The Sound of Silence

I’m writing on my new blog every day for thirty days straight. This is the eighteenth one.The following ideas are pretty blurry. Unearthing your motivation to pursue a career and work hard isn’t always a fair fight against your own biases. But the work remains.I know there are reasons why I became an actor. I was always pretty insecure growing up, and I think besides liking it, it offered me the opportunity to be validated by other people. When I started with improv, I started to hear people laughing at what I was doing. It’s incredible, the direct connection with people’s approval of your actions. Improv is like mainlining human validation. I could also invite close friends to shows and they could validate me. Even if they didn’t like a show, if I heard something like, “wow, I could never do that,” I’d won. Someone recognized that I was being courageous.Years have passed, and many shows have been performed. But the work remains. And now, I’m beginning to see more clearly how my motivations may only be driven by outside validation. I may only be writing this blog so that I can do something that’s visible that people can approve me for. I may only work hard to hear someone come up to me and say “you were great.” I don’t fault myself for any of this. I think it’s pretty human. It’s obviously not ideal. But it’s definitely human. But isn’t there a better way to live? To work? It feels so disingenuous to wake up and work for someone else to tell me good job. But acting is hard. Because it is an art. And it is subjective. There isn’t a physical answer, a right or wrong. There doesn’t have to be approval for it to exist – but for art to mean something, there does have to be some sort of approval. Movies have to make money for more to be made. People have to see your improv show for you to have a chance at performing others.Art can’t exist in a vacuum because I believe the relationship with the audience is paramount. But at what point, can I turn my eyes from the crowd and focus solely on my work? At what point can I deafen my ears to their noise and listen solely for my own approval? At what point can I quiet all my senses for approval from an audience, to hear that approval inside myself? Darkness. Silence.Hey, bud. It’s pretty distracting out there. Let’s get to work.