What Actors Know, Self-With-Others & Other Writings
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The shortest day: mental health in a time of change
We’ve reached the shortest day — at least here in the Northern hemisphere. Maximum darkness. Minimum light. As I look at the storm outside my study window, though it’s daytime, it’s gloomy. Barely above half-light. The clouds are low and dense. Everything, sky, earth, trees, the very air itself, sucks light in and gives out…
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Perfect moments: Finding beauty in the present
I sat last night in my kitchen. Wooden table and white wooden chairs. Outside the wind was, for a while, stilled. No stars. I live in a very quiet place. A few white houses. Fields. Some trees. Peat bog. Behind the house, beyond the hill, ocean. I hear the waves some days. A lighthouse up…
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Marketing Alchemy: Turning Gold into Crap.
Apparently ‘authentic’ is word of the year. Dec 26, 2023 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary just announced that ‘authentic’ is their ‘word of the year’. Back in 2021 I wrote a piece about ‘Authenticity’. I thought I’d reconsider what I wrote back then. Does it still stand up, in a marketing world obsessed with selling ‘the real’…
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Feeling like I belong: recovering from boarding school.
Christmas used to be a time of isolation. Slowly, that’s changing. Christmas has always been a difficult time for me. There’s a tension between what we’re told it is — togetherness, family, community, peace, joy, generosity — and how I experienced it. I’ve always experienced it as a time of heightened anxiety and uncertainty. The…
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How to interact online
…and not make things worse while you’re trying to make them better In bitter times, Social Media is a cesspool. I’m talking about how we choose to interact — with friends, colleagues, strangers. I’m talking about how the desire many of us have to do good, to be healthy and contribute to creating a better…
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A path through the mountains
Embracing contradiction and developing adaptability There’s an old story I sometimes tell. It’s from one of the many Buddhist traditions. It goes like this: Some students go to their Master, and say: ‘You’re a fraud! We don’t want to study with you anymore!’ The Master smiled softly and stroked his beard (for this story comes…
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Self is a fiction
You’re not a thing, you’re a relationship How can we live authentically, when we’re each such a tiny part of a vast universe? How do we combine self-care and individual fulfillment, with social engagement and ethical, altruistic life-choices? How can we align our needs, desires and obligations without exploiting others or the earth? We start,…
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Snow
How to build community Where I live, community still matters. People wave when they drive pass. If I’m out walking, often drivers stop to say hello, or ask if I want a lift somewhere. Often enough I don’t lock the house when I go out. If I ask a neighbour for help, I know it’ll…
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Being Authentic
This is a workshop/talk I gave for School of Human Kind about What Actors Know
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Acting and Life
A brief extract from a longer introduction to What Actors Know