O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!
I started in high school to be interested in music and from there, I decided to study in college. Yeah, you're right, I did start late, but luckily, because of my schooling, I picked up a lot of ground pretty quick.
I did all this stuff that was illegal when I was a kid. I drank beer when I was 15. I smoked cigarettes when I was 13. I drove to New York City when I was 14 - don't tell my son. Those things were against the law, but I did them anyway. I didn't become a heroin addict, although I probably could have gotten heroin somehow. I don't think my son would buy heroin at any price. He knows what it is, and he knows how stupid it is.
I didn't know any successful actors in Kenya, so I felt like I could get away with going to college to study film more easily than I could with saying, 'I want to be an actor.' That's what I did.
At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
At a purely formal level, one could call probability theory the study of measure spaces with total measure one, but that would be like calling number theory the study of strings of digits which terminate.
Until I was eighteen, I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn't know. I already had my nose in the art world; I was already looking at things, but I didn't really get it that you could study that because my school was a very different environment.
Anecdote: In a controversial way, Comedian and actor Bill Cosby sought to teach his son the pain of being lied to. Convinced his son had been dishonest regarding an issue, Cosby promised that if he told him the truth, he would not hit him. When his son did confess, Cosby did hit him. Seeing his son's shock and hurt, Cosby said he hoped this lesson had deepened his understanding of the anguish generated by a sense betrayal.
Learning by study must be won; 'Twas ne'er entail'd from son to son.
My advice would be to look at the things you do to make money as ways to inform your work in the end. If our work is to study the human condition, most humans that we are going to be playing aren't going to be artists, so go out and, as I did, learn what it's like to have a 9-to-5 job... Think of it as character study.
These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
My son called to me that God was inside his red fire engine. He wanted to show me. I did move as fast as I could, spilling like water through the kitchen door into a summer day, but God had left by the time I got there. My son smiled, told me I'd missed him by seconds.
Definitely, study is absolutely necessary in all forms - it's just like any talent that's born within somebody. It's just like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know? Like, schooling brings out the polish of any talent. It happens anywhere in the world.
When I was younger, I was almost too afraid to admit that I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know any successful actors in Kenya, so I felt like I could get away with going to college to study film more easily than I could with saying, 'I want to be an actor.' That's what I did.
Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.
When I was a kid, I thought that if everyone looked up the way I did then everyone would want to study the universe just like me - how could they not? This naiveté is what tells me that my interest was more a calling than a rational comparative assessment about what to be when I grew up.