Point of Origin: Taking control of your creative career
Having
ownership of your creative career can sometimes feel like a paradox. So here's a powerful powerful question that can start to help you take
control of your creative career.
Back
to the future
My
teenage years are all a bit of a blur. I
remember leggings and body tops, lumberjack shirts and stone washed jeans. I was mad about Knight Rider, my ZX Spectrum
64 and Erasure. Nobody understood me, I hated secondary school and I wrote very
depressing poetry which I thought was seminal.
When I join the dots backwards to the beginning of all this teenage
chaos, I surprisingly find the point of origin that helped me start to understand
how to thrive in the creative industry.
Joining up the dots
In 1985 I lived on a beautfiul island in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man. I was twelve years old in the springtime of that year and I was preparing to sing a song called The Golden Bird by Max Reger for a solo song competition in the local Manx Music Festival.
Now, don't be deceived into thinking this music festival is a lovely tea and scone affair. It is an adrenalin junkie experience with little time for a casual scone. For context, the Manx Music Festival (locally known as the Guild) is an annual pilgrimage for the island's musicians, singers, dancers and actors to compete and win medals for various degrees of mastery. This already sounds like a pressure cooker of an environment. But there's more...
Now, don't be deceived into thinking this music festival is a lovely tea and scone affair. It is an adrenalin junkie experience with little time for a casual scone. For context, the Manx Music Festival (locally known as the Guild) is an annual pilgrimage for the island's musicians, singers, dancers and actors to compete and win medals for various degrees of mastery. This already sounds like a pressure cooker of an environment. But there's more...
The
festival takes place on the Isle of Man, an island whose size is so small that
to be able to swing a cat, it had to cut off its tail. As a result, every April, your musician
friends become your competitors. Your
neighbour's hellos aren't quite as chirpy.
And in April 1985, Reger's song, The
Golden Bird was practiced each day by
over twenty, twelve year old girls in school practice rooms and living rooms
across the island.
The point of origin
When
I was twelve, my singing teacher was Janice Percival. A week before the competition I was at her
house having a final lesson. Half way
through the lesson, Janice asked me to stop singing and create a picture of
what this golden bird looked like and why it sang in the cherry tree. I gave her my best withering teenage look. But Janice was hardened to these looks and
continued on with her questions about the life of the golden bird.
To
answer these questions, we started to talk about how some of the pictures in
the living room could help me visualise the song's environment, we looked out
at the garden to watch the garden birds singing and nesting and read a poem
about bird song. We thought about what I
would see when I sang each line and why I sang it. And I understood. No longer was this song made up of a set of
notes that I had to sing to perfection to get a distinction. That didn't matter anymore. What did matter was telling the story of this
brave bird and its dreams of gold.
On
the day of the competition I was very nervous.
So nervous in fact, I was sick in the toilets before I sang. When I walked out onto the stage, I faced an
auditorium that was a mock of the Royal Albert Hall. In front of me sat my twenty or so competitors,
their families, an audience of festival followers, the press, and the
adjudicator sitting in a box that looked like a toilet cubicle. Then a surprising thing happened. My nerves left me. It wasn't about me anymore. It was about the golden bird and I wanted to
tell his story.
Why do you create?
When
I sang The Golden Bird, it was the
first time I experienced being in flow. Today,
this remains a powerful sense memory for me.
I followed this memory and filtered through my body of work to explore what
helps me work in flow today. Through
this reflection, I unpacked the reason why I get out of bed to think, create, audition
and learn new repertoire as well as what I need from my creative process.
Knowing
who we are as an artist and human being, understanding what we need from our creative
environment and process and why we create, is the heart line of our work. When we lose sense of this, perhaps because
of personal or artistic issues, or we feel demotivated by industry expectation
or even devalued, join the dots backwards and reclaim the artist you are. One
way to begin this process is with a powerful question. Take this brilliant question, substitute the
word acting for singing and ask yourself:
"If you take a moment to think about acting when you're
most enjoying it, the times you can really say to yourself, Aaah, this is why I do this. What comes up for you?"
Justina
Vail, How to be a Happy Actor in a Challenging Business: A Guide to Thriving
Through it All; 2012, p45
That's a winner, chicken
dinner
Did
I win the singing competition? Yes I
did. And it was the first competition I'd ever won. I continued to compete in the festival until at
twenty, I left the island for music and drama college. Looking back, the Manx
Music Festival was the place where I started to explore the beliefs, values,
dreams and approaches I have as an artist today. But this article isn't about winning
trophies. It's about the journey. It's about discovering what you need to
thrive. If you feel personally or creatively
stuck, it also means that you can choose to be unstuck. Ready to start the adventure?
Next steps:
Interested in finding out more about thriving
in a creative industry, read this brilliant article by Justina Vail
Want to know even more, then read her fantastic
book
Although these next steps are actor centered, the knowledge and
experience shared is applicable to other creative practices.
Las Vegas: Best Casino & Hotel Deals - JSMH
ReplyDeleteWith over 4,300 rooms and 청주 출장안마 suites, this resort 사천 출장마사지 is 서산 출장안마 home to a top-notch gaming, premier shopping and best 서귀포 출장샵 of 천안 출장샵 Las Vegas entertainment.
Each image is chosen randomly and the number of that image isn't influenced by exterior components like earlier outcomes of winning/losing history. Mega Meltdown is a 3-Reel, 1-Line online game with a 6-tier financial institution progressive that players won’t ready to|be succesful of|have the ability to} get sufficient of. The Mega Progressive is awarded 바카라사이트 when the Mega image lands on the primary reel in a successful mixture during max guess play. An on-line slot game works very similarly to a slot machine at a standard on line casino. You place your wager, and as an alternative of pulling the lever, you click the spin button and see what the slot machine throws your method. However, it can possibly} turn into boring playing in} the same games all over again, so we’ve singled out one of the best on-line slots and the websites to find out|to search out} them on.
ReplyDelete