We've reached a point where we are not a very empathetic people, and art without empathy is art without an audience. My basic viewpoint is that without art we're alone.
If you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.
Truth is just as essential to nourishing the mind as food is to nourishing the body. The more fully you live each moment in truth, the more powerful and effective those moments will be.
There are four basic emotions - mad, sad, glad and scared. And if you touch those emotions then you can grab your audience, your reader.
Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.
Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.
Movies can be effective in influencing people to think in ways they might not otherwise be exposed to. Social commentary in films is most effective when you're not aware of a soapbox. Making the point without force-feeding the audience is the most desirable approach.
An effective lighting design is like a beautiful painting. Your medium is bringing someone to an emotional state he or she would not achieve at that moment without your art. This does not and can not happen by accident.
Think of your mind, your emotions, and your spirit as the ultimate garden. The way to ensure a bountiful, nourishing harvest is to plant seeds like love, warmth, and appreciation, instead of seeds like disappointment, anger, and fear.
Acting is bad acting if the actor himself gets emotional in the act of making the audience cry. The object is to make the audience cry, but not cry yourself. The emotion has to be inside the actor, not outside. If you stand there weeping and wailing, all your emotions will go down your shirt and nothing will go out to your audience. Audience control is really about the actor
Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it.
Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.
Negative emotions will challenge your grit every step of the way. While it's impossible not to feel your emotions, it's completely under your power to manage them effectively and to keep yourself in a position of control. When you let your emotions overtake your ability to think clearly, it's easy to lose your resolve.
You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.
Chandresh relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. A show without an audience is nothing, after all. In the response of the audience, that is where the power of performance lives.
Lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication. We can share our emotions, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds with many other beings. Emotions are the glue that binds.