The Vs. Studio Blog

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger. –Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

My dad once told me a story about how he almost drowned when he was a young man. It involved having fun at a party and then afterwards, him (for some reason) going nightswimming alone in Jones Beach.

He ended up getting caught in a riptide. (A riptide is a strong ocean current that flows directly away from the shore. A swimmer caught in a riptide is pulled out into the open water. Nearly 100 people died in riptides last year in the U.S. alone.)

As he tried to swim in to shore, he realized he wasn’t making any progress. No matter how hard and fast he swam, he kept going further and further out until he could no longer see the shore. Exhausted and no doubt frightened, he somehow gathered his wits about him and just stopped swimming entirely. He let himself drift. Every once in a while, he took a few strokes and then stopped and drifted again. He noticed the current wasn’t as strong as he wasn’t being pushed as far out. He repeated the process over and over. Swim. Stop. Drift. Swim. Stop. Drift. Eventually, after an hour or so, the current died down completely and he made it to shore. He thanked his lucky stars and lived to tell me the story many years later.

I was always impressed by his ability to stay calm and pivot under these adverse circumstances. (As well as so many other things my dad accomplished in his life). That story has always stuck with me.

Turns out, I recently discovered there’s a name for this thinking and it can be applied to life itself. It’s called having a “riptide mentality” per Sahil Bloom and his always excellent Curiosity Chronicle. He writes below…

The recommended course of action when you’re caught in a riptide is to relax and let it take you out into the open water. Once the current dissipates, you swim parallel to the shore and then in. You conserve energy by not fighting the riptide, and then use your energy to return to shore once outside its grasp.

This is what I call the Riptide Mentality:

At certain times in your life, there are going to be subtle, hidden, external forces conspiring against you—pulling you further away from your desired destination.

In these moments, your instincts will tell you to fight back against those forces. You’ll breathe faster, push harder, and strain against them.

But these instincts may lead you astray:

You may be caught in a riptide—and in a riptide, the best course of action is the opposite of what your instincts tell you.

In these moments, when you feel the currents are too strong to resist, allow yourself the freedom to relax and let it take you.

Once it inevitably dissipates, you will have the energy and fortitude to safely navigate to your destination.

So the next time you feel those intense forces conspiring against you, and your instincts tell you to strain and fight back, consider the Riptide Mentality:

Perhaps the best course of action is to conserve energy now and deploy it more effectively later.

There’s a time to swim, a time to stop, and a time to drift. Knowing when can make all the difference in your endeavors and your overall life.

“Do you like green eggs and ham?”

“I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.”

“Would you like them here or there?” –Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

I’m sort of back to that place I’ve always been in my career: Wherever I was working with agents, or working in L.A. or New York, at the same time I was always going off and doing my own thing. Like we’re going do a short play or a short film, finding jobs on my own. Like when I was at the University of Kansas, I was getting my Masters, and there were only so many spaces….Finding space for yourself when you’re writing plays on your own, you’re not the first person on the list. So constantly, especially there, I’m going all over campus. And I would find spaces that fit plays. I’m finding places on campus, I’m like, ‘Oh man, you know that stairwell under the Natural History Museum, have your read that Pinter play, One for the Road, where this guy’s doing those interrogations? Why won’t we do that there? And we’ll put the audience on the stairs.’ So I was doing environmental theater faster than I could think. And of course, there’s always some teacher saying, ‘you can’t do theater there.’ Yeah, you can. I’m kind of in that same place.

That’s one of the things they tell students. Any time somebody says, give me some advice, it’s not like, ‘here are the keys to the kingdom,’ My big one is, ‘don’t take no for an answer.’  Somebody says no, that’s just one no. Go around them, or find something else. . . So I’m still out there looking for money, to make a movie, or finding a place to stage a play. Who cares if the audience is here in Romania? Or if it’s in L.A? Or if it’s in Canada? My job is doing theater, not doing Broadway. Broadway used to be synonymous with doing theater when Tennessee Williams was around. There was no regional theater in the same way, but now we can do it anywhere.” -Neil LaBute, Stage Raw Interview with Steven Leigh Morris

“When you hit a wall of your own imagined limitations, just kick it in.” -Sam Shepard

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Go make your art.

In a boat.

With a goat.

In the rain.

In the dark.

On a train.

In a car.

In a tree.

In a box.

With a fox.

In a house.

With a mouse.

Here and there.

Anywhere.

Just do it.

Go make your art.

By any means necessary.

For the producer or project manager…

If someone wants to hire you (assuming the project interests you), the first two questions you should immediately ask the person are:

-Why are you doing this? (How did this originate? What’s your goal? Etc.)

-When is your (rough) deadline to ship this?

If they don’t have good answers, you have two choices:

-You can spend time with them to help clarify their why and set a deadline. Then see if that aligns with your why for producing and your current schedule.

-You can pass.

But you’re certainly not ready to say yes. Let alone move on to the next two important questions. Which are:

-Who is this for?

-What is your budget?

Clarifying intent and establishing timelines are two of the most valuable skills you can bring to any project. Including your own.

If not, “it’s curtains for you.” And them.

“One’s own dharma performed imperfectly is better than another’s dharma well performed…It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another.” -Bhagavad Gita

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running — that’s the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach….”
–The Dharma Bums, novel by Jack Kerouac

While the word “dharma” is not easily defined, it can be understood as behaving in accord with the orders and customs that sustain life. Being virtuous. Doing one’s duty. Living harmoniously with the cosmos.

Consider it your duty to find and follow your dharma. Because when you’re lit up, you light us up too.

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” -Robert Henri

“As you deepen your participation in the creative act, you may come across a paradox. Ultimately, the act of self-expression isn’t really about you. Most who choose the artist’s path don’t have a choice. We feel compelled to engage, as if by some primal instinct, the same force that calls turtles toward the sea after hatching in the sand. We follow this instinct. To deny it is dispiriting, as if we are in violation of nature. If we zoom out, we see this blind impulse is always there, guiding our aim beyond ourselves. In the moment when we feel the work is taking shape, there’s a dynamic surge, followed by an urge to share, in the hopes of replicating that mysterious emotional charge in others. This is the call to self-express, our creative purpose. It’s not necessarily to understand ourselves or be understood. We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.” –The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Erik Rittenberry (check out his wonderful Substack, Poetic Outlaws) recently shared the below advice to writers. However, I think it’s applicable to any artist in any discipline. Or anyone aspiring to produce a passion project….

Advice? 

I don’t have advice. 

Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. 

Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. 

Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. 

Or don’t. 

Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

If you don’t have to do it, don’t do it.

If you have to do it, do it. By any means necessary. Just ensure you put your whole heart and soul into it. Otherwise, you’re not really doing it.

“Pure love, careless of all things, kindles the soul.” -Seneca

“Let us be full of love. Let us tell those we love that we absolutely and totally love them. Let us answer with love to every situation and problem we face….Almost every situation is made better when it is full of love.” -Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

“So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.” -The final line from the poem, The Names, US poet laureate Billy Collins’ ode to the victims of the 9/11 attack. Read in full here. Listen in full here.

“You blame your prior convictions. But they’re not to blame. You yourself are to blame. You never understood that just having convictions doesn’t lead to success. You should have done something! -Maria Vasilyevna speaking to Voinitsky in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Annie Baker adaptation)

“Thank you for the excellent company. I respect your, uh, way of thinking and your enthusiasm and spontaneity. But allow an old man some parting words–just one observation…Do something with your lives, ladies and gentlemen! You must always take action and do something!….I wish you all the best.” _Serebryakov’s parting advice in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Annie Baker adaptation)

The bridge between knowing and doing is massive.

There are lots of people on one side. (The knowers.)

Very few on the other. (The doers.)

Love and action.

Be a doer.

Go make your art.

P.S. – On the 23rd Anniversary of 9/11, this voicemail.

“Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make. Forget Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry and write the kind of stories you feel like writing. Learn to typewrite, so you can turn out stories as fast as Zane Grey.” -William Saroyan, from his preface in his short story collection, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

William Saroyan (born 1908 in Fresno, CA; died 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for his play The Time Of Your Life (he refused the award because he believed commerce should not judge the arts), and the Academy Award in 1943 for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy (his original treatment was rejected by the studio, so he turned it into a novel).

Saroyan wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno. He grew up very poor, including spending five years in an orphanage starting at age three. (He was later reunited with his family in Fresno when he was eight.) In his short story collection, My Name Is Aram, Saroyan called his childhood “the most amazing and comical poverty in the world.” As a young man, he worked a variety of odd jobs and traveled extensively throughout the San Joaquin Valley, and much of his early writing reflects this experience.

Besides his talent, Saroyan was known for his blazing speed and prodigious output of work (sadly later in his life, also known for his heavy drinking and gambling). He’s written nine novels, fifteen short story collections, nearly forty plays and over a dozen essays and memoirs. He famously wrote The Time Of Your Life in six days at New York’s Great Northern Hotel. Although in an interview Saroyan said, ‘You can’t just say I wrote this play in six days and let it go at that. It really means six days – and 30 years.”

Saroyan is regarded as one of the most underrated literary figures of the 20th century. Kurt Vonnegut called him “the first and still the greatest of all the American minimalists.”

”Most writers strain too hard to produce, especially in the movies. Since all art consists of capturing and presenting a section of life, why should characters and plots be forced?” -William Saroyan

Following on the heels of his successful debut play, My Heart’s in the Highlands (produced by the Group Theatre), The Time Of Your Life opened in October, 1939, at The Booth Theatre on Broadway. (Saroyan actually directed the production after seeing early rehearsals in New Haven. He dismissed that director and completely restaged it for Broadway.) It was an instant success and immediately entered the canon of great American plays. Besides winning the Pulitzer, The Time Of Your Life also won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award, becoming the first play to win both. It’s been revived three times on Broadway; was made into a film in 1948, starring James Cagney; and twice filmed for TV. The Royal Shakespeare did a star-studded production in 1983 and in 2002, Steppenwolf Theatre under the direction of Tina Landau, did a much heralded revival.

Set in a San Francisco waterfront bar called Nick’s Tavern (based on a real place Saroyan frequented called Izzy’s), The Time Of Your Life offers a rich tapestry of human life. Wistful dreamers, hobo-cowboy fabulists, pining lonely hearts, and beer-hall-philosophers are among many other eccentrics who all populate Nick’s. There is “much humor, a touch of menace, and a refrain of despair. No foundation. All the way down the line.” as The New York Times wrote.

“What I love about it is that it fluctuates between these two extremes which are the nitty, gritty reality of street life and money and cold places and no shoes and the word which appears in more thirties songs that any other word, which is dream. There are so many songs about the dream. And Joe’s first line to Kitty, which is “What’s the dream?” That line is very mysterious to me. And the more I think about the play and because I’ve been listening to and playing through a lot of music of the period, I’ve realized the dream, with a capital T and a capital D is a big thing. So I love, I love, there’s this Oscar Wilde quote, and I’m going to misquote it, but it’s something like, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” but it’s that pull of opposites, which is also what we’re trying to follow through in the designs, which is on the one hand a kind of really exposed, raw, human, prosaic word, and a world that romance and a belief in a better future and I think Saroyan does that too, in that on the one hand he’s looking at a group of people who are, you know, one could consider to be the down-and-outers, the disenfranchised, the, it’s a motley crew. And at the same time they’re filled with these incredible longings for what is good and beautiful and true and that’s what I find in his writing, is this great mixture of the hardships of reality and the beauty of the dream.” -Tina Landau

Join us tonight on Zoom for a Vs. Tuesday Night Reading of this American masterpiece.

People will tell others about your show because:

(a) they love it.

(b) they love it so much and are so confident in their love of the show, that they’re willing to risk being judged wrong in their assessment.

(c) it’s a generous act; it makes people feel good to know they were a linchpin of sorts; that they told others about your show and those others showed up and also loved it.

Ask yourself when’s the last time you went out on a limb and strongly recommended something to people.

And then ask yourself, why did you do it?

“Today I will be master of my emotions…The tides advance; the tides recede. Winter goes and summer comes. Summer wanes and the cold increases. The sun rises; the sun sets. The moon is full; the moon is black. The birds arrive; the birds depart. Flowers bloom; flowers fade. Seeds are sown; harvests are reaped. All nature is a circle of moods and I am a part of nature and so, like the tides, my moods will rise; my moods will fall…Today I will be master of my emotions…It is one of nature’s tricks, little understood, that each day I awaken with moods that have changed from yesterday. Yesterday’s joy will become today’s sadness; yet today’s sadness will grow into tomorrow’s joy. Inside me is a wheel, constantly turning from sadness to joy, from exultation to depression, from happiness to melancholy. Like the flowers, today’s full bloom of joy will fade and wither into despondency, yet I will remember that as today’s dead flower carries the seed of tomorrow’s bloom so, too, does today’s sadness carry the seed of tomorrow’s joy…Today I will be master of my emotions.” -Og Mandino, book The Greatest Salesman In The World

Joy (Pump, pump, pump it up) and pain
(Come on, come on, here we go)
Like sunshine (What else? What else?) and rain
(Ah yeah, here we go)
Joy (Come on, come on, here we go) and pain
(Pump, pump, pump, pump it up)
Like sunshine (Yeah) and rain -song, “Joy and Pain” by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock

I love the below passage in Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist short story, “The Nose”…

After the police officer had left, the collegiate assessor remained for a few minutes in a sort of indefinable state and only after several minutes recovered the capacity to see and feel: his unexpected joy had made him lose his senses. He carefully took the newly found nose in both his cupped hands and once again examined it thoroughly.

“That’s it, that’s it, all right,” said Major Kovalyov. “Here on the left side is the pimple which swelled up yesterday.” The major very nearly laughed with joy.

But there is nothing enduring in this world, and that is why even joy is not as keen in the moment that follows the first; and a moment later it grows weaker still and finally merges imperceptibly into one’s usual state of mind, just as a ring on the water, made by the fall of a pebble, merges finally into the smooth surface. Kovalyov began to reflect and realized that the whole business was not yet over: the nose was found but it still had to be affixed, put in its proper place.

“And what if it doesn’t stick?”

At this question, addressed to himself, the major turned pale.

One of the many wonderful things about art is its ability to spotlight and heighten moments of joy (and pain). There’s one such moment in the Geffen’s current production of THE BROTHER’S SIZE by Tarell Alvin McCraney (a must see) that’s really stuck with me. The two Size brothers, Ogun and Oshoosi, after much conflict, come together in song (Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness”). It’s a beautiful, uplifting moment and you wish it could last forever. The heartbreaking thing is that just like life, it can’t.

While it’s sad that joy is fleeting, it reminds us to not hold on to anything. Be in the moment, and then let it pass through you. That way, you can be fully alive and present in the next moment.

Also, remember that while joy is fleeting, so is sorrow. Take comfort in that. Nothing lasts forever. This too shall pass.

P.S. – This scene. Andie, I still maintain that you should’ve chosen Duckie.

P.P.S. – This song for when you need a little boost.

You might be tempted to think that not feeling like doing something indicates you’re on the wrong path.

Don’t fall for the trap.

“Not Feelin’ It” is just another insidious way The Resistance tries to derail your worthwhile efforts.

There are many, many “not feelin’ it” things you have to do in the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime, that are in service of something bigger and greater. Including the things you’re passionate about.

Remind yourself of your why. Get back to work. And trust that “feelin’ it” is right around the corner. Because it is.

P.S. – Remember to have a “not feelin’ it” action plan.

P.P.S. – Seth Godin’s great “your audiobook” advice. It will keep you motivated when you’re not feelin’ it.