The past is passed, long live the future.

We have talked a little bit about living in the moment on this blog before.  It’s amazingly important, no matter what you are doing in life.  Every career path and person can benefit greatly from this.  But I have already trod upon those boards, so if you want some more of my rambling thoughts on that, I suggest going back to that post.

This post is a little different.  I was working with a student the other day and we had a bit of a breakthrough.  So as to keep this person’s anonymity intact, let’s call them JohnSusie Squatblatt.  JohnSusie had been noticing that whenever they nailed a read the feeling was fantastic.  They just KNEW that they had done it “right,” and it felt amazing.  When I am working with students, I will often ask them how something felt when they click in to the “right” read.  This is immensely important because there is a LOT to be learned from that feeling. 

JohnSusie, however, had been trying to recapture that feeling on every subsequent read.  Always striving for the read that felt “right” five minutes ago.  What JohnSusie didn’t realize though, was that read WAS “right”… five minutes ago.  It doesn’t apply anymore.  The next “right” read will be different, even though it may result in that same exhilarating feeling.  The breakthrough was this:  don’t try to re-capture the last “right” moment, let it go and move on to the next.

This can be amazingly hard to do.  We all suffer from a little bit of “good-student syndrome” and we want to do it “right.”  When the teacher we are trying to impress is ourselves, the desire to be “right” can be even more overwhelming!  It is so tempting to re-create that feeling we just had… I mean we JUST had it… it was right there.  But it is gone now.  That moment has passed by and the only “right” moment is the next one.  Find that moment and move on to it.

By doing this, we can create a thrilling performance and life.  We never know what we are going to do next because we haven’t done it yet.  It is living life constantly on the edge, always about to tip over into chaos, but just within our control.  I have problems with this, as do most people.  It is so hard to let moments go and move on to the next one, as we are constantly judging how we have just done things.  But dwelling on those things we just did doesn’t help; it just gives us heartburn. 

So the next time you find yourself thinking about how to recapture that sentence you just read, that show you just did, that moment you just lived or that meeting you just had… remind yourself to let it go.  It’s done.  The next great thing you are about to do is just around the corner; so let the new one happen.

You’ll be glad you did.

First of all, I wanted to give a hearty apology for being silent for a couple of weeks.  I was out of town (as you know) and then I was buried with houseguests/paperwork/other stuff and just couldn’t get around to the blog.  BUT I’M BACK BABY!  So on with this weeks blog…

This is a book.

A Book?

Yes. A Book.

Oh. A Book.

Well my book came out early!  Huzzah!  For those of you who have already bought it, I thank you.  For those of you who haven’t yet… what are you waiting for?  Here is the link: Starting Your Career In Voice-Overs, go ahead, click and buy.  I’ll wait…

OK, are you back?  Good!  Thanks for doing that.  So now on to the meat of the matter:  books. 

During my 7(!) years of theatrical training, I was assigned, and read, a huge amount of books on theatre, acting, script analysis, theory, plays etc. etc. ad nauseum.  I read ALMOST all of them.  A big apology to William McConnell Bozman who taught my theatre history class in undergrad… I didn’t read all of the plays during that class.  BUT if it makes you feel any better, I have since read them all… several times. 

I digress.  Having read all of those books, something struck me:  by themselves they are worthless.  Don’t misunderstand; the books themselves are great; filled with useful insight and tips on the craft of acting.  Now that I have written one of those books (which you can buy here) I would never tell you that those books are useless!  But without implementation and practice, they are nothing but pretty words on a page.  Theory is needed and wonderful, but unless you put that theory into practice, it means nothing.

So try things out!  Read the books and get on stage, mic or camera and try it!  You may read a book and the words resonate, but when you try to apply the words wholesale they fall flat.  Excellent!  You have learned something.  The glaring truth of the matter is that the right approach for each individual is different, and very rarely is the right approach all of what one person says.  Most often, it is a mix of things:  a little bit of Stanislavsky, a touch of Meisner, a dash of Suzuki, a scoach of Chekhov and a smidge of Beeson… oh did I mention I wrote a book?  You can get it here. 

This is what makes good teachers, writers, actors, business people and just plain ol’ people:  experience.  Locking yourself away in a room filled with books is no way to live a life.  The only way to live and learn about what you read is to get out into the world and play with those ideas.  It’s also what the author intended… so please don’t make our intentions go unfulfilled.  We just want to help.  We?  Oh, yeah, did I mention I wrote a book?  You can get it here.

This shameless self-promotion is over.

OK, one more.  My book is available here.