A Quote by Joan Didion
Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me - how really tenuous our sanity is.
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Sanity is tenuous. Tenuous. Comes and goes. Many of the brightest people floating about this planet have only a finger's grip on sanity, if that.
One might talk about the sanity of the atom the sanity of space the sanity of the electron the sanity of water- For it is all alive and has something comparable to that which we call sanity in ourselves. The only oneness is the oneness of sanity.
I always think it's interesting to switch genres, because if I read a script and I know exactly how to manifest a story, I don't really want to do it anymore, because I've already done it in my head. It becomes less interesting. If I read something that's challenging, I get really passionate and usually fall in love with it, because I feel I need to do it. I need to tell the story; I need to find a way to make it happen.
The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase “He was visited by grief,” because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.
Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it's exactly the same with acting.
But if I did read, say, [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty, for instance, it always seemed to me that the parts that I understood in what he was talking about - and I read him because - well, he wrote a book, well, the Phenomenology of Perception [New York: Humanities Press, 1962]. And it seemed to me that perception had a lot do with how we take in art.
I had identified discipline as a really important part of my life, in maintaining my sanity. It's kind of interesting when people don't know me and then get to know me and see just how workaholic I am and how unhappy I am when I don't have something to work on, or if I am not provided with the tools to be able to accomplish those things, like touring without my looping rig or without a piano, I'm just kind of like, 'Aahhh, what do I do with my day?' To me, that's just a large part of my sanity.
Whatever I'm writing has seemed to be about something I don't feel I could freely express in my everyday life, and stand-up is a really effective medium for getting people to hear exactly the things and viewpoints that they normally don't want listen to.
If I was painting or writing, I wouldn't veer away from things because they seemed unsavoury to me. So as an actor, I kind of think the same way. I should do things that are different and interesting and shed light on the craziness of the world.
I read a lot, all the time, but often I read books for research, or because they're interesting to me in some way, even if they aren't exactly 'pleasurable.'
I always think it's interesting to switch genres, because if I read a script and I know exactly how to manifest a story, I don't really want to do it anymore, because I've already done it in my head.
Nothing is too controversial, but you have to think about how to do it with sensitivity. I don't try to be insensitive. I think really, really carefully about exactly what things mean and how they will affect people.
It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.
Well, I was passionately curious about what my body was doing, and when I got the lessons on how to meditate, it seemed really solid to me. It seemed real.
I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this.
It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances of circumstances over which we have no control; but it is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances our helpers,--when we can appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, "Child, you must learn to like me in the form in which you see me, before I can offer myself to you in any other aspect.
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