The New Frontier

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Frankly, My Dear Starlet

Love this essay from Adi Shankar. Fresh POV, undeniable truths, real motivation and inspired perspective.

An excerpt:

Understand and Believe that Art is Important
Art gives our lives context. It helps us understand the culture that makes us who we are. And, if you are lucky, one day you may be able to shape the culture that influenced you. If you claim to be an artist, but you’re motivated by money… You’re a douche.

Do What You Love. Period.
Friends, parents, educational institutions, and marketing companies all seem to really enjoy telling people what they should want out of life. Fuck them. Figure out what you want and do that. Don’t sacrifice your integrity early on for a paycheck. It’s your life, and you are beholden to no one. Living your life according to what’s cool at the moment is the ultimate form of servitude.

Hint: If treading water doesn’t feel like drowning, you’re not doing what you love.

Don’t Be Discouraged by People Who Don’t Believe
A fatal flaw in the human condition is that even if there is a great likelihood that something is true, we don’t want to believe it. A potentially fatal flaw for many creative people is to be brought down by the doubts of others. People without vision will likely never believe that things can change. But once it happens, no matter how great the tectonic shift, they are quick to accept this new reality as the one true reality. Anyone who has ever set out to do something even slightly outside the norm has been mocked, questioned, and ridiculed. Realize that people’s doubts aren’t a reflection on you, your abilities, or your ultimate outcome. They are just upset at their own lack of imagination and inability to step out of their comfort zone, and you become a walking reminder of those insecurities. Ignore the haters.

read the whole thing here:

Gary Oldman is the bomb

Aside

Loved this interview with Gary Oldman. A excerpt:

Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. An acting teacher told me that.

You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.

“Fuck ’em.” Shortest prayer in the world.

A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you’re writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don’t have to do it over.

I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: “I’ve crossed oceans of time to find you.” It was worth playing the role just to say that line.

…..

The Bakery

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Frankly, My Dear Starlet

There are two kinds of people in ‘the industry’. The first category: the people who are convinced they are starving because you are stealing their piece of the pie. They are certain this is the only pie that exists, and that pie is obviously a finite resource. They will hoard their pie and hide their pie. They will hold tight to the recipe in fear that you could somehow duplicate their pie. They won’t tell you where they buy sugar or who taught them how to get that perfect flakey crust. They might event tamper with your oven or try to convince you that you are diabetic and simply not made to enjoy this delicious confection. They will talk about how making a pie is impossible, and now that they have found the pie NO ONE will take it from them(!!).

On the other hand are the people who understand that we live in a bakery.

They know the secret. You can always make more pie.

They function with generosity and inclusion and (surprise, surprise)…they are the most successful. They understand we are surrounded by the best ingredients, state of the art equipment, the perfect oven and we are each bakers…or know bakers…and we can share baking tips and recipes and learn from each other…we could even create pies that no one has ever thought of before. And not just pie….now we can make cakes and cookies, muffins and chocolate croissants! It can be dessert-apalooza up in here.