Be Comfortable Not Knowing | The Great Acting Blog

Be Comfortable Not Knowing | The Great Acting Blog

“It is not a sign of ignorance not to know the answers. But there is great merit in facing the questions” – David Mamet, True and False

Much of our lives as artists is not within our control. Often, we must wait for our imagination to mobilise in order to solve some impossible creative problem, or we are waiting on some outside agent to decide our fate. Why? Because the rational mind cannot create, and mostly we rely on others for our work to be seen and even for the chance to do our work at all. That is the nature of the artist’s life.

It is required of us to continually step into territory not known to us. That territory may lie within our imagination or it may simply be the roads we have to go down in order to get our work done. Either way, we will be posed questions to which we don’t already know the answer. And this process is continual, there is no end.

Dead ends, loose ends, red herrings, bad decisions, embarrassing mistakes, unforced errors, terrible judgements, unnecessary distractions, precious time wasted carelessly and plain, old fashioned bad luck, humiliation, injustice, misunderstanding. Despite all our focussed planning, despite our firm resolutions, despite all our hard work and despite ourselves, we will encounter all of the above over the next year.

Our intention as we take our first step forward then, must be an optimistic, learning intention. Those who get their work done are those who know that setbacks are neither permanent nor pervasive – but are temporary and isolated. Further, they know that everything that happens to them, everything, is information. No journey is wasted, there are no catastrophes if we extrapolate lessons from the experience. For it is our experience that provides us with ideas for our future.

Practice optimism, learn from everything, only do work you believe in.

And be comfortable not knowing.

Good luck.

 

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Some Practical Philosophy
Continous Artistic Growth – The Expansive Mindset of Ingrid Bergman

 

 

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