The Vs. Studio Blog

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.” -Scottish mountaineer and writer W. H. Murray

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” -Goethe

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe” -Saint Augustine

“When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.” – ancient Hasidic Proverb

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” -Rumi

Here’s the thing about going all in…

You have no idea if it will work.

There is no turning back.

You must throw your cap over the wall.

And the people, things and events you truly need to materialize for your success don’t actually show up until you’re all in. It’s blind faith.

So ask yourself, are you really all in?

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say. -“The Walking Song” in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold, yeah
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll, not to roll -“Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

The road ahead to your desired destination will most assuredly not be straight.

It will be filled with all kinds of twists and turns that you didn’t anticipate. There will be long stretches where you will lose sight of the road or other stretches where you will feel like the road never ends.

You will feel like giving up and going home, especially because that road back is very clear and easy to navigate.

But don’t.

Don’t turn back.

Be a rock. Don’t roll.

Onward brave one. Forge ahead!

“People who get an unusual amount of work done are maniacal about removing things from their lives that others tolerate.” -Shane Parrish

Artistic work isn’t for everyone. It requires total focus and concentration on the task at hand. You must shut everything out. Eliminate all distraction. Treat this work and time as precious, sacred, consecrated even.

Some excerpts from Mary Oliver’s Upstream: Selected Essays that reinforce this principle (h/t to Maria Popova’s always excellent Marginalian blog for inspiring).

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities.

Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about.

Of this there can be no question — creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this — who does not swallow this — is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only. Such a person had better go off and fly an airplane.

The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work — who is thus responsible to the work.

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” -Mary Oliver

If you’re fortunate to receive the call to do creative work, you must answer it.

Otherwise it will haunt you the rest of your life.

Go make your art.

“If you speak any lines, or do anything, mechanically, without fully realizing who you are, where you came from, why, what you want, where you are going, and what you will do when you get there, you will be acting without imagination. That time, whether it will be short or long, will be unreal, and you will be nothing more than a wound-up machine, an automation.” -Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares

To be effective in any scene or entire play, the actor must know (a) what they want, (b) why they want it and (c) what obstacles stand in their way.

Sounds simple enough.

And it is. Provided you do massive prep work beforehand to figure out the answers to these questions. If you don’t?…Well, good luck.

Note: This isn’t just for actors. Anyone looking to accomplish anything would be wise to heed Stanislavski’s advice.

“We can never go back. We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago.” -bell hooks

“Over and over, the hand of memory reaches back, grasps for the bygone moment when life was simpler or brighter or more redolent with aliveness, forgetting that the only thing for the keeping is the naked now, vulnerable as a newborn, total as eternity. The great challenge, the great triumph, is to make of memory an instrument of presence.” -Maria Popova

“You have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity.” -Richard Rohr, book The Naked Now

“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.” -Thomas Wolfe, novel You Can’t Go Home Again

“Nostalgia is a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.” -Brene Brown

The word nostalgia is derived from two Greek roots: “Nostos” meaning homecoming or return to one’s native land. “Algos” meaning pain, grief, or distress. Originally, the term was used to describe a severe, sometimes fatal medical diagnosis of extreme homesickness, specifically among Swiss mercenaries fighting far from the Alps. Over time, it has evolved into an emotional longing for a past time, place, or experience rather than a physical location. And thanks to capitalism and the rapid, modern transformation of our society, we are particularly susceptible to longing for simpler times.

The cure?

Gratitude for the past. But then, letting it go so that we can be wide open and available to the present.

The below poem “Weeds” by Diane Suess helps us with this:

The danger of memory is going

to it for respite. Respite risks

entrapment. Don’t debauch

yourself by living

in some former version of yourself

that was more or less naked. Maybe

it felt better then, but you were

not better. You were smaller, as the rain

gauge must fill to the brim

with its full portion of suffering.

What can memory be in these terrible times?

Only instruction. Not a dwelling.

Or if you must dwell:

The sweet smell of weeds then.

The sweet smell of weeds now.

An endurance. A standoff. A rest.

P.S. – Hope you had a great and relaxing Memorial Day. Speaking of, read this great poem “Ode For Memorial Day” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. While it was written in 1896 and is about the Civil War, it pays tribute to all who gave their lives in service to our country.

“On May 2, 1972, Bruce Springsteen auditioned for the record producer John Hammond. Hammond had signed icons like Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin—two of Springsteen’s heroes. “I would’ve been in a state of complete panic,” Springsteen writes in Born To Run, “except on the way up in the elevator, I performed a little mental jiu-jitsu on myself. I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing so I’ve got nothing to lose. I can only gain should this work out. If it don’t, I still got what I came in with. I make my way through the world as myself and I’ll still be that person when I leave no matter the outcome.’” By performing a little mental jiu-jitsu, by holding his dream of landing a record deal with a loose grip, Springsteen said that instead of panicking, he walked into the audition feeling confident. He performed his song, “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.” “When I was done I looked up,” Springsteen writes, “and I heard him say, ‘You’ve got to be on Columbia Records…That was wonderful.’” Springsteen signed a ten-album deal and would go on to record with Hammond and Columbia Records for the next fifty years.” -excerpt from Billy Oppenheimer’s Six At Six Newsletter

… Well I was the king of the alley
I could talk a trash
I was the prince of the pauper
Crowned downtown at the beggar’s bash
I was the pimp’s main prophet
I kept everything cool
Just a backstreet gambler with the luck to lose -song, “It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City” by Bruce Springsteen

“Playing with house money” is a gambling idiom used when a person is betting with their winnings rather than risking their original capital.

Another way to think about this is you’ve got nothing to lose. (Think of an underdog, Cinderella team going on a hot streak in the NCAA Basketball tournament.) As a result you play loose and free, perhaps, more aggressive.

This should be the approach for most things in life. Yes, it matters. Yes, you care deeply and want to win (or perform well, win the part, nail the job interview, give a great speech, etc…). Yes, you want to work hard and do everything you can to prepare.

But at the end of the day, (assuming you have your health and basic needs covered), you’re playing with house money.

So.

Be bold.

Be fearless.

Have fun.

Leave it all out there.

You’ve got nothing to lose.

Cuz you’re playing with house money.

Might as well go for it.

Go make your art.

P.S. – Click Here to listen to the Springsteen demo.

“The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created.” -Tina Fey

“Saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow. Saying ‘yes’ leads to knowledge.” -Stephen Colbert

“Our first energy has to be “yes” energy, an acceptance of what is. From there we can move, build, and proceed, even if in opposition. We must choose the positive, which is to choose love.” -Richard Rohr

“Because the terms that you have invented, which you think describe and define you, inevitably collide with the facts of life. When this collision occurs—and, make no mistake, this is an absolutely inevitable collision—when this collision occurs, life offers you the choice, and it’s a very narrow choice, of holding on to your definition of yourself or saying, as the old folks used to say, and as everybody who wants to live has to say: Yes, Lord. Which is to say yes to life.” -James Baldwin

Just like every great improv scene starts with “Yes”, every great experience you will have ever have in your life, including the tough learning ones, must start with “Yes.”

You must say “Yes” to all that life throws at you.

It’s the only way to grow.

Open. Open. Open.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

“Build a life where you’re energized in the morning and exhausted at night.

Energized in the morning means you’re excited about the things you get to work on and the people you get to work on them with.

Exhausted at night means you gave your all to those things and people.

Your best life is built in that collision.” -Sahil Bloom

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” -George Bernard Shaw

You need both energy AND exhaustion to have a successful day, and life.

If you’re energized in the morning, but not exhausted at night. That means you didn’t give it your all. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Do better tomorrow.

If you’re exhausted at night, but not energized in the morning, it means you’re not doing the work you’re meant to be doing. Spend time figuring out what that work is, immediately.

“Better late than never.”

Yes, this ancient proverb (From the Latin…”Potiusque sero quam nunquam….The historian Livius first recorded in 27 BC) is true. It is better to accomplish a goal or arrive at your destination late than never at all.

But the proverb is not an excuse to turn in lazy or careless work.

If that’s the case, then you’re “better never than ever.”