ARTicles vol. 7 i.1: Listening and Talking

Art is more than a representation of life. It is more than a mirror. It is more than a snapshot. The photographer sets up lights, uses shutter speeds, etc., to make a “likeness,” which is as much about his/her eye as it is about what is observed. Did you happen to see the cover of Vanity Fair where the photographer Annie Leibovitz photographed President George W. Bush and his defense team the winter after the World Trade Center was hit by terrorist planes? That is not just a photo—not just a mirror. The photographer is creating a sort of fiction out of this group of people. Yet art strives to make meaning.

To me, artists are students of the human condition, potentially. Being outside does not mean being without compassion. But it does mean that you may sometimes become clinical.
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Years ago I interviewed the head of pediatric surgery at Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York. I asked him what had moved him to become a cancer surgeon for children. I thought he would tell me a moving story about having seen a child suffering, but instead he replied, “I wanted to do bigger operations.”

What was driving him was his desire to be a very good surgeon, and to discover things. I think as artists we too should want to do “bigger operations.”

Standing in and out at the same time is a structural matter. It is a way of bringing order to the otherwise chaotic situation of life. I say chaotic because as an artist you are both in life and commenting on life. That’s your position.
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Elizabeth Neuffer was a friend of mine. She was a war correspondent for the Boston Globe. When she was preparing to go to Afghanistan in 2001, I talked to her while she was packing. She needed batteries for her cell phone, some dried fruits and nuts, which were easy to carry, proper clothes, and so forth. Those would have been expected. What surprised me was that the last thing she did before leaving was to go to Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City, where she got samples of perfume. Not for herself. These were gifts that would not take up a lot of space in her suitcase, and she could carry a lot of them. She would give them out after interviews as a way of saying thanks. And you know what else she packed? Pens. She would also be giving out pens, saying as she did so to children in Afghanistan, as she had done in Bosnia and Rwanda: “The pen is mightier than the sword. Use this one.”
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As an actress I feel that my identity is for rent. Not for sale. But for rent.
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We need to know how to talk and listen and revitalize the art of conversation. A work of art engenders a conversation.

The back-and-forth, sending and receiving, listening and talking, sitting with your pad and paper, or easel, or board and watercolors and watching others watch you paint-—all of this can be a kind of leadership, and it can cause change.

As humans we are interested in seeing the human face of things, and acting puts a human face on things or on deep feelings or on ideas. Acting is bridging the gap between yourself and the character, yourself and the playwright, yourself and the director, yourself and the other actors, yourself and the costume, yourself and the light, yourself and the objects, yourself and the actions. Acting is bridging the gap between the character and the audience, yourself and the audience. Acting is going into a dark place, whether a theater or a soundstage, or a bright place, and exposing your soul to a group of strangers, whether three or thirty, whether in a movie theater or a live theater, on a street corner or an ocean liner.
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As an artist, I see myself as one of the clowns, one of the fools, one of those who see the world upside down and inside out. I am a fool in the classic sense. But I take my foolishness very seriously.