You must be strong and wrong & what you have to decide about working for ‘free’

Day 7 NaNoWriMo– Written 2269 words tonight and total now is 13874 words. I received a lovely FB message today saying how the lady writing had been inspired to do acting classes based on my blog and also was getting her artistic daughter to read some of my posts on forgetting about perfectionism. Anyone who knows me knows well that being perfect isn’t within my grasp anyway and I have learnt that being strong and wrong is very important. The past negative opinions of others about my creativity, my voice, my acting, my humour, my (fill in the blanks….) are varied and fabulous, I dont really hear them nor do I bother trying to listen (hence I never read reviews) and thus I can speak from a mountain of experience on being strong and wrong.

Yet my ability to  be strong and wrong led me to being one of 6 people asked to be megaphonistas in May to sing outside the South Bank solo through a white megaphone, dressed in white (basically looking like an angel from hell 😉 to bring in the band and the choirs. It was our very ability to not care if we got it wrong (important when you are dealing with the public in an open entertainment situation) and to carry on, that meant we got picked.

I have been strong and wrong on so many things in my life, but at least it means I fall forward.

There is a great story about Herbie Hancock playing in a set with the legendary Miles Davis and hitting accidentally a wrong note. A note so bad, that it wasn’t even in any associated keys, it hit and hung in the air like a clanger. Miles Davis though just nodded over to Herbie as if to say ‘I can hear you man’ and took that wrong note and made it magically right, he weaved Herbie’s wrong note and played the hell out of it, made it exquisitely right.

‘….. touring with Davis in the 1960s. They were playing in Europe and were having an especially good night, the audience rapt.

“And just as Miles was about to start his solo for ‘So What,’ at the peak of the concert, I hit a note that was so wrong I thought I had crumbled the show down like a falling tent,” he recalled.

“And Miles took a breath, and played some notes that made my note right. It took me years to understand that Miles didn’t judge what I played. He worked with it. That lesson wasn’t just about music. It was about life.” Quote from here

I did a Podcast on being strong and wrong as an artist, and I think we must hear this message over and over, ‘ do your work, do it to the best of your abilities, show the world, ignore the press, and then do some more work’ Yes we need better technique – but I don’t know  a better way to practise than in the eye of the storm of a public viewing or concert.

Plus have a listen to a very successful artist, Liz Ranken’s podcast ‘Just do it, dont care what anyone else thinks’

However I love the fact that I now today I inspired someone to be more creative, to listen to their heart and go take a class in something they had an interest in. That someone else in this world this week is taking a step into the scary creative unknown, just as I am delving further onto the mysteries of my ‘possibly world’s worst novel’ as the words fly out of me and onto the page 😉

I would love to hear from people 😉

I also advised them to read The Artists Way by Julia Cameron if you havent go get a copy now, do the weekly exercises and watch your artistic life and confidence grow 😉

P.S I saw this great link on Backstage
When It Is OK To Work for Free as an Actor | Backstage.
It echoes the podcast Ryan and I did this on this subject a few weeks ago, that free work needs to be quantified  or qualified in some way at least.
Podcast ‘How to deal with ‘free’ work, learning to say NO & taking care of yourself”
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