The Vs. Studio Blog

For the actor…

Don’t show it.

Just mean it. With your whole heart, mind and soul.

Trust that when you do, we’ll see it.

More importantly, we’ll feel it. With our whole heart, mind and soul.

General William T. Sherman: “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”

General Ulysses S. Grant: “Yes…Lick ’em tomorrow, though.” – Conversation between the two generals after the first day of the Battle of Shiloh during the American Civil War

All you lovers in the world (it’s a brand new day)
Stand up and be counted every boy and every girl (startin’ up a brand new day)
Stand up all you lovers in the world (it’s a brand new day) -song, “Brand New Day” by Sting

For the stage actor and the athlete…

You were great tonight.

So what?

You gotta do it all over again tomorrow night. For a brand new audience.

You were lousy tonight.

So what?

You get to do it all over again tomorrow night. For a brand new audience.

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you get one more yard
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part -Tom Petty, song “The Waiting”

“Silence is God’s first language.” -St. John of the Cross

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things. -“Tao Te Ching” by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

Make friends with waiting and silence.

For if you can do so, these two friends will guide you. They will clarify and amplify your heart’s true desire. And lead you to the inner peace you so desperately seek.

Patience, Grasshopper.

What has our arrogance profited us?
And what good has our boasted wealth brought us?
All those things have vanished like a shadow,
and like a rumor that passes by;
like a ship that sails through the billowy water,
and when it has passed no trace can be found,
no track of its keel in the waves.

Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding. -“Book of Wisdom”

“You got a life? Live it! Live the motherfuckin life!” -Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon: A Novel

Just because you’re older and wiser now doesn’t mean you should renounce your ambition.

It just means you now know what it’s all about. How to properly channel that ambition. Which is into…

Doing the work.

Loving the process.

Striving for excellence solely for the sake of excellence.

Being generous.

Having the discipline and courage to make and share your art. So that others will benefit from your passion and your vulnerability and your willingness to step out on the ledge and risk.

So, please keep your ambition. It’s your fuel. Your energy to make your art. To make the kind of change the world needs.

Just check your ego at the door. (Wisdom and experience are what enable you to do this.)

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.