Tag: psychology

It’s All About Growth
This excerpt is from Episode 2 of my new podcast Alanism in which we explore the therapeutic benefits of creativity.
I sat down with filmmaker Maya Avidov to discuss her creative process, upcoming projects and her latest short The Listener.
Maya
You were talking about creativity when we started off, and there are two things that became very apparent to me the past couple of years. Both of them I learned through podcasts, actually, which is the idea that the minute you understand that every single organism in the world is creative and all it’s trying to do is spread, things become very clear.
Alan
Right, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.
Maya
It doesn’t even have to be ego driven. Its not even about survival. It’s just about more. And that can be interpreted as anything: i.e. I want to spread because I want to control, or I want to learn, or I want to grow.
Alan
This idea of growth, I think, that makes sense to me because every organism…
Maya
Yeah, wants to better itself in one way or another. Even if it’s just a survival mechanism… and this connects to my second point which is, I’ve recently thought about this, human beings like to say, although I don’t think it’s true, that they’re the only animal in the world that takes from their imagination and builds it into reality. I think that’s not true because, spider webs, hello! And there’s a lot of artistry that happens in the natural world that I have a feeling an otter was all like ‘I have an idea for a dam that’s gonna blow all the other dams away!’ But generally what’s amazing about entities with a consciousness and subconsciousness is that they have an imagination, and that they can bring this imagination into fruition like little gods or whatever.
Filmmakers have taken this to a hyper extensive place and a lot of them deal with that, with what they’ve done, with the process of what… and the minute you kind of open that rabbit hole…
Alan
When you say deal with it, do you mean the repercussions of pushing your [boundaries]?
Maya
I mean actual reflexive art about this, about what is real and what isn’t real. About being a mirror within a mirror within a mirror… it repeats itself. Yeah, it’s a rabbit hole. It’s very fun to talk about, it allows a lot of conversations with yourself. Because I find when a lot of people write… this how I think Charlie Kaufmann ended up in Adaptation. Where he’s like ‘I wrote myself into my script’, and you’re like, yeah that’s bound to happen.
Alan
A lot of writers do.
Maya
Yeah, but not as a starting point. He literally wrote himself into the script within a script that he was writing which he was in from the beginning. It’s a very… there’s a lot of layers to it. But I think, all of these things where we’ve taken our imagination and made it real, we’re examining what is real, because the thought of it was very real, and now the thing is very real, and they’re equally… so I’m very interested in sort of balancing those two things. And then with a film or any type of art you’ve made the thought real, and then you’ve made it a thought again. What I was going to say was, one of the things that’s really interesting about everything having growth is that, all of the films I’ve seen that I had nothing to do with the making of them have made me who I am.
Alan
Sure, so just as a viewer, forget about the [filmmaking] process.
Maya
As a viewer they’ve continued to grow within me. And that’s so true of so many albums. So many songs… twenty years later I’ll meet a person and they’ll remind me of a lyric, and I’ll be like ‘Oh that’s what they meant. That’s what they meant!’ So I feel like there are seeds to everything. But everything is a seed to everything else.
Alan
So I’m wondering then, is the therapeutic benefit for you of being involved in the creative process and filmmaking is that you get to make the inner outer… bring whatever’s going on internally for you out into the real world, a kind of giving birth to it and releasing it somehow?
Maya
I think the release. I’ve only once or twice… so people always say ‘Oh when you watch it on the screen with an audience you’ll have a…’ no.
Alan
It’s not about that [recognition] for you.
Maya
First of all if it was about that for any filmmaker there would be no films. It takes years to get to that point. And also that’s very… how much external reassurance do you need? Although I have to say I had a moment that’s near that moment where I had my first laugh, and that made me feel really good. But it wasn’t like everyone showed up, I don’t care. People I didn’t know laughed, and it was a physical thing [for me], it was a rush.
Alan
I can see that, because you want people to respond.
Maya
Well I’ve screened stuff before, and I consider myself more like a funny… there’s more money for drama than comedy. So it was great to make people laugh. I used to decide if a therapy session was good or not also based on how many laughs I got. I decide if a day is good or not based on how many laughs I got!
Alan
I kind of like that gauge—yeah that resonates with me.
“Profound ideas in an easy format.”
“To the point and informative!”
“It’s awesome and everyone should do it.”
What Would People Think of Me?
This excerpt is from my new podcast Alanism which explores the psychological benefits of creativity in art, music and theatre.
I sat down with actor/writer Liam Cogan of Ragged Trouser Theatre Company to discuss his upcoming play Gary’s Not Well at The Bread & Roses Theatre 5-9th Feb, 2019.
LIAM
The theatre, for me, was a relatively new experience up until I got to drama school, actually. And also because where I grew up in the Midlands we didn’t have a theatre. We would have had to drive about 40 odd minutes to go to Sheffield, or to get to our closest theatre.
ALAN
So what was that transition like then going from growing up without much experience of being at the theatre as an audience member to kind of jumping into the deep end and doing a degree in theatre and acting?
LIAM
Yeah for sure, I mean let’s put it this way, it got me out of my comfort zone for sure. I was a very sheltered person and a very boxed in person when I arrived there. But one of the things I realized about drama school is it does help you step out of your comfort zone—it really frees you.
You’re doing a workshop to do with acting and wellbeing for people, and I’m a staunch supporter of that because I think it really does get you out of that comfort zone. I was the kind of guy that when I arrived I had very certain ideas: this is how a man acts, this is how a man should be, and this [drama school] is a little bit strange.
And you get there and they’re like, ‘OK everybody crawl around on the floor and pretend to be an ape’ and ‘I want you to make monkey noises at the top of your lungs’ And I’m thinking, ‘What did she just say?’ ‘Am I hearing that correctly?’
They use the example of children, right, so as a child, what do you do? You play, you know, ’Oh I’m in a spaceship, wooooo’ and the child’s free and he’s playing, and he doesn’t care that he looks ridiculous—he’s simply playing and imagining.
ALAN
And we lose that as adults don’t we? And we get filed down to specific roles, and we have all these expectations about who we’re supposed to be, and how we’re supposed to act.
LIAM
And how do we behave, and that’s not normal, and I’m an adult now, you know, this is reality. And they worked really hard to get us to lose that—to crack the armour. So it was like, Liam, ‘I want you to crawl on your stomach and pretend to be a snake’. They basically try to do whatever they can to take away any dignity, any self respect that you might try and hold for yourself, they try and break that in front of people. You have to do it, because maybe one day on the stage you need to prance around like a unicorn, and be a character that might be completely different to yourself.
ALAN
So was that challenging for you?
LIAM
Very challenging. Because instantly I’m thinking, imagine if my family in Italy could see this, god, what would they think? What if my friends back in the Midlands could see me prancing around, or pretending to be a dandelion in the wind, what would they think of me? But I think it was one of the best things of my life getting out of that mindset—What would people think of me? And it was so good to get rid of that mindset. And it really is a mindset I think, not just mentioning some of the machismo culture that does exist in the Mediterranean, in South America and in various parts of the world, but it was a machismo culture that again also existed in the North and in the Midlands… we’re real tough men, and especially in the mining community that I grew up in the Midlands it was very kind of real man’s man. We go to the miner’s club on a Friday and a Saturday and we drink alcohol. This is how you behave if you’re a man, and if there’s a problem there’s violence.
ALAN
Or if you have internal problems you just suck it up. You don’t talk about it.
LIAM
Yeah, exactly. And that’s what they think that men are. And I think it’s great to see the reverse side. You know we often talk about jiu-jitsu, because I’m a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and my jiu-jitsu instructor is coming to see the play [Gary’s Not Well]. His actual profile picture on his WhatsApp is ‘No health without mental health’. Outside of his Brazilian jiu-jitsu and his judo, he really works hard for mental health because again he knows in an environment like martial arts that can sometimes translate into ‘I’m a fighter, I’m a fighter, it’s all in here’. You know, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ you’re not getting inside my head’.
ALAN
But everyone has struggles right? I think we need to talk about it. I think that’s a big part of what I want to do with this podcast as well is encourage people to reach out if you need help, rather than just carrying these struggles around and kind of sucking it up. Especially for guys, it’s very hard to reach out, very hard.
“Profound ideas in an easy format.”
“To the point and informative!”
“It’s awesome and everyone should do it.”

Tag: psychology

It’s All About Growth

What Would People Think of Me?