GIRL AT PLAY PRODUCTIONS - by Alex Beauchamp

Many people go to work every day just thinking of payday, and the money they will get from the work they are doing. They can hardly wait for Friday or Saturday, whatever day they receive their money and can take time off. They are working for the reward, and as a result they resist work. They try to avoid the action and it becomes more difficult, and they don't do their best.

They work so hard all week long, suffering the work, suffering the action, not because they like to, but because they feel they have to. They have to work because they have to pay the rent, because they have to support their family. They have all that frustration, and then when they do receive their money they are unhappy. They have two days to rest, to do what they want to do, and what do they do? They try to escape. They get drunk because they don't like themselves; they don't like their life. There are many ways that we hurt ourselves when we don't like who we are.

If you take action because you have to, then there is no way you are going to do your best. Then it is better not to do it. No, you do your best because doing your best all the time makes you so happy. When you are doing your best just for the pleasure of doing it, you are taking action because you enjoy the action.

Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results and no reward.

Interesting little article on Caterina Fake and how Flickr came about. My favourite bit?

I read this line somewhere today: Remember that blame, including self-blame, is a sign that creative process has stopped. One of the things I feel very fortunate about is that I tend to not do self-blame or the "I should have, would have, could have" talks. Instead, I just keep doing and moving forward. There's no failure for me which isn't to say that everything I've done or wanted to do has worked out. Probably only half of what I try actually takes hold - everything else just turned into something else. Creativity kept me going, evolving, adapting, changing. Being creative stopped me from seeing things as failures and instead as just things that didn't work out.

To communicate something of what I feel about what we do as artists, as musicians and as human beings. The sun will not fall down from the sky if there are no more [artists]. The world can and will go on without us but I have to think that we have made this world a better place. That we have left it richer, wiser than had we not chosen the way of art. The older I get, the less I know but I am certain that what we do matters. You must know what you want to do in life, you must decide, for we cannot do everything. Do not think [art] is an easy career. IT is a lifetime's work; it does not stop here. What matters is that you use whatever you have learned wisely. - Maria Callas

I was watching Faye Dunaway's play "Master Class" based on the infamous opera singer Maria Callas (Unfortunately the play is no longer going and it's not available on DVD - I only had access to it because Faye dropped it off. You'll have to wait until she makes the movie). And of all the things I've heard about being an artist and what it means and advice given and stories told, I would have to say that this play is the only thing that ever shook my core and made the hair on my arms stand in attention. "This is not an opera! This is LIFE" she says to a student who sings without passion, and sings because someone told him he could and he thought it'd be a great job to make him famous. She goes on to explain to him that because she was living every moment that she sang, she was great. Because he goes through the motions and removes himself from it all, he isn't.

Why this struck me so was that often people tend to want to take on jobs that they think they should, or that they're good at or that will get them somewhere. They tend to think of work as work, art as art, and life as everything that happens outside. But life is everything. Life is the act of living. There is no separation from work, art and life. She goes on to say that a person should know what they want to do in life and live it. That to scatter the mind with half wants and ideas is a waste - choose something and go after it with life. And, when you subscribe to the theory that there is no separation between life and work then one really ought to only do what they love. Isn't that the truth.