Go Big or Go Bust: Day 161 (on fame and success)

I was talking with a dear family member over the weekend who shares my impulsive approach to work, who works full-throttle on whatever he feels drawn to and who has been successful by any measure.  But he doesn't feel that he's been successful.  He isn't rich or famous or powerful.  If only he'd focused on one aspect of what he does instead of spreading himself thin, he feels sure that he'd be reaping these rewards.  I pointed out that Ben Affleck or Matt Damon had said something like "Fame is the greatest single thing in the entire world.  For about twenty minutes."   Anyway.

It was instructive and very helpful for me to observe this dilemma in someone else.  I know that with his intelligence and energy he's capable of doing whatever is necessary to become rich and famous.  But I also see that it's not in his nature (nor is it in mine) to constrain and suppress his life force to (for example) sit at a desk all day every day cranking out a novel every year (a web series episode every week) whether his (my) heart is in it or not.  

And in fact, to do that might just make him (me) physically ill! 

It's clear that he's actually 'living the dream'.  He's on fire all day every day doing what he's doing.  And he's even making a significant difference in the world and getting paid to do it.

This doesn't mean that I'm giving up on the hope of getting The Louise Log out to a wide audience, but it helps me to realize that I'm already 'living the dream' and to be grateful for that.  It hasn't always been so. 

Today I finished vacuuming my new studio and this part, the office.  Hoping to move in tomorrow. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 160 (on how a loathesome hit film inspired me)

Today I was overwhelmed with emotion - joy at the earth-shaking rulings by the Supreme Court (and at my new studio), mixed with relief at the capture of the escaped convicts and all this eventually displaced by anguish over the terrible hardships faced by the previous generation.  It doesn't even sort of pull together into a story.

I wanted to get some relief from my inner turmoil and having heard good things about the new "hit from Sundance" Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, dragged Mr. Green to go sit up close to a huge movie theater screen.   "Beautifully scripted"  "Perfectly cast"  "Chunks of gold"   Variety, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and apparently everyone else is mad about this movie.  Finally.  Something great to go feel inspired by.

From the first two minutes, it rubbed me the wrong way.  And then, for my money, it richocheted between annoying and repulsive all the way to the end credits.  But, in a funny way, even 'bad work' is inspiring.  And it's empowering. 

I'm happy to be back home in the peace and quiet of my own life (and studio).  Here's to making new work there without a single thought to which audience segments or studio executives it might appeal.  Since very few of you saw yesterday's pictures of the inside of my studio, here you go. 

The so-called 'conference room', where I might hang a swing from the overhead beam.

the 'office' part in the way back, with a wood stove

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 159 (my new office and studio)

HERE IT IS.  Pre-furniture.  

My friend Kitty suggested hanging a swing from the overhead beam in the big room (the so-called conference room). 

 All the way in the back is the 'office' part, with a wood stove.

I can't wait to move in.  TOMORROW.  

- a white board for a 3-month schedule

- a desk and chair

- a standing desk

- a bookshelf 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 158 (on my new office and studio)

I have a history of tiny little offices in New York City apartments.  My first office was a room that had once been a kitchen.  It was about 5' X 7,  partly tiled in white subway tiles (with an inset band of burgundy tiles) and had a north window facing the now tony Gretsch building's parking lot in Williamsburg.  I loved this little office.  The space felt like it concentrated my ideas and protected me from distractions.  I wrote the script for and produced my feature film (How To Be Louise) in this office.  There were some cabinets left over from the kitchen days for storage, and a thick piece of plywood served as a desk.  The desk stretched from wall to wall (supported by file cabinets) and when I sat at it, my back to the window, daylight poured in over my shoulder. 

The Director of Photography Vladimir Tukan is behind the camera on the far left, standing in my white-tiled office.  Lea Floden, Louise in How To Be Louise, is on the far right. 

After the kids were born, we moved four times in seven years and I was thinking more about diapers and getting a nap than about an office.  In the third apartment, I had a desk in the bedroom. In the fourth apartment, I commandeered a hallway and wore ear plugs to block out the kids.  This is still my office in New York City but now it has a fourth wall with a lockable door in it.  It's a small office, about 6' X 9' and I love it. There's room for the camcorder and a couple of hard drives, but the paper I've accumulated, God help me, the reams and reams of paper, there's no way it can all fit in this office.  There are files in the basement, files in my bureau, in the linen closet and every other closet and bookshelf in the house - trying to keep track of it all is a full-time job.

Upstate, I'm back to a desk in the corner of the bedroom and a bookshelf filled with, yup, papers.  But I've had an eye on one of the sheds.

Maybe you saw the picture of me pick-axing a dirt floor last week?  Tonight that dirt is all smoothed out, covered with a layer of crushed stone and ... paved in cement tiles.  This shed is about to be my first-ever, free-standing 'office and studio'! 

Last Fall, trying to justify to myself that I wanted this entire shed, including the lean-to section in the back, all for my own, I explained to Mr. Green that the lean-to part could be my office (as I like small spaces to concentrate my thoughts).  The other part, which is twice the size and with a higher ceiling, could be where actors and I could sit around a big table and have table readings before we shoot.  (And hey, it could even be a place to shoot.)  Mr. Green said something like: "Oh.  A conference room. You need an office and a conference room."  So now my shed has been dubbed my Office and Conference Room.  It sounds so corporate that it makes me laugh out loud but, in fact, tonight I'm not laughing.  I'm completely in awe. 

We finished the floor tonight.  I went in, closed the doors and said in a voice so low that even if someone else was there, they couldn't have heard me:  "This is my office.  This is my studio." 

But I'll tell you, I wasn't feeling AT ALL like I 'owned this room'.  I felt more like when I first meet an intimidating person or a very powerful and large animal or when I walk into a building or a room that takes my breath away. 

While we were fixing it up, I went through spells of worrying that it was too big, that it would overwhelm me, that I'd feel ridiculous, that I don't deserve it and, the topper, that because of it, I'll never do anything again...  Tonight I can't wait for tomorrow so I can go vacuum it, wash the windows and move my stuff in. 

Pictures tomorrow. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 157 (the power of imagery)

The surprising power of that one 'Own The Room' photo, on the side of a phone booth, has me thinking about how I might better make use of pictures to help me to 'go big'. To hammer home the point (to myself), I want to recount a couple of experiences.

- A number of years ago, I went to see a healer who works with imagery. On my first visit to see him, he 'prescribed' images to visualize three times a day for twenty-one days. Thanks to his treatment, I was saved from disfiguring facial surgery. 

- When I moved to New York City, I'd been trying to stop smoking for the better part of ten years. Living on Rolaids to deal with the constant burning in my stomach. I'd throw away cartons of cigarettes to reinforce the firmness of my resolve. But I'd always started up again.  

One night, heading home on the #1 train, stomach burning, some teenage boys  bounded onto the train. I was only twenty-six, but watching them in basketball jerseys and shorts as they threw a basketball around made me feel old and tired. They had beautiful muscles and were bursting with life and energy and innocence. 

And then, one of them pulled out a cigarette and lit it.  It was as if someone had taken a rock and smashed a plate glass window between us. The image of their youth and health was obliterated in that instant. I suddenly got the destructive power of smoking. And I never smoked another cigarette. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 156 (the power of the positive)

So I guess the cat is out of the bag when it comes to the truth about me and my inner voice, that it's a very lively relationship.  Today I had an unusual experience with it.

Someone recently paid me a compliment on something fundamental.  (It's neither false nor real modesty that's stopping me from saying what it was - am just blanking out.)

Generally songs get stuck in my head, sometimes random meaningless phrases.  Today I hit the jackpot and this compliment got stuck in my head.  Hours later, I can still feel the glowy, relaxed, hopeful feeling after hearing my inner voice replay this compliment.  Who knows why this positive affirmation replaced the usual who-do-you-think-you-are self-criticism, but it did.  Effortlessly. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's related to this image/intention of 'owning the room'.  I get images.  Or they get me.  This 'owning the room' one feels like it could change my life. 

Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth l totally owning the room in that whole movie (a movie I've been meaning to watch again ever since it first came out)

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 155 (You spot it, you got it.)

Mr. Green awakened me at 5:30 this morning in a rather unpleasant way.  He was snoring.  I managed to be a good sport and not go ballistic or storm out of the room with my pillow, giving him the silent treatment as I have in the past.  I actually even stayed in bed, going back to sleep a number of times until finally at around 7:30, unable to take it anymore, I leapt out of bed, accidentally dragging the top sheet with me like a live Greek sculpture and shouting (without anger) "Marriage is so GREAT!  Everyone should be married!"

I would actually say I owned the room!  So what if there were only two of us in it.  I could have been on a stage with a massive audience.  I was so fully myself and my feelings.  (And not mean.)

And then later on, Mr. Green and I got into a little bit of a row, me taking the point of view that rocks have consciousness. 

Now I don't mean that rocks have the same consciousness that we do (á la inanimate objects like Chairy in Pee Wee's Playhouse) but I'm sure they have some kind of consciousness and it all came together with this new obsession of mine: this rock is totally 'owning the hill'.   So I'm thinking, Oh yeah.  There's an expression which has often been turned against me.  This time it's in my favor: "You spot it, you got it."

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 154 (foreign concept I am adopting)

The black and white part of this picture is an ad on a public telephone booth in the Village.   I don't know if it's the way the singer is twisting her body, the way she's packed into the dress, the hand on her hip, that she looks like she's about to belt out a song or that the dress is shimmery. 

Or maybe it's all of that combined with the fantastic line of text at the bottom. 

It generally takes a conscious effort for me to feel bold enough to take up as much space as I would by putting my hands on my hips.  And 'owning a room' is at least one step up from that.  But somehow looking at this picture makes it feel possible, makes it even seem desirable.  

Maybe I'll go power mad. 

HA. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 153 (progress report on the highlights reel)

Like the little vegetables in the garden, I'm happy to report that I'm making some progress.  The highlights reel is close.  Even very close.  Mr. Green pronounced it 'a lot better than okay'.  

And this even though I'm spending way too much time googling 'breaking news' about the escaped convicts, all the while hoping that I'm not drawing them psychically to me by this fixation.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 152 (on persistence ... like the potatoes)

One of our grown kids recently tried to save me from embarrassing myself: 

HIM   "Mom.  The whole 'go big or go home' idea--" 

I jumped in.

ME   "Go big or go bust." 

He nodded, acknowledging the irrelevant fine point. 

HIM   "Whatever.  The 'go big' thing has a certain urgency to it.  There's a finite kind of excitement implicit in it.  What day are you up to, eighty or something?" 

ME   "We're way over a hundred." 

He shook his head, wincing with pity. 

HIM   "No.  Stop it.  It's WRONG.  Just STOP."

Thinking back on the conversation, I don't think I even tried to explain myself or to argue with him.  I've been completely committed to this daily journal/blog and had never imagined an urgency issue.  I let his point of view sink in a little to see if I agreed with it at all.  That's how I generally function - pure gut instinct, which told me:

GUT INSTINCT   "Are you crazy?  Give up?  You've hardly begun."

So it was nice to go down to the basement to look for something else and notice last Fall's potatoes on the bench.  Their life force,  their faith that they're using their finite energy doing what they obviously feel they're supposed to do.   And this reminds me of a quote from Piet Mondrian:  "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 151 (on having a family)

Today I spent the entire day preparing for a young house guest - vacuuming up a whole winter of dust, scrubbing, shaking out linens and making lentil soup with kale from the garden. 

Did I long to be working on the Highlights Reel?  You bet I did.  Did I feel pangs of guilt for being so far behind with email, facebook and twitter?  Oh YES.   All day long I had to keep reminding myself that being a part of this family is the rock of my life, that from time to time I have to put my schedule aside and do what needs to be done.   Today was one of those days.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 150 (on letting go of a will to power)

I'm writing with a heavy heart tonight in the wake of the horrific murders in Charleston. 

I'm not religious,  but feel a kinship with people on a spiritual quest, people who seek to connect with and/or to serve something greater than themselves.  The victims of this crime certainly must have been doing just that. 

It took decades for me to even be interested in anything spiritual.  First I had to be willing to let go of my will to power.  Working as an artist, humbled by artistic blocks and achieving far less than I'd hoped for brought me to my knees.  Eventually humiliation was transmuted into the freedom and joy of being a channel for the work I had tried so hard to accomplish by force.   

Would that everyone could realize the deep and widely applicable truth of my father's firm suggestion.  (The precise circumstances are murky but likely involved me tattling on my sisters in trying to get the upper hand.)  "Taking care of Anne is a full-time job."  That and "Live and Let Live".  

Rest in peace.

 

Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton    
Cynthia Hurd
Susie Jackson
Ethel Lance
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor
Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney
Tywanza Sanders
Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr.
Myra Thompson

 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 149 (on the little things that fill a day)

Last night I couldn't fall asleep and really really wanted to creep out to the barn for my knock-out drops (thirty or forty-five minutes of pickaxing the dirt floor).  Too scared that the escaped convicts might show up, I read until the wee hours. 

Today I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and somehow the precious hours just ran through my fingers. A trip to the two-table farmers market in the nearby town was followed by a stop to see the blackened shell of a neighbor's 18th c. farmhouse (chimney fire).  Other neighbors stopped over to talk about non-chemical bug repellents, I cut a great many weeds with a pair of kitchen scissors and did two loads of laundry. 

OH.  And I showed a rough partial version of the highlights reel to Mr. Green who thinks "it has a nice way about it".  (!!!)  I'm encouraged! 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 148 (on experiencing a psychic power)

A number of years ago, the boy who sat next to my child in the high school band committed suicide.  I was overwhelmed by his death, even though neither my child nor I knew much about this poor kid.  All I could find out was that he was quiet, white and had brown hair.  I had a mental image of him, but I wanted to know more. 

Obsessed with trying to understand who he was and how this could have happened, every day after school I asked for news or details about his life.  He was smart.  He was quiet.  That was about it.   

I thought about him and wondered what could have driven him to take his life, outdoors, on a bitterly cold night.  I worried that maybe other troubled teenagers at the school might decide to follow suit.  After all, what teen isn't troubled?  My kid seemed fine, but this boy probably did too.  Plans were announced for a Buddhist memorial service in Riverdale in the Bronx and I decided to go.

There was snow and ice on the sidewalks and streets and it took longer to get there than I'd expected.  I arrived late to a packed room filled with the sound of chanting.  There might have been some sort of bells jangling too.  It was obvious who the parents were and I hung back out of respect for their grief and my lack of connection.  

An enlarged photograph of the boy, with a beautiful and delicate rope of flowers draped over it, was in the front of the room.  To my shock, the picture of the boy was identical to the mental image I had of him, with one small difference.  In my mental image, he was present and free.  In the photograph, he seemed to be withdrawn and held in, almost as if he was behind a thick piece of plexiglass. 

I've never experienced anything like this before or since but it gives me hope.  First of all, it's proof to me that death is not the end.  And secondly, we're obviously connected to each other in unimagined ways and have powers which are generally untapped. 

image from YouTube video: Abhidhamma 7 Verse Incantation Thai Buddhist Funeral Chanting

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 147 (outside NYC there are so many distractions)

I grew up on a farm.  And, being a terrible student with possible ADHD (or it could've been all that sugar), the one thing I was good at was sports.  Physical work makes me happy.  And afterwards, I sleep like a rock.  Meanwhile, it even feels like I'm making some progress on the Highlights reel, the Highlights reel being the key to beating the bushes.  Daring to think we're going to go big.

When you get outside of New York City, there are so many distractions. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 146 (on how time flies)

So today I managed to hold it down to one hour of weeding, one hour of obsessive searching for old-news-I-might-have-missed about the escaped convicts and finally, finally one hour of work on the old two-minute highlights reel.  How can there only be three hours in a day?  Tell me.  Please.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 145 (on aiming at a balanced life)

Wild swing of the pendulum.   (Please note newly excavated, almost weed-free areas.)  Standing OR sitting at a computer (for the past seven years) is not the world's most comprehensive exercise.  And so now - well weeding doesn't exactly raise my pulse, but it does involve bending.  So stiff I can barely walk but hey, who needs to walk.  

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 144 (on what strikes fear in the core of my being)

On twitter this afternoon, I clicked over to see if I wanted to follow back someone who'd followed me.  I was hoping she wasn't going to be scantily clad ... and she wasn't! This lead me to her website, to reading a post she'd written and eventually to feeling like I'd stumbled on the answer to my (unworded) prayer.  She's real, she's vulnerable and she's funny.  She talks about her inadequacies, her failures and her dreams.  But then I came to a line which struck fear in the core of my being:: 

"... those women have created long careers by letting the audience get to know them intimately ... "

That phrase both sends me to and drags me (kicking and screaming) from my bunker of isolation.  It's what Mudd Lavoie keeps encouraging me to do with this Go Big or Go Bust 'live journal': "Go all the way, naked in front of the world!"  (naked being a metaphor here...)  And even I can see that it's because this new twitter friend shows herself with all of her perceived inadequacies that I'm attracted to her.

Onward!  Seriously, I want to do this. 

But let's face it.  In the immortal words of my (then) middle school-aged child:  "It's not easy being me."

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 143 (doing the artist dates ... at last)

Taking Julia Cameron's Artist's Way, I went hook line and sinker for one of her two key tools: the  so-called Morning Pages.  And I've stuck with them religiously for the past seven and a half years. 

But a second key tool, the Artist Date (with which you 'fill the well') did not go so well.  You're supposed to do an Artist Date alone and it's supposed to feed your soul.  You can go to the beach or to a junk store.  You can go to the movies or get a massage.  You can't sleep.  And you have to do it alone.  As good as I was and am with the 'Morning Pages', I've been that bad or worse with the Artist Dates.  There just never seems to be enough time!  Yes, because I'm a living person, I've accidentally done things which would qualify as Artist Dates.  But I never did them as a result of planning or deciding to give myself that time.  The Artist's Way assignment is to do at least one a week.  I've done so few that it isn't worth counting.

But the effect that this vacation has had is to make me realize that I actually can not afford to dismiss my need for these. 

And so today, Day 1 of my new life since vacation, I scheduled an Artist Date.  Okay.  Guess what.  I never got around to it.  It was supposed to be watching an episode of The Comeback and spending at least thirty minutes looking through a fashion magazine. But I did feel compelled to do something else which totally qualifies - gardening!  While listening to the birds. You may remember that picture of me 'crawling around in the dirt' as I planted the garden?  Look at that garden now!  Wall to wall green!  Alas, it's mostly weeds but my OCD goes haywire with mad joy weeding and I had the time of my life.  In fact, when my allotted hour of weeding was up, guess who didn't leave the garden.

Garden left unattended while we galavanted =  weeds/crabgrass/the 3rd Thing and a few struggling vegetables.

An interesting twist on the old 'weeds' problem was caused by the fact of our ignorance as first time gardeners last year.  We didn't realize that it's a bad idea to let anything go to seed and let the dill and the mustard greens do just that.  This year, we planted neither dill nor mustard greens but look what I pulled up out of the rows where the basil, garlic, sugar snap peas and zucchin are struggling to reach the sun. 

L to R: Three plastic grocery bags (15 lbs) of dill and two paper bags (15 lbs) of mustard greens

Guess what we'll be having for dinner for the rest of June.  And guess who is going to schedule that Artist Date for tomorrow. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 141 (on getting a little sick of myself and ... hope!)

I have an admission to make: though I started off very gung-ho about this Go Big or Go Bust blog, my feelings about it are changing.  One of our kids asked what it's all about and I had to be honest.  "I'm not sure anymore. I'm getting a little sick of myself."   

And then just this afternoon, at the post office, Lynn Singer, whom I've known but have rarely seen for thirty-plus years, was in line two people ahead of me.  Eventually we got to talking and she mentioned the multi-media experience she's about to launch online.  She was practically pounding on the table you're supposed to fill out your forms on: "Thoughts create reality! We're all hugely creative beings! Our job here is to unblock the mind and spirit." How could I not get excited: "When can I buy it??" Lynn was a little vague: "Soon." It's called Breaking Into Brilliance. 

So tonight I'm thinking that my job may be to recognize that The Louise Log is already big, that I don't have to struggle and slave away to get somewhere. My job is to let go of my age-old idea that scrimping and saving and working my fingers to the bone is the path to success. I thought I had let go if it ... with all my great affirmations. Guess there's room for improvement.