The Vs. Studio Blog

“The heart of open-mindedness is curiosity.” -Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being

“Curiosity can empower you or impede you.

Being curious and focused is a powerful combination. I define this combination as unleashing your curiosity within the domain of a particular task: asking questions about how things work, exploring different lines of attack for solving the problem, reading ideas from outside domains while always looking for ways to transfer the knowledge back to your main task, and so on. Even though you’re exploring widely, you’re generally moving the ball forward on the main thing. You start something and you keep searching until you find an effective way to finish it.

Meanwhile, when your curiosity sends you off in a dozen different directions and fractures your attention, then it can prevent you from focusing on one thing long enough to see it through to completion. Curious, but unfocused. You’re jumping from one topic to the next, they aren’t necessarily related, your efforts don’t accumulate, you’re simply exploring. You start many things and finish few.” -James Clear

You start by being curious. Follow that curiosity. Let it take you where it takes you. Eventually you may decide to make something. 

Should you make that decision, then you finish by being ridiculously, intensely and laser-focused.

nostalgia (n.)

1726, “morbid longing to return to one’s home or native country, severe homesickness considered as a disease,” Modern Latin, coined 1688 in a dissertation on the topic at the University of Basel by scholar Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) as a rendering of German heimweh “homesickness” (for which see home + woe).
From Greek algos “pain, grief, distress” (see -algia) + nostos “homecoming,” from neomai “to reach some place, escape, return, get home,”

Originally in reference to the Swiss and said to be peculiar to them and often fatal, whether by its own action or in combination with wounds or disease.
[Dr. Scheuzer] had said that the air enclosed in the bodies of his countrymen, being in Æquilibrium with a rare and light air that surrounds them, was overloaded in lower countries with an air more dense and heavier, which compressing and obstructing the capillary vessels, makes the circulation slow and difficult, and occasions many sad symptoms. [Account of the publication of “Areographia Helvetiæ” in New Memoirs of Literature, London, March 1726]

“That’s all I have. I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books, and I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it’s all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about.” -Aksel telling Julie in the film The Worst Person In The World

Think I’m going down to the well tonight
And I’m gonna drink ’til I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of, well time slips away
And leaves you with nothing mister but
Boring stories of

Glory days, yeah, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
Yeah, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days -Song “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen

“In a few decades, you will be much older, you will remember how much younger you were today with nostalgia, and you will wish you had spent less time getting angry at things that never mattered at all, and more time treating the few people who cared with more kindness and love.” -Orange Book

It wasn’t as bad as you remember.

It wasn’t as good as you remember either.

Beware of nostalgia. It’s a disease.

It’ll keep you stuck in the past and outta the present.

Keep going. Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep trying.

Better days ahead my friend.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding. –Tao Te Ching, Verse 1, by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

“The scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work.” -Albert Einstein

Much like the Zen Buddhists would advise to focus on the moon and not the finger pointing to the moon, don’t worry if it’s a myth or not. If the miracle actually happened. 

Instead, focus on the story itself. What it might be telling you. 

Allow for the mystery. Be grateful for it. 

And remember…life, planet Earth, you breathing, you being alive at this exact moment in time…it’s all one giant miracle. A mystery. And in some alternate universe, who knows, maybe even a myth?

Faith, love and gratitude are certainly feelings. And good feelings at that.

But they become virtues when they are rooted in action. When they become regular practices. Especially when practiced in absence of feeling.

“If deadlines are the only things that motivate you to get stuff done, then it pays to get better at setting and enforcing your own deadlines. The alternative is waiting on other people to set deadlines for you. But then you’ll always be dependent on others for you to get your stuff done. The problem is we hold the deadlines other people set for us as more valuable and important than our own promises to ourselves.” -Gabe The Bass Player

Arbitrary deadlines are a gift. Welcome them every chance you get.

Wanna know what’s an even greater gift (to yourself)? How to take it another level? 

Set your own arbitrary deadlines. That is true power. True self mastery.

“The knowledge that every day there is something more to learn, something higher to reach for, something new to make for others, makes each day infinitely precious. And I am grateful.” – Uta Hagen, A Challenge For The Actor

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready, the teacher disappears.” -Lao-Tzu

We’ve all heard the adage, “Those who can’t do, teach.”

Hogwash.

Some of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had were also great artists. My first mentor, Kurt Naebig, comes to mind. He’s an incredible actor and director as well as being an inspiring, patient and loving teacher. He brings out your very best. I’m also thinking of Paul Stein, our Vs. Studio Writing and Solo Performance Workshop instructor. Paul is not only a world class teacher, but also a gifted writer, director and producer. I had the privilege of working with Marilyn McIntyre in The Credeaux Canvas. Marilyn is a phenomenal acting teacher and was brilliant in the role of “Tess.” I learned so much from being on stage with her every night. (Not to mention Uta Hagen and Stella Adler who were considered phenomenal actors in their time. Lee Strasberg put his butt and reputation on the line by acting in The Godfather. He was nominated for an Academy Award.)

If you’re a student in any setting (and this goes for any subject, not just the arts), give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. It’s fine to question–critical thinking should be encouraged–but until proven otherwise, assume the teacher has been in your shoes. Certainly that they can empathize with your position. That they deeply know and love the subject they’re teaching and have a passionate desire to share it. Be open minded and try on everything.

If you’re a teacher, never stop growing or stretching. Get back in the trenches (act, write, direct, produce, etc.) every free chance you get. Regularly practice beginner’s mind. And remember, your students will very often be your best teachers.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” -Mortimer Adler

“Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it. However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it. When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover how something that seems so simple in our heads is explained entirely wrong.” -Shane Parrish

Before you tell it, write it. Draft an email or blog post or even an essay. You don’t have to show it to anyone. This is just for your own clarity.

By doing so, you will figure out what you’re really trying to say, why you’re saying it and how best to communicate it.

You might be surprised by where the pen takes you. Don’t fight it. Let your subconscious take over and trust it to take you wherever it takes you.

P.S. – This excellent FS post.

“People will forget what you said, and they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” -Muhammad Ali

Just like an actor wants to make the other person feel something, (check out this post about legendary acting teacher Earle Gister and his advice on how to do so) if you want to make great art, rally people around your cause/passion project, or make any kind of lasting change in this world, you gotta make ’em feel it first.

Everything flows from feeling. Heart before head. The rest is secondary.

“Action alleviates anxiety.” -Sigmund Freud

“Use the relaxation to eliminate fear and tension that interrupts expression.” -Lee Strasberg

“The wrong kind of concentration is a stumbling block, and once you have removed it, you are better. If you can concentrate your genuine human powers of attention on fulfilling a concrete task in performance, you will be really good.” -Constantin Stanislavski

If you want to be confident, get focused.

Similarly, if you want to be relaxed (a must for any actor), concentrate on something. The famous acting teacher Lee Strasberg developed all kinds of exercises like this one and this one to do just that. One supposedly involved staring at a plate glass window, imagining you could break it with just your voice, and then trying to do just that.

One of the greatest baseball players of all time, Shoeless Joe Jackson, supposedly would stare for hours at a candle flame, to improve his “batting eye” and sharpen his concentration. (This could be apocryphal but it’s a cool scene in John Sayles’ awesome film Eight Men Out. And Shoeless Joe did hit .356 for his career.)

Point being, you don’t get relaxed by “trying to relax.” Instead, concentrate on a task with your whole being– the task could be removing tension in your body per the Strasberg exercise–and as a result of your concentration, you get relaxation thrown in for free.

P.S. – Hat tip to my friend David S. for the Freud quote above.

“We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind.” -Seneca

“Art is choosing to do something skillfully,
caring about the details,
bringing all of yourself
to make the finest work you can.
It is beyond ego, vanity, self-glorfification,
and need for approval.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” -Joseph Campbell

A Misogi is a Japanese Shinto practice of ritual purification by washing the entire body. Another interpretation of a Misogi writes entrepreneur and author Jesse Itzler, is “undertaking a challenging task to transform oneself.” Because when you voluntarily do hard things, amazing growth happens. This explains why people climb mountains, run 100 plus mile races like the Badwater in Death Valley, or stand for hours on end underneath ice cold waterfalls.

These are tremendous physical and mental challenges to take on. And no doubt, one grows tremendously from these. But I propose a different kind of Misogi, one in which you will also grow…I call it, an Artistic Misogi. 

Here’s how it works:

Find a piece of material that lights you up, and then commit to manifesting it with excellence and generosity. For yourself. Your fellow artists. And the audience you seek to serve.

Rest assured, you will be scared (and excited). You will be challenged. You will face numerous obstacles along the way. 

To execute said material, it will take everything you have. Your pound of flesh. You will have to make sacrifices. Stretch yourself. Learn new skills. Be uncomfortable.

But…

If you commit. If you get organized. If you set realistic deadlines. And then surround yourself with others who are also striving for excellence and generosity, you can make it happen. You can have an incredible, potentially life-altering experience. One that reminds you why you chose this art form in the first place. You can be transformed. 

The Vs. Studio Producing Workshop begins soon.

Your Artistic Misogi awaits. 

Ready to take the plunge? (I promise, no standing under waterfalls.).

Let me know!