A Shorter, Eighter Episode
I wrote a couple of days’ ago about this becoming harder to write because things are becoming less noteworthy of late. I’ve been ruminating on that for the last 48 hours and I’m not sure that’s the problem. I think it’s actually something that is very linked to my acting and creativity in general; and I shall explain for why. I think the real reason that I am finding it hard to write these blogs, is because it has fallen into a natural rhythm - one blog a week, it’s quite long, has an introduction of sorts before derailing itself into generic waffle about what is going on around me, before being tied off with a tenuous bow, and voila! A blog! This rhythm is fine, and super natural; that’s just how it’s happened and I didn’t force it. But I think that it is ultimately restricting: my thought process has become more “it’s that time of the week when I write stuff down - sit down with the laptop and write some stuff. Make it funny but mean something. Be honest, but don’t turn it into a diary entry.” I’m recreating, rather than purely creating. There is expectation every time I open this web page, that I have to write something. I have to say something, however mundane or stupid. The result is that it has become relatively stagnant - and I think that I can parallel this with one of my biggest hurdles in my acting. I often find that when I have a breakthrough, or something interesting happens, that that is a signal of me doing something right, and therefore, I have to keep the conditions exactly the same the next time I do it, so as to generate another result that affects me in the same way. The other thing is - people have contacted me since I started doing this to say that they are enjoying my missives and to keep them coming - I honestly love the feedback (I have an enormous ego to feed, so keep it coming) but then I start writing for a purpose. I think the beauty of this blog is that it is SO inconsequential. My corner of the internet is visited so infrequently that this isn’t a blog that should be written with business in mind. I shouldn’t be thinking about important or significant people reading this and judging me. This should be freeing - I can write anything I want, in any style, in any language, in any font, with any tone and with whatever regularity I like. Except I have turned it into a chore without realising it.
So here you go, another blog two days’ after the last one. School’s great. Today we discussed Taxi Driver and how wi
cked it
IS.
In any style I want.
There actually isn’t much more to write, I think I’ve laboured the point enough at this point; one doesn’t like to flog dead horses, unless practising for a flogging competition and the world has suddenly run out of alive horses. I was just sitting down after a long day and, having done a load of work for school I thought I’d do some more writing (I’m working on a short film homage to Sunset Boulevard) and I smashed out about four pages as if they were mere post-it notes, and sat back and caught myself realising that it was because I was only really writing so I didn’t go to bed at 8PM, and I was writing with no expectation, and I suddenly thought “Damn, this feels like a learning moment.” So I came here. In the end, it was a fairly unhelpful decision because I have totally lost my train of thought on the script…but these things can’t be helped - and I’m glad that you could come along for the ride. This is a much more digestible chunk of writing than previous blogs so, you’re welcome, I guess.
Keep your eyes peeled for my next entry: I have no idea when it will come, and I can’t promise it won’t be in the form of gifs. But that’s art.