The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller
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Geology and drawing are two of the most important and most memorable courses of study of my experience, because they both taught me not only to observe but also to think.
Intuition is a valuable tool in those two disciplines as it is in any instruction of value. Intuition is one of the thruways to imagination. Observation is the starting place of all learning, doing and creating, the first step toward the silent world which is only symbolized by such things as rocks and drawings.
Immanuel Kant wrote "Sense is the faculty of intuition in the presence of an object. Imagination is intuition without the presence of the object."
Some rocks are very beautiful (lapidists deal in them) while others are very ordinary looking, just a rock. But all of them have stories to tell. It is interesting to examine a rock to determine it's age and chemical, cellular composition. But whenever I hold a rock in my hand I realize I am holding millions of years of history.
A mystic I used to know once gave me a rock she had pick up off the side of Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountain of the ancient gods. She put it in her purse and carried it all the way back specifically to give to me. I kept that rock for many years until someone found it and threw it out. It was just a rock, after all, it didn't belong in the house. So somewhere on the ground in Westchester County, New York is a bit of Mount Olympus.
One day I discovered an outcropping of stratified rock sticking up from the ground at an angle and pointing at the sky. I knew it was stratified, which meant it was made of layers of sediment, probably laid down by centuries of rain, baked in the hot sun, hardened into solid rock, then covered over by other layers, twisted into an arc by volcanic action of the earth and then eroded by rain and wind to it's current state. As I looked at it I tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it first covered the surrounding earth, and what it was like as a mammoth spectacle after the earth had buckled it. I also imagined the real possibility that somewhere, near or far, one could find the other end of that rainbow, a chunk of stratified rock jutting out of the ground and pointing in the opposite direction back to itself.
In upper Manhattan, around 200th Street, there's a boulder. It's surrounded very closely by houses and it's a prime piece of real estate. But ti's protected from developers because it's a natural wonder. It was set down there centuries ago during the ice age by a gigantic glacier that traveled through.
There is another boulder of comparable size along the Boulder Loop Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That one is surrounded by trees and is also protected because of the National Forest it's in. I wonder if the two boulders are related. They were both probably set down by the same glacier.
Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955) was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. He was an actor who also taught and wrote on acting. One of his theories was called the PG, which stands for Psychological Gesture. It's not the kind of gesture such as pointing a finger or shrugging of shoulders but a full body gesture. With it an actor can convey the inner life of a character even though presenting a false face to the other characters on the stage. The way a person stands or sits can tell a lot about how that person feels or thinks.
I studied life drawing at various locations around New York City. When I first began I struggled with getting the proportions right of the human figure, then learning how to articulate the bones and muscles in different poses. After a few years I began to observe something else. The models weren't actors, most of them, but whenever they would drape themselves into a pose for a period of time they would strike a psychological gesture. Each figure, each pose had a story to tell. Though unconscious, perhaps, on the part of the model it was a clear statement of some inner life. My imagination began to provide histories of these people, current events in their lives, their fears and dreams. My drawings took on a more interesting quality and were more enjoyable to do and to see.
On the stage when a character enters the scene he is coming from somewhere. The actor is coming from the wings, but the character is coming from a specific place not seen on the stage. The actor has to know where his character is coming from, and he does know because he decides, through observation and imagination.
Imagination is creative intuition. By careful observation of all the things we come across in the world, from boulders to blades of grass, and by intelligent thinking about them, the mysteries of life unfold themselves on every level, in every place.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
*************************
I recommend that you read "Voracious Details" at http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/
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LAST DAY OF SPRING !!!
Get in under the wire, before the door closes and you're left out in the heat.
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 12 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
******************
Showing posts with label observation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label observation. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Front Facing 3/15/09
It is ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living.
Suzanne Farrell
******************
Hello again.
____________________
As I am fond of saying: "What's the next step in life? It's the one right in front of you." Life is unfinished business. There is always something to worry about or something to regret. We spend too much time trying to make things go the way we want them to or fruitlessly trying to fix things that weren't right when we did them. And while we're doing that we are missing out on the real life that's going on. The past is stuff for historians who hardly ever agree with each other, and the future is for prophets who are hardly ever right. So where does that leave us? With both feet planted firmly in the "now,"
It's good to make amends if you can and it's good to plan for the future. We all do that. But floating along on a cloud of "maybes" deprives us of the joy of living in the energy beams of the palpitating present.
"Where did it all go?" older people ask. It went right in front of your eyes and you didn't notice it. When I was learning to be an actor, I learned about observation, about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching as much as I could. Then I asked myself why I was so busy doing that. Soon I learned that it wasn't just to gather information and images but to make a form of personal sense out of them. Like a giant puzzle I was storing up bits and pieces of the world around me to eventually help me put together a meaningful life as a man and an artist. Not a complete picture, certainly, but fragments that could lead me to understand more and to share what I knew with those around me and to learn what their observations had given them. That pleases me, because if we knew everything there is no know there would be no point in living or being with other people, would there?
The great doorway of the mind should always be open for the big and small things to flutter in. Yearning to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else is a betrayal of where I am, whom I'm with and the life I am actually living.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
Smile at someone who looks sad, even if it's yourself.
Suzanne Farrell
******************
Hello again.
____________________
As I am fond of saying: "What's the next step in life? It's the one right in front of you." Life is unfinished business. There is always something to worry about or something to regret. We spend too much time trying to make things go the way we want them to or fruitlessly trying to fix things that weren't right when we did them. And while we're doing that we are missing out on the real life that's going on. The past is stuff for historians who hardly ever agree with each other, and the future is for prophets who are hardly ever right. So where does that leave us? With both feet planted firmly in the "now,"
It's good to make amends if you can and it's good to plan for the future. We all do that. But floating along on a cloud of "maybes" deprives us of the joy of living in the energy beams of the palpitating present.
"Where did it all go?" older people ask. It went right in front of your eyes and you didn't notice it. When I was learning to be an actor, I learned about observation, about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching as much as I could. Then I asked myself why I was so busy doing that. Soon I learned that it wasn't just to gather information and images but to make a form of personal sense out of them. Like a giant puzzle I was storing up bits and pieces of the world around me to eventually help me put together a meaningful life as a man and an artist. Not a complete picture, certainly, but fragments that could lead me to understand more and to share what I knew with those around me and to learn what their observations had given them. That pleases me, because if we knew everything there is no know there would be no point in living or being with other people, would there?
The great doorway of the mind should always be open for the big and small things to flutter in. Yearning to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else is a betrayal of where I am, whom I'm with and the life I am actually living.
DB - The Vagabond
__________________
Smile at someone who looks sad, even if it's yourself.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Miracle Management 12/23/08
Blessed be the poet, the artist who knows how to keep alive his sense of wonder.
Ella Maillart
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An actor is one who observes other people all the time, not critically nor judgementaly, but with curiosity. We observe how someone stands, sits and walks. We notice, movements, gestures and facial expressions, actions and reactions. We listen to the voice. Hear tones, pauses, stresses and breath. Those things can tell a story about people. We are trying to read the story so that we can tell a similar story on the stage.
Human beings are endlessly fascinating creatures to observe. There is hardly anything in the universe that is more complicated and in greater variety than the human race.
One of the reasons why we observe people so carefully is just because on the stage nothing is done in general. Everything is specific. There is no such thing as reacting to a rain storm in general. It's how my character reacts to it that matters. And that starts with a sense of wonder. I wonder what this man is really like, this man who depends upon me to give him life?
I was doing an Off-Broadway show years ago, the story took place in a New York City apartment. In one scene I had to look out the window at the weather and see that it was raining. I knew that there were other buildings partially blocking my view so I took that into consideration. My character was hoping to get on a flight out of town and was worried that the rain would interfere with his plans. It was one very short moment in the play.
An actor friend, who had every right to be critical of my performance, came to see it. He enjoyed it and he made mention of that moment and how completely believable it was. "I saw you looking up at that gray and rainy sky and I knew exactly what you were feeling." The fact is the window was right up against the bare wall of the theatre. There was nothing to see out of it. I simply said if I was looking out of an apartment building window at the rain, I wonder what it would look like? I invented it in my own imagination, believed in it and made it come alive.
Describe a storm. The poet writes it, the painter paints it, the actor plays it.
DB
Ella Maillart
*****************************
An actor is one who observes other people all the time, not critically nor judgementaly, but with curiosity. We observe how someone stands, sits and walks. We notice, movements, gestures and facial expressions, actions and reactions. We listen to the voice. Hear tones, pauses, stresses and breath. Those things can tell a story about people. We are trying to read the story so that we can tell a similar story on the stage.
Human beings are endlessly fascinating creatures to observe. There is hardly anything in the universe that is more complicated and in greater variety than the human race.
One of the reasons why we observe people so carefully is just because on the stage nothing is done in general. Everything is specific. There is no such thing as reacting to a rain storm in general. It's how my character reacts to it that matters. And that starts with a sense of wonder. I wonder what this man is really like, this man who depends upon me to give him life?
I was doing an Off-Broadway show years ago, the story took place in a New York City apartment. In one scene I had to look out the window at the weather and see that it was raining. I knew that there were other buildings partially blocking my view so I took that into consideration. My character was hoping to get on a flight out of town and was worried that the rain would interfere with his plans. It was one very short moment in the play.
An actor friend, who had every right to be critical of my performance, came to see it. He enjoyed it and he made mention of that moment and how completely believable it was. "I saw you looking up at that gray and rainy sky and I knew exactly what you were feeling." The fact is the window was right up against the bare wall of the theatre. There was nothing to see out of it. I simply said if I was looking out of an apartment building window at the rain, I wonder what it would look like? I invented it in my own imagination, believed in it and made it come alive.
Describe a storm. The poet writes it, the painter paints it, the actor plays it.
DB
Friday, November 28, 2008
Ocular Offering 11/28/08
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation.
William Osler
********************
A good actor will tell you that one of the most important activities on the stage is listening. Parallel to that is observing. It is important to pay careful attention to everything that is going on in order to be completely involved in the character and the play. There are exercises and tests in the various arts to improve one's ability to observe.
When I was learning how to draw, my teacher would sometimes work us to distraction with his fiendish observation exercise. He would have the model take a pose and hold it for one minute, then relax, and we had to draw the pose from memory. I finally began to do it by observing, not the details of the arm, but in what direction the arm was going. From shoulder to elbow it is pointing to the edge of the model stand, the forearm is pointing toward the window and if the fingers are spread out, each one has a specific part of the room they are pointing to. It sounds dreadfully complicated but it isn't if you develop a good sense of observation.
Observation comes in two similar forms, or results. One is description and the other is reconstruction. In a classroom of acting students there are exercises for both.
The student looks at a photograph or a painting for one minute. Then the picture is removed and the student has to describe it: the subjects, where they are placed, the dimensions of each compared to the others and the colors employed. I thought I was fairly good at observing things until the first few times I tried this test.
Reconstruction exercises can be even more difficult. The student looks at a table top with a bunch of objects on it, Then the actor turns his back and the objects are rearranged or removed. The actor turns around and has to put the objects back in their original positions. This exercise is also done by having other actors sitting in a row, in various poses. After a minute the student turns his back. The actors then rearrange themselves and change their poses. Then the student has to put them back the way they were. If the actor has his feet crossed it isn't enough to say "cross your feet." If he originally had the left one over the right one and then changed them, that's something the student has to notice.
A good, well trained actor can walk into a restaurant, take a seat and tell you, if you ask him, how many tables are behind him, how many people are sitting at them and where they are.
I was doing a show in Virginia and on the day of the technical rehearsal, which comes the day before dress rehearsal, which comes the day before opening night. the scenery was finally in place. It was a complicated set with doors and stairs. I walked all over that set looking at everything. Some people thought I was crazy and wasting my time. At another theatre in Virginia I was in a show with a complicate set and the director asked us to walk all over it and set aside rehearsal time for us to do it. In both cases I had a firm knowledge of the environment of that play.
What if you were suddenly called upon as an eye witness of an event? How well could you describe it?
DB
William Osler
********************
A good actor will tell you that one of the most important activities on the stage is listening. Parallel to that is observing. It is important to pay careful attention to everything that is going on in order to be completely involved in the character and the play. There are exercises and tests in the various arts to improve one's ability to observe.
When I was learning how to draw, my teacher would sometimes work us to distraction with his fiendish observation exercise. He would have the model take a pose and hold it for one minute, then relax, and we had to draw the pose from memory. I finally began to do it by observing, not the details of the arm, but in what direction the arm was going. From shoulder to elbow it is pointing to the edge of the model stand, the forearm is pointing toward the window and if the fingers are spread out, each one has a specific part of the room they are pointing to. It sounds dreadfully complicated but it isn't if you develop a good sense of observation.
Observation comes in two similar forms, or results. One is description and the other is reconstruction. In a classroom of acting students there are exercises for both.
The student looks at a photograph or a painting for one minute. Then the picture is removed and the student has to describe it: the subjects, where they are placed, the dimensions of each compared to the others and the colors employed. I thought I was fairly good at observing things until the first few times I tried this test.
Reconstruction exercises can be even more difficult. The student looks at a table top with a bunch of objects on it, Then the actor turns his back and the objects are rearranged or removed. The actor turns around and has to put the objects back in their original positions. This exercise is also done by having other actors sitting in a row, in various poses. After a minute the student turns his back. The actors then rearrange themselves and change their poses. Then the student has to put them back the way they were. If the actor has his feet crossed it isn't enough to say "cross your feet." If he originally had the left one over the right one and then changed them, that's something the student has to notice.
A good, well trained actor can walk into a restaurant, take a seat and tell you, if you ask him, how many tables are behind him, how many people are sitting at them and where they are.
I was doing a show in Virginia and on the day of the technical rehearsal, which comes the day before dress rehearsal, which comes the day before opening night. the scenery was finally in place. It was a complicated set with doors and stairs. I walked all over that set looking at everything. Some people thought I was crazy and wasting my time. At another theatre in Virginia I was in a show with a complicate set and the director asked us to walk all over it and set aside rehearsal time for us to do it. In both cases I had a firm knowledge of the environment of that play.
What if you were suddenly called upon as an eye witness of an event? How well could you describe it?
DB
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