Quantum Physics
Please DO NOT IGNORE THIS SUBJECT. You can, however, ignore it here very easily as I will not be writing about it. And as I won’t be writing about it, you won’t be reading about it, thus you’ll find it impossible not to ignore here. You see, I don’t know the first thing about Quantum Physics.
The subject does start with a ‘Q’ though, and anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the alphabet and the english language can inform you that ‘Q’ follows hard upon the letter ‘P’.
Well, that about concludes all I have to not say about Quantum Physics. Thank you, and Good Night.
Ponderosa
First of all, I want to sincerely apologize to all of you for my tardiness in getting this installment up to you. It was, alas unavoidable.
But here we now are, just you and me alone together… well, not quite. So I have to ask you, did you turn your lights out for Earth Hour? I must confess, it completely slipped my mind. Oh, well – next year.
I have had a week of looking for (being auditioned or interviewed for) work, and this coming week will hopefully reveal the outcome of my quest. I did my very best on both accounts so it’s wait and see time.
Right now I’m cooking a pasta meal for myself and I plan to stay home and watch the idiot-box for a few hours.
I’m pretty sure Ponderosa was the name of the ranch in the television classic, Bonanza. Please let me know if you have any info on that.
That’s all, folks. Have a great week. Wish me luck.
Originality
There’s this old thing that goes around most Actors’ minds, about whether Acting School is really the only way to get the skills necessary for a career as a Professional Actor. We fear that we may lose our originality, our spontaneity, our uniqueness, if we get indoctrinated into a system. I don’t know where you stand, but I sway almost daily on this question. But today? Well, here’s where I stand…
Whether I like it or not, I’m already in Acting School. I’ve learned from the all the experiences I’ve had in my life, and that’s a pretty intensive curriculum. I’ve been to Acting Schools such as The National Theatre Drama School in Melbourne, Victoria, The Screen Acting Workshops of The Perth Actors Collective. I was a member of the New Theatre in Sydney and The Darlington Players in Western Australia. And I’ve auditioned and participated in local, national and international productions. But all this pales into insignificance to the really essential question. Read more
Not Only But Also
I went to an audition today, and I must say it feels good to do something I know I’m good at. Those of you who’ve been regular readers of these entries will know my thoughts concerning auditions, so I won’t regurgitate them here, suffice to say that confidence is a strange thing.
Today, I was doing what I do on Thursdays, and I was happy in that I’d done some good work, but I was quite exhausted as well. After these things, I went to the audition, and it was different in that I was given no lines to prepare, and only a synopsis of the story of which I was auditioning for a part. I was less nervous than usual (I’m usually not a very nervous audition-actor anyway), but the thing that was more unusual was that I walked into the audition hardly even thinking that I was auditioning at all! Read more
Melancholia
I think one of the best depictions in movies of Depression was in the Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver, in the scene where Travis Bickle (played brilliantly by Robert De Niro) stares into the dissolving Alka-Seltzer glass of water.
And one of the things I find very frustrating is when people think they can give advice when it hasn’t been asked for, or when they simply assume they know what they’re talking about, when they clearly haven’t a clue. This is not just done by those who’ve never suffered from depression, but by those who either have suffered, or think they’ve suffered from this ailment.
To those people I want to say this:
- Please respect that others may know more about themselves than you do.
- Please do not offer unsolicited advice.
- Please, if you’ve not been diagnosed with Depression, please don’t just assume that you’ve had it, or have it.
- Please, if you have been diagnosed with Depression, please don’t assume that yours is the same as mine.
- Please, if you’ve never had Depression, don’t assume you know what it’s like. (Being down in the dumps for an afternoon is not Depression, just like a headache isn’t a migraine, or a mild sniffle, the flu.)
- Please, Do Not Judge Others.
This One Counts
I go to cafes. Not just sometimes. ALL THE TIME. And I have been in cafes all over the world. So I think I know what I’m talking about. When I am greeted with a friendly welcome, and the ambiance is pleasant, the music at a background level, the tables and floor are clean, the coffee is served promptly, I’m in my second home.
In the past the village pub was the closest thing you had to a community environment, where you’d listen to some music, have a feed, meet with your friends, discuss the world and relax and share a joke. Now, it seems people are a little more sophisticated and they want to do these things as well as get on-line and discuss business. Where they can do their work outside the confines of the office, and not have to worry about the booze-bus when driving home. Where they can be with their thoughts when all around them seems too much. Read more
Ludicrous
I just came from watching a screening of a short film. This was it’s Premiere and the producers hired a cinema for the screening of this 15 minute film.
I found the experience very, very… annoying. I realize that the house was filled with friends of the film makers and their contemporaries, so I’m going to write this partly for them.
As an audience member, this was the longest 15 minutes I’ve ever spent. I would think that short films should feel short but leave you wanting more, like a short story. This one was diabolically boring and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Apart from depicting young men as troglodytes and drugged-up little mummy’s boys, this film was a pathetic ‘look-at-me-on-the-big-screen, mum’ style of film that I thought the advent of you tube had finally put to rest. Alas this is not to be. Read more
Kaleidoscope
What if we chased our dreams and we caught them? Would our dreams end with that? What if, having caught our dreams, we wanted more. Could we be satisfied with achieving our dreams and let that be it? Is it conditional on the type of dream?
I’ve seen it. It’s a boat. It’s a beautiful boat. It’s the most deliciously attractive object I’ve ever seen. My dream is awaiting me. It’s my move. It’s within my grasp. This is seduction amped up to 11.
A couple of school kids came up to me today and asked me if it was me they saw on television 2 weeks ago. They described to me a scene from a children’s television series called Parallax in which I played the police constable Sergeant Rick Garcia. Read more
Judicious
It is the most current thing in my life right now. It’s so present that by the time I’ve finished this, things will have altered forever. This is where my thoughts and feelings lie. I’m talking about distinction. About the axis – the “tipping point”, the “crossroads”. The difference between inner and outer reality.
I have come to a momentous revelation that would seem nothing and yet is everything. It is solemnity. It is intoxication. It is so profound in it’s life-force that if I sit unaware of it, it ceases to be for me; yet it doesn’t cease to exist. And as sure as plugging in a light socket will ignite action (or inaction), so awareness is surefire.
It is when the unconscious crosses over to the conscious. Read more
Id
I’m not going to talk about the ‘id’ because I’m a firm believer in talking only of what one knows, and leaving the other stuff alone. It’s a curious thing to me that the simpler questions are the hardest to answer. For example, what do I know? One thing I’ve learned is that we have two ears and one mouth and that we should use them in that proportion. I think that’s why it’s been hard at times for me to do this blog because I am quite conscious of speaking only of what I know. Maybe real writers have this trouble as well.
I’m fairly positive today. I had an excellent workout with R yesterday, and she really put me through my paces. I am very fit and I feel it. I like being part of the ‘bloggosphere’ because it’s a way of expression, and short of tagging bus-stops, this is definitely a good (and legal) option.
I’m hoping to be in a movie in April. The powers that be loved my stuff and I’m on hold for the part. Now there’s a curious development that has been happening in the past few years. Being “On Hold”. Imagine putting your plumber “on hold”, or your doctor, or the police. “Excuse me officer, I may be the victim of a burglary in the next 6 months, so I’d like to put you on hold. So if you’re doing something when the incident happens, because I’ve booked your services first you’ll have to drop everything for me. OK? Cool… thanks a lot.”
A little passive-aggressive of me, I know, and I’m really not serious, just having a bit of fun. For the record, I should just say that I’m on-hold for any work for the forseeable future, that way we can cut out all the formalities of ‘audition’ stuff and just get down to work.
Character consists of what you do on the third or forth tries.
- James Michener
