Getting back into the swing of blogging, here we go!
I think two factors have contributed to the drop off in how much I've been writing this past year, well three if you count Shakes and Co. But the first is, ironically I guess, Facebook. Someone I know posed the question over Facebook "do you consider Facebook status updates and tweets to be their own form of writing?" Which got me thinking why of course they are. Usually when I go to write a status update, which is at least once a day probably, I'm trying to think of how to phrase it in the pithiest, punchiest or most insightful way possible in as few words as it can be expressed. When I consider my own identity and the ways which I define myself, actor and musician come to mind, in that order but I've always struggled with allowing "writer" or at another time in my life "poet" into that equation. I think maybe it's because writers and poets are so frequently presented as caricatured figures, the idea of the pompous pseudo intellectual novelist or poet or whatever pops up a lot in popular culture to the extent that it's become a comedic archetype in our modern landscape of comedia dell arte types. And perhaps because of that representation I was always very hyper aware of being pompous or pretentious, and thought telling people "oh I'm a poet" or "oh I'm a writer" would somehow invoke that.
Additionally, I wonder if those same forces in culture make the act of creation in some sense problematic, I suppose combined with the proliferation of technology that made it very easy to print and share one's own work. Inevitably, this writer caricature tries to get the other characters in the world they inhabit to try and read their work and it's never any good and usually the butt of a joke.
Knowing what I do know, seeing this scene played out in film or television is pretty ironic because the people who make those things are writers themselves and no doubt would identify with that same caricature in the much the same way I am doing in this moment!
Where was I? This post was going to be about my podcast but it's become about identity. Also I feel a sense of vulnerability in telling people that I'm a creative person. This doesn't extend to my acting, which I've always felt very confident about for whatever reason or at least have learned to, but also it's much harder to "act" for someone in a coffee shop. It's much more feasible to say "I'm a writer, can I share some writing with you?" and then if they don't like it or it doesn't set them off or inspire some kind of praise in them, it feels like failing a little.
This feeds back into whatever need for approval loops I have that do whatever they do for me in making me create my art. And this all a big tangent to why I haven't been writing here so much!
Because Facebook makes for a very easy feedback and approval loop I find when it comes to creating things, specifically status updates. If I can write a really funny or affecting status update, people can "like" it or comment on it instantaneously and in the hours after I put something up I can see all the people who read it and liked it or whatever.
This requires much less effort and focus than writing a blog post and involves much more instant gratification!
Which is ironic because the other thing I've been pouring my energy into other than blogging has been my podcast, (The Mike Handelman Podcast, I keep trying to think of catchier names but then I've stuck with this one for this long) which takes hours of work or honestly however much work I feel like putting into it but if I'm motivated and able it can take hours and for all that probably the fewest people take the time to really give it a listen.
But that's assuming that the goal is page views or whatever, which it's not, it's to make things I'm proud of. At a certain point the snake starts swallowing it's own tail though, because you need to go from making things you like and would want to listen to into finding other people who like and want to listen to similar things and will do that enough that people will pay money to access those people such is the nature of entertainment and show business!
So I'm doing all this work with the mindset that someday I'll find a way or have an opportunity to bring this work to a larger audience and then on to some kind of sponsorship to at least make some pizza and beer money, which would be nice. And by continuing this work with dedication, every time I put out a new podcast, I'm making a slightly improved or more refined product.
Which has been the case! I've been at this for about a year now since my friend Jesse and I first got in a room with a microphone and we really have come a long way in our artistic partnership and in my skills as a producer and engineer, which is something to be excited about. I hope after you've finished this, maybe you'll check out the podcast. Even if it's not yet something you'd enjoy (it's hard for me to keep perspective on whether or not I even enjoy it, I listen to some so many times in editing them) someday soon it will evolve in a better version of the thing it already is, that you will want to listen to.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Moments of Anticipation
I've realized I need to become less precious with the communications I share via this blog. Since coming back from Shakespeare and Company this February (wow hard to believe it's been that long) I've started to write a whole bunch of blog posts and then either stopped and not finished them or meant to go back to them or what have you.
Part of this I think had to do with how Shakespeare and Company dealt with the subject of communication in their training, in that they teach you to talk about things as succinctly and specifically as possible. This lead to a struggle in my writing to continue doing that, and when I've felt like I don't completely or succinctly communicate something in a first pass, I get frustrated and want to write it over until I get annoyed with writing it or move on to something else and then I have no writing to share!
That's silly. I have observed my writing process is that I'm most likely to actually get a blog post at the end of a writing session if I commit fully to writing down the thoughts I have in a given moment, ideally doing a quick pass of an edit, and then sharing it and moving on. The blessing and the curse of the internet is how easy it is to access quantity in a sense that it's removed from the expenses of physical media, so you can quickly and cheaply create things and so there are lots of things being created. Vast numbers of things, so many that it becomes counter productive at a certain point to spend too much time worrying about the quality.
But that's another blog post.
I'm pretty far into rehearsals for Caucasian Chalk Circle, we've been getting into the really rough and difficult parts of the "birthing" as it were of this piece of art. Is that an appropriate analogy? There's a lot of collective pain and suffering as we work through the gritty details and logistics of mastering the text, smoothing over the staging, sweating out blocking and staging. For many of us in particular a big part of this has been mastering our Spanish lines, I know it has been for me! I studied Spanish a good deal in school, so I'm not coming in completely ignorant to how it works, but back then I never worked very hard at it, or was ever a preternatural talent for the language, I don't think. So that's been very challenging. But also pretty cool and kind of rewarding. I really like the Spanish text and it's fun getting to work with different sets of actors on the same scenes but in different languages. It's basically equivalent to rehearsing two shows at once. On the hand, that sucks, you're rehearsing two shows at once and it's a lot of work. But also, I'm getting to rehearse two shows at once, so I feel like I'm growing perhaps faster or at least exercising new and different muscles than I normally do as an actor and that's really rewarding.
I talked in that last process about how creating theatre feels like giving birth. Obviously, I haven't ever and will never get the chance to experience that particular component of the human experience, which is honestly something I sort of regret. If I could do it, I would do it. Is that weird and over sharey? I remember talking to my mother as a younger person about her experiences birthing myself and my two brothers. She talked about doing it naturally, and that when I was conceived the philosophy was that the feeling of giving birth can be perceived as being pain but that it's not, it's something else and if you can learn to experience it as that something else pain killers become unnecessary.
So maybe this analogy is stretching it a little bit, but what the hell. For us as artists, what other people might perceive as the tedious, frustrating or painful work of putting something together maybe what sets us apart is that we're able to see the process of birthing work as that something else, something joyful.
This is especially true in theatre, where getting to that final result is such an ecstatic experience, sharing work with an audience, sharing moments with cast members, getting to relive and redo and retry each individual moment night after night and watch it grow and change. I find myself in a series of moments of anticipation as we're on the verge of those final contractions before we can share our creation with the world. I see all the beautiful things beginning to happen, I can see all the things I've already discovered and can already imagine the moments of discovery to come. It's an amazing feeling.
Remind me to make sure I get back into the habit of blogging about it, OK? Thanks.
Part of this I think had to do with how Shakespeare and Company dealt with the subject of communication in their training, in that they teach you to talk about things as succinctly and specifically as possible. This lead to a struggle in my writing to continue doing that, and when I've felt like I don't completely or succinctly communicate something in a first pass, I get frustrated and want to write it over until I get annoyed with writing it or move on to something else and then I have no writing to share!
That's silly. I have observed my writing process is that I'm most likely to actually get a blog post at the end of a writing session if I commit fully to writing down the thoughts I have in a given moment, ideally doing a quick pass of an edit, and then sharing it and moving on. The blessing and the curse of the internet is how easy it is to access quantity in a sense that it's removed from the expenses of physical media, so you can quickly and cheaply create things and so there are lots of things being created. Vast numbers of things, so many that it becomes counter productive at a certain point to spend too much time worrying about the quality.
But that's another blog post.
I'm pretty far into rehearsals for Caucasian Chalk Circle, we've been getting into the really rough and difficult parts of the "birthing" as it were of this piece of art. Is that an appropriate analogy? There's a lot of collective pain and suffering as we work through the gritty details and logistics of mastering the text, smoothing over the staging, sweating out blocking and staging. For many of us in particular a big part of this has been mastering our Spanish lines, I know it has been for me! I studied Spanish a good deal in school, so I'm not coming in completely ignorant to how it works, but back then I never worked very hard at it, or was ever a preternatural talent for the language, I don't think. So that's been very challenging. But also pretty cool and kind of rewarding. I really like the Spanish text and it's fun getting to work with different sets of actors on the same scenes but in different languages. It's basically equivalent to rehearsing two shows at once. On the hand, that sucks, you're rehearsing two shows at once and it's a lot of work. But also, I'm getting to rehearse two shows at once, so I feel like I'm growing perhaps faster or at least exercising new and different muscles than I normally do as an actor and that's really rewarding.
I talked in that last process about how creating theatre feels like giving birth. Obviously, I haven't ever and will never get the chance to experience that particular component of the human experience, which is honestly something I sort of regret. If I could do it, I would do it. Is that weird and over sharey? I remember talking to my mother as a younger person about her experiences birthing myself and my two brothers. She talked about doing it naturally, and that when I was conceived the philosophy was that the feeling of giving birth can be perceived as being pain but that it's not, it's something else and if you can learn to experience it as that something else pain killers become unnecessary.
So maybe this analogy is stretching it a little bit, but what the hell. For us as artists, what other people might perceive as the tedious, frustrating or painful work of putting something together maybe what sets us apart is that we're able to see the process of birthing work as that something else, something joyful.
This is especially true in theatre, where getting to that final result is such an ecstatic experience, sharing work with an audience, sharing moments with cast members, getting to relive and redo and retry each individual moment night after night and watch it grow and change. I find myself in a series of moments of anticipation as we're on the verge of those final contractions before we can share our creation with the world. I see all the beautiful things beginning to happen, I can see all the things I've already discovered and can already imagine the moments of discovery to come. It's an amazing feeling.
Remind me to make sure I get back into the habit of blogging about it, OK? Thanks.
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