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In
August I spent two glorious weeks in my beloved Oregon
where I spent some time with friends on the Deschutes
River, cooked & ate fresh salmon, got dog-piled by
countless 7-year-olds, and came 2 steps from getting
chomped by a rattlesnake. Life doesn't get much better.
 And
I picked a lot of
blackberries. They are so
tasty.
Know
the best way to find
the ripe ones?
Find
a good spot and then
move a couple of feet to
the left. Move to the right.
Look at the same spot from underneath. Go around to the
other side of that spot. In other words, change your
perspective and keep your eyes open.
Blackberries
like to hide behind their own leaves and if
you miss them today, they might be gone tomorrow.
What
does this have to do with your acting career?
Everything.
Imagine
all the acting opportunities out there are
blackberries, waiting to be picked. Not all of them are
right for you: some are under ripe, some are over ripe,
some covered in spider webs, just as some roles aren't for
your type.
But
there are still plenty just hanging there, waiting to
be plucked, devoured, and savoured. And it's all a matter
of looking at them from another angle, another perspective,
with fresh eyes.
I
have a theory that part of human nature is that we go
through our lives with filters on, removing from our
awareness all the things that don't apply to us. Try
walking through Times Square, as I did last week, and take
everything in.
You
can't do it; it's just too much information, so our
brains have to put limits on what it allows to come in, and
what it keeps out. And that's probably a good thing:
imagine the kind of overload you would go into if you could
let everything in.
The
only problem is that we also start to see patterns in
the world, and assume that those patterns are true. And
sometimes those patterns involve filtering out things that
could be really valuable or helpful.
For
example, several years ago, I was shopping for a
motorcycle. My dad and I used to go riding a lot (even into
his late 70's), and I was longing for that freedom and
excitement.
As
I went through my normal life, motorcycles seemed to be
everywhere, and half of them had "For Sale" signs
on them.
Everybody rode a motorcycle all of a sudden.
Of
course it wasn't the case that there were more
motorcycles on the road than before, but I rather that I
had been filtering them out, not noticing them up to that
point. Had someone asked me what percentage of vehicles on
the streets were motorcycles, I would have given a number
much lower than what was actually there.
And
when I changed my mind and decided not to buy one, I
went back to my normal life. All the motorcycles that had
been littering the roads and my awareness dried up over a
few weeks.
So
as the summer comes to a close, the blackberry bushes
shed their old fruit in preparation for the winter.
Motorcycle riders take every opportunity available to
spread their wings before it gets too cold to ride.
In
the acting business though, things are just heating up
for the fall season, and opportunities are becoming more
plentiful. So if you're lamenting the lack of work during
the summer months, take off those filters, look at the
situation from different angles, and scope out the
opportunities that you might otherwise miss, because the
tasting is so sweet and the ride is such a thrill.
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Lessons
for Life:
Christopher Reeve's unique perspective