Dreaming of A Life in the Arts is Like a Bad Dating Pattern

In my dating days, I routinely projected all kinds of need- and wish-fulfilling things onto various women. It didn’t help dating. In fact, it often shot it in the foot.

Similarly, back in the day, I projected all kinds of need- and wish-fulfilling things onto “being an actor,” “being a filmmaker,” “being a theatre-maker,” or basically “being an artist.” And it did not help me create a single thing or advance my career.

Both romanticized ideals, of love and art, can be motivating in a raw sort of way. The desires to have “that” in my life got me up and working. But they did significantly more harm than good.

If you look forward dreamily to a vision of how wonderful your life will be once you “make it” in some way as an artist, quit it. It’s the very thing that’s stopping you from getting down to the real work.

A month ago, I officiated at a friend’s wedding. The following is part of what I said…

“But I’m still left with an abiding sense of humility in the face of the invitation to speak today. I want to say something like ‘I am in no position to give a homily about love.’ Not with authority. And that’s true. But it’s also true of all of us…a few saints and poets excepted. 

I have been joyfully thinking a lot about marriage and commitment and love of late. (Caught me at a good time.) And I’ve been looking at the fear that can come along with or may even be a part of marriage and commitment and love, in the way that it’s a part of those things that make us grow the most. I’ve come to some clarity on what love is not. I used to think that love – marriage love, the finding of a partner – was something that would happen to me. I would receive it, almost passively. Some gilded woman would enter my life and – merely by her presence – would fix all my problems, alleviate all my fears; she would make me whole.

[Hopefully a laugh]

I really thought this! Not always consciously, but somewhere very deep. And we’re all shown and taught images of this story of love – a love that takes no strength because it asks nothing of us; it takes no wisdom because it is so obviously cosmically correct that it annihilates all insecurity; a love that, in a sense, takes no commitment, because the commitment is forced by the universe.

So when I came to the cliff’s edge of my marriage-bound relationship, when I came to the point in our dating when it was time to commit – or not – I was painfully, really painfully, aware of my humanity. I still had problems! I hadn’t been made whole! The image in my mind was literally that I and we were standing at a cliff’s edge. The path of our relationship had been beautiful and wisely walked, but now I stood at that precipice. And I looked out into thick fog. I saw only a few inches down and a foot or so forward. So I did what any man would do. I stood there. Frozen. Waiting for the fog to clear. Figuring that, once it did, either there would be no actual drop – maybe a foot or two and that’s it – or the path would rise up to meet us. That, in some way, it – the future – would all become Certain.

But then I realized: our futures will always remain shrouded in fog. The cliff is a cliff. The question is not ‘who will make me whole and all things certain?’ The question is: ‘Whom do I want to leap with?’ It is a leap. And that takes guts. It takes strength, wisdom, and more. This is the commitment.”

This paradigm shift I’ve – thankfully – had about love in the past many months took me years longer than the one I was forced to have about my life as an actor and producer. But it's essentially the same shift.

Years ago, despite the fact that I was already making and acting in theater and film, I spent emotional energy looking forward to some gilded future in which I would “be” an artist in some way I deemed more legitimate. It wasn’t about accolades or praise, it was about a kind of peer recognition, a sense that “they” – or even “you,” since many of you readers are theatre- or filmmakers – would see me as “really” an actor and producer, and then I would feel…well, great, I suppose. Or, more apt, Certain…about my future, my identity, having made the right choices. Certain.

And, because I didn’t feel Certain, that implied to me that I wasn’t yet legitimately an artist. I knew I wasn’t perfectly gilded, so I figured I must not be ready to enter the perfectly gilded future I had dreamed of since I was a kid.

Except here's the thing: making art isn’t gilded. Just like real, beautiful, deep love, it’s sometimes messy. It makes you face parts of yourself you don’t like or, even scarier, don’t even recognize at all. It requires of you that you bring, explicitly, the non-gilded parts of you into the world and let ‘em all shine. It was only when I realized that just the normal old me doing normal old day-to-day work is all that art making ever is that I started to both do my best work and to see the right external success for it.

Just like standing at that cliff, the very belief that Certainty even matters got in the way more than anything else. Art making isn’t Certain. If you’re not doubting and sometimes afraid, you’re not reaching far enough. No matter how fancy the rooms you start to enter, there are always people in them that are less than brilliant. Nobody’s gilded. At best, we’re all just folks who work hard, most of us not hard enough, to make stuff. Some of the stuff turns out to be good, some of it turns out to be successful in the market, and some of it turns out to be both.

Or, as Charles Bukowski said better than I: air and light and time and space.

The First Post

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Hanoi, Vietnam, more than a little travel weary and bewildered. I’m about to begin a two-week stretch here and in Thailand – floods permitting – to screen Make Believe across the two countries. It’s part of the American Documentary Showcase, so I have the honor of combining my passion for storytelling with my desire to be an active citizen. Suddenly, I find myself representing the US overseas, using film as the impetus for discussions with people of an entirely different culture. I am excited to see what this adventure brings!

Documenting this work-driven travel gives me a reason to begin a long-overdue blog. In short, the blog’s theme, core to my life, is about being a generative artist. [I removed the travel-focused posts, so the blog can be more dutifully focused on this core theme. -SK 04/12/15] Beginning it as I begin a trip resultant from Make Believe feels appropriate.

Since there is little to report travel so far – 20+ hours in planes and airports aside – I will begin with printing the more fleshed-out draft of a piece I wrote for Back Stage West, a trade paper for actors, last year. The original, cut down to 600 words, can be found here.

The fuller version, which gets at more of the underlying philosophy of this blog, follows….

"The Acting Career You Dream of Doesn't Exist"

If Only The Button

If I had a button that ensured I was given great, meaty roles in strong projects for the stage and screen; that these projects had brilliant scripts, were directed by visionaries, and that I worked with wonderful artists on sets without crazy people; that the projects were overseen expertly into their final editing or production, and that they were delivered to market intelligently so that people actually saw them…if I could have all that and “just be an actor,” just show up and act in these miracles?  I would push that button Now.

Here’s the thing: that button doesn’t exist for anyone. It doesn’t exist for me. It doesn’t exist for George Clooney or Julia Roberts. And it doesn’t exist for you.

To Counter Unhelpful BS

It took me nearly a decade to accept this. I had fallen into the trap evident in the whispers you hear at acting programs everywhere: “I just want a future in which I have my choice of projects.” And believe me, I used to be one of those – like a lot of you – for whom the word “actor” was tied to my very identity. I fell in love with the craft when I was nine, and something in me has been pulled, pushed, forced, and drawn to tell stories ever since. Over the years, I’ve learned that many of my old ideas about “being” an actor came from ego, and ego rarely serves art. Letting go of those old ideas and replacing them with more useful ones was always challenging, often painful, and is one of the smartest things I’ve ever done – leading to more access to better work.

The Lesson: Interpretive to Generative

I used to think of myself as the kind of actor willing to do the dirty work necessary to give myself a job as an actor. Then I realized this dirty work is called “producing.” And I was already doing it: helping to get plays off the ground in random spaces, starting a theater, starting a film collective to make digital shorts, all with only the conscious identity of Actor and with a strong resentment of someone wanting me to produce. I was tied to the idea that being an actor was to be an interpretive artist only: to play the stories generated by others. To make a very long tale quick: I finally embraced the power and depth inherent in becoming a generative artist, including as an actor, but – by definition – not exclusively so. The journey between those ideas, from interpretive to generative, taught many lessons, and I have tried to distill them to practical points below.

• Start Making:  Don’t be precious. Don’t try to make the Best Thing Ever. Just make. Hell, make badly. And in making, learn. Put up a play. Shoot a short film. Then do another one. Don’t over-market these projects, don’t make it about people knowing you’re doing them – do them small, let them suck, don’t put yourself out there yet. Just start the journey of generating. You may know “how to act,” but give yourself time to learn how to take the reins as a generative actor in the professional world.

•  Bet on People, Not Projects:  When you’re doing the above, bet on people – your collaborators – not on the projects you make. I know you’ve wanted to play Hamlet or Lady M since you wept at summer Shakespeare when you were 11, but that urge is on your behalf, not your audience’s, and, years from now, it just won’t matter that you played Hamlet in a small production. The very fact you can identify “I want to play X role” means that X role is already in the public consciousness, and that makes it something tough for you to profit from. If, on the other hand, you try to think “I want to work with X person” – be it some director you saw put up a reading, the best actor in your class, the emerging writer who just had a short play published in an anthology but who’s yet to get a break – then you can be part of discovering and creating value. As you travel through the industry, it’s these relationships, not the specific projects you generate, that will serve you. As each of you progresses in your separate careers, you will still have access to each other and to continuing collaborations, and those will become professional gigs with real budgets. (For this to be true, you must pick collaborators because you truly admire their work, not because you think they’ll go far. You must resonate creatively. Only if you truly share tastes about what is good will these collaborations be satisfying to everyone, and only if they are satisfying to everyone will they build sustaining allegiances.)

•  Redefine “Business” to Serve You:  Somehow, artists have agreed to teach each other that “business” is a dirty word, synonymous with “selling out.” When you buy into that, the only thing you achieve is handing over all creative power in the marketplace to people who shouldn’t make creative decisions. Learn that business is a tool. It is the process of getting anything done, including creative projects. Take a business class, learn how to write a business plan, learn how to think in goal-oriented business terms. Being a generative artist is being an entrepreneur, so equip yourself for that road. Have we forgotten that Shakespeare’s company was run by its artists?

• Get Over Yourself:  Nobody cares about “what” you are or what you dream of, in part because they’re busy caring about whether you can help make their dreams come true. As an actor, you don’t serve other people’s dreams unless you’re valuable in the marketplace…yet you somehow expect other artists to care about giving you “a break.” But if you learn to generate – as a writer, director, producer, etc. – you are inherently of value to others. You can help their dreams. Then, you can leverage that into having them help your own. A less gain-oriented way to express this: stop worrying about “what” you are. Worry about The Story. Find great yarns to spin and let go of your ego about having to act in them. Do whatever gets the good story told, and learn that your true job as an artist is serve that story, not your ego. (A secret: this attitude will also make your acting work stronger.)

• Realize that All of the Above Is Acting in the Pros:  Sure, every now and then someone wins the lottery – books some role early on, does it well, and never hustles again. Go ahead: play the lottery. Otherwise, recognize that wanting to “just” act is like wanting “to be a lawyer” when you mean “making great speeches in courtrooms,” simply ignoring that every minute a lawyer spends in trial is backed up by dozens of hours of painstaking research, briefing, precedent checking, etc. If you don’t find some form of entrepreneurial hustle just as invigorating as actually getting on stage, then I’ve a newsflash: you don’t like being an actor. You like learning a craft in acting class. Which is great. But don’t sadden yourself by confusing the two. If, however, entrepreneurialism does invigorate you, makes you chomp at the bit – even to prove how wrong I am – then you are good to go. So: go. 

Break a leg.