“One of the things I always thought was the secret of The Beatles was that our music was self-taught. We were never consciously thinking of what we were doing. Anything we did came naturally. A breathtaking chord change wouldn’t happen because we knew how that chord related to another chord. We weren’t able to read music or write it down, so we just made it up. My dad was exactly the same. And there’s a certain joy that comes into your stuff if you didn’t mean it, if you didn’t try to make it happen and it happens of its own accord. There’s a certain magic about that. So much of what we did came from a deep sense of wonder rather than study. We didn’t really study music at all.” -Paul McCartney, The Lyrics
“But the risk is worth it. Because the half-baked work, shared in a trusting environment, is the fuel for the system that created the works of genius.” -Seth Godin
“You were only waiting for this moment to be free.” song, Blackbird by The Beatles
Most times you shouldn’t serve the pie until it’s fully baked.
But sometimes, especially in collaborative mediums, you should serve it up half- baked. Give the team a taste. Get them excited.
And who knows? Maybe your half-baked version is actually fully baked and ready to go.
“At every moment keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand, as a Roman and human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice—giving yourself a break from all other considerations. You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. You can see how mastery over a few things makes it possible to live an abundant and devout life—for, if you keep watch over these things, the gods won’t ask for more.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.” -Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” -Simone Weil
You don’t need faith or religion to experience sacred moments.
You just need to pay full attention to each one as they happen.
“When I was starting out, I used to sit down and write a couple times a week. And then, one day, I was watching these construction workers go back to work. I was watching them kind of trudgin’ down the street…It was like a revelation to me, and I realized, ‘These guys don’t want to go back to work after lunch, but they’re goin’… ’cause that’s their job!’ And I thought, ‘If they can exhibit that level of dedication for that job, I should be able to do the same.’ Just trudge your ass in!” -Jerry Seinfeld in Comedian
“Do your job.” -Bill Belichik
Sometimes you’re gonna feel like doing the thing. Sometimes you’re not.
But you will ALWAYS feel good AFTER you’ve done the thing.
Sometimes coming with the exact right verb or phrase for what you want or your actions in a scene/overall script, is difficult. Another way to tackle this is to just write down what your character dreams about. Write one or two pages in vivid detail. Dont’ edit. Don’t worry if it’s logical or if it can actually happen. Just let it flow. (There should be some excitement going on.)
When you’re done, now connect to that dream. Desperately want it. Believe that you deserve it. Expect it.
As a result of doing this work, three things will happen:
(1) You’ll remember this dream in each scene and all throughout the play.
(2) You’ll be set up for maximum conflict when your character fails to achieve it. But you’ll keep fighting for it.
(3). Because of (1) and (2), you’ll be alive in every moment and thus, riveting to watch.
“Artists can talk. Artists love interviews. Artists love talking about their songs, being asked about their melodies and lyrics and creativity.
Because artists know that as long as they keep talking they can hide within the words.
Because artists know that the music itself is fully exposing. No more hiding. The music is the thing. The centerpiece of it all.
Most artists can talk their way into their music coming off the way they want it to come off…but then what do the songs have to say about it?” -Gabe Andersen
If they awarded medals for our ability to talk about the work, we’d all win gold.
“Bad teams, they reject their roles. Good teams, accept their roles. Great teams, embrace their roles.” -JJ Redick
“There are no small parts, only small actors.” -Konstantin Stanislavski
Forget about the size or quality of the role. If you’re fortunate enough to be cast in a project, then go all out. Give it everything you got. Play the part with all your heart, mind and soul. As if your life depended on it. As if it’s the last part you’ll ever play.
“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?
We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.
But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.” -David Brooks, The Moral Bucket List Essay in The New York Times
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” -Joan Didion
“To tell a story is to say: this is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path.
To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention.
When we make moral judgments, we are not just saying that this is better than that. Even more fundamentally, we are saying that this is more important than that. It is to order the overwhelming spread and simultaneity of everything, at the price of ignoring or turning our backs on most of what is happening in the world.
The nature of moral judgments depends on our capacity for paying attention — a capacity that, inevitably, has its limits but whose limits can be stretched.
But perhaps the beginning of wisdom, and humility, is to acknowledge, and bow one’s head, before the thought, the devastating thought, of the simultaneity of everything, and the incapacity of our moral understanding — which is also the understanding of the novelist — to take this in.” -Susan Sontag, At The Same Time: Essays and Speeches
“I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” -Seneca, Moral Letters
Maybe you’re feeling satisfied today because you worked hard on building your resume virtues. (Or maybe you’re frustrated because you didn’t.)
But what did you do today to build your eulogy virtues? Because those are far more important. Those are what last. And the good news is you can always work on them. (Love and simple acts of kindness are the way.)
The Vs. Studio Blog 