anxiety & comedy: emma stone and mark ruffalo - fresh air podcast
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I’ll confess that as I’m writing this (and when I listened to this podcast), I haven’t watched Poor Things yet. this tells you how urgently excited I am about this film — and listening to this Fresh Air podcast interview made me even more so.
the interview was in 2 parts, with Emma Stone + Mark Ruffalo — who played the two main characters of the film.
here are my distillation & notes from each:
emma stone interview — on anxiety & acting as presence
though I’m not sure I really liked Terry Gross’s interview style in this, Emma Stone said so many beautiful, wise things about anxiety and acting that I deeply resonated with, and I know will linger with me.
On the ratio of violence vs. sexuality on American media
“[it’s shocking] how much violence is acceptable in sort of American media, but sexuality is, you know, really looked down upon, like, as if watching someone die on screen is less challenging than watching someone experience pleasure.”
this is a topic we all know, and yet feels odd each time someone says it outloud. why is the portrayal of sexuality shrouded in so much shame, and yet violence treated portrayed and recieved with such non-chalance? surely it has to do with our own relationship and discomfort — to erotic energy vs. the (often times) dehumanization that comes with violence.
Discerning between anxiety vs. intuition
“So anxiety as the interesting beast that it is, it feels like intuition, even though it's irrational…
“Over the years, I've been trying to understand that if it feels like my heart is racing and there's a fire inside of me, that might be false information. If it feels calm and like a knowing and like a warmth, that might be true information.”
I totally relate to this, and, over the years, have been trying to find my own way of discerning between the two. I love her description of it as an embodied experience - this feels really true to me.
For me, anxiety keeps my mind spinning — thinking that it can solve the problem. in fact, anxiety creates problems to solve. but intuition is a knowing - a certainty.
Acting as Extreme Presence (the opposite force of anxiety)
“I felt like every reaction in my body is permitted. All of my big feelings are productive, and presence is required, so it's like a meditation, because anxiety lives solely in the past or the future, either future tripping or past tripping, things you can't control on either side. And acting requires you to be so present, to listen, to be looking at the other person, to be living in the experience and living in your body.”
I’ve written about creation as an antidote to bad days. I’ve felt this kind of presence when I’m deeply in the creative flow of an art form — writing, drawing, animating, designing websites… though it is a pre-requisite to doing my best work, I’ve also done these things absent-mindedly (to varying degrees of success).
But, in other art forms, presence IS a vital ingredient. If you’re NOT present when dancing, acting, or playing music, or making pottery (the body remember hows to center) — the art form doesn’t happen. It seems to be a relationship with the form + time.
As in, does the form take place in TIME?
Is it somehow dependent on TIME?
Anxiety as a creative superpower
“And if you can use it for productive things, you know, if you can use all of those feelings and those synapses that are firing for something creative or something that you're passionate about or something interesting, anxiety is like rocket fuel because you can't help but get out of bed and do things, do things, do things because you've got all of this energy within you. And that's really a gift.”
this is really so beautiful - something that I’ve never articulated in this way. I’ve struggled with anxiety a lot over the years — in that it’s always felt like a hinderence to my creative work, as in, my anxiety prevents me from focusing on anything long enough to work. (see: anxiety feels like slowly being eaten alive)
normally, I turn to deep journaling to untangle my anxiety, THEN start working.
but what if it could be simultaneous?
how would I transmute anxiety into energy, and power?
mark ruffalo - comedy and embodied acting
Mark Ruffalo’s interview made me smile a lot, and inspires me to say something super basic like... “Aww. I really really really like him.” I liked him a lot as The Incredible Hulk - which is where I first saw him. in this interview, hearing his voice and personal story made him seem so real, humble, down-to-earth, grounded, human, funny — like some normal guy who, from a young age -- despite not being born in a family of artist or actors (but instead, of house painters, construction painters, business people) -- was just really passionate about something, and decided to devote his life to it.
I guess this is the thing with actors as public figures. You watch them play characters — that is, you watch them use their bodies as the vessels of these fictional characters -- and then you project your own reactions and feelings to those characters.
Comedy as Play & Spontaneity
“in comedy, I mean, I find is you have to be you have to be very open to play... And it's not an inner thing. it's this open thing and it happens in this kind of special space that's outside yourself. And so you have to be very open and aware and ready to grab whatever is being given to you and then play with it.”
“like if you're really in the flow of comedy, the accidents are the goal. Those are the gifts from God, you know.”
I love his description of comedy, particularly because it's not a genre I seek out a lot. in this interview, he describes it as a process of such openness and play. it reminds me that what makes acting feel alive is this element of improvisation, and improvisation can only happy when fully in the present.
over the years, I've come to see my own creative process - writing and drawing - as an ongoing dance with spontaneity; and I've felt that my best, in-the-flow work is born from a sense of PLAY, as in, it feels more like PLAY-WORK, rather than work-work.
Using the body to channel energy in acting
“Certain people have, you know, tension in their bodies in certain places, and it makes them move a certain way [...]
And there's a toughness about someone who's holding their pelvis, I mean, you know, where they're holding their solar plexus like that, you know? It's someone who's, like, protecting something, and it makes you walk a certain way. And it sort of pulls down on your spine, your vocal cords in a certain way. [...]
I want to try to assume some of that. But I also found when you start doing that, there's an inner quality that starts to come into view.”
this felt both so intuitively, obviously true, and delightfully surprising.
the question it opens up for me is:
how could the practice of "embodied performance" be ways of accessing the different facets of our infinite selves?
how can I use the body as a portal - to channel the parts of myself that want to be activated at different levers?
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