It is quite a remarkable thing to lose control. Especially when in my normal life I work very hard to retain control over everything. If anything gets a little bit chaotic or discombobulated in my every day life I have to make it right. Life is a journey of creating order out of chaos, combating entropy at every turn, but it is the exact opposite with acting. In acting I want to lose control. I want to get out of my head and into the moment. That is what we strive for in our craft, to lose control; to surprise ourselves. For when we surprise even ourselves, something magical is realized. We come alive.

Last Monday I was working on Dreamer Examines his Pillow with my partner and I very distinctly remember a moment when I came alive. My partner was saying her line and without the normal processing and rigamarole that is actor listening I just simply responded. I responded with such vigor and passion that I cut myself off. I had shocked myself at my reply, and apparently my partner, for her eyes were definitely alight with the response. I had come alive as Tommy, it was surreal. I couldn’t remember cognitively the build up we had to that point but I could feel it within my soul and it’s expression tingling throughout my body.

Unfortunately my response to my shock took me out of it and I tried to anchor back in and continue the scene. It was somewhat successful. However, it was a great feeling to feel alive as the character in that moment. My coach said we would always chase those feelings and now I know why. It’s too easy for me to make acting wrote, which is uninteresting. It’s too easy for me to make acting solely technical, reciting words without life behind them. These words from our great authors are meant to be expressed through characters who are fully alive, and as is the case with real life, life is not fully within our control.

If you don’t share what you have, you’re gonna live a lonely life.
– David Bamberger

It’s been 2 years since I’ve started acting and 1 year since I’ve been writing. I ask my self now, in this moment of selah, this moment of reflection, what have I learned? What have a I achieved? What is next? I have learned that perspective is vital and important.

This past year has been a tumultuous year. I was cast in my first stage production, as well as my first film production. Both of those projects being wildly different experiences and lot of long weekends. I added on to my class repertoire to be a full-time 5 night a week acting student. I started a web series film project with two close friends and stepped up my audition outings. It has been a blur of a past year with learning to deal and manage my new busy lifestyle.

In looking forward to next year it only seems that my life will get busier. I have the opportunity in front of me for this next year to be the busiest and most successful, or for it to be a year of total failure. This dichotomy of possibility has absolutely thrilled me but mainly it has abjectly horrified me. I’m scared. I feel like I am losing my mind. The more I learn the more I feel I don’t know. I feel like I have no idea what acting is. The scariest feeling being that I feel like I don’t have a direction at the moment.

See, every year I have a goal or plan on what I am going to do. I had a goal last year to get out and audition more and I did that. Which, in turn, led to my first two productions. This next year there are a lot of goals for different productions and a goal for getting into a training program abroad. As well there is always the overarching goal of moving out to LA and making the big leap into the professional acting world. These all sound nice in looking forward to this next year but I feel like I’m doing that on very shaky ground. I’m suddenly out of my comfort zone and with that comes the instinctual desire to want to seize control. I want to steer this ship back into that comfort zone but at the same time I still have these goals, dreams, and aspirations. My ego and my soul are locked in battle and so my mind drifts off, trying to stay afloat, with no direction clear as of yet.

This is where perspective comes into play. I’ve been in the trenches too long, not lifting my head to see the greater scope of it all. That singular focus has led me astray and festered all my fears of failure and rejection. I am very much out of my comfort zone. I’m putting myself out there, in this next year, to potentially face failure at every turn. That scares the shit out of me. Yet, I know that I can never go back to my comfort zone. I will never be happy there again. I have to step out.

I went to a premiere of Macbeth up in Flagstaff the other night to see a friend perform. She was magnificent. There were a lot of magnificent actors up there that night. And I could see at times some nerves come out in some, it was an overbooked sold out opener, but even greater than that I could see their eyes alight and alive in the thrill of being up there on stage. Meeting them after the show they were so full of energy and buzz. They were truly alive. It reminded me of why I do this. Why going back to my comfort zone is impossible now. Why I can stand up against the possibility of outright failure in this next year. Because without that risk of failure there is no chance, no opportunity, to take part in the highlights and the thrills our art can afford us.

…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
– Theodore Roosevelt (The Man in the Arena)

That perspective shift has given me my direction for this year. Nothing risked is nothing gained. This next year will be a year of huge risk taking, that I am sure of. What comes of that, be it abject failure or amazing success, time will tell. Either way I’m going to go for it and will continue to go for it into the next year and the year after that. I can accept the failure. What I cannot accept is living with the regret of never putting it all on the line.

Why do I try so desperately to be perfect? It is a trifling task to become perfect, for what is perfection in this art anyways? When I try to be absolutely perfect I fail and when I fail I berate myself: tormenting myself with every thing that went wrong. I become blinded by my failures from seeing any triumph I have also obtained. It clouds my mind and traps me.

Perfection can be a hidden tool to propel us forward. To help halt any contentment or stagnation. It does push our art forward and leads one to a lifetime of breakthroughs. For we are always chasing this idea: this knowing that there is always more work to be done. At the same time perfection can choke our art. It can send us backwards or in the worst case can have us throw in the towel and give up, walking away.

Thus, I have found it important to keep a reminder of why I act in the first place. To hold within the thing that brought me out of my hole and into the craziness of our art, starting as a shy and hungry beginner. It reminds me that I am still a beginner and that there is still so much to learn. It also allows me to own my triumphs that I have obtained throughout this journey. Those are all hard-earned and they should be celebrated. For if we do not honor our triumphs we have blinded ourselves to our progress and thus have stagnated.

This reminder helps me to stay focused in the pit of failure. The craft we have chosen is a humbling one. One day we are at the height of the mountain with limitless creative energy and in the very next moment we are starved, crawling around lost; zombies to this mistress. Through all this though, is growth. That mountain top is fleeting but so is that pit. We are here to stay at neither but rather to grow as artists and push forward in this craft. There is always work to be done. That is the great equalizer and constant of this craft. It is its blessing and its curse. May we always remember that what we touch in our craft is bigger than just ourselves.

You are loved — You have purpose

Must keep reminding myself on this
Must rebuild my name myself on this

You have talent — You have potential

Must keep reminding myself on this
Must rebuild my name myself on this

I have always said that I will be the hardest working actor—not the most talented. For the latter is not in my control as the former is, and talent is the the thing most wasted. I must strive to work hard—even when I don’t want to—especially then. The passion will ebb and flow, that is life and lately that passion has been tested. Hard work and discipline in those times of lack are what matter. That is what will carry me forward and see me through.

So that when the struggle comes and all I feel like doing is quitting, and others around me fall, quit, and drop out when the passion leaves them, I will persevere. That is grit! Also let it always be known that it is the excellence and growth of others that lifts us up. My ego wants to bring everyone down to my lowest level but with that there is no growth. I cannot tear down this art to my level, for it demands that people rise. The giants that have come before are there to elevate me—not for me to tear them down. I would only destroy my art and myself to try such a task.

To be humble is to constantly be inspired by others.

I’ve been trying to write the past couple of days, nay week, and have been failing. Not for lack of inspirations or ideas, for those have been spewing forth like an active volcano in my mind, rather a failure of translation. For as soon as my pen hits paper or my fingers gently rest on the keyboard my mind shuts down.

In fact my whole body has been shutting down as of late. Coming into class I am full of vigor and life, wanting to get up on stage to play and live. However, as soon as my feet land on the stage and my eyes look out with the lights framing my face everything leaves me. My body shuts down and I am either flat and boring, or closed off and withdrawn. Left to spend the rest of the class angry and frustrated with myself; sinking into a state of despair and rage.

Yet, the next morning I’m up with a newly cleared mind to tackle this craft all over again. It’s a nightmare of a cycle; full of artistic creativity in the mind yet unable to pass it through to the fingers for writing or the whole body for acting. Something is blocked. It feels like a brick wall is stopping my progress with the skin of my knuckles flayed and bloody from beating this wall mercilessly to try and get through. And of course there is no sign of any dent or headway into this brick wall. Strong it stands staring me right in the face.

So after enough brute force I give up my futile self-beating and decide to just play in the sandbox I am in. It’s far from perfect, usually adding nothing to my work but it at least keeps me from going insane in trying to break down a brick wall with my fists. The beautiful step comes next. A step where after playing in the muddy garden you are forced to play in you look up and see a beautiful sunrise. You see the colors more vividly, time slows down, the sounds are crisper and clearer, your eyes are alight with all the life that is around you. The black and white of the world falls away and even the grey of the progressives falls away. I begin to see life in the full spectrum of colors. It’s awe inspiring.

More importantly as I look around this beautiful landscape I notice that it’s not mud I’m playing in but a glorious sandbox full of toys and different kinds of sand. And the wall, the wall that seemed so grand and impenetrable, is mightily tall but 5 feet wide; I can simply walk around it.

I have found that breakthroughs are not about mercilessly beating down a wall to come out on the other side. Rather it’s a shift in perception. Whether that perception is a perception of my circumstances of life, of my art, or who I am as a person. As my perception shifts I get a more expansive view, I’m not tunnel visioned like I was before, and that is the beauty of breakthroughs. That is the beauty of our art. As we progress our perception shifts and grows, not just of our world but of ourselves; maybe most importantly of ourselves!

When we ourselves are struggling the best course of action can simply be to reach out a hand to another who is also struggling…

Sometimes I find myself up in the clouds, soaring high above in the work of our craft; rising to the occasion. The view is beautiful and elegant in these lofty heights, without stress or need for control, it is free. It seems effortless to fall into the skin of another person and to see the world from their point of view. To find and express the truth in yourself in such raw realism that those watching you glide majestically far up above, cannot help but be moved. These are the moments I think as being ‘wins’ but they are few and fleeting.

I flew too close to the sun.

More often than anything I find myself in the pit of despair; on the edge of quitting this craft. A place where I am questioning myself as an artist and whether this passion that burns inside of me even burns at all. Or has it rather been smothered by my own insecurities and spread outside this heart to engulf in flames all of my artistic creations. I find myself confronted face to face with my principal fear: myself.

I was just trying to be an actor, writer, and artist…but I hate what I play…what I write…what I create.

I’ve been thrown back into the pit I took most of my life to claw out of, or at least thought I had made it out of. I climb these sloped walls of this gravel pit only to slide down just within grasp of the lip. One fateful day I finally claw my way up to the lip to launch myself out, rising up high above this hole. The air is sweeter, colors more vivid, and the view absolutely breathtaking. As I float aloft my eyes drift down to behold the landscape underneath me of pit after pit after pit, for as far as the eye can see. My wings grow heavy from the weight of this burden of artistic growth and as they fail me I descend down into another gravel pit.

I ain’t scared of living…

Yet, I do not falter…I do not give up. For the first time in my life I have realized I am truly not alone. For in that brief moment of soaring up there in those bright clouds I looked down and saw my fellow man. As I descend back down and settle in this new pit I am greeted with the smile and tears of another artist. So that while my eyes long for the clouds above and I grow weak and hopeless from falling back into this desolate landscape, I am pulled up by my fellow artist.

What are we breathing for?

As we struggle together to ascend out of this pit to reach those great heights of our art above we give strength and comfort to each other. That while one might fall a hand is always there, extended, to lift us back up again; to keep climbing. Or even when we are so bone tired that we can only rest in the crux of this hole our eyes can look up and behold those that have made it out to fly high above. Their glorious wings and displays of excellence inspiring motivation within our hearts, lifting us up to climb again. Waiting for the day when we will soar again, and we will soar.

No one is spared the artistic struggle, no one.
– Brandy Hotchner

The wins are not when we find ourselves up in the sky flying freely as Icarus but every day in those pits when we continue to struggle. When we continue fighting and persevering. The wins are in those moments when we hate everything about our work and ourselves, when we’re on the verge of giving it all up, but we don’t. The win is every day we face ourselves and fears, with heartbreak and tears, and press on. I have found it helps immensely to know too, that we are not alone in this struggle.

To be alone in this craft is artistic suicide.

Two nights ago I was sitting in a small black box theater awaiting an experimental production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. This small Phoenix theater was fully packed with an audience in May and had no air conditioning. It was stifling and stuffy in there to say the least. What was refreshing was the production that unfolded before me. I watched actors who boldly played and took risks, sometimes failed, but were always engaged and energized in their performance. It was a true delight to behold. I was inspired.

I feel like I talk about humility a lot and well maybe that’s because I am constantly humbled by my fellow actors. I also feel as though I often talk on my personal struggle in acting in regards to getting over myself. While I tire of those discussions they really are my truth for that moment. The main fault in those struggles is that I have turned inward in my craft. I have turned the focus away from the work and joy of the outward expression of our craft and focused solely inward, making it all about me. My self-indulgence only begets frustrations and unhealthy failures as I continue to slide deeper and deeper down this dark internal downward spiral.

While that path of self destruction is hard to break I can always count on my love of this craft to win out. Even more so it is through the experience of watching my fellow colleagues and other actors bravely play that I am freed from this unholy charm. I am humbled and reminded again why I feel so called to this craft. There is something within me that cannot stay hidden.

I had a great night last night full of wondrous play and exploration and I need to own that triumph. I need to remember this feeling and lock it in for where I always want to act out from. More so I have realized again that this wonderful gift that we hold inside ourselves as artists is not meant for us alone. It is meant to be shared in all its splendor and glory. I am meant to showcase all my shades of grey and the magnificent beauty they contain.

It might be hard to view myself in such a light, to see such worth inside of myself, but it is there. It’s long overdue that I own that and then share it. I will always be grateful and indebted to my fellow actors for their bravery and inspiration that causes me to then want to share in return. Each one of us has been called to this craft for a reason and we each have something great within us that is so much bigger than ourselves. May we always have the bravery and inspiration to get up and play!

I have become so frustrated with myself: with my acting training. There are times when I have fun but most of the time as of late it has been anything but exuberance. I feel as though I’ve lost the joy of acting. Most of my time is spent trying to push through, to not shut down, to not beat myself into a pulp. It seems like every night I am picking myself up from off the floor and with each time I get up slower and slower, more bruised and battered. It’s exhausting.

There are a myriad of things causing this—and to be honest I don’t care too much to try and navigate through them all. I have no motivation to reach some grand breakthrough. I have hit the wall that I have hit all my life. So what follows: defiance, rebellion, and all the ugly shades of myself I hide away. In the end though I just want to play. I just want to find the joy of being at the beginning all over again. I want to go back to that wide-eyed boy that came in soaking wet out from the rain, knowing no one, and wanting to just simply act.

I believe I can and I believe I will. I’m so tired of my own ego getting in the way—thinking I’m some “veteran” in these classes, like I know anything. We have peaks and we have valleys and currently I am in a valley and I have to admit that I am OK with that. Will I be here forever, no. Will I grow to a new peak and hit another plateau and go through this cycle all over again, yes. Through it all though my goal is to always remain this wondrous awe-struck child. I’m tired of letting my pain, my ego, my self-hatred and loathing, keep me from what I love.

I love being a child, I love getting messy. I yearn to get up and play with no concept of right or wrong—just pure joyous freedom. There is no one stopping me from that but myself and so it’s time to let that go: to shed away that holding. I have made my acting training too personal. A child may get sad, hurt, and upset, but in the very next instant they are laughing and playing again. There is no time for self-pity and mutilation.

Deep down through the muddled darkness of my soul I have found my inner-child once again. Now it is time to let him out to play again. To see this world and craft we hold dear in all its awe-struck wonder. May I always peer through the eyes of a child in my acting.