Commitment

“The drama nerd comes out in me when I’m in a theater,” he explained now, as the actors rehearsed. “When I saw ‘All My Sons,’ I was changed — permanently changed — by that experience. It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: for me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great — well, that’s absolutely torturous.”

- Philip Seymour Hoffman, New York Times, 12/19/08

The hardest part about acting, according to Philip Seymour Hoffman, is the very pursuit of it. When I read this quote, something struck a chord in me about the ease of falling in love with an art form, that love igniting the drive to pursue it, and the torture of knowing that the ideal of the beauty in this art is so intangible and at times feels so completely unreachable that the wanting of it only brings oneself to a torturous state of pursuit because of its beauty and fragility. It's easier to want than to do, and the doing at times feels as though it hinges on the brink of destroying the beautiful from too much effort or too much pining.

I've often wondered what I can do to make my commitment to my own art form less torturous in its own right. Why is music not as natural as a part of my daily doing, my daily being, like breathing? Instead, it is often this monstrous thing that looms ever before me, its beauty slipping further from my grasp with each day that I don't purposely pursue it. It often feels like an insatiable burden that I've only brought upon myself, an insurmountable duty that I've chosen. What is it in the human spirit that allows to reach for the things that are completely intangible, much akin to a longing for a Creator that we can't see?

I think it has something to do with a much needed commitment to believe that the intangible beauty that first captured my heart at the age of five is a inseparable part of my life now that I've chosen it. Even in its torture, it is somehow a part of me that is inescapable as long as I keep making this decision to want it. I hope for the day that music will become as natural as living is. Like breathing.

Artists can learn a lot from athletes. I saw Michael Phelps on TV the other day. He talked about how there was one year in which he did not miss a single workout. Such was his determination that not 1 day out of 365 was taken off. Could I ever be that committed?

I guess we'll have to wait and see in 2009.