Where Do Ideas Come From?

Creating and developing our own projects is a great way of staying proactive as an actor. But how do we find that initial inspiration? What can we do to unlock the creative potential we all have hidden away? 

In this final part of our series on Storytelling, we discuss what questions we can ask ourselves to help create meaningful art.

From Mozart to Paul McCartney, from William Shakespeare to Phoebe Waller-Bridge – we find out what drives artists to make work that stands the test of time and resonates with others.

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‘Love’ Omid 16B (EP version)

Composer – Omid Nourizadeh

Courtesy of aLOLa Records P & C 2022

Published by aLOLa / Westbury Music Ltd.

An Awakened State production.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:08

You know, it's the same in acting. The more questions you ask, the more characters pictures you create. You know, it activates the imagination because you're answering those questions in your imagination in pictures. And the more pictures you have, the richer the character, the better the acting. And it's the same with uh writing, the more questions that the playwright has asked, the more detail and the more depth that it has to it.

Speaker 2 0:40

Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting Podcast. This is the third and final part of our series on storytelling, and this one is focusing on creating your own work. If you've ever thought about developing your own projects but have no idea how or where to even start, then this episode is definitely for you. How do we get inspired and take that first step to create meaningful work? In this episode, we explore how different artists from different eras and disciplines have harnessed that elusive muse to create work that has stood the test of time. Hopefully, this episode will inspire you to help unlock whatever's hidden inside you and get you on the right track to turning that creative spark into a reality. Let's jump into it. Like we've said before in the episode on directing and the seven qualities of a great director, we talked about how creating your own work can be hugely beneficial to the actor. Maybe even giving them opportunities that they wouldn't have had elsewhere. Although I think a lot of actors, especially, completely close themselves off from that avenue. Maybe they might think, you know, I'm well, I'm just not a writer. Or, you know, I don't know where to begin, or or maybe even I don't have any good ideas. And I think if you there's there's plenty of examples, but you take someone like Phoebe Waller Bridge, who wrote a one-woman show for the Edinburgh Fringe called Fleabag, and then that was adapted into big BBC series. From then on, she's had huge success both as an actor and as a writer. I think the idea behind Fleabag is actually quite simple, but it's it's executed, I think, with such a vigor and like a pure ballziness from her that it's that's probably why it spoke to such a massive audience. You know, it was like it was straight from her consciousness. And she wasn't pulling out punches, she wasn't uh second guessing what the audience wanted to see. And it it's it's almost like there was just something that was that piece was connected to something inherently truthful within her. And I think that's that's probably the gold of creating her own own work. It's it's about unleashing that really awesome potential that we all have locked somewhere deep in our subconscious. So I think in this episode, it'd be good to explore that that notion of where good ideas come from, you know, how to unearth the richness of our imagination that we all have. So so yeah, where where do good ideas come from?

Speaker 1 3:17

Well, it's a great question and a fascinating subject. Uh, because as you say, it's absolutely right. The actor, it can be very, it can be very disempowering being an actor. You're waiting on other people. Um, you're hoping that a casting director is gonna, you know, look at your look at your image and bring you in for a self-tape, or uh that you know, that you're gonna get the part that it can be very frustrating and you can feel powerless and sort of time can go by whilst you're sort of waiting for the phone to ring or waiting for the email to come in. And so to sort of take back your own power and you know, potentially create something great. Uh, I encourage all actors that do the course to start thinking about developing their own work and um see what they bring to the table. And like with you know, with with the example there you were given with Fleabag, uh, she very much wrote from her experience. Um, she she you know, that was an aspect of her own psyche that that's that she was sharing. I mean, obviously, I don't think she's purely that, but I think that's you know, it comes from her own psyche and comes from her own experience. And that's that's always the good starting place, is you know, to write about what you know about. So that's a good question to ask yourself is well, what do I know about? And start start making a list of what I know about. Um, but in terms of where do ideas come from, I mean that's that's a huge question. Ultimately, all you know, like to cut to the chase with all this, all every everything comes from consciousness. Uh, and if you think of the mind, if you think of the psyche, you know, as kind of if we look at some of the sort of the layers of the psyche, the first layer of the psyche is the visible chamber of thinking, is um, you know, the mind's eye, where you know, that little space behind the eyes between the ears, where every thought you've ever thought has taken place, you know, that that's the uh interface uh to your whole mind is is really that space. So that that we call the visible chamber of thinking or the mind's eye. And then we have what we call aware thinking. So these are thoughts that we know we have. So these are aware or conscious thoughts. Um, but then if we follow that, if we follow it downward, if you think of this this going downwards, and then we draw a line and we say everything below that line is subconscious. So these are thoughts that that are in the mind, but I don't know I have. This is my personal subconscious, subconscious meaning below the level of visible consciousness. But if you go down deeper beyond the subconscious, you would go into uh what we could call the unconscious and the individual unconscious. So think of that as a layer deeper than just even the subconscious. So this is the unconscious. And then if we go deeper still and we go down, down, down, you know, like this is a deep dive. Um, we go deeper still, then we could then beyond the individual unconscious, we would come to the collective unconscious. Uh, and in the collective unconscious, this is where the ideas are. There was um, this is where the great ideas are, by the way. This is this is what we're talking about the great idea. I mean, there's there's lots of ideas. There's a difference between a good play and a great play, you know, or a good piece of art and a great piece of art. So let's let's deal with sort of the the great ones. And they they really come something from the collective yearnings of the race, you know, of the human race, and the collective uh dreams of the human race, and the collective existential uh insecurities of the human race, that's all down there. But if you if you keep going, the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, he had uh an image of the psyche rather like a spiral, or the spiritual journey being rather like a spiral. So it starts from a central point, a spiral. Uh, that would be the absolute, that would be pure consciousness, and then it emanates and it goes out and it gets wider as we get into more and more diverse forms. You know, so starting from a single cell amoeba, right, up to a human being or an elephant, that there's been you know greater complexity and uh a movement towards novelty uh in the movement of creation. So it goes from a single point to multiplicity, it goes from unity to multiplicity. The spiritual journey is the journey back, it was going, is would be going inward of the spiral, going back to the central point, going back to stillness, going back to the self. Um, with each year, would be you know, each round of the spiral. You appear like you're you're the years are going by and it's you know, oh boy, it's Christmas again, that that kind of situation. But actually, with spiritual work, you're getting closer and closer to the center as the year go years go by, rather like with a spiral. Now, what Marsilio Facino, he was a Renaissance philosopher, what he said was that as we get sort of close to the center, we come into a realm which we could he called angelic mind, or we could call it universal mind, or even um God's mind. And this is where the forms of creation, as it were, are stored. Plato talked about this as well. Plato in his writings talked about the ideal of forms, you know. So if you if you take, for example, the idea of a chair, that concept of a chair, it's it serves a function, you know, people need to park their bottom somewhere. Um, it serves a function, and that having you know, generally four legs with something to sit on, and often a back, is the concept of a chair. And from that concept of chair, you can create an infinite different variety of different types of chair. Do you see what I mean? So these are so you think about this as the kind of storehouse of the primary ideas of creation, of the forms of creation. And so when you're getting into meditation and you're getting towards the point of complete stillness, you know, in meditation, the goal of meditation and really the process of meditation is to go from movement to stillness. So it's to go from being on the wheel, as it were, you know, again, we've got this idea of turning like a spiral, to going to the center and going to where there's stillness. Now, in that area, in that stillness, there are ideas. You're coming into by by as an artist, by coming to your own stillness and resting in your own being, you're really dipping into the the universal. And um an artist is rather like a channel from that universal mind to bring it into manifestation. So a kind of conductor, if you like. So the energies from one side, sort of the creative ideas or or the impulses, the creative impulses are there, and then conducting them, allowing them to come through you, and then bringing them into manifestation. Mozart wrote in his diary, uh, he he sort of referred to this. You know, this is someone obviously who who is visiting that realm. He said, Um, when I'm alone and feeling of good cheer, he wrote in his diary, uh, maybe going for a walk after dinner or coming back in my carriage after visiting friends, I fall still. And in that stillness, I hear music. And he said, it didn't just come to him as the seven separate parts of the orchestra, but he he heard the whole orchestra as one. And he said, I have a tendency, I'm told, to hum these little ditties to myself. And then he said, uh, he sits down in front of the piano and he applies the laws of counterpoint. So he understood the kind of, if you like, the science of music. He understood how the notes related to each other and how to take a motif and then create variations on that motif, for example, you know, musical motif. Um, so he he understood the logic of music, as it were. So, but he came up with the initial tune, he said he heard it. At the end of the diary entrance, he simply says, of his own creative process, what a joy this is, I cannot tell. Which I just think is so sweet, you know. It's just very simple, isn't it? Yeah, it's very simple, and and there's nothing in there of it. Was I, Mozart, who created the concerto or the piano sonata, uh, or the opera. There's no sense of that, just simply I hear music and I write it down and I share it with people for them to be able to hear it themselves. He could hear it in a way, you know, he could hear the music of the spheres, he could hear um the music of the other world, the music of the subtle realm. And he was rather like a channel, and that's why when you listen to that kind of music, you know, which we could call conscious music because it comes from pure consciousness. When we hear it, we're united with that place from which it came. We're united with it because it's in the music, we're taken to that same place.

Speaker 2 13:31

Yeah. That that reminds me of um, you know, uh Brian Wilson. There's an excellent film, it's like a biopic of sorts called Love and Mercy, in which there's uh two actors playing Brian Wilson at different stages of his life, you know, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. And uh Paul Dano plays the younger Brian Wilson of the 60s, who's in the middle of uh creating pet sounds, you know, this huge masterpiece. But what it really shows uh really beautifully in the film is is his almost like struggle with music. That the way it's portrayed in the film is that he just hears so much music. It's a bit similar to Mozart, but it's like this it's like it's he's not even doing anything to channel it, it's just there. There's all this uh cacophonous sound which is almost like store in his brain until he gets it out, until it just kind of pours out of him. And it's and it's it's almost like he's this conduit, yeah, that something's coming from somewhere and it's just it's tormenting him. But in when it comes out in this like physical manifestation of this music, it's some of the most beautiful things you've ever heard, and it's standing the test of time, and we're still talking about it today. It's just a similar, almost like a modern version of that mode, sort of it's just something is kind of in there, yeah.

Speaker 1 14:40

Yeah, well, and that's how you know it. It has that the music that comes from that sphere, it you know, it has a timeless uh kind of quality, you know, and often you know becomes a hit because it resonates in people's hearts because of where it's come from. Um, Shakespeare, in talking of his own creative process, um, in one of the sonnets, well, in in first of all, in the classical tradition, their their idea was that you had go, if you're going from heaven, you have in their idea, you have God, right? You have absolute truth, pure consciousness. And then the energy from God in terms of creativity is distributed through the nine muses. So these were almost like you know, these were female embodiments that represented the different talents. You know, there was a muse of folk dancing, there was a muse of poetry, there was a muse of history. I can't I can't remember what they all are, but they're you you can look them up, the uh the nine muses. So the energy uh would come from God, go through the muse, should be channeled through the muse, and then the muse would be in communion with the artist's genie. So they believe that we all had a genie. This is where we get the term genius, right? Yeah, uh who's connected with their genie, so it's creative genie. Yeah, and um in connecting the muse to the genie, then the genie is connected to the artist, and then the art flows, as it were, from the absolute, from God through the muse into the genie, and then directly down into the artist, and then manifests as them playing their instrument or doing their dance, or it's the point at which their quill pen meets the the paper. Yeah, um, is there's a direct line. Do you see what I mean? So it comes from really, it follows the idea the same way, the just the other way around, of it coming up from pure consciousness, going through the realms and then coming into the mind as a as a fully formed idea. Um, so the best ideas obviously come from that realm. Um, but in terms of playwriting and film writing, particularly, I a very good analogy is of uh a piece of grit that gets into an oyster. So the writer would be like the oyster, and unfortunately, apparently, a piece of grit gets caught in the oyster, right? Something alien, an alien body that shouldn't be there, and it bothers the oyster, and the oyster wants to get rid. So the oyster, in the process of dealing with this thing that shouldn't be there, this thing that doesn't sit right, it creates a pearl. Now, what's the piece of grit that gets inside the writer? It's really some unfinished thinking. It's really a sense of life not working, of something that you know that we've missed, something that we've collectively forgotten, um, something that bothers us, some unanswered question that relates to our own personal journey, you know, as a human being alive on this planet, it relates to our personal journey, and we find it echoed in the creative journey. And then through the process of you know, researching and contemplating and thinking and structuring this thing, a pearl, a work of art, a play, a screenplay, um, or a finished film arises from that. But it starts with some problem that the writer is having with their own life. So that's why, you know, we're gonna look at some some questions, uh, I think later on. And one of the questions is, you know, what pisses me off? You know, a good place to start to get ideas is like to make a list of things that piss you off, things that aren't right, things that you know that that get you that might get you to actually create something which solves this problem. You know, necessity is the mother of invention. You know, that that old cliche is a cliche for a reason because it's true, it comes from the necessity of the moment.

Speaker 2 19:30

Yeah. That makes me think of there was a film a few years back uh called The Harder They Fall, and it was uh a black western, and and that uh and the director had basically had found out this very little-known fact that one in every four cowboys were black, and that's not represented at all in in the hundreds of westerns of cinema history, and so that was something that bothered me. As a black director telling stories, he was like, Why is this one you know one of the most mythic and original stories from the West? Yeah, why isn't it actually kind of connected to the truth? You know, but and and so for him that bothered him enough to make a film, a big black western in which most of the characters are black, you know, and it actually has probably more historical accuracy than most other westerns.

Speaker 1 20:20

And and I'm sure that was born of the you know, the disappointment of the prejudice that that filmmaker had met as a human being, that that they'd met. And so they were doing something about it.

unknown 20:35

Yeah.

Speaker 3 20:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:36

You know, so it's so you know, that that that's what brought the creative energy. It has to be purposeful. There has to be a purpose for doing it. You see what I mean? That's where the the creative bit comes from. In terms of my own experience of this, is I was um after I finished my training as a stage director, I directed the British premiere of a William Mastressomone play called Catspoor at Battersea Arts Center. It was my first sort of professional gig as a director. And um I remember that the reason why we put on the play was simply because it was a four-hander. Uh, we could get the rights, it was a premiere, and I had four actors who were willing to work for nothing um to get the play on, or you know, for very little to get the play on. Because it's very obviously it was very low budget. And literally that was my, you know, I trained as a director, right? So let's get out and then direct. Let's direct something. So we put on this play, and um the play itself, in terms of the acting and the directing, without flattering myself, it you know, it was well acted and and well directed. It was a compelling uh performance, as it were. But the reviews that I got for it. Basically said, you know, nice acting, nice directing. Uh, they referred to the sort of rebirth of Stanislavsky and and all this kind of stuff. But what they said was, why would why would you want to put on this play? Is this play relevant? How relevant is this play? I mean, it I mean, I think it might be more uh relevant now, but it was um actually about an environmentalist urban gorilla who is going to wants to do an attack on the White House, but it turns out that it, you know, it's all for his own personal agenda, basically. He's uh so it is in the play. That's what's going on with the play. And um I I was quite shocked, you know, but when I read these reviews, because it hadn't even occurred to me. The only reason why I directed a play was because I trained as a director and that was my job. So let's direct a play. There wasn't a single thought about whether or not the audience might want to see this play. And we got, you know, we got okay audiences. Um, so that that left a big hole in me. And I remember phoning up the artistic director of BAC at the time and chatting with him about it and saying, you know, what works? And him laughing and saying, Well, you know, that that's a ridiculous question. All sorts of different things work. But the question for me was like, Well, what works? So I'm what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna develop my I made a decision, I'm gonna develop my own play, but I didn't have an idea. And then shortly afterwards, I found myself at Glastonbury Festival. This was in 1994. Uh, I was with Colette, and um, we were walking around on the Sunday, sort of glowing, and uh there was a poster on a gate post, and it had a picture of the Buddha, it's like an A4 piece of paper, and it had a picture of the Buddha, in you know, meditation Buddha, and then it had the words beyond ecstasy and a question mark, and it was a talk, advertising a talk in the Buddhist field, in the in the healing field or something, right? And as soon as I saw it, something really resonated. I'd I'd not long before uh started practicing meditation, and you know, I I I'd been to to uh you know, I'd seen sort of the sort of dance music culture and the ecstasy uh culture building up around me, and it just seemed luminous, this poster. And I was like, Beyond ecstasy, that's a great title. I wonder what is beyond ecstasy? What a question. What is beyond what? Well, first of all, what is ecstasy? Not just, you know, what is sort of chemical uh, you know, um MDMA ecstasy, but what is the experience of ecstasy, ecstasis itself, and what is beyond that, you know, and as someone who who had you know not long before begun a studying philosophy and and uh and starting a simple meditation practice, it got in there, it got into the heart, you know, as a seed. So we basically, from that inspiration, we booked a theater and got so I had five actors again who had trained with me, uh, you know, trained and done done my course and wanted to do some work and were again willing to put their energy for free, uh, so it could be low budget. So we booked the et cetera theater in Camden. We had five-week rehearsal, we even got posters printed, right? We didn't even know what the play was. And we developed the play using structured improvisation, and then from there, and it and it got a nice review in time out, and it was simple, it was just sort of five scenes. So we did another production, we did a bigger version, we did it up in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe. This is in like way back in 1997, uh, and sold out, you know, in Edinburgh, which is pretty uh unheard of. Yeah, then from there brought it to a 250-seater theater in Brixton, the Bricks Theatre, which before we went in had had an average audience of seven people a night in a 250-seater theater. The Hamlet was the play that they'd had there before. And they'd given us cheap because they just thought, well, it's going to be a disaster, no one comes to this theater. We and we got, you know, Time Out Critics Choice, Guardian Critics Choice. It was, you know, on the radio, it was, you know, got a lot of coverage, and as a result, it completely sold out 250 seater and got an extended run. And then more recently, I've I've developed it as a screenplay when it's my next project, actually, is this uh Beyond XY after we I've done the the short film The Space Between. Now, what I'm next working on is uh get getting this feature film off the ground, but it all came from that one moment of seeing that poster and getting that title and the desire to explore, you know, what was that? So it starts with an initial impulse, and of course, then I had to go and you know study plot structure and you know study these things to learn the sort of craft of how to bring it alive. But now I feel sort of knowing how to take an idea from concept to finished product, and I feel like now, as long as I've got a good idea to start with, I know what questions to ask myself and I know what a story is. Do you see what I mean? I know what the elements of the story they're in, they're in my, you know, they're in my mind, they're in my consciousness. So when I get an idea, I'm able to develop that and ask it questions to develop it into a full-fledged project.

Speaker 2 27:52

Yeah. I think that's that's the important thing you've said there about it's all about questions, isn't it? The more questions you can ask of your idea, the the more you can you're able to turn it into a story. There's a there's a screenwriter called uh Glenn Jeres, and he he actually basically he has six essential questions that he has that he always asks himself that to help turn whatever it is, you know, that feeling or that idea into a story. I thought they were really interesting.

Speaker 1 28:21

Yeah, great, let's hear them.

Speaker 2 28:22

Yeah, they were so question number one is who is it about? Question number two is what do they want? Why can't they get it? What do they do about that? Why doesn't that work? And how does it end? And if you're able to ask those questions, you've got a story. You can you can turn any, you can, you know, for for where whatever it is, uh, you know, a a screenplay, uh, uh a theater play, uh, a video game, you know, those are the essential questions to ask. But I think you know, going beyond that, just writing itself is a process of asking questions. If you're able to always constantly ask questions about your story and your characters and then come up with an answer for that question, you're always for advancing, or always, you're always getting, you know, going down that journey of turning that thing into a compelling story, I think.

Speaker 1 29:10

Well, in a general sense, that's that's that's talent, isn't it? Is the ability to ask yourself questions, is asking the questions. Because you know, it's the same in acting, the more questions you ask, the more characters pictures you create. You know, it activates the imagination because you're answering those questions in your imagination in pictures. And the more pictures you have, the richer the character, the better the acting. Um, and it's the same with with uh writing, the more questions that the playwright has asked, the more detail and the more depth that they that it has to it. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I was gonna mention, Jordan, I was gonna mention about the um Shakespeare.

Speaker 3 29:49

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 29:51

And where Shakespeare got his ideas from. I we got sidetracked somewhere, but the the the the first thing is is in one of the sonnets, Shakespeare said that my new muse is the tenth muse. Now, Shakespeare knew full well there are only nine muses. So, what's the tenth muse? Well, tenth is a magic number, it's a number of the absolute because it's one with zero after it. So it's one with nothing after it, if that makes sense. It's the the one that right, so that's the number of the absolute, and really what Shakespeare is saying by saying my muse is the tenth muse, is saying that this stuff comes directly from the source, and you read it, and uh you could well believe him that this stuff is is almost like divine poetry. You know, they they say if if this island of ours, this Britain has ever produced scripture, it's in the form of the place of William Shakespeare. They cover the whole remit of human life. So we need to find out, you know, it's take him seriously when he says, Well, where is his idea coming from? So it's coming directly from the source. He also said, um, referred to his creative process in uh that the famous speech in Midsummer Night's Dream, this is sort of act five, scene one. I think it's Theseus' speech. Listen to this, he said the poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them into shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, right? So he's talking about being in a state of inspiration, a fine frenzy, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. So this is sense of going between these two worlds.

Speaker 4 32:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:12

You know, has one foot in, and the manifest realm, you know, the the realm of everyday life, uh of what of that which we generally call reality, um, is bringing it into this realm. So he's saying it's coming from heaven, right? So he's glancing from heaven to earth, the poet, and then from earth to heaven. And as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing, what a lovely term, airy nothing, a local habitation and a name. So it's going from the formless to form. Do you see what I mean? It's going from that which has no form and bringing it into form. And this is shamanism.

unknown 33:00

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:01

Shamanism goes from, you know, you go from the ordinary world into the spirit world, as it were. I mean, usually in uh shamanism is due to ingesting psychedelic drugs that take you into this extraordinary realm. And then the shaman comes back, rather like we were talking in the hero's journey, goes on that adventure into that special world, and then comes back with the elixir, comes back with knowledge, comes back with something useful in the quest to save the planet, um uh reinstate justice, to find God in the world, to uh realize that the principle of love, uh, comes back with stories, comes back with something that he's discovered in that subtle dream world, which is useful here on the level of waking consciousness. So an artist really, in that way, is a shaman, is a master of Maya, a master of this sort of great illusion. In fact, what the artist is doing is observing the play of creation and observing life. And remember, that's the duty of the artist is to observe nature, and then to arrange it in such a way that it reveals that which is hidden. In this case, the absolute, you know, it would be the greatest art, would reveal the absolute itself through the art. So by taking the forms of Maya, the playwright or the artist is putting them together, it's like a cocktail of things they've seen and heard themselves, things they've observed, and putting them in together in such a way that the highest ideal would be that they reveal, they're like a portal into the absolute. You know, that the the audience is held in aesthetic arrest, they're just spellbound by the beauty of it, and the meaning of the words of the work can be transmitted from the artist's heart into the audience's heart through the medium of the work.

Speaker 2 35:37

If you're enjoying these episodes and learning lots from the content, then please consider supporting us by becoming a member on Patreon. For just a few quid a month, a Patreon subscription gets you 15% off all course material on the Spiritual Psychology of Acting website. Plus, you can now also get free access to a video workshop called How to Put Yourself in a State of Inspiration. It's a two-hour class, you get a link to watch on Vimeo. It's great for learning how to harness your creativity and helping you achieve that flow state that all actors, writers, and musicians absolutely crave. Sign up now with the link in the description of this podcast and help us in bringing you more great content. All of your support is very much appreciated. It makes me think of like a deep sea diver, you know, going down, exploring the unexplored. I think that's quite a nice image because I think for many people they they have that surface level of that there's ocean and they don't really know what's you know below that. And it's uh I think for for many people they don't they don't explore that. They don't they don't plumb those depths to try and figure out you know what is down there. It's it's it's really unexplored by the largest amount of population, I think.

Speaker 1 37:09

That's where the meditation comes in. Right, yeah, how do you go to that level, you know, where there is nothing but consciousness, just stillness and being. That's that's what meditation. Meditation is rather like taking that deep dive, going to more and more subtle areas of the being, um, sort of to go beyond the mind to where there is just stillness itself, where the experience of oneself is as the stillness itself, or the experience of oneself is the field of silence itself. You know, ultimately that's what we are. We are the field of silence itself.

Speaker 2 37:47

Yeah. Well, to take that analogy further as well, like you know, that deep dive, it's only really possible to get to those really deep levels with the right equipment, right? It's it's not humanly possible. So to take that analogy further, and what what are those then steps to get down there? Obviously, there is meditation, but in terms of uh finding that creativity, again, that that channel, where like where do you start with that?

Speaker 1 38:12

Well, it has to be said, first of all, that sometimes these things just come from revelation. Uh, you know, there are writers, I can't remember. One of one of the students on the know yourself, be yourself course was telling me last term about one writer who writes crime novels, and she says that she literally just gets the whole thing as a single download, and then she just writes it out. It literally she says it just comes in a moment, the idea for her next book. And it's like the whole story is contained in that one moment where the thought came, and then she just has to write it out. And she and the the right, I can't I wish I could remember who she was, but she said she didn't, she didn't, it took her a long time to realize that that wasn't the case for everybody. She thought that's how everybody sort of created.

Speaker 2 38:56

It's quite similar to uh Paul McCartney, the story of him writing yesterday. I I think he uh that melody just came to him in a dream. Uh that he woke up and just had this melody in his head, played it on the piano and recorded it, wrote it down, and then that's yeah, song that kind of really touches a lot of people. I think it's the most covered song in in music history yesterday. That has to have a melody that really resonates with people in order to have that accolade.

Speaker 1 39:21

Well, what he's saying is that it came from that realm.

Speaker 2 39:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:25

That you know, he he didn't he didn't write it, as it were.

Speaker 3 39:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:30

Um it came through him. Uh, but he didn't write it. But of course, then if he claims it, the the the portal closes closes down.

Speaker 3 39:39

Right, yeah.

Speaker 1 39:40

It's the attachment and the ego makes it close down, as we'll see. But what were you saying? So what what what are some questions if we wanted to make a start? Yeah, what kind of practical stamps can be. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna create a piece of work. It's first of all, to start with that resolution. And obviously, now we've got the uh director's course, which people can still join, and this is all about what we're doing this term is developing ideas, is we're looking a lot at the writing part um of you know, more detailed structure and starting to help the students to sort of develop their own ideas till then we create a log line, uh like a single line description of the narrative of the play. And then from there we create a synopsis. From there, we create what I call a scenario, and the scenario is like a scene-by-scene breakdown of the sort of narrative of the play. And then once you've got the scenario, you're ready to write, start writing the scenes. Do you see what I mean? It works in those um successive stages. But the first question that I I would ask in getting to touch with this is what moves me? So to think of some examples from your life where you've been moved, where you've felt um extreme emotion is to just go and have a look at some of those things to start off with and make some notes on them. Another good question is if really the the the work of art solves a problem or goes some way to exploring a problem, then you have to start with a problem. So a really good question would be what is my problem with life? What's my problem with life? What where am I if I was a character in a play, what is it that that character needs to learn to sort of restore the equilibrium and win the prize? You know, what what what what's that? Another good question is therefore, what pisses me off? So, where you've seen injustice, or the way people, you know, in denial of things, or people living in illusion, or people playing the victim, or something that really pisses you off. Make a note of that, because there's there's usually something there. What do I know about? What are the worlds I know about? You know, and I don't mean just, you know, oh well, I go to my job, but I mean, you know, I might be interested in sci-fi, I might be interested in a football club, um, I could be interested in ponies. Uh, it do you know what I mean? It could be anything. What am I actually, what do I know about? What's what's a world and a setting that I know about, not just from experience, but also from imagination. It could be, you know, from my study of fiction or something like that. I know all about Doctor Who or something like that. So, what do I know about is a good question.

Speaker 2 42:40

Well, uh well, it's Rick Ricky Gervais in the office. That's you know, he he worked in an office. And although it's you know the it's not directly based on his experiences, it will have had an effect, and it will be it's the office isn't a documentary or the just the things that he saw. It's that was a jumping off point, wasn't it? That was that was a spark there where he can then take this character he's got and let him rip, you know. Let you know, it's not always just stay in the stay in your lane, it's not that kind of thing, is it? Not what you know about like you said with George Lucas, you know, that whole idea that you know he's interested in sci-fi, he's never been to these other planets and galaxies far, far away. No, you know, but he he does know about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey, and that is what helped him write Star Wars. So that's kind of that he's writing what he knows about, right? That's those are the things that are helping him get get to that point.

Speaker 1 43:30

Yes, and and to think of it like this if if the what you're working on isn't going to change your life, don't bother.

Speaker 4 43:40

Right.

Speaker 1 43:40

Because if it's not going to change your life, it's not going to change anyone else's life. You know, if it's not absolutely compelling and fascinating to you, why should it be to anybody else? You know, so be selective. It has to be something that that moves you in some way, something that um resonates with you. Uh that's that's how you'll get your best work. Uh and I would also do a list of extraordinary people. Do a list of 10 extraordinary people that you've met. So scan over your life and go, right, there's that's an that was an interesting, he was a character. And just write a bit about them. Um, what was it about them that was unusual? Uh, what did you like about them? What didn't you like about them? What were that what was their problem with life? You know, start throwing that into the mix because then you're starting to find some ideas for potential characters and heroes, you know, a potential, you know, first person for your hero.

Speaker 2 44:39

Well, that's almost the the whole process of Mike Lee, how he works and operates, right? It is it's taking characters that the actors have met, you know, people they they know, taking getting all these characters and then choosing one and then expanding on that using the imagination and then finding a story, you know, outlet for those characters.

Speaker 1 44:57

Yeah. Yeah. And it and I suppose for like for Mike Lee, it must be it has to be a subject that compels him. Like, you know, he did he did Secrets and Lies, and it was about adoption. That that there's something that has to be within him that really wants to explore that, that really that can can see the mileage in that, yeah, and the questions that that subject raises about the human condition, then you've got a really good subject for a story. I would also just look in the news, just go in the newspaper. I remember when you know when we did drama at school, I remember one morning we we turned up, we had triple drama on a Wednesday morning, which I used to love, uh, sort of you know, nine o'clock till one o'clock or something like that. And uh he basically just uh the the teacher who who I absolutely loved, he he gave us a paper and said, right, there's your inspiration. Find something in the paper, and you're going to develop the script, you're gonna put it on, and we're gonna show it before lunch. So we had to we we grabbed something uh from from the paper and we made, I mean, it wasn't great, what we came up with, but that I like the challenge of it is like can you sort of you know deliver something by lunchtime, starting from nothing at all except for a paper, and just starting to go through the paper and go, well, here's a story. You don't have to stick to what's actually there in the narrative. It just might give you an idea for something.

Speaker 2 46:25

I think also the pressure of you know writing a masterpiece or you know, writing a hit TV series or big blockbuster film, that's often a stumbling blot for many because it's just it's thinking too far ahead, isn't it? It's you've not got a story. Because I feel like it reminds me of uh No Galica was asked about, I think it was writing the song Don't Look Back in Anger about that whole process. And he and No Galica said something like if he knew what that song was going to become, how special and important it was gonna be for so many people that they'd see it as this huge anthem and it would you know stand the test of time, he would never have finished the song. He would have been constantly perfecting it, thinking, Oh, this these lyrics aren't good enough, this melody isn't tight enough, or whatever it is, he would never never have released it because the pressure of what it would become was was too great. Whereas he wrote the song in about five, ten minutes, and you know, and it becomes then people take it on, but it's it's he didn't have the pressure or the the you know the the idea that it was going to become this huge thing.

Speaker 1 47:23

And what if the song was already there in the unmanifest, in the angelic realm, yeah, you know, uh in angelic mount mind, as we as we were calling it, and it just it just came through him. He was an open enough channel, you know, and he took the time to actually get his guitar out and have a strum, yeah, you know, uh he actually made himself available to it on a regular basis. But what if that the the the song was already there and it came out and he just was was the channel from which it came out?

Speaker 2 48:02

Yeah. Well, that's I think you know, a lot of songwriters do say that, don't they? That some of the best songs they write they they they knocked out in half an hour, or you know, it's it's it's those things where it's like the thing to take away from it isn't that it doesn't take very long, it's you know, or that you shouldn't take very long on on things. It's not that greatness comes in just small bursts, it might do, but the the thing to take away from that is that they were just open channels. Yeah, they were good conductors for that that you know to come straight through.

Speaker 1 48:30

Yes, and then level of consciousness, the level of consciousness of the work of art is in direct proportion to the level of consciousness of the artist. Yeah, so if you want conscious art, what you need is conscious artists. That's the purpose of the directing course, yeah, is primarily, and what that's what's different about this directing course uh to others, because you can learn like the art and craft of directing, but what we're really going is for the for the soul of it all, you know, is connecting the artist with their own sensibilities and their own style and sense, and finding what's what have they what do they want to talk about? You know, what is it in their direct experiences, you know, what pisses them off, and then uh finding how to bring that and turn that into works of art. There's a wonderful story. Um, if you buy the play or one of the uh versions of the play, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, you could probably find it online. There's a wonderful essay that Williams wrote that was published with one of the editions of that play, and it's called The Catastrophe of Success. And in it he speaks from personal experience and he explains that he was inspired working on this play, right? Glass Menagerie, and uh he was enjoying his life, you know, creating it, and um, in it echoed, you know, there were there were some sort of you know biographical elements to the play, but a lot of it was from imagination, and he's getting something you know off his chest. He's got the grit in the in in the oyster, and he's created a pearl with it in the form of the glass menagerie, and then suddenly he's the talk of the town on Broadway, because it's a big hit on Broadway, and everybody wants to interview Tennessee Williams, and everybody's talking about Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie, and people recognize him and they just want to talk about the play, to the point that it starts becoming, he starts to actually dislike the play, he starts to become actually sick of the play, and then Hollywood come along and they're like, Right, you're the you you're the new uh new Broadway playwright in town, right? Come on, write us a screenplay. And they get him into a hotel in Beverly Hill somewhere, and he had writer's block. They supplied him with with uh he he didn't have to, you know, he had room service to bring in whatever food he wanted in a nice hotel with a nice view out the window and a typewriter. And it's like, right, come on, here's a big check. You're you're you're the talk of the town, right as a write as a screenplay, and so he just couldn't find anything to write. It was nothing, he was completely sort of dead, creatively dead from all of this. And uh he describes how you know the food just starts to look disgusting and the patterns on the wallpaper, and everything just starts to feel nauseous, and he's really in the wrong place, and so he decides that he's going to go and go where no one has ever heard of Tennessee Williams. So he goes and works on a farm in Ecuador, right, to get away from it all, can get a complete change where no one has ever heard of the glass menagerie. And one day he's working in the field and he says a wonderful thing happened. An idea suddenly came into the mind, which uh he knew straight away it was you know, here's an idea for a play, and then it that play became the knight of the iguana, as it was and what his warning of in the you know, it's there in the title, The Catastrophe of Success, is he says that the real joy in being an artist is in the creative work itself because he was someone who'd enjoyed creating the work and then he'd become famous and become celebrated, and at that point the actual creative well dried up, and it became all about the person Tennessee Williams, and there's a principle that um we use on the course, which kind of sort of sums this up nicely, and that is that wherever the ego arises, the force of consciousness, the absolute, withdraws. So it's almost as if, you know, when you say, you know, aren't I clever? Oh, what a good boy am I, what a genius am I, aren't I brilliant? That the absolute goes, all right, go on then, clever clogs, let's see what you can do on your own, and then just sort of stands back, folds its arms and watches you fall head over heel, you know. Um, and but the but the principle also works the other way, and that is wherever the ego, which is the the sense of personal doership, it's the idea of me and my greatness, and aren't I wonderful and all this kind of thing, but whenever the personal ego is dissolved, this is meditation, this is letting go, this is surrender, the force of universal consciousness arises. And that's where the ideas come from. It's uh being in touch with consciousness, really.

Speaker 2 54:13

And that's the you can see those examples clearly in you know Paul McCartney not claiming, you know, that I wrote this incredible song, it came to me in a dream, you know, just it was it was there, it's nothing to do with me. Maybe in a similar way that you know, no gallagher, you know, he had no he wasn't thinking about how he can be a beloved rock star. You know, he was playing music because he loved to play music. You know, he was at this age where he was young and just in love with playing the guitar and writing songs.

Speaker 1 54:41

It's yeah, it's really interesting. There's a there's um, I'm glad you said that, there's uh uh a producer, uh a music producer, sort of house and techno producer, uh Matthew Benjamin, Matthew Bushwacker. And he wrote this track sort of in the early noughties. It's called Harps, and it is really beautiful, and it's really like divine music. It's kind of got a breakbeat, but there's something just really beautiful about this this piece of music. And I met him at a party once some years ago, and uh I was chatting to him, and I said to him that that that was my favorite record that he'd made, his production. And he said, That's my favorite too. And I said, How did you come up with it? And he said, All right, I'll tell you honestly how I came up with it. Is I had a piece of software and I'd played around with all the different parts of this piece of software, and there's one more part just to play around with, and I just played around with this piece of software, and that came out, and it was really clear standing there looking at the man that he didn't write it. Do you know what I mean? It's like he made himself available for it, but that man didn't write it, the music wrote itself, you know. He was there operating it, but it comes from you. Look it up, the track is called Harps, it's by Bushwhacker. Uh, it's really beautiful. I've got an edit of it where I where I put some vocals from the um Peter Brooks Upanishad. I put it over the top of it. It's the it's the opening of a DJ mix I did called There's No Place Light Ohm. Uh, if you want to look it up, it's Solar Loon. Solar Loon presents There's No Place Light Ohm, you'll find it on SoundCloud. And it opens with this track, Harps, and it's got this beautiful Sanskrit vocal over the top, which again just how does it fit? It's like the key changes, everything it just fits. It's like they were made for each other.

Speaker 4 56:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1 56:42

Um, anyway, listen, have a have a listen to that. But but that was another example, it was really clear. Let's like, no, this music was beyond the artist.

Speaker 2 56:49

Yeah, there's that's there's that weird phenomenon as well. Have you heard of that with um The Wizard of Oz matches perfectly with the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd? That's that's you know, it's crazy. But you know, it is it's that thing, isn't it? Of just the synthesis of great works of art coming together. Like, of course they're gonna match up in some way.

Speaker 1 57:10

Well, that yeah, it's it's timing. I mean, that's is remarkable. There used to be uh when I was teaching in New York, there was a movie theatre in the East Village that used to show that every Saturday night. That used to do a little bit of a religious experience of yeah, we went along and we what we watched it, but it worked for the first for the first running of the album, yeah, it works, but then they just start again the album because obviously the film's much longer than the album, yeah, yeah. And it just and it doesn't work and it loses the intention. But certainly the first, yeah, it seems to be in sync somehow. Yeah, yeah, magic. But thing, but I think you know, things like a work of art like the what like the Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, there's a rhythm underneath it. Do you know what I mean? There's a natural rhythm underneath it, and it's but that the you know, the artists were tuned into that rhythm, and so no wonder it's compatible.

Speaker 3 58:02

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 58:04

But but you know, the the the basic message here is you know, as an actor, if you're an actor and you're listening to this, you have an imagination, you create characters, you've already worked on plays and seen play structures, and it's gone in unconsciously, whether you you're aware of it or not, it's gone in there. And there's something great that you have to lend to writing from your experience as an actor. So, you know, don't spend your time waiting to be discovered by somebody else. Discover yourself, start creating, and uh, you might be surprised of what what you come up with. And as they say, you know, from an acorn, oak oak trees grow. A thousand mile journey starts with the first step, you know, and the first step is to make a resolution. I'm gonna make something of my own.

Speaker 2 58:58

Well, also that's you know, I think a writer is just someone who writes on a regular basis, right? And so I think you know, in order to call yourself a writer, you just need to do it every day. I remember when when I studied before going to drama school, I did a two-year course in in cut in acting college. And I remember the tutors there, they they asked us to always say that we were actors in training, you know, that we were you know, we we are actors. It's not that you know we want to be actors someday, it's gonna happen, you know, eventually. It's that we were actors in training. So it's kind of starting off that you are this already. You don't have to try and reach for something. Like if you make a habit of something, then that's what you become, right? And it's the same thing with acting with writing, especially. I think that's the thing that many people they stop after so many hurdles when it's really just can you do it? Can you keep it up as a practice? Like you say, you make a resolution, stick to that and and and uh and don't stop.

Speaker 1 59:53

Yeah, and many, many have done it before you. Many have done it before you as artists, and Hollywood is full of A-listers who've actually got the ball rolling through this very means of creating their own work and being cast and cut and then cast yourself. You know, cast yourself. You know, don't wait for someone to create that part for you, create it for yourself.

Speaker 2 1:00:19

Well, that's you know, Sylvester Sallone with with Rocky. So what he did, right? He he nobody wanted they wanted the script, but they didn't want him, and he held fast. The same thing with uh with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon with Goodable Hunting, they wrote a script, they wanted to be in it and then won the Oscar.

Speaker 1 1:00:35

Yeah. Because they hell held on to that idea. Because it becomes from the artist's own personal drives and energies, which are universal, but they're you know, it's personal to the artist. The artist needs to do it, you know. Being an artist with uh, you know, an unproduced screenplay or something like that is a tough is tough going because it's rather like being uh you know a woman who's waiting to give birth and you know they're long overdue, you know, uh and and all your artistics, and you've got this child that that you want to give birth to, and the ability to sort of stay with it, you know, takes some real discipline. Um, I find, you know, as an artist, I might I make DJ mixes, uh, which you know, a feature film, even that takes there's a there's a lot goes into making a feature film. There's a lot of steps you have to go through. But a DJ mix, you can just collect a bunch of new music together uh that it piques your your interest in some way, and then just arrange them in such a way and record them and then dress them. You know, I put little samples of of things I've recorded off the telly, little cosmic conversations and stuff like that. I'll put in the breakdowns of the music and just you know, tidy it and polish it and create the artwork for it. You've done that in a week, but it keeps your it stops me from going mad. It keeps my creative faculties being used and actually creating something where you're waiting to sort of you know uh create something bigger. So, you know, sit down in front of the typewriter, get a pen and paper, start writing some notes. Um, it it depends on how much time by putting the conscious time into it. If you consciously park your bottom and you get your notepad out and you start making some notes, your brain and being understands that this is important to you. And whatever we consciously make important to us, a subconscious understands it to be important and learns how to do it automatically. It learns how to synthesize it, is how we've evolved. So use that. But you do have to make the effort, you do need to sit down and put everything aside and just make some notes and start. So good luck with that. And if you want the guidance, the course is available. Come and join us. Uh we meet on a uh Tuesday evening uh from 6.30 till 9. And uh we're developing all these great projects, which you know the ideal for Awakened State is that then these projects we will be able to produce through the umbrella of the production company Awakened State Productions. So get creating.

Speaker 2 1:03:36

If you are interested in joining the directing course, it's still not too late. You can get the first couple of weeks as recordings to catch up on. The link to purchase the course is in the description of this episode. We'll be back in a few weeks for our final episode of this current season, but until then, be excellent to each other, and we'll see you again next time. Thank you to Charlie Robinson, she helps with the video editing and artwork for this podcast, and to Amit 16b for providing the music. The track is called Love and is available on all streaming platforms.