When is Self-Help no longer Helpful?

On the platform, reading by moriza

I really love reading. It's one of my favorite things ever. I've been known to read at the dinner table, in math class (sitting in the front row, no less), while watching a movie (probably doesn't count as watching anymore - while listening to a movie), and even while walking (one of my earliest goals in life was to be Belle in Beauty & the Beast).

So, I have a lot of books, but only in a few distinct categories: General Fiction (most of my books), Plays, books about Acting or Theater that aren't Plays, Music Books and books about Music, and a small but well-worn collection of Touchy-Feely books.

Now, what I'm calling Touchy-Feely books are those that tend towards the philosophical "how to live your life & enjoy it" thing. Almost all of these have been given to me over the course of my life, and each of them has helped me in a time of need.

I've found that there will be one lesson in a book that will speak to me, just when I need it, and when I start following the advice/rule/philosophy/lesson, everything in my life seems to simplify itself again.

HOWEVER

Sometimes, when I'm feeling down, or stressed, or whatever it is that's not calm and happy, I think "Hey, I'll feel better if I read one of these books!"

Dual-head-mounted-listening-device by x-ray delta one
(I should get one of these)

But then one book turns into three or four. Before I know it, I'm trying to apply not one lesson, but every lesson to my life. Then I remember that I have a set of blogs that I know of that also have hundreds of lessons for me to learn and apply. If I could only live every second of my life the way that these books and blogs are telling me, then I'd feel better, right? RIGHT?

And I always get to a certain point in my self-help binge when I realize that I need to put down the self-help books and listen to myself.


I was feeling bad. Maybe I still am. How about I stop looking for the answers from someone else and ask myself what's wrong? Cause only then can I really begin to feel better.


I need to figure out what I'm feeling, so that I can figure out why I'm feeling that way, so I can figure out how to change or accept things and move on.


I think my self-help addiction comes from one of my favorite little monsters - perfectionism. All of these touchy-feely authors are telling me how to attain perfection, so if I just do what they say then I can be perfect, right? Nope. Perfect doesn't exist. Happy does.

During Week 4 of The Artist's Way, one of your tasks is to NOT READ. This, as I'm sure you can surmise, was extremely hard for me, but it really forces you to be present with yourself. My self-help marathons may be me escaping from my feelings, but suddenly I'm starting to question if reading might be, too.

Messy Artwork by Robert Conrad Photography

Reading deprivation forced me to learn that I don't have to escape into someone else's imagination every time things get hard. Sure, sometimes it's helpful to give yourself a little break before you get down to business, but life is about balance. 

I'm starting to figure out that I don't need to cling to books, be they Touchy-Feely or otherwise, in order to survive life. In fact, sometimes making the active choice to not cling may bring me closer to living my own life, enjoying my own imagination, and being present with the world.

Wow. With all that Touchy-Feely, Self-Helpy stuff that I just wrote, I have to acknowledge that there is some extreme irony in sharing my realization in such a "here's life lesson for YOU" way. Here's a real piece of advice: try not to make my mistake. Don't listen to me. Listen to you.

Maybe now I can get onto being creative and making some sh*t.

Anti-Slump Artist Date

Today I went on a trip to the beach. Just a little, half-hour excursion, just me & my camera.

I've been in a slump the last two weeks - emotionally, creatively, spiritually. The Artist's Way talks a lot about slumps, creative set backs, and generally not feeling up to creating. The advice that is given, over and over, is that creating things, despite how you're feeling, will bring you out of the slump. Having read this advice (over and over) I thought, "Obviously! How many times have you told me? I will SO remember this when I hit a slump."

...I didn't. Until today.

I've been trying to feel better by "relaxing" - watching tv, lounging around - or by trying to "be creative" by working on homework and my show. But, the thing I was missing in all that "relaxing" and "creativy" was PLAY. I wasn't letting myself play around and really enjoy the things I was doing.

When my rehearsal for this evening was cancelled, I went home and started doing the usual, but then I was struck by a whim to get in my car and hit the beach. So I did.

A selection of the fruits of my labor today:

Taken from inside my car, at the stoplight.

I didn't realize as I was taking it, but it almost looks like the foreground is in black and white.

I love silhouettes against sunsets.

Really love them.

And then...I started playing with the functions on my camera. Longer exposure and a receding tide equals moooving pictures:

I had to include this, even though it's so close to the other shots I took (there are so many more versions of this shot in my album from today). The wave is just slightly blurred. Yay movement in still photos.

And one last one, also taken from my car. Sort of a Hail Mary shot. Stuck the camera over my shoulder and pressed the button. I just wanted to colors! I love blue and orange together.

*

I also spent some anti-slump time playing around on Pinterest. I think that's what made me want to take my camera out. It's so great for vision boards and discovering new images that inspire you! It also made me realize that I've been avoiding writing, so it was good to allow myself to be creative in a few different visual ways so that I felt unblocked enough to write again.

Actionable Steps

Up a Winding Path by Steve-h

So, it's Week 8 in The Artist's Way. Week 8's subtitle is "Recovering a Sense of Strength." I think part of this is also recovering a sense of clarity of purpose, or that's what I'm getting out of the two days that I've been in Week 8.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my pseudo-pending move to Los Angeles. As of right now, I'm planning on moving to LA after grad school ends, which isn't until May 2013. It's so far away and fuzzy that it seems like a HUGE deal, and if I think about it too much I get pretty anxious.

This often leads me to ignore it completely.

Working on one of this week's tasks, a Goal Search, is making it seem less fuzzy and more accomplishable.

The Goal Search steps include:
Name your dream.
Name the event that signals the accomplishment of your dream.
In five years, where do you want to be in relation to your dream?
What action can you take this year to move closer to your dream?
This month?
This week?
This day?
Right now?

My dream, as of right now, is to act in movies. There was lots of other soul searching that went into this task, but the point of this post is what I realized at the end of the list of questions. As the goal search forced me to break down the huge task of moving to LA and becoming a movie actor in actionable steps, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Follow the path that you've created for yourself.

I found multiple things that I could work on today that would help me in my eventual career move. And, because the anxiety was gone, I no longer ignored my big fuzzy dream by watching TV on the Internet (and imagining myself as one of these people following my dream), but I did something about it! It's only research at this point, but research now means less research time, being informed and having more fun later.

I often run into a similar problem at the beginning of each quarter of grad school - when I am handed a syllabus that tells me all of the things I will have to accomplish in the next ten weeks, I'm struck by this overwhelming need to finish every single assignment immediately and it's all just too much. When I realize that no teacher expects me to do all of the work at once or to turn everything in the first day, I am able to step back and just work on the next assignment. One step at a time...

So often as creative people our dreams are washed in big strokes of color, hope, and chance. Taking the time to concretize the steps towards a dream may make the dream less glamorous, but so much more achievable.

Los Angeles in a good light by kla4067

Give Yourself Permission

Danbo conoce a Domo - Danbo meets Domo by GViciano

One of the truisms I've learned through my time studying acting (and studying life) is that you're the only person who can give yourself permission. Whatever it is that's holding you back or down, it's you that has the power to overcome that.

I re-learned this just a few days ago when Sonya and I were performing our Chekhov scene in class. We were doing the Natasha/Olga scene from Three Sisters and I was playing Natasha, who gets very upset at Olga.  The scene was going great, but I could tell that the depth of emotion wasn't quite as deep as it could be.

I had been afraid, going into the scene, that everyone watching the scene would think that my character was the bad guy. I knew that there must be some kernel of good in her that causes her to behave so nastily towards her sister-in-law, so I was constantly trying to find ways to show that she wasn't just a cold-hearted bitch. Then I realized that I still thought of her as the bad guy, so I was trying to play against that, rather than allowing myself to be her, whoever she is, and experience the events of the scene.

Once I gave myself permission to really enjoy getting back at Olga for all the shit she's put me through, the scene really took off.

It's so hard because I love Sonya dearly, and didn't want to be mean to her, but sometimes we have to separate what we want to be like as people in the world from what our characters have to do. Once I allowed myself to "go there," it was actually easier to separate the two. I was able to really commit to what I was doing onstage, which made me sure that my classmates would know the difference between that person and me.

This is just one small instance of this truism, but there are many others that I've found.

Give Yourself Permission

• to get angry
• to "go there"
• to be wrong
• to look like an ass
• to not like your teacher
• to try something new
• to hope
• to be scared
• to relax
• to be a person and an actor
• to treat yourself
• to take care of yourself
• to say no
• to say yes
• to use a picture for a blog post that has nothing to do with the blog (although, now that I think of it, he is an angry little monster, isn't he?)

A lot of these have stories behind them, as I'm sure you can tell, but those are other stories for another time. 

Inspiration: On Being Creative

Don't Watch Yourself Drive

Rainy Mid-Night Snack by MSVG

Yesterday in Aikido (one of the classes we have to take for our degree - I love being an actor), Sensei watched my classmate Sean and I while we were practicing a throw. I knew I had done something weird in it, so I made a face. You know, one of those "damn, why did I do that?" faces. Sensei looked and me and said, "Why did you make that face?" I said "I just knew I did something wrong." Sensei then said, "Maybe, but if you're the one correcting yourself then what am I supposed to do? Do you want to take over my job?"

Since then, I've been thinking about judgement. I judge myself so much throughout the day. It's like I'm trying to be my own teacher in order to make myself into a "perfect" student-person every second of the day.

WOW is that not helpful in creativity.

However, as actors, we are often left in the position where we have to direct ourselves. We have to make our own choices and be our own artistic judges. In audition material, for example, or in scene work for class. In auditions, it helps a TON to get a coach, so that you're not trying to both do and watch, but in scene work, your work usually doesn't get seen by the teacher until you go up in class. In rehearsal for scene work, I'm trying to learn how to help myself make artistic choices, but it's so hard not to get caught up in seeing all of the flaws of what you've done to the point where you are no longer acting the scene but watching it.

You have to somehow find the balance between experiencing and critiquing.

In singing, I think it's easier to find because you can record it - so that later you can think about what you heard. In acting, I think it's maybe just a matter of being flexible and being able to switch between the two sides - essentially teacher and student. Be the student while you are doing, and be the teacher afterward when you are observing.

It's a balance that I'm continually trying to find.

And, when I forget, my voice teacher likes to remind me of this by saying "Don't get out of the car in order to watch yourself drive."

Create!

I made this during my artist's date yesterday :)

Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves by Mukumbra

At the end of each week of The Artist's Way, you're asked to do a check-in about how the week went, how you felt about using the tools (morning pages, artist's date), any creative freedom that you noticed or other things helpful to your recovery as an artist. I'm going to start doing a little round-up for myself on here as well.

This week, as you may tell from the title of this post, is themed as "recovering a sense of abundance." In really broad strokes, it means that I'm supposed to be examining my relationship with money. What I think about it, how I feel about it in relation to my art, etc.

I read the chapter this week with a similar feeling to how I read it the first time I did the workbook. That is, "this doesn't apply to me right now."

Last time, as I have mentioned, I started the book as I was starting my final semester of undergrad. I didn't have any sort of job to speak of, and my parents were supporting me.

This time around, I'm in my second year of grad school. My tuition is paid for by the school, I get paid for the classes I teach at school, and my parents are still helping me out.

So, both now and then, I thought that my financial circumstances were out of my control. This week in particular, I noticed myself reading the chapter and thinking that my money problems would be fine if I had the time (like other non-grad-schoolians do) to just go out and get a job. Or two.

And then I realized that this is exactly the sort of thinking that we are meant to examine. I have, unconsciously, placed myself the victim of my circumstances and have allowed that to change the way I perceive money in relation to my creative endeavors.

I have just as much ability to go out and find work as anyone else. My hours are more limited, so my options are more limited, but it is my thinking that is stopping me from going out and trying. (Also, feeling like it's not a great idea, as much as I'd like a little more financial security, because grad school keeps you busy.)

I did, however, start to think that it would be nice for a little extra change to come my way, and - in a nice little bit of synchronicity - a friend of mine had a couple of voice students that she couldn't fit into her schedule, and asked me if I'd like to take them on. Why yes, Universe, I would.

So, once again, thank you Julia Cameron, for making me think about my life. Particularly for making think of the parts of my life that I try not to think about. I'm more and more grasping the fact that my life is what I make of it, and that's an empowering, humbling thing to know.

When do you feel the most creative?

Summer Solstice Sunrise in Krakow by Raffee

I've started to wonder about this since I re-started The Artist's Way. There are times that I expect myself to feel really creative, like when I'm writing my morning pages, but I find that I'm just...not.

I suppose, just because I tell myself "write, right now" doesn't mean that the creativity comes along with it. For some people scheduling time to work on art everyday is helpful, and I've certainly  found it to produce results in terms of number of pages written, but it's not always as fun as when I'm feeling inspired or moved or just ready to create some shit.

What I have noticed...is that I feel creative at night. Late at night. This sucks, because that's a time that I like to spend sleeping.

I think I come up with some of my best ideas as I'm falling asleep. Sometimes I actually get up and write them down, but it takes a lot to get me out of a warm bed, so frequently my night insights are left with a "I hope you're still there tomorrow" as I fall asleep.

Feeling creative is different than feeling productive. I feel most productive in the morning. If I can get it together to get out of my oh-so-comfy bed early - I get shit done. But, rarely is it creative shit. It may be mildly creative shit because the things I'm getting done right now are usually homework assignments for grad school, but if I complete something like that in a productive mood, it gets done in a productive (rather than a creative) way.

Starting to hone in on this daily creativity cycle can be helpful. If I can find an ounce of productivity to get me away from the tv or computer late at night, then I can do creative shit when I'm feeling creative. This is also great to know in terms of rehearsals or even auditions - plan them to my advantage. It's like working out to maximize calorie burn. If you work out at a certain time after you've eaten, or at a certain time during the day (depending on which studies you read) you will burn more calories than if you don't. I want to give myself time to be creative when I'm feeling creative.

Also interesting to notice - when I don't feel creative. The morning, wow, the morning. The morning pages are especially difficult when I do not feeling like writing at all! Also, when watching TV. I'm sure this is obvious to some, but I have often tried to write or look over a script or draw while watching TV and it just doesn't work. Watching a movie can be great, but TV...I don't know. Maybe it's the commercials.

Has anyone else noticed this? Do you often feel creative at certain times of the day? Or is it just me?

Nocha de luna llena by Luz Adriana Villa A

Inspiration: Cross-Create

music by craigCloutier

I'm working on a song in my voice lessons that I am having some trouble with. It's an Irish song, and it's essentially the same four-line stanza that repeats three times. I LOVE the song, but I felt like it was all the same mood, the same inflections, etc. the whole way through. The hard thing with this kind of song is building a story around it so that you can give it variety and interest within the same set of notes. I was feeling kinda bummed about working on it cause I wasn't really sure where to start.

Normally, my voice teacher has us write out our lyrics on a piece of paper so that we can see the build of the thoughts as the melody changes. For example:


xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx


xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx
     xxxxx



          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


               xxxxxx
               xxxxxx

               xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


But with my current song, it looked like

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Boring!

So, he suggested that I make up a story. This is fairly normal, because you want to create circumstances for yourself in a song that are specific and that speak to you and fuel you to perform the song. However, for this particular song he suggested that I think of it like a screenplay. It's basically like making my own music video in my head, but it's not a way that I've worked before so it may turn out to be really helpful.

Decide the specifics of the story, thought by thought, and even imagine what the camera shots look like - when is the camera on you?
when is the camera from your perspective and who are you looking at and why?
when are you singing in voice over and we're seeing a flashback into the time in your life that you're singing about/thinking about?

I think this is not only an awesome idea, but an idea that inspired me - what if I started to apply different mediums to things I'm working on? Like applying screenwriting or film making to singing performance.

My voice teacher told me about an artist friend of his who would put on a symphony and paint what she heard. Sometimes I'll put on music while I'm writing, and damn does it make me feel like everything I'm writing is brilliant!

Cross-Creating is like cross-pollinating. When plants are cross-pollinated, they often end up getting stronger and better able to pollinate (they often have taller stamens, at least according to Wikipedia...).

Maybe if I start cross-creating, my art will get stronger.

Other things to try in the future:

Paint the feeling of a poem
Take pictures of things your character might look at or find interesting - how would they frame it?
Choreograph a dance that embodies the story arc of your character in a play
Sing a monologue - what would it be like if this monologue was the main number of a musical?

Yay making things!

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solutionand that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important. 

Support the Arts in our schools!

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Put It Out There

There's a story that Hitler (yes, I'm writing about Hitler, bear with me) asked his arts advisor about the films made in Germany over the course of a given year. He wanted to know how many had been made. He was told, "About a hundred." He then asked, "Out of those hundred, how many were genius films?" His advisor told him, "Maybe two." Hitler then said, "Well, why don't we just make the genius films?"

Action by Jonathan Kos-Read

The first time I heard this, my response was - why not? We just have to work harder, right? But then I realized that the whole point of the story is that you can't have genius films without the non-genius films to compare them to. You have to make a hundred movies in order to realize that two of them are genius.

Which brings me to the fact that I'm scared.

Yep, ya heard me. Scared. Of writing.

Today is one of those days when it feels like writing and having people read it is one of the scariest things in the world. BUT - I'm doing it anyway. Because I need to get used to just putting shit out there. Because it doesn't matter if it doesn't exist. And not that I'm trying to hit on genius writing with my blog, but it would be nice if there was a teensy bit of value beyond the joy I get from creating it.

Getting used to putting things out there is part of expanding my creativity. My friend Virginia uses this idea as one of her personal process guidelines on her blog, acceptanceprojectnyc.blogspot.com . She calls it "quantity not quality." This is also talked about a lot in the Artist's Way.

Make a deal with your artist/creativity/god that you will take care of the quantity of things being created, as long as he/she/it takes care of the quality.  

I like to call it "Putting Shit Out There." Cause even if it's shit, it's got to go in the "created" heap or else what will you be able to compare the gems to?

Part of my "Putting Shit Out There" resolution is this blog. I'm trying to write something everyday. I don't make it everyday, but if that's what keeps me more on track to putting more shit out there, then great.

So, here I am, putting it out there. My musings on the topic of creativity may not be the most creative, but they're mine. I'm planning on putting things that I create on here as well, but...I'm in grad school, and the things I create there are extremely ephemeral. We'll see how that can all translate into one lovely, sloppy, quantity-filled blog on creativity.

Louis Armstrong

Evil, thy name is Perfectionism

The Russian Royal Family, Library of Congress

My friend Sonya and I are currently rehearsing a scene from Chekhov's Three Sisters for school, and at the end of rehearsal yesterday we were discussing the evils of perfectionism. We were talking about how being perfect isn't possible and yet we so frequently strive for it in every aspect of our lives.

We try to be perfect actors. When you are trained in the American schools, you are taught or somehow misled to believe that the ideal to be reached is to inhabit your character 100% - to move, breathe, act, talk, think, feel like your character - to believe that you are your character the entire time you are playing them. Sonya and I, both being Type A personalities, have aimed for this in the past when working on characters.

And it drives you crazy.

Why? Because you can never 100% be another person. You would have to have been born another person, to have lived their life in their time period and in all their exact circumstances in order to be them completely. But you will always have been born you. What is an actor to do?!

For a long time, my answer was "do nothing." If you didn't do any work (or claim that you didn't have time to do the work) then you can't be blamed for not making it to 100%. I didn't try, so of course I didn't make it anywhere. I would tell myself that it would be worse if I really tried, and still didn't make it anywhere.

But trying and failing is how you learn.

So, after getting a kick in the pants by reading David Mamet's Theatre (more on that another time), I've let go of the guilt by remembering that 100% is not possible.

Do your work, be prepared, and then get in the room and have fun with it. Don't let the guilt of not being a perfect actor (or person) keep you from being an actor at all.

*

My chat with Sonya also reminded me of a conversation I had with a very good friend when I was first starting to study acting. I think I was more of a perfectionist then than I am now.

 He told me:

1. You're not perfect.

2. You're never going to be perfect.

3. No one thinks you're perfect.

These three things blew my mind and surprise me to this day because, at the time, I thought the opposite of each was attainable.

"Perfect" is just an idea. An idea that we define for ourselves, and usually the bar is set beyond what is really achievable. As we begin to renegotiate our own expectations of ourselves, we can live our lives in the direction of achievable goals.

Move towards great acting, not perfect acting.

If you want to take it in another direction and out-think your inner perfectionist:

1. The only thing you can perfect is always being imperfect.

So there, inner perfectionist beast! I'm already imperfect. Try perfecting that, bitch.

Do Something You LOVE

Be by h.koppdelaney

Gretchen Rubin over at The Happiness Project wrote a post yesterday about things that you should do daily to be happy & healthy. Her list included things like "wear your seatbelt," and "take prescription medicines properly."

If I had to add one thing to the list, it would be do something you love. Everyday.

It doesn't have to be the same thing everyday, but it should be something. Creativity includes creating your life the way you want to live it. And who doesn't want to spend their days doing something they love?

I'm not only talking about doing something you love for a living. That can be extremely challenging. I'm just talking about having something to look forward to in each day.

If you are in the position to love what you do for your job (or do what you love for your job), remember how lucky you are, and be grateful to anyone that helped you get to that place. If your job is not something that you love, then lift up your day by giving yourself even five minutes to do something just for you:

Take a walk

Have a cup of tea

Read

Put on a nice dress

Call a friend

Crack a joke

(this is obviously my list, and yours may include none of these ridiculous things)

If enjoying your life were as essential as wearing your seatbelt, we'd all be happier, right?

If you could add one thing that you love to your daily routine, what would it be?

Inspiration: Give Yourself Boundaries

Every Wednesday is going to be Inspiration Day. I'm going to write about things that inspire me to work on new projects, or things that may inspire you.

My boyfriend saw Jack White of the White Stripes on Charlie Rose say he never wanted to expand the band from him and his drummer, Meg, because it challenged him artistically. White said, "I think there's more creativity when there's less opportunity." He said similar things in an interview with Rolling Stone.When my boyfriend told me, all I thought was what a great idea.

Have you ever thought of giving yourself boundaries in order to create something new?

Box girl by sxld

A lot of people are using time as a boundary - 365 days of pictures, a year of doing this or that every day. Theme months, theme weeks. (coincidentally, this picture comes from a 365 pix project - "365 photos taken over the course of forever")

What if you only took pictures of things that were green?
What if you only took pictures from three inches off the ground?
What if you only drew things that made you think of home?
What if you never rehearsed a dance piece in the same room twice?
What if you wrote a short play where each sentence a character spoke had to be one syllable longer than the sentence before?

Some of these could be terribly difficult, but they would force you to do something you've never done before.

Create the box, so that you can think outside of it.

What kind of boxes are you going to create?

A Tale of Synchronicities

Alice in Wonderland by Brandon Christopher Warren

Four years ago, this week, I got a callback for an audition. I had been telling my friends and my parents that all I wanted after college was to get a job as a professional actor, so, to that end, I participated in the Theater Bay Area General Auditions. I did a monologue and a song in front of 200 or so casting directors, directors and other representatives of the theaters around the Bay Area, thinking that it might lead to some familiarity when I came in to audition for other shows at these theaters throughout the year.

Even though I had my wisdom teeth taken out 8 days before the audition, I got a callback! I was asked to come read for a part at a professional Shakespeare company. At the time, I lived in Berkeley, and the callback was in San Francisco (for those of you unfamiliar, about an hour's drive). BUT, the first day of a class I needed to finish my minor started ONE HOUR after the callback. At UC Berkeley, if you don't show up for the first day of a class, you are automatically dropped, and since it was my last semester I couldn't take it another time. So, with all of these things stacked against me, I decided to go.

"Wait, go?" you say. Yes.

Why? Synchronicity. 

The first time I started working through The Artist's Way was a few days after I got my wisdom teeth out, those same four years ago. In it, Julia Cameron talks about synchronicity - when you put a wish, a dream, a hope out into the universe, and something just happens to fall into your lap that fulfills it.

Hadn't I been telling everyone how I wanted to work professionally after college? Hadn't I gone to the general auditions just to meet that end? And yet, there was that part of me that wanted to look this glorious gift horse in the mouth and say "I can't go to this callback because I can't get dropped from my class."

But, something in me started to open up, even with only a few weeks of Artist's Way work under my belt, and I went anyway. (No one's going to die if I don't finish my minor, I finally let myself realize.)

And you know what? It went swimmingly. It was like the part was waiting for me. I had to be able to do Shakespeare, I had to be able to play fast Irish music on an instrument, and I had to be able to sing folk songs. Oh, and dance. Sure, I've only been training my whole life to do exactly all of those things.

So I got the part.

*

by 85mm.ch

I thought of this story recently because it was the biggest example of "yes, this book is helping me change my life" that I could think of as a reason to do start working through it again.

Keep an eye out for when the universe answers the questions you're asking. But you have to ask the questions. Put shit out there. What do you want to accomplish? Just open the door, and watch for when the answers ask to come in. They may not always happen in the ways you thought you wanted, but trust that they will be just what you need.

Waffling? Do Something.

untitled by minato - flickr

Do you ever find that you have so many options for the same thing that you don't choose any of them?

You have an afternoon free, so rather than choose to spend an hour of it drawing, or acting, or writing, you start checking your email and suddenly you've spent the entire day doing nothing.

Or, as I recently ran into, you're so worried about what "type" you should be in your headshots that you don't make any choices and come out in a sort of bland wash?

Waffling, putzing, killing time - I find that the easiest way to cut through that mire of bull is to do something. Even if it's only for five minutes. Set a timer or an alarm, and tell yourself that you're going to make the bed. Do your laundry. Choose which shirt to wear for headshots. Go through a monologue - on your feet, not in your head. Stretch. Get out a piece of paper and draw for five minutes. It may not be a masterpiece in that amount of time, but at the end of the day you'll have done something.

(And, if you really want to spice it up, spend those five minutes doing something you've never done before.)

I find that the fear of not choosing the right thing to do can hold me back from doing anything.

Lucas Calhoun Photography

I was looking at headshot websites prior to a shoot I did with my friend Lucas (Lucas Calhoun Photography), and I came across one girl who said she printed out her headshots as 4x6 cards and asked people to look through her pictures as hard copies. She was able to note which ones made people stop and look, even if they weren't the ones that people said that they liked. She ended up going with a shot that was much moodier than she comes across, but she got "so many auditions that she doesn't even send out the other [happier] shot anymore." Even if it's not "right" - it was an attitude, a point of view that drew people in. A headshot is just an opportunity to get in the room.

So, in choosing my own headshots, I went with something that is less "I guess that's a nice picture of me." and more "Huh. What's going on there?" It may not represent every version of myself, every aspect of my personality, but it says something.

And - it leaves you with the opportunity to surprise them in the room.

So, go out, do something. Today, I'm going to the gym, I'm rehearsing a scene, and I'm practicing songs. Hopefully I'll be doing more than five minutes of each.

What's in a Name?

To address the name of the blog -

I wanted to come up with something that included creativity or imagination, as that's the extremely general topic that I'm going to be writing about. My first thought was CreativitINK, but I figured it was taken, and it sound more like someone writing about the types of pens they like to use when they write (an extremely valid topic for posting on this blog, but not what the whole blog's about). I tried a few more things in my head, but nothing jumped out at me.

Then, I hit the interwebs. "Blog Naming" and "How to Start a Blog" were big hits. After a few tries, I ended up on Wordoid.com, which is a name generator which also conveniently tells you if the made-up word it's just created has already been used as a .com or a .net, and how many times it appears in search engines. I popped in "creat" to see what things it would come up with, but after discarding DISCREATY, INCREATED, and SACREAT, among other equally-anti-creativity-sounding words, I went back to playing with words in my head.

Then I thought, CreativiTEA! That's it! I LOVE tea!

Apparently so does everyone else.

Google came back with about 87,000 results for that particular word, reminding me that original ideas are never original, particularly when it comes to homophones.

Tea Talk Teacup by Partea at Wrapables.com

But then I thought, wait, thanks to grad school, I now know the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), so I changed the spelling to Creativətea. That upside-down e in the middle? It's called a schwa. It's a phonetic symbol that represents the relaxed vowel sound usually used in unstressed syllables of words - believe, photograph, indescribable - as long as you say the words the way you would in regular conversation, assuming that you are not a person that over-articulates every word in every conversation.

So, the name, so far, includes creativity, linguistics, and tea. Great. However, I'm not writing about creativity in general, or how to be creative with tea, or how to be creative about combining linguistics with tea. I'm writing about my personal journey as a creative person.

I found another blog-naming page on GZZT.com (now THAT'S a unique name), which was mostly unhelpful but led me to chronicles. I like it. It reminds me of the Chronicles of Narnia, which I haven't read (surprisingly, to me, because they're definitely in my genre of choice), but makes me think of books. Oh, and this.

So, there you have it. Creativətea Chronicles. The chronicles of one girl, examining creativity, linguistics, tea, you name it.

Beginnings...

A new day, a new blog.

I've never written a blog before. I've toyed with the idea, but I always thought my inclinations for writing were to varied and vague to be distilled into one concise theme. Creativity, however, includes whatever the hell I want it to - so here we are.

I hope to write about things that inspire me, enrage me, spur me to create, to work, to change.

This blog was inspired by my second round of working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it is a sort of 12-step program for your artistic self. I love that it's just structured enough to inspire and not bog you down. I'm currently at the beginning of week 5, and will surely post about how the process is working this time around.

Please peruse, enjoy, create.