It’s not easy. We all struggle with focus, clarity, freedom of expression. The acting workshops give us the opportunity to confront these challenges. Our demons who want to take over our will, have to be put in proper perspective in order for our instrument to be free. The exercises we do give us a new perspective on those demons and in so doing lessen their grasp on our minds.

Acting is a process of gaining knowledge about life, about ourselves and about the human condition. I pray for all of us to have to willingness to go through that fire, in whatever way we need to, so that our passion and talent will not sit quietly in the mist.

It is so good to know that you’re doing what you know your supposed to be doing. How many people can say that? Those of you who are members of Scott Tiler Studio Theater (STST) are very dear to me for you are the mouth piece of light, truth and creativity. All you need to do to find the truth of the scene is to know yourself. And you learn yourself by sitting with yourself, buy engaging the depths of your mind and soul and then opening your mouth and speaking. You must detach from any intellectual result, your mind must be free of unnecessary chatter. So get a mantra, count, listen, accept, watch, learn, look listen. It’s all in you, now, here, today.

It’s “Our Time”:

“Something is stirring,
Shifting ground¦
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring
All around,
And yesterday is done.

Feel the flow,
Hear what’s happening:
We’re what’s happening.
Don’t you know?
We’re the movers and we’re the shapers.
We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers.
Up to us now to show ‘em¦

It’s our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change and worlds to win.
Our turn coming through,
Me and you, pal,
Me and you!”

-Stephen Sondheim

A new dream is taking place, is being lived, people from all walks of life are coming together to do something that makes life really worth living.

Doing work that feeds the soul and engages the mind. Creating, acting, writing, directing, living.

But in order to shine our light and bring joy to the world, we must turn within. Therefore I offer words from the ancient hindu text

“The Baghavad Gita”:

“The vibration of the senses(Kurus), which keep the the devotee’s attention upon the internal sounds of the physical body , are shrill and disturbing-comparable to shattering a quiet atmosphere with the clamor of drums, horns and cymbals”

Tiler: Too much focus on the satisfaction of our senses clouds the mind and depletes vital energy needed to create the magnificent work we wish to create and can lessen our ability to share it with the world.

Therefore we must (Gita) “aspire to develop steadily in spirituality and must calm the mind by the practice of the right techniques of concentration; must keep the breath quiet by pranayama and proper breathing exercises; must preserve the vital essence (generally the most abused of the senses) by self-control and by seeking only the company of good people; and must free the body from restlessness and aimless motions by conscious control of the life force, and by keeping the body in good health and training it by patient discipline to sit absolutely still in meditation”.

The theater will be a place like no other: an artistic center of healing, a creative oasis, a place to express our personal truth and illuminate the human spirit through acting.

Comparisons are odious

 

Cervantes said that and later Kerouac quoted him “It don’t make a friggin bit of difference whether your in The Place or hiking up Matterhorn, it’s all the same old void, boy”

 

Yeah, that’s it just life, the oneness, flowing. All of us in a huge void that is bigger and more powerful than any of us can comprehend. Our worries about who has what and where and with whom and “she’s younger” and he’s “got the Benz”, who gives a rat’s___

Who? I’ll tell you who. We do and that is our problem. I consider everyone I work with an artist; in fact we are all artists, creators of our reality, of our life.  As artists we need to be authentic and true to who are and our creation. As soon as we start to alter the creation to fit someone else’s’ idea of what we should be, we lose the power to create. In fact at that point we are merely replicas of somebody else’s idea of who they think we are and how we should act. Now I’m not saying run amok and commit random acts of violence, lord knows the world is violent enough, but we have to accept who we are as individuals. And in order to do this, we have to stop comparing ourselves to others, we need to stop trying to fit in, and be accepted. There was a play many years ago about a salesman, perhaps you’ve heard of it. In the play the salesman says that the most important thing in life is to be “well liked”.  This is a very American sentiment which I do not subscribe to nor do I believe any true artist can afford to entertain. What is liked mean?  What I like, what he likes, what they like – who cares – opinions are like…well you know everybody’s got one.

 

What about the “void” that Kerouac mentions  - sounds kind of depressing doesn’t it?  Well I look at the void as the universal consciousness. That means there is a cosmic energy that never began and can never die. This energy is an infinite field of which a very tiny tiny infinitesimal part is you, me and the life we are living here for the 70-80-90 years or so that our skin and bones can last out against the chemicals and the wars, the drugs and the violence.

 

Incidentally my theory on violence in society  – THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN ACTING CLASS.  People have repressed emotions and hurts pent up from childhood and in most cases no place to express them. So they get bottled up and in extreme cases explode in horrific attacks against humanity. Put it into a scene!  Do a “vent” exercise – flail your body through the air screaming your lungs out  - get it out, so you don’t have to go around hurting other people or hurting yourself.

 

Back to the void, since we are such a small part of the big picture – the equivalent of one grain of sand in contrast to the size of our entire planet – then comparisons within the planet itself are indeed not only odious (which means offensive, disgusting and horrible) but moronic and idiotic. And yet many of us have not only grown up hearing comparisons in our own families (“why can’t you be more like Howard Glassman, he’s such a hard worker”) but every day in every news publication advertisers are trying to compare you to someone else in order for you to by their product. They create and then amplify the sound of separation between people which leads to isolation, loneliness and more violence.

 

How do I get this intellectual understanding into my body, Meditate. There are hundreds and hundreds of meditation books out there. Try anyone of them – check out Paramahansa Yogananda, anything by him will help you to see that it is the ego and its need to be right and dominate that leads us into many of our neurotic complexes and personal frustrations.

 

Create art; write thoughts down, work on a monologue or scene for in creating art you are expressing the best of you and at the same time when you work on a character, you are learning something about the human condition, something about compassion, something about love.

 

Work, love, laugh…

 

Skkurt

Well, I’ve joined the computer age and am engaging in this new way to communicate. I wanted to do it because we are all doing so many wonderful things and having such powerful insights that I wanted to allow them all to connect.

Check this out, this was sent to me by Anton Troy in the Thursday night acting class:

The process of spiritual development is an expansion, and this expansion is brought about by the widening of the outlook. The outlook depends upon the attitude of mind. If a mind is focused to thinking of small things, then this process of widening the outlook will not be completed. … Spiritual progress is the lifting of the consciousness in order that the consciousness may expand to perfection. Therefore it is a continual work of trying to look into a wider sphere. By this attitude a person, without learning to be spiritual, will naturally become spiritual; his outlook on life will become different. Little things that people take to heart will seem to him of little importance; things that people become confused with will become clear to him; things that matter so much to everyone will not matter to him. Many things that frighten and horrify people will not have the same effect upon him; disappointments and failures will not take away his hope and courage. His thought, speech and action, as his outlook becomes wide, so everything he says or does will be different. What we call nobleness, that natural nobleness which belongs to the soul, will blossom.

~~~ “Sangatha I, Ta’lim”, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)

Yes, this is really powerful stuff. We all need to look at the bigger picture, that is why acting is so great because it shows us what it is like to live through the eyes of another and therefore discover more about who we are. Now in looking at who we are, we may find things we do not like, and many use that as an excuse to not look in the first place. It is not an excuse because we all are responsible for our past our present and our future. We have the power to do the work, but there are blocks, there is fear and there is our conditioning. A client said to me today in regards to acting: “It’s uncomfortable, but I like it” The discomfort is to be expected, acting is a metaphor for life, the struggles, the joys, the peaks and valleys – but it sure beats the hell out of ________ yeah that’s a flatline.

With the dynamic act of self-searching, spiritual and creative work one of my friends said that “along with the nightmares, you get the Goodies”

I like that.