i love what actors and filmmakers and directors and writers can do. separately or together. it's such an efficient way to convey a real emotion to an audience.
i am not an actor and have no insight into the techniques involved.
but this evening something struck me:
in order to be a great actor, do you have to stop 'acting' in our everyday lives.
i feel like each of us puts on a costume and goes out to face the day armed with only the knowledge you have of your 'character'.
so, if this is possible, to strip away the layers of identity that we all have collected that we use in different social settings, and lay bare any real emotion or feeling you could muster so that it could come out so strongly and purely that it could transcend the medium of film or the stage, is this not what the great actors do?
that would be an incredibly humbling journey.
to lay bare or have laid bare any insecurity, any veil you held over a secret passion or fear pulled away to reveal the crushingly emotional center in all of us.
i think all artist must take this journey, the ego tamed and humbled, strengthened and sharpened by the sighting of something that had been just out of view and has now awakened one's consciousness.
if so, then my hat is off to all of you. any of you who would attempt this.
it's so incredibly risky. but perhaps that is part of the allure.
i've never had to be anyone else when i performed or recorded and now that i'm 47 there's no need to pretend to be anyone else. no one would believe it.
when i was younger it was fun to don makeup and put on shiny clothing to pretend to be something or somebody else. i loved KISS. the fantasy behind the music was key to its enjoyment as an adolescent .
now there's less theatrics, still plenty of shenanigans, but you just listen to each other and play and the music becomes the main focus. it's the thing that moves everyone in the room along. lights and fog might help, but the groove has to be there.
so, i guess i will wait for our good friend dylan kussman to somehow read this and expound on my thesis in his own blog, which i believe is called 'i got punched in the face a lot in the movies'.
that's not the name.
acting looks tough. how do you do it, dylan?
love,
joe
