Whatever one's role in life is, we all have our own particular style, our own particular character.
Jim Capaldi
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Hello Rose
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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.
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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
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Showing posts with label sibelius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sibelius. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
What are you?
It's strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.
Gustav Mahler
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There's the story of the man who became a nuclear physicist because when he was in high school he found, by accident, in an encyclopedia, the scientific explanation of rainbows.
There's the story of the South American Indian who found a guitar sitting alongside a remote trail, picked it up and discovered that he could play it and went on to become a well known musician.
And there's the story of the business man who developed a problem with his throat and, on the doctor's suggestion, took up singing to exercise it. Within a few years he sold his business and became a full time opera singer, something he never thought he would be.
Here's my story.
It was 1958. I was 19 years old. I had just left college prematurely because I didn't want to be a well rounded liberal arts student, or a well rounded anything else. It was the era of the Beatniks. My sister once said she thought I was probably one of the originals. That was probably so.
I knew I wanted to do something interesting with my life, but I couldn't decide what that was. There were several options, specialties of activity, roads into the unknown, sturdy brass hinges to hear scraping as they opened the door I would step through.
I enjoyed writing. I had written a short story and some poetry which a lot of people seemed to like. I had been a music student, learning violin, percussion and composition, and I had played drums for a jazz trio in the area. I had done some work for the local police department and was encouraged by the captain to go to the police academy and have a career in law enforcement. I had worked for a French chef, a wonderful man I admired, who wanted to teach me all about cooking and how to be a chef and manage a kitchen. I had done some acting in school and for local theatre groups and I enjoyed it. While in school I took a geology course from an inspiring teacher and became very interested in geology, an interest I still have. I had done some drawing, painting and design and wanted to get formal training in art. I really didn't know which direction I was going in, but I also didn't think about it much.
One afternoon I went to visit my sister. She was having a dinner party later that day. I was early and tired from something, so I lay down on her living room couch to take a nap. In the middle of the floor was her vacuum cleaner waiting for me to wake from my nap so she could vacuum the floor. She was in her kitchen preparing the dinner. The radio was on to a classical music station.
When I began to awaken the radio was playing the Symphony #2 by Sibelius, As it neared the end I, in my half sleep, was seeing a vision. It seemed that screens were passing in front of my face, each one replacing the one before it, back and forth, in and out they went. And each one had an image that represented one of the options of my life. There was a screen the showed me as a drummer, another that showed me as a painter, another as a chef, another as a cop, another as a composer, another as an actor, another as a poet, another as a scientist and so on. These screens just kept passing in front of my mind's eye as I listened to the finale of the Symphony which is a combination of march and hymn. When it was over I got up and stepped quickly over the vacuum cleaner and when I did one of those screens popped back into my head and on it was written "You're an actor." I knew right then it was true.
Everything else became a hobby or a special interest. From that very moment I became an actor and I never looked back.
Dana Bate
The True Vagabond
(Never give up.)
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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
17 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
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Gustav Mahler
***********************
There's the story of the man who became a nuclear physicist because when he was in high school he found, by accident, in an encyclopedia, the scientific explanation of rainbows.
There's the story of the South American Indian who found a guitar sitting alongside a remote trail, picked it up and discovered that he could play it and went on to become a well known musician.
And there's the story of the business man who developed a problem with his throat and, on the doctor's suggestion, took up singing to exercise it. Within a few years he sold his business and became a full time opera singer, something he never thought he would be.
Here's my story.
It was 1958. I was 19 years old. I had just left college prematurely because I didn't want to be a well rounded liberal arts student, or a well rounded anything else. It was the era of the Beatniks. My sister once said she thought I was probably one of the originals. That was probably so.
I knew I wanted to do something interesting with my life, but I couldn't decide what that was. There were several options, specialties of activity, roads into the unknown, sturdy brass hinges to hear scraping as they opened the door I would step through.
I enjoyed writing. I had written a short story and some poetry which a lot of people seemed to like. I had been a music student, learning violin, percussion and composition, and I had played drums for a jazz trio in the area. I had done some work for the local police department and was encouraged by the captain to go to the police academy and have a career in law enforcement. I had worked for a French chef, a wonderful man I admired, who wanted to teach me all about cooking and how to be a chef and manage a kitchen. I had done some acting in school and for local theatre groups and I enjoyed it. While in school I took a geology course from an inspiring teacher and became very interested in geology, an interest I still have. I had done some drawing, painting and design and wanted to get formal training in art. I really didn't know which direction I was going in, but I also didn't think about it much.
One afternoon I went to visit my sister. She was having a dinner party later that day. I was early and tired from something, so I lay down on her living room couch to take a nap. In the middle of the floor was her vacuum cleaner waiting for me to wake from my nap so she could vacuum the floor. She was in her kitchen preparing the dinner. The radio was on to a classical music station.
When I began to awaken the radio was playing the Symphony #2 by Sibelius, As it neared the end I, in my half sleep, was seeing a vision. It seemed that screens were passing in front of my face, each one replacing the one before it, back and forth, in and out they went. And each one had an image that represented one of the options of my life. There was a screen the showed me as a drummer, another that showed me as a painter, another as a chef, another as a cop, another as a composer, another as an actor, another as a poet, another as a scientist and so on. These screens just kept passing in front of my mind's eye as I listened to the finale of the Symphony which is a combination of march and hymn. When it was over I got up and stepped quickly over the vacuum cleaner and when I did one of those screens popped back into my head and on it was written "You're an actor." I knew right then it was true.
Everything else became a hobby or a special interest. From that very moment I became an actor and I never looked back.
Dana Bate
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
17 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Reckless Rascality 5/19/09
No amount of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
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In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
-------------------
In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
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