and ripeness we can't make the discoveries and produce the marvels that are so beloved by the rest of the world.
Think of the lush paintings of Rubens, Botticelli and Rembrandt, the vigorous poetry of Shakespeare or John Donne, the novels of Dostoevski. There is nothing moderate about any of their works. If you say Tchaikovski, most people think of the 1812 Overture. Where's the moderation in that?
One day a colleague and I went to visit a class of high school seniors who had seen our play. Questions were asked and one boy asked what life was like in the theatre. I asked him if he was thinking about a life in the theatre. He said "Mildly." My colleague said "Well, if you're thinking about it mildly don't think about it." And that brought on a discussion of what it was like for professional actors, how there was nothing mild about it, how it was with us every moment, how it was a constant occupation and preoccupation of our thoughts and lives, as it is with any artist.
I explained that we were not addicted, obsessed or insane but that we were committed to it and that it ranked in our lives above any other activity. I told the boy he might stop thinking mildly about it and start thinking passionately. Or he may soon discover something else to which he knows he can honestly commit his life.
Every day I sit here and write a entry into the Vagabond Journes and I often wonder why I do it. There is usually some mud the computer wants to throw on my page. Tonight it's that some girl scout stole my cookies so I have to reregister for every place I want to log in to. But I also wonder about the seeming futility of what I am doing. Maybe 15 people out of the millions in the world read my journal and maybe I will get 2 or 3 comments. It seems unlikely that any words will reach the shores where they can do the most good, unless I publish, which I would love to do if I knew how.
So why do I keep writing?
DB - Vagabond Journeys
***************************
This Week's Contest
This is one I put up a few years ago and people seemed to enjoy it so here it goes again.
You are now ordered to take a famous remark, a cliche or otherwise and restate it in the most verbose manner possible. Example:
Night is an inappropriate time for the manufacture of animal feed.
(Make hay while the sun shines.)
Get it? Ken Riches won this contest the last time, so you're up against some heavy competition.
Good luck. The decision of the ornery, biased, curmudgeon is final.
DB
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Friday, March 25, 2011
Fortune Telling
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth, is potentially to have everything.
Joan Didion
*******************
A palmist can look at your hand and tell you things about your life. A Greek mystic can do the same thing with your coffee grounds. A gypsy mystic does it with a crystal ball. An astrologer will cast your life according to the stars. A Muslim mystic will draw a circle on the ground and make you see images in the circle. Or you can bypass the clairvoyants and cast I Ching or read the Tarot. In every case what you learn is something that is already in your own mind that you didn't know was there.
At some point in my life I have consulted all of those sources of esoteric knowledge in hopes of finding solutions to my difficult and troubled life. And did I get any solid answers? I don't know.
I grew up in a poor family. We became authorities on "making do." Making do is a tactic for survival. Making do requires struggle and sacrifice and is inevitably accompanied by some suffering. Millions of people in this country and others are making do while, ironically, billions upon billions sit in Swiss banks, billions owned by people who don't know what to do with it.
I saw my mother go off to typing jobs with her arthritic fingers. When I was old enough to take care of myself she worked in the evenings as a baby sitter.
When I was a teenager a neighbor gave an old bicycle. I fixed it up and took a paper route. I knew a rich guy who didn't need the money. His paper route was in a tenement. He just took an elevator to the top and walked down dropping papers at apartment doors. Mine was outside. There were winter days with so much snow I couldn't deliver the papers by bicycle, I had to walk them through the neighborhoods carrying the heave bag, in the freezing cold. I didn't complain much. I had a job. One summer day, while I was delivering the papers, our house burned down. Then we lived in a wealthy couples glassed in porch, with no privacy at all.
When you are poor you are automatically insulted by the rich, even when they think they are being compassionate.
From an early age I loved classical music. I bought a small $11 plastic radio so I could listen to the only AM station playing good music (a station I became an announcer for many years later). My schoolmates and teachers thought I was pretending, putting on airs, showing off, trying to make an impression that I was superior somehow. But I genuinely loved the music. So when the insults flew I just kept quiet and stayed by myself.
There is a point to this sad tale and it is that I finally got the respect I deserved when I stepped on the stage as an actor. Then and there I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing. I found there the answers to a lot of questions I never got from I Ching or the crystal ball.
Where did the artistry of my acting come from? Was it born in the great music I loved or in the struggle of poverty? Was I tempered by the freezing snow, taught to be comfortable being seen through the glass window of a porch? Was it all homelessness and the product of the mighty lesson of making do?
And did I carry the silent sense of my own self worth through all the troubled years of growing up, the sense that gave me permission to go on the stage and to be at last at home there? I don't know.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
***************************
The Ball Game
a story in 7 parts
Part 6
So Jimmy played for the Brooklyn Hawks for several years. He was a dependable third baseman, his hitting was improving and so was his RBI average.
When the Hawks were playing home games Jimmy stayed with his mother. It was a simple subway ride away. His mom liked to hear all about the games and the other players.
One evening after the game he was standing on the subway platform waiting for the train. Suddenly he heard his name called "Jimmy." He looked down and saw a man in a white lab coat and glasses, pointing and not smiling. He looked where the man was pointing and saw a baby carriage that had rolled to the edge of the platform tumble over onto the tracks. Jimmy heard the sound of the approaching train growing louder. He jumped down onto the tracks and saw the headlight of the train entering the station. He saw it coming toward him gradually and gracefully like a huge, bright bubble on the breeze. He grabbed the carriage with a crying baby in it and hoisted it up onto the platform into the hands of a panicked mother. The he threw one leg up onto the platform, then the other one and rolled out of the way just as the train came roaring and screeching into the station.
The next day there was his picture on the front page of the Sports section in the New York Times with a story about the event and a headline that read SPORTS STAR BECOMES SUBWAY HERO.
His mother was impressed. His teammates were impressed. So now he was a "sports star." He hoped he would have a chance to prove that some day.
(Part 7 tomorrow)
****************************
SPRING QUESTION
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
2 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Joan Didion
*******************
A palmist can look at your hand and tell you things about your life. A Greek mystic can do the same thing with your coffee grounds. A gypsy mystic does it with a crystal ball. An astrologer will cast your life according to the stars. A Muslim mystic will draw a circle on the ground and make you see images in the circle. Or you can bypass the clairvoyants and cast I Ching or read the Tarot. In every case what you learn is something that is already in your own mind that you didn't know was there.
At some point in my life I have consulted all of those sources of esoteric knowledge in hopes of finding solutions to my difficult and troubled life. And did I get any solid answers? I don't know.
I grew up in a poor family. We became authorities on "making do." Making do is a tactic for survival. Making do requires struggle and sacrifice and is inevitably accompanied by some suffering. Millions of people in this country and others are making do while, ironically, billions upon billions sit in Swiss banks, billions owned by people who don't know what to do with it.
I saw my mother go off to typing jobs with her arthritic fingers. When I was old enough to take care of myself she worked in the evenings as a baby sitter.
When I was a teenager a neighbor gave an old bicycle. I fixed it up and took a paper route. I knew a rich guy who didn't need the money. His paper route was in a tenement. He just took an elevator to the top and walked down dropping papers at apartment doors. Mine was outside. There were winter days with so much snow I couldn't deliver the papers by bicycle, I had to walk them through the neighborhoods carrying the heave bag, in the freezing cold. I didn't complain much. I had a job. One summer day, while I was delivering the papers, our house burned down. Then we lived in a wealthy couples glassed in porch, with no privacy at all.
When you are poor you are automatically insulted by the rich, even when they think they are being compassionate.
From an early age I loved classical music. I bought a small $11 plastic radio so I could listen to the only AM station playing good music (a station I became an announcer for many years later). My schoolmates and teachers thought I was pretending, putting on airs, showing off, trying to make an impression that I was superior somehow. But I genuinely loved the music. So when the insults flew I just kept quiet and stayed by myself.
There is a point to this sad tale and it is that I finally got the respect I deserved when I stepped on the stage as an actor. Then and there I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing. I found there the answers to a lot of questions I never got from I Ching or the crystal ball.
Where did the artistry of my acting come from? Was it born in the great music I loved or in the struggle of poverty? Was I tempered by the freezing snow, taught to be comfortable being seen through the glass window of a porch? Was it all homelessness and the product of the mighty lesson of making do?
And did I carry the silent sense of my own self worth through all the troubled years of growing up, the sense that gave me permission to go on the stage and to be at last at home there? I don't know.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
***************************
The Ball Game
a story in 7 parts
Part 6
So Jimmy played for the Brooklyn Hawks for several years. He was a dependable third baseman, his hitting was improving and so was his RBI average.
When the Hawks were playing home games Jimmy stayed with his mother. It was a simple subway ride away. His mom liked to hear all about the games and the other players.
One evening after the game he was standing on the subway platform waiting for the train. Suddenly he heard his name called "Jimmy." He looked down and saw a man in a white lab coat and glasses, pointing and not smiling. He looked where the man was pointing and saw a baby carriage that had rolled to the edge of the platform tumble over onto the tracks. Jimmy heard the sound of the approaching train growing louder. He jumped down onto the tracks and saw the headlight of the train entering the station. He saw it coming toward him gradually and gracefully like a huge, bright bubble on the breeze. He grabbed the carriage with a crying baby in it and hoisted it up onto the platform into the hands of a panicked mother. The he threw one leg up onto the platform, then the other one and rolled out of the way just as the train came roaring and screeching into the station.
The next day there was his picture on the front page of the Sports section in the New York Times with a story about the event and a headline that read SPORTS STAR BECOMES SUBWAY HERO.
His mother was impressed. His teammates were impressed. So now he was a "sports star." He hoped he would have a chance to prove that some day.
(Part 7 tomorrow)
****************************
SPRING QUESTION
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
2 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Life's Orbits
Life is a voyage that's homeward bound.
Herman Melville
***********************
I got a chuckle out of a tech support fellow one night. After finishing the session he asked if there was anything else he could help me with. I said "No. Not unless you can tell me the real meaning of life." He laughed a good natured laugh and said he was sorry but he couldn't help me with that one.
------------------------------------
I remember seeing a card on a woman's desk one day. It was circular and on it was printed "A Round Toit" as in I'll take care of that as soon as I get around to it. So someone gave her a round toit.
One of the implications in the woman's work situation was that she was going in circles, and sooner or later everything comes around. In fact isn't that the way all of our lives are? We live in constantly repeating cycles: the days of the week, each with their special duties, the months of the year, the seasons with their unique circumstances. Special occasions recur: holidays, birthdays, anniversaries.
To live in cycles means to be in orbit. Our circles are not aimless, they are all going around something. The moon circles the earth, the earth circles the sun and, who knows, maybe the sun is in orbit around a much larger force than we can see.
For most of my life I knew what I wanted, to get roles and play them. It didn't much matter who the characters were I was portraying or what the plays were about. I had honed my skill to the point where I could take on any type of character, from the silliest to the most heroic, from the grandest to the most villainous. What mattered was that I had a script in my hand and a contract in my pocket. That was enough for me. I was living my life in the arts and that was exactly where I wanted to be.
Then about 15 years ago I began to ask some important questions. I wasn't questioning what I did, even though I had to put up with decades of prejudice from people who didn't know or thought they knew what life in the theatre really was. And I wasn't questioning why I did it. I already knew why. The questions were much broader and taller than that. Inadequately put they were questions about what I was orbiting around. What gave me the authority to be on the stage? What gave me permission to be an actor? What allowed me to entertain people? What gave me the right to interpret the human race to itself?
I was searching for the light giving, life enhancing sun around which I was orbiting. I was asking for the answer tech support couldn't give me: the real meaning of life.
Now, after 15 years of asking and groping, I don't know if I am any closer to finding an answer or even if it is possible to. In the process I've learned some important facts: that life is unfinished business, that prescience is a valuable but uncertain practice, that our capabilities far outweigh our achievements and, that no matter how many times we live through the cycles of our lives change is constant and inevitable.
And I am on the cusp of understanding something else. There is a spirit that gives existence to our lives, that justifies human endeavor, that defines nature and gives impulse and impartation to the arts. A great cosmic energy cell around which we orbit that asks nothing more from us than to be understood and expressed. It is the inspiration for all beauty and honest achievement, on stage or otherwise, it is where we artists come from, our spiritual home, and, maybe, the answer to the real meaning of life.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 7 responses so far. Winter is almost over. What's your answer?
DB
******************************
Herman Melville
***********************
I got a chuckle out of a tech support fellow one night. After finishing the session he asked if there was anything else he could help me with. I said "No. Not unless you can tell me the real meaning of life." He laughed a good natured laugh and said he was sorry but he couldn't help me with that one.
------------------------------------
I remember seeing a card on a woman's desk one day. It was circular and on it was printed "A Round Toit" as in I'll take care of that as soon as I get around to it. So someone gave her a round toit.
One of the implications in the woman's work situation was that she was going in circles, and sooner or later everything comes around. In fact isn't that the way all of our lives are? We live in constantly repeating cycles: the days of the week, each with their special duties, the months of the year, the seasons with their unique circumstances. Special occasions recur: holidays, birthdays, anniversaries.
To live in cycles means to be in orbit. Our circles are not aimless, they are all going around something. The moon circles the earth, the earth circles the sun and, who knows, maybe the sun is in orbit around a much larger force than we can see.
For most of my life I knew what I wanted, to get roles and play them. It didn't much matter who the characters were I was portraying or what the plays were about. I had honed my skill to the point where I could take on any type of character, from the silliest to the most heroic, from the grandest to the most villainous. What mattered was that I had a script in my hand and a contract in my pocket. That was enough for me. I was living my life in the arts and that was exactly where I wanted to be.
Then about 15 years ago I began to ask some important questions. I wasn't questioning what I did, even though I had to put up with decades of prejudice from people who didn't know or thought they knew what life in the theatre really was. And I wasn't questioning why I did it. I already knew why. The questions were much broader and taller than that. Inadequately put they were questions about what I was orbiting around. What gave me the authority to be on the stage? What gave me permission to be an actor? What allowed me to entertain people? What gave me the right to interpret the human race to itself?
I was searching for the light giving, life enhancing sun around which I was orbiting. I was asking for the answer tech support couldn't give me: the real meaning of life.
Now, after 15 years of asking and groping, I don't know if I am any closer to finding an answer or even if it is possible to. In the process I've learned some important facts: that life is unfinished business, that prescience is a valuable but uncertain practice, that our capabilities far outweigh our achievements and, that no matter how many times we live through the cycles of our lives change is constant and inevitable.
And I am on the cusp of understanding something else. There is a spirit that gives existence to our lives, that justifies human endeavor, that defines nature and gives impulse and impartation to the arts. A great cosmic energy cell around which we orbit that asks nothing more from us than to be understood and expressed. It is the inspiration for all beauty and honest achievement, on stage or otherwise, it is where we artists come from, our spiritual home, and, maybe, the answer to the real meaning of life.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 7 responses so far. Winter is almost over. What's your answer?
DB
******************************
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Warming Up
The actor, no less than the soldier, must be subject to iron discipline.
Constantine Stanislavki
*************************
During my acting career I had a small sign taped up on the wall in front of me when I was at my desk with the two words "IRON DISCIPLINE."
One day in New York I was talking with a young man who had just purchased a guitar. He also had a book on how to play it. "Learn How To Play A Guitar In 10 Easy Steps" or something like it. I saw the book. It showed how to finger some basic chords and how to play some songs. I asked the fellow if he did any warming up exercises since there were none in the book. He said that he couldn't be bothered by that stuff, he just wanted to play music.
Quite coincidentally, almost as a gift from the god of music, there was an interview a few days later, in the New York Daily News, with one of the current stars of the rock music world. A guitarist.
Among other things they discussed, the interviewer asked him to describe an average day in his life. And he told about having breakfast and then spending 2 or 3 hours warming up, with scales and finger exercises. He told of how important it was to help him with the music he would practice later.
I clipped out the article and sent it to my young friend. I don't know if he ever went on and mastered the guitar or not. But at least he knew what real musicians do.
I once had a part time job as an accompanist for a dance company. By the end of the morning session those dancers were flying across the studio. But they all began at the bar, bending and straightening, under the expert eye of the dance master and choreographer.
Singers vocalize every morning. I know artists who will begin the day making simple drawings before they approach the canvas. Somerset Maugham said that if you want to be a writer you have to write every day. One day at Marlboro I accidentally came upon a trombonist who was getting ready to play with the orchestra and he was rapidly playing up and down chromatic scales, not an easy thing to do on any instrument;
Actors don't have the benefit of a musical instrument, a dance studio or a typewriter to start the day. But we have our own tools and technicalities. We keep the body in shape to be able to express the most subtle meanings in the gestures we make with grace and articulation. Same with the voice. Memory is an all important tool for an actor. There was a famous actress who used to memorize a sonnet every day. We may have audition pieces that we work on to make better. But if there is a rehearsal or performance of the day we have the script and any serious actor will pick it up and work on it to gain a further understanding of it and gain more agility with the speeches.
With an actor, a musician, a dancer or a painter, just as with the writer, the mind works through the medium the artist has and it must be handled with the utmost discipline to be dependable. When you see a performing artist work you are seeing what floats on the top of the barrel, what flies across the room and not the iron sweat of discipline.
DB - Vagabond
***********************
Weekend Puzzle
Let's play ball. I'll start.
base ball
foot "
------- "
---------
and so on.
Starting at the top how many balls can you add. The person with the most number wins the nifty prize.
Good luck
DB
********************
Constantine Stanislavki
*************************
During my acting career I had a small sign taped up on the wall in front of me when I was at my desk with the two words "IRON DISCIPLINE."
One day in New York I was talking with a young man who had just purchased a guitar. He also had a book on how to play it. "Learn How To Play A Guitar In 10 Easy Steps" or something like it. I saw the book. It showed how to finger some basic chords and how to play some songs. I asked the fellow if he did any warming up exercises since there were none in the book. He said that he couldn't be bothered by that stuff, he just wanted to play music.
Quite coincidentally, almost as a gift from the god of music, there was an interview a few days later, in the New York Daily News, with one of the current stars of the rock music world. A guitarist.
Among other things they discussed, the interviewer asked him to describe an average day in his life. And he told about having breakfast and then spending 2 or 3 hours warming up, with scales and finger exercises. He told of how important it was to help him with the music he would practice later.
I clipped out the article and sent it to my young friend. I don't know if he ever went on and mastered the guitar or not. But at least he knew what real musicians do.
I once had a part time job as an accompanist for a dance company. By the end of the morning session those dancers were flying across the studio. But they all began at the bar, bending and straightening, under the expert eye of the dance master and choreographer.
Singers vocalize every morning. I know artists who will begin the day making simple drawings before they approach the canvas. Somerset Maugham said that if you want to be a writer you have to write every day. One day at Marlboro I accidentally came upon a trombonist who was getting ready to play with the orchestra and he was rapidly playing up and down chromatic scales, not an easy thing to do on any instrument;
Actors don't have the benefit of a musical instrument, a dance studio or a typewriter to start the day. But we have our own tools and technicalities. We keep the body in shape to be able to express the most subtle meanings in the gestures we make with grace and articulation. Same with the voice. Memory is an all important tool for an actor. There was a famous actress who used to memorize a sonnet every day. We may have audition pieces that we work on to make better. But if there is a rehearsal or performance of the day we have the script and any serious actor will pick it up and work on it to gain a further understanding of it and gain more agility with the speeches.
With an actor, a musician, a dancer or a painter, just as with the writer, the mind works through the medium the artist has and it must be handled with the utmost discipline to be dependable. When you see a performing artist work you are seeing what floats on the top of the barrel, what flies across the room and not the iron sweat of discipline.
DB - Vagabond
***********************
Weekend Puzzle
Let's play ball. I'll start.
base ball
foot "
------- "
---------
and so on.
Starting at the top how many balls can you add. The person with the most number wins the nifty prize.
Good luck
DB
********************
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Useless Information
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heart break.
Michael Marino
***********************
If you are standing directly on the South Pole, (I wouldn't advise it unless you are extremely well dressed and have some company) no matter which way you look there is only one direction you can go and that's north. Once you take a step you've added east and west to your limited possibilities. A few more steps and a few more directions are added. If you keep moving soon there are a great many directions you can move.
It's the same with your front door. There's only one step out, but once out you have some possibilities. Choose one of those to move in and you are gradually increasing the number of ways you can go.
I was quite sure of what I was going to do with myself when I retired. I had spent my adult life as an actor, I fully intended to keep doing that. But I didn't realize how hungry I was going to be, not for food but for knowledge.
In my career I knew actors, and I was one of them, who were prepared with the lines and behaviors of the character they played and with the intricacies of the drama. But there were other actors who came into rehearsals with much more. They had traced down the political, social and geographical contexts of the plays and the playwrights. If it was an historical drama they were acquainted with the events of the time and they had read biographical items of the main characters. Some of the other actors would yawn and consider it useless information. But I learned to be very interested in that approach. To me in added so many more dimensions and directions to move in while developing the play.
In "Educating Rita" specific reference are made to books by E. M. Forster and Rita Mae Brown. When I performed the play in Cincinnati the actress I worked with and I read both of those books. When I played a supporting roloe in "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" I read the whole novel about the Caine mutiny by Herman Wouk. If I found that a play touched on an ancient myth, as many modern plays do, I would track down the myth.
So what have I done since I retired? Bought books. I have books on philosophy, art, music, history, biography, science, psychology, religion and many other topics. Will I ever get to read all of those books? It doesn't matter. Whichever direction I go in I'm learning something. It's a love affair.
DB
********************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
Michael Marino
***********************
If you are standing directly on the South Pole, (I wouldn't advise it unless you are extremely well dressed and have some company) no matter which way you look there is only one direction you can go and that's north. Once you take a step you've added east and west to your limited possibilities. A few more steps and a few more directions are added. If you keep moving soon there are a great many directions you can move.
It's the same with your front door. There's only one step out, but once out you have some possibilities. Choose one of those to move in and you are gradually increasing the number of ways you can go.
I was quite sure of what I was going to do with myself when I retired. I had spent my adult life as an actor, I fully intended to keep doing that. But I didn't realize how hungry I was going to be, not for food but for knowledge.
In my career I knew actors, and I was one of them, who were prepared with the lines and behaviors of the character they played and with the intricacies of the drama. But there were other actors who came into rehearsals with much more. They had traced down the political, social and geographical contexts of the plays and the playwrights. If it was an historical drama they were acquainted with the events of the time and they had read biographical items of the main characters. Some of the other actors would yawn and consider it useless information. But I learned to be very interested in that approach. To me in added so many more dimensions and directions to move in while developing the play.
In "Educating Rita" specific reference are made to books by E. M. Forster and Rita Mae Brown. When I performed the play in Cincinnati the actress I worked with and I read both of those books. When I played a supporting roloe in "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" I read the whole novel about the Caine mutiny by Herman Wouk. If I found that a play touched on an ancient myth, as many modern plays do, I would track down the myth.
So what have I done since I retired? Bought books. I have books on philosophy, art, music, history, biography, science, psychology, religion and many other topics. Will I ever get to read all of those books? It doesn't matter. Whichever direction I go in I'm learning something. It's a love affair.
DB
********************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
Monday, January 3, 2011
Seals And Monkeys
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Socrates
************************
During my career I have often been disgusted to learn what some young students have been taught by one dim acting teacher or another from their various drama departments. I heard one girl say her teacher told her the way to do comedy was to always keep her elbows up. I tried playing a scene with a boy who wouldn't look at me or listen to me because his teacher told him to always play to the audience.
One summer day I was with a few youngsters fresh out of college with degrees in Acting. It was a field trip of sorts to which I was invited as a resource. We went to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
Just inside the entrance there is a large stone pit filled with water. There is a foot bridge over the water to a small island in the middle. Swimming around in the water are seals. Periodically a zoo keeper will walk out to the center and hold out fish. The seals will jump out of the water to grab the fish. They are trained to do that and it is quite amusing.
But as we entered the zoo I said to the group I was with "Remember. All the animals we see will be acting, except for the seals." They gave me very strange looks, probably doubting my sanity.
We saw the penguins, standing up flapping their wings, or swimming like bullets through the water. We saw the polar bears, one stretched out in an undignified posture sunning himself on the rocks, the other swimming back and forth. We saw the tree snakes oozing their way from one twig to another.
Then we came to large tree filled area with some very hairy black and white monkeys. The monkeys were chasing each other around from one tree to another, swinging on branches and chattering away. They were having a hell of a good time and it was very entertaining.
One of the girls turned to me and said "Now I see what you mean. These monkeys are doing what they naturally do. They're not playing for us, they're playing for each other."
"That's right" I said.
"I'll never look at animals the same way again."
"Or people."
"Or people?"
"Yes. Who are the natural monkeys and who are the trained seals."
I don't know if any of the other kids got it, but she sure did. And to know she could translate that knowledge into the performing art gave her a flame that would never go out. To know to rely on natural behavior and to play with the other actors and not to the audience was the beginning of her training as an actor. And it had nothing to do with elbows.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Socrates
************************
During my career I have often been disgusted to learn what some young students have been taught by one dim acting teacher or another from their various drama departments. I heard one girl say her teacher told her the way to do comedy was to always keep her elbows up. I tried playing a scene with a boy who wouldn't look at me or listen to me because his teacher told him to always play to the audience.
One summer day I was with a few youngsters fresh out of college with degrees in Acting. It was a field trip of sorts to which I was invited as a resource. We went to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
Just inside the entrance there is a large stone pit filled with water. There is a foot bridge over the water to a small island in the middle. Swimming around in the water are seals. Periodically a zoo keeper will walk out to the center and hold out fish. The seals will jump out of the water to grab the fish. They are trained to do that and it is quite amusing.
But as we entered the zoo I said to the group I was with "Remember. All the animals we see will be acting, except for the seals." They gave me very strange looks, probably doubting my sanity.
We saw the penguins, standing up flapping their wings, or swimming like bullets through the water. We saw the polar bears, one stretched out in an undignified posture sunning himself on the rocks, the other swimming back and forth. We saw the tree snakes oozing their way from one twig to another.
Then we came to large tree filled area with some very hairy black and white monkeys. The monkeys were chasing each other around from one tree to another, swinging on branches and chattering away. They were having a hell of a good time and it was very entertaining.
One of the girls turned to me and said "Now I see what you mean. These monkeys are doing what they naturally do. They're not playing for us, they're playing for each other."
"That's right" I said.
"I'll never look at animals the same way again."
"Or people."
"Or people?"
"Yes. Who are the natural monkeys and who are the trained seals."
I don't know if any of the other kids got it, but she sure did. And to know she could translate that knowledge into the performing art gave her a flame that would never go out. To know to rely on natural behavior and to play with the other actors and not to the audience was the beginning of her training as an actor. And it had nothing to do with elbows.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
It's In The Details
Nothing in life demands closer attention than the things which seem natural.
Honore de Balzac
**********************
I am currently reading, among other things, "The Black Sheep" by Balzac. If Balzac isn't the greatest French novelist, he is certainly high on the nomination list. One of his great gifts is in character descriptions. Before any action you know so much about the characters that you feel as if you know them personally.
It's an enviable ability. As a writer I tend to be more concerned with thoughts and actions than in my descriptions of characters. I suppose that is because I spent so many years as an actor where most of what I read were plays. Playwrights spend very little time on character descriptions. There is dialogue and speeches. From those the actor learns about the character and depicts him on the stage rather than in writing.
In both cases however great attention must be paid to details. An actor makes so many decisions from his imagination and intuition about the role he plays that would seem unimportant and useless to playing the role, and they are things the audience may never see, but they add dimensions to the life of the character that makes him more believable and therefore fuller and richer for his participation in the story. And as Balzac says these are often natural things that one would take for granted and not think about, such as which shoe does he put on first when dressing, what does he have for breakfast, what's his favorite music, does he bite his fingernails, what does he do that he's embarrassed about, does he like cats or not.
Each of the things the actor finds about the role he plays are tucked back into a sack of characteristics that he carries with him into the role. Some are more important than others, but all are useful.
In my current novel "The Savior" I have avoided character descriptions so far, as I concentrate on the plot, I am planning to go back and fill in the descriptions of the main characters. Balzac shows me that I better do it soon.
Then there's the matter of our personal characters. Could you write an honest, objective, third person description of yourself that would convince anyone of who you are? What would you leave out? What would you forget? And what is there to you that you don't even know about? Maybe there are habits you have, simple quirks of behavior that you consider perfectly natural (Doesn't everyone eat there peas with a knife?) but which other people might find strange and unnatural. How closely do you pay attention to your behavior and your life? The more natural it seems the more it needs to be observed.
DB
Vagabond
***********
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
Honore de Balzac
**********************
I am currently reading, among other things, "The Black Sheep" by Balzac. If Balzac isn't the greatest French novelist, he is certainly high on the nomination list. One of his great gifts is in character descriptions. Before any action you know so much about the characters that you feel as if you know them personally.
It's an enviable ability. As a writer I tend to be more concerned with thoughts and actions than in my descriptions of characters. I suppose that is because I spent so many years as an actor where most of what I read were plays. Playwrights spend very little time on character descriptions. There is dialogue and speeches. From those the actor learns about the character and depicts him on the stage rather than in writing.
In both cases however great attention must be paid to details. An actor makes so many decisions from his imagination and intuition about the role he plays that would seem unimportant and useless to playing the role, and they are things the audience may never see, but they add dimensions to the life of the character that makes him more believable and therefore fuller and richer for his participation in the story. And as Balzac says these are often natural things that one would take for granted and not think about, such as which shoe does he put on first when dressing, what does he have for breakfast, what's his favorite music, does he bite his fingernails, what does he do that he's embarrassed about, does he like cats or not.
Each of the things the actor finds about the role he plays are tucked back into a sack of characteristics that he carries with him into the role. Some are more important than others, but all are useful.
In my current novel "The Savior" I have avoided character descriptions so far, as I concentrate on the plot, I am planning to go back and fill in the descriptions of the main characters. Balzac shows me that I better do it soon.
Then there's the matter of our personal characters. Could you write an honest, objective, third person description of yourself that would convince anyone of who you are? What would you leave out? What would you forget? And what is there to you that you don't even know about? Maybe there are habits you have, simple quirks of behavior that you consider perfectly natural (Doesn't everyone eat there peas with a knife?) but which other people might find strange and unnatural. How closely do you pay attention to your behavior and your life? The more natural it seems the more it needs to be observed.
DB
Vagabond
***********
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)