Divine Discontent

I am going to write here of something artists rarely talk about because it sounds fanatical, even crazymad. And this is going to come across like I have completely lost the plot. But I write this with all humility, because i know how far short I come of achieving my ideals.

But fuck it, it is what I think!!

My prayer life, daily meditation and spiritual writings have always been informed and intimately bound up with my experiences as an actor/ artist. Acting has remained my preferred and most creative form of worship for over 30 years. In my most sublime moments I like to think have been able to bring my entire soul to the acting process, as a gift returned to God... It is only then that the body and the mind and the heart all become imbued with the highest motives of my soul: 'gathered', as the Quakers might put it. It has been many years since I have really experienced this, but I do know first hand (better than anything else I have ever known) miracles in the theatre are possible. On those blessed 3 or 4 nights of communion with the divine (I told you it would sound mad!) I briefly succeeded in knowing what it is to become whole. It's not that I am perfect by any means (far from it!) but in those moments I am Being rather than behaving; totally congruent- inwardly and outwardly, bursting with the magic that transmutes the invisible and intangible universe of Spirit into the tangible, the worldly and the empirically real. The work feels touched, even embraced by God's truth, purity, grace and beauty; so easy and completely in the eternity of the now that I know it is God who is lifting me up and employing me as His channel.


...And it is exquisite.

So why can't it happen every night???! What prevents me from bringing my whole soul and every fibre of my being to the work each and every time, given that it means so much to me?

Well,fear, pride, shame about being inadequate or foolish, ingratitude to my Source, ambition, lack of faith, the desire to impress, the apparent safety of repeating ones successes (bad habits), all the mental nonsense interfering with your flow and focus- in fact the very same factors that interfere with all the many other forms of prayer or contemplation.

The purpose of my work as an actor is to be a channel of Love as I have already said in a previous blog. And, just as it is with any devout Mystic's earnest prayer, one is required as an actor to shed and utterly cede all egoistic control, to surrender and lie prostrate as you bathe in His divine influence and enter into the total bliss of fearlessness and yield to faith in the outrageous, the impossible. But this is never easy, because it ultimately depends on Grace and an utter and pure humility.

Most actors contrive to conjure in themselves (and hence their audiences) what Samuel Taylor Coleridge termed "the willing suspension of disbelief". But I think this neat little phrase enshrines a scant and tawdry form of 'artistic agnosticism',. It fails to foster full Flow and Connection. Coleridge's 'suspension' can only result in theatre that is comparatively mediocre and ultimately inert. It is only the truly great dramatists, directors and actors who will strive to go beyond this. These rare artists set their sights on creating not just a suspension of dis-belief, and not even mere belief. Instead they courageously pursue a dream of unshakeable Faith that can move souls to be totally transform under the light of Heaven. These geniuses in-spirit and en-courage us to live life in entirely new ways. Higher ways. Great acting proves to the hearts, minds and spirits who witness it that miracles are not just possible but inevitable when you commit fully to God's promises. In our cynical age where we want to ascribe such achievements to tricks, emotional manipulation, mass hypnotism, to scientifically measurable techniques and results, to psychological aberation or simple delusion, the art of acting must strive to retain its claim to being one of the last remaining antidotes to the zeitgeist of 21st century toxic Doubt. The theatre must lay assert its rights as a Temple where we can witness the full spiritual and transcendent supremacy of God's power moving mountains. It is time we stopped being ashamed or embarrassed of thinking in this way. OK it could be just an impossible ideal, a futile fantasy, but it is a Holy one and it can spur us on if we are willing to let it.
In my youth I would frighten myself with the possibilities of this power of which i write today. I feared that I might drive myself mad like poor old Ronald Colman playing Othello in that wonderful old movie A Double Life, and so I shied away from fully committing to these fanatical ideals. I would sit in Sutton Library as a 17 year old and devour Nietzsche and every acting book I could lay my hands on and dream all this stuff, but was too afraid to commit myself fully to it. Now I am approaching 50, and so much more secure in who I am and who I am not, I have to finally throw my old addictions to fear and pride aside and stand stripped naked before my God, without masks, and believe I am safe and relatively sound of mind. And so I here renew my vow- To surrender my will and soul to His service completely each time I act. Nothing else matters.