An advanced seminar on the art of acting, part two: “… it is all about DETAIL”

 

Inwardly returning from my summer holidays, after a great “anniversary” weekend which I started with renting “The Crucible” from Digital Theater (like my favourite films, this gets better every time I watch it!) and closed sitting on the bank of the Isar with Claudia talking about relationships with fictional characters (and loads of other interesting stuff), I am coming back refreshed to my seminar about acting:

 

The next important thing I understood about acting appears self-evident as well, but it really is at the heart of what the kind of acting I am so interested in – as well as the kind of reading! – is all about. Immediately after I got my master’s degree, I realized that what I had been working on for my thesis hadn’t been what I would have wanted to work on. And that, if I would ever write a doctoral thesis - which didn’t appear impossible at the time - it would probably be on a theory about REALISM. It was only on a hunch, though, and I didn’t really know why I wanted to look into that. Now I know that it had always been my focus where reading and literature is concerned, and that I wanted to find out why. But only much later, reading “The Lord of the Rings” and really getting into a fantasy world for the first time since childhood, I noticed that it doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of literature dubbed “naturalism” or “realism” – not in the FIRST place! - though this was my main focus at the time. Of course I read all kinds of stuff for my studies, but these novels from the 19^th century were what I really liked and selected for recreational reading. I didn’t much like to read crime novels then, for example, because I always felt that I couldn’t “believe” these exaggerated stories and workings of distorted minds. But what does this even mean?

 

Now I put this question before me again, realizing that it is actually the same question that Tom Hiddleston’s teacher at RADA always asked his students when he said: “I don’t believe it. Do you believe it?” And this rather worn out guideline is still what I use to SELECT what is worth reading. “Do I BELIEVE it?”, and, knowing that it isn’t “real”: “WHY do I believe it?”

 

Later, trying to write fiction, there were always two things I checked when I was writing – that is, mostly they got “ticked off” automatically because, if they weren’t there, I couldn’t go on writing. First: does it SOUND GOOD? I liked to read my stuff aloud, and if it didn’t sound good it got changed or chucked out. After a time, it began to sound good automatically. And I think this is actually the BASIC requirement for realism: that it is well written, and PLEASING to listen to – or, in the performing arts, beautifully and perfectly done, and pleasing to see. It is in fact some kind of “foolery” – or aesthetic spell – because, without the spell of beauty cast on it, “we” single out the bullshit immediately and don’t believe it.

 

So, this was always my first concern, but what always got checked independently – though I didn’t have any obvious criteria for it – was: Do I believe it? I actually remember now that I did want to write a story set in a fantasy world a long time before I read “The Lord of the Rings” because I coveted the story/characters but couldn’t find a world they belonged to. And noticed that I couldn’t because the reality I could conjure up was too flimsy. (As usual, failure is most instructive! It’s just that we only REMEMBER things/events when they have got past that stage.) Obviously “believing it” requires that the text has SUBSTANCE. And the answer to the question about a criterion for realism is exactly what Tom Hiddleston said about successful acting. Which means

 

“grounding a performance in naturalistic truth – which is all about DETAIL …”

 

In my mind there is no doubt that there is a huge and increasing demand for this kind of realism – which, in my opinion, is the reason that British actors – who have “always” worked in this way – are in ever higher demand outside their “natural” (BBC) environment. There is obviously an increase in the complexity of characters and interesting predicaments. Of course the conventionally simple love and family stories are still frequent and used to provide the same kind of motivation in every one-dimensional action story. But there is so much else – so many other areas of our world or dark corners of history that fiction expands into. And formats like TV series that allow it to look rather deep into a whole bunch of different people and relationships. The reason might be that there is a general awareness that the complexity of our world far surpasses our ability to understand it. And to produce this impression of reality as we experience it, the audience has to be overwhelmed with detail.

 

Taking this into consideration, I suppose the inherent criterion I had for my own texts was something like the question about good coffee: Would it “work” on me, or is it too “thin”? I COULD fool myself for a time with good writing, but not for long. If the emerging text lacked substance, I would notice and stop believing it. (It also works the other way round: If I don’t believe it, I lose confidence and aplomb and will not be up for good writing.) In the first place, “believing it” has nothing to do with the story being set in a realistic environment, with characters I might meet in the real world. This kind of realism can be as flimsy and “unreal” as any other kind of literature. And often is – I think even more often than the kind with a lot of imagination in it. (I suppose we tend to believe what comes out of our own heads. At least I do.) Daily soaps that pretend to sneak into the lives of real people and pseudo-realistic crime programs are an example for this. Even the “scripted reality crap” Claudia referred to. If it is bad, it doesn’t FEEL real. On the other hand, recently reading “Red Dragon” and the other “Hannibal” novels by Thomas Harris, I experienced that these books are so “densely” written, and so fraught with “body feelings”, that I got immediately drawn into a world that is not at all a world where I WANTED to be. (I just talked to my 22 years old nephew – the one whom I told the “Lord of the Rings” when he was five – and was surprised that he loves the series. But he also said that he was interested in serial killers. I am not!) And it is certainly not a world that has anything to do with my own reality, or any reality I know of. If anything, it’s the realism of a nightmare while we are dreaming it … It is a great example because this amount of detail - especially when it is “addressed” to the area BENEATH my throat – obviously tends to turn any kind of bullshit into something I might “believe”.

 

I even experience these fictional worlds and people becoming more “real” than the so-called “real world” because they are usually more completely “filled out” and substantial. So many areas of “my” world are vague or obscure because I don’t understand the motivations of the people acting in them. (For example – as we just discussed - it completely eludes me why people dislike and want to hurt other people JUST because they are different. I never had a clue about it, and no theoretical explanation I received or found has ever satisfied me. There probably is no way for me to find out unless it is going happen to me. Unless something is going to shatter my natural self-love and confidence so that deep-rooted fears might surface. Which would still be unlikely to be about women or buggery because I am a woman …??? There is still a chance, though, that a FICTIONAL text will suddenly explain this to me.) This perspective on the world might apply solely to me because my grip on reality is not what it probably should be. For me, the “real” world is a NECESSARY world because I bodily live there and my means of living and social relationships are there. I actually have scant feelings about it. Nothing much apart from contentment (or discontent) – being pleased (or displeased) with myself or others – awareness, actual discomfort or (minor) fears, and some kind of vague dread about any number of things that might yet come to pass. MY “real” world – where I LIVE and am myself, where my affections and memories lie, where I really enjoy things, allow myself to have “deep” feelings like longing or sadness, where I pursue my goals - is almost entirely fictional or imaginary. So, this might just be me - but I strongly suspect that this “condition” might be more widespread than “we” generally think, with so many people passing so much time with computer games, Netflix series, and all kinds of fictional stuff. And I have this uncanny feeling that there actually might be more orgasms brought on by imagined or “online” situations than by actual sex … No wonder that we have this abundance of surrogate worlds - and the kind of actors that can make them feel real with their compulsive search for completeness and detail in the characters they are playing. To “inhabit a character fully”  in this way is the secret behind “being truthful in IMAGINARY circumstances”. And this is at the bottom of the kind of realism I refer to. In part three of my “seminar” I will look further into this special relationship between actor and character.

 

A digression on “beautiful sadness”

 

The “advanced seminar” will be continued, but it was bad timing. This is always one of my two “times of the year” where I cannot really stick with anything constructive. This year especially, not just because of the corona crisis. The extent of it only emerges now, slowly, as we are tentatively approaching normal life again. The collateral damage. (I am still debating with myself if it is sensible to go to the cinema again for the first time post-lockdown …) No, there was another “break-through” – or “epiphany” – besides the two or three I already had. This time it was about the SADNESS. It has been a constant companion so much longer than I realized, but when it raised its head above the surface I gently pushed it back every time without looking. How could I be sad when I was so HAPPY? Now, suddenly, I turned around and looked it in the face ...

 

I remember the one time, a few months ago, when I couldn’t quite push it back. When everything I read or watched or listened to suddenly seemed SO INFINITELY SAD (even Agatha Christie ???!!!) and it appeared no other feeling could exist besides it. I blamed it on menopausal depression, and I think it has something to do with it, but just to introduce myself to the feeling. The feeling that, UNDERNEATH IT ALL, there is sadness. Now I definitely wriggled out of depression – for the time being - but the sadness remained. I think I managed to ACCEPT it as this part of myself. Not something that has to stay out but this STATE I AM LIVING IN.

 

There is a long, long backstory leading to this point, so long that I cannot remember the beginning. For all I know it might have started shortly after consciousness hit, with the first big disappointment. When I thought, or rather felt: Uhmm – THIS is what life is going to be like! And then the long journey to where I was until about seven years ago: the realization that life is basically shit – even if you are one of the few people who got lucky and are healthy and live in safety and without heartbreak! – and ends with death. But I have got work, and I have got money to spend, and I can write – which is about the only thing I ever achieved – and I WON’T LET IT GET ME DOWN! This decision certainly was important – at least as long as I had no idea how to get anything I really wanted! – but it precludes sadness. There can be no longing, and no regrets, and no sadness – and, as I am now, I think: How does one even live without this? It is INHUMAN!!!

 

This took a bit of preparation, but now I am coming to the part about what this has to do with READING. My “state of happiness” started some time before this blog – in 2012 when the first “Hobbit” film came into the cinema, and developed through the following year, a time of which I remember nothing but writing and being happy – even though I know that a few particularly disagreeable things happened. (Just now it all came to an end, and I finally contrived to make a book of what I have written, only for myself basically, but of course I am inanely proud:)

 

 

 

… and where I finally fell in love with the RIGHT person - who couldn’t have been more wrong IN TERMS OF REAL LIFE if I tried!!! But this was extremely important nonetheless because I knew this from the beginning, and it taught me that my life is not about GETTING anything for real or even about relationships with other people. It is about ME - how I can grow and expand, and get better at the things I like to do, and feel strongly about them.   

 

My (conscious) “state of sadness” started a lot earlier. Weirdly, as far as I remember, it started in 2001 with the first time I saw the first “Lord of the Rings” film in the cinema. When it was introduced with a black screen, a huge space of anticipation that got filled with the voice of Cate Blanchett speaking the words which then became my absolute favourite bit from the books:

 

The world is changing. I feel it in the water, I smell it in the earth …

 

Which, in the book, ends with:

 

I do not think we will meet again.

 

I became aware very soon that this was my favourite bit from the “Lord of the Rings”, but I didn’t quite know why. Now I do. Of course that is because it is SO SAD! As far as I know I had an unusual approach to Tolkien’s world because I approached it as an adult. I mostly loved it not because it could be turned into hyperbolic action films but because of its “beautiful” sadness and nostalgia. (And I will hold Peter Jackson in high esteem always, even though I don’t like most of his work and disliked a lot about the films, because THIS shows – especially in “The Hobbit”!) A few years ago I discovered that my favourite piece of music of all times is the one by Tomaso Albinoni they always play at funerals. I just filed this under “weird” and never thought about the connection. Besides, my favourite song for a long time was “The Drugs Don’t Work” by The Verve, followed by “Things that Stop You Dreaming” by Passenger, and my favourite film before “The Hobbit” was “Brokeback Mountain”. Should I go on … I think rather not! Now I am wondering why I never noticed how these singular observations might be connected. That I never really asked myself what all this “beautiful” sadness might be about.

 

My theory, at the moment: I couldn’t AFFORD to. That life is basically shit and ends with death is a fact that can only be denied by people who are stupid or delusional – or drink and do drugs. (Which, I am afraid, are a lot more than the twenty percent I always estimated – for being stupid or delusional, I mean. Before the corona crisis I was more optimistic about the figures. But not being delusional – not constantly lying to oneself – is kind of hard work too because it is not something we really want to do. And I don’t think that there are that many people who are consciously TRYING, like myself.) So, in my opinion, to grow up mentally means to somehow ACCEPT this fact that would make our lives dreary and bitter, and really hard to live. And this does not, usually, apply only to people who HAVE stupid and dreary lives, as I always thought. It also applies to people who – unlike myself! - have really achieved something and became “somebody” because success doesn’t just come like this but usually requires really hard work and denying yourself, and, almost always, a lot of compromise and sacrifice. (Of course, the worst is to work hard and achieve nothing. Or to be destitute, depressed, or in pain – and I have always been consciously grateful that my life until now hasn’t been like this!) I think this is why I love this moment in “Uncle Vanya” so much where Dr. Astrov says that “there is no hope for both of us”. Because it means to consciously look this fact in the eye FOR A MOMENT. More of it is lethal. We cannot REMAIN in this state and not die. Nonetheless I think that we have to be CONSCIOUS of it.

 

I still haven’t figured out WHY this is so. Why it matters so much to live IN the truth – not outside it. I just feel that this is what makes life REAL. How we know that we have really lived it … (I suppose a lot of people would disagree!?) But sadness – as the logical consequence - is not really something we could LIVE. I think I didn’t recognize it because I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Because I couldn’t afford to. In real life, if we REMAIN in this state, it inevitably turns into depression and some kind of dying inside before death. My only remedy is then to get back to work. But IN A FICTIONAL CONTEXT I can afford sadness. I can ACKNOWLEDGE that I really live in this state. Which isn’t such a bad state because there is so much longing and beauty. The longing for unobtainable beauty and the longing for all the things that are gone is also sad. But it is the only way we can preserve all the beautiful things and moments and feelings. Even now I know that most of my happiness is already in the past! 

Once upon a time - when mankind wasn't THAT stupid yet? - "we" had a name for it. It is so far gone that I don't even think I would have remembered it if it hadn't popped up recently when Richard Armitage, in the Telegraph interview, referred to himself as "melancholic". It is hard for me to admit, but some people just have a way with words that I have not. 😉

And I am excessively grateful for the word because I think it did the trick. Made me take the right turn and finally figure it out. Melancholy is this state we are in when we have ACCEPTED the sadness of life. And when we are “in” it, this isn’t a “bad” feeling anymore. It can even be quite enjoyable to deal with what it is really like, “inside ourselves”. Contrary to its bad repute, melancholy might even be our best safeguard against depression. I cannot help thinking that the bulk of “our” common psychological problems would disappear if we hadn’t chucked out all the old-fashioned “virtues” like humbleness or melancholy. (And I don’t think that it is a coincidence that the British still remember them!)  

 

As usual, when I have made it, it doesn’t seem like this big discovery. But there already are repercussions. I know I could carry on with examples till kingdom come. (Already in my FIRST post: what really impressed me about how John Cleese played Petrucchio was that he played him like somebody who is genuinely and deeply DISAPPOINTED with his life and is struggling with clenched teeth to get ahead of everything and everyone. And this made me see that life once put me in Katherine’s position and recognize what is behind her “shrewdness”.) But there is something much more constitutive I discovered, about the nature of FICTIONAL WORLDS.

 

When I tried to write about fictional worlds, I was kind of dissatisfied because I knew that it is such a big thing for me, and everything I could write felt bloodless and theoretical. But every reader is aware of the nature and use of fictional worlds! They are just PLACES to live in, good places and horrible places, even bleak places at times. Always places, though, where I can move unmolested by idiots, and DO THINGS I like, and have feelings about them, without any IMMEDIATE consequences which might be unhelpful in real life, or even destructive. The most important thing about fictional worlds I have always known. It is that they have a BOUNDARY – and I was always so amazed and puzzled if people cannot recognize it. If they can get seriously upset about things that happen in a TV series, or angry and disappointed with fictional characters, or frightened, or disgusted … (well, I might get disgusted or frightened, but not often! Not anything like I would be in real life.) These boundaries are so useful because when we are in a fictional world WE can also change, and be what we want to be or need to be. “Being truthful in imaginary circumstances” (courtesy Tom Hiddleston!) doesn’t just apply to acting but to any fictional activity. It is so useful because it kind of explains that – regarding the truthfulness – it doesn’t really matter if it is experienced in real or imaginary circumstances. The effect it has on us is the same. And as it often is really hard – and may have dire consequences – to be truthful in real life, a lot of what we really are can be “exercised” without detriment in a fictional environment. The effect ON US is basically the same. There are of course innumerable activities we can pursue in a fictional environment but this is probably the activity that is most important for MY life: that I have a place where I can be myself without any boundaries people or the circumstances impose on me, and “afford” feelings like melancholy. Besides expanding into other areas of reality that are unreachable for me.

 

And I feel as if I had come closer to answer one of the most fundamental questions about reading. In fact, there are several questions, like different sides of a dice. How come that different people have such utterly different, even contradictory, inner representations of the same text? Why do I feel so differently about a text I read a long time ago when I am reading it now? Is it more the text working on me when I am reading, or is it more me/my imagination working on this inner representation? It is useful to put this question on the table for once though it is still much too imprecise for attempting a full answer. One aspect of it is obvious, though: As a fictional text usually is incredibly complex (and often cryptic so that large “areas” of it remain hidden, or their meaning lost to us contemporaries) everybody is welcome to take their pick. (I ask myself, though, if with something “emotionally straightforward” like a poem by Rilke or a Beatles’ song there is really that much “room” for different versions? There are texts that are very consensual. You can just quote the title, and everybody will know exactly what feelings you are referring to. Very useful! A Shakespeare sonnet, on the other hand, is quite a different kettle of fish.) This at least appears obvious to me, but it doesn’t cover all the aspects of this complex problem. I noticed this when I listened to my current favourite song: “Genie on the Tabletop” by Al Stewart, and suddenly found it sad!!! THIS song I picked special, I believe, because it is so NOT sad, but crazy, funny, uplifting, and lightheaded – exactly the mood I want to be in at least once a day. It always works to make me feel better. And then the song “tricked” me and came out as sad. But of course this was not the song - which is still crazy, funny and so on … there isn’t any sadness in it whatsoever! This was the first POSITIVE PROOF I had how my own mood – when it is very strong – influences not just what I choose, or what I am really listening to when I pick it up by chance, but the WAY I understand it. Of course there is no doubt about the vital importance of feelings and moods for my reading – I noticed recently, listening to audiobooks, that I never START Really Reading before I pick up and join in the mood - but I never could come up with positive proof. Which is probably possible only in extreme/contradictory instances like this one!

 

(Another) toast: There is to “beautiful sadness”! And may we all cease to be afraid of ourselves …