Even after two and a half years of living here I still feel very British and it’s hard to immerse myself fully in the 'touchy feely, let's talk about our emotions all of the time and live outside our comfort zone' LaLa lifestyle. Some would say that being open to all of this will make me a better actor (/person?) I know that those of you who know me well are laughing at the fact that there actually may be times when I don’t talk about how I’m feeling (the Scot is screaming ‘Please, no more than you do already!') but maybe there is something in this.
I recently took part in a challenge at my acting studio thinking it would be a good opportunity to help me with this. It involved doing all of these things on a daily basis for ten days - meditating, writing, giving, artistic expression and mindful movement.
This is what I learned;
I can’t quieten my brain. I’m not sure if I (or you) should be surprised by this. Saying you don’t like meditating in LA is a bit like saying you don’t like dogs. I’ve tried really hard (well not so much with the dogs). It’s amazing how even when chanting a silent mantra in your head in a dark quiet room, whilst breathing deeply and focussing on a light in your mind that there’s still room for other things such as Christmas lists, what I’m having for lunch/tea/breakfast tomorrow and how rubbish I am at meditating and how maybe this isn’t even meditating it’s just thinking about things with your eyes closed. Oh and apparently you’re not supposed to do it of a night in bed and think that’s so much easier - that’s just called sleep.
The writing bit is ok. The writing comes from the meditating though so it's no good me writing down all of the things I was ‘meditating’ about (see above) but I’m good at writing down all of the things I was supposed to be meditating about.
Day 1 of ‘Giving' surprised me. We had some delicious muffins left over in work so I decided it would be a good thing to give them away to homeless people on the way home. Not so easy. When the homeless person I see every day at the traffic lights wasn’t there I realised that it wasn’t going to be as easy as winding down my car window and passing the muffins out. I would have to work a bit harder and rightly so. I didn’t really fancy walking around the worst parts of LA at night to complete this mission so I drove to a familiar place not far from home. I decided to start with one homeless lady who I know sleeps on a bench there. She was already settled down in her sleeping bag for the night so I gave her a muffin, explaining what it was and kind of leaving it balanced on her chest. She doesn’t really talk and she just sniffed the paper bag but I took the fact that she didn’t throw it at me as a good sign. One down, three to go. I went back to where my car was and saw a woman looking through the bins in the car park so I got into my car and drove around and asked her if she was interested in a muffin/cake (I think that’s what I actually said, sometimes I forget what’s English and what’s American so I go with both) She said ‘What?’ So I said ‘Would you like a muffin?” (I was sure that was American) ‘No!’ she said. She seemed really offended so I left her rooting through the bins Maybe she thought I was trying to poison her. I had to go to the supermarket so I wondered if I came out of there with them in a bag then people might think they were freshly bought rather than pre bought and poisoned (I gave this a good go didn’t I?) so when I came out of Ralphs there was a man in a wheelchair, again having a look through the bins. As a side note you have to choose your homeless people really carefully and by that I mean make sure they are homeless. I bought a man sat outside CVS a Snickers once and to this day the Scot swears he wasn’t homeless which is why he didn’t seem too impressed! Anyway I asked my wheelchair man if he would like a muffin/cake and he asked was it sweet. I said ‘Yes it’s a muffin, you know like a cake' and he said ‘No thanks, I can’t eat sweet things.' I gave up, went home and gave them to the Scot who was very happy and appreciative and I guess knows me well enough to know that I’m not trying to kill him in the process through poison, diabetes or just plain insensitivity!
The artistic expression and mindful movement were a little easier. I’ve opened myself up to a world of podcasts and TED Talks instead of binge watching ‘Parenthood’ on Netflix and any kind of extra movement is obviously a good thing. I completed the challenge and I’m still trying to do some of these things every day. This week I’m going to see if I can volunteer at the Police Activities League. I’m not even really sure what that is but I’m definitely living outside my comfort zone. Has it improved my acting? Well on some days I think I did pretty well at trying to be someone I’m not!
