When my friend mentioned this to me the other day I was flabbergasted and skeptical. At the very least, I thought he must be mistaken. He wasn't thinking of This Old House was he?

Turns out that Hugh Laurie is not only English but he's sooo English that he was chosen to play Bernie Wooster in the English sitcom Jeeves and Wooster based on P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. Go over to YouTube and search under "Jeeves and Wooster" to see Laurie in his former role.

This utter transformation, not only in accent but in personality, emphasized the talent some actors have for … well, acting. I don't always appreciate this. I often imagine I'm seeing the real person, dolled up with a costume and a little make-up. Maybe that impression is encouraged by the typecasting that many actors seem to suffer.

Hugh Laurie's transformation reminded me of another I'd seen recently while watching the Irish-born actress Sinéad Cusack take on two dramatically different roles. The first was as the dour matriarch of a mill-owning family in Victorian England in the dramatic mini-series North and South; the second was as the theatrical Miss Lavish, a writer of romance novels, in the 2007 production of A Room with a View. As with Laurie and his Wooster/House transformation, I could hardly imagine two more disparate characters.

It made me wonder whether American actors are more likely to be typecast than English? If so, why? Does it say something about the respective film industries in the two countries? Of course, it was an American producer, Bryan Singer, who chose Laurie to play Gregory House, though at the time he, too, thought Laurie was an American.

I'm sitting here uncharacteristically writing my blog directly into the blog window. Maybe I should select "adventuresome" as my mood, only that's not one of the choices.

I'm not sure I get the whole "Current Mood" thing. And even if I did, I wouldn't want to limit myself to someone else's list. Besides, I'm actually anticipating that my mood will change over the course of this entry. For instance, I was just over at PhotoBucket resizing the graphic at the head of this blog, using their new on-line editing tools. My mood then was "pleased" because the resizing tool worked intuitively and simply. Then when I pasted the graphic into this entry, only to find that it hadn't been resized, my mood was … I'll be polite and say "frustrated."

Right now the setting sun is flooding the apartment with buttery light so I'm "appreciative," that is until I notice the film of dust on everything, after which I'm "disgusted." I don't consider myself moody, but obviously I am—far too moody to hope that a pull-down menu is going to nail down my emotional state for more than 30 seconds.

Label me "done."

This morning I was reading Danny Gregory's The Creative License. I'd been reading for a while when I turned to a page on which Gregory had sketched several reproductions of Edward Hopper paintings, the first of which was called "Eleven A.M." Out of idle curiosity I glanced at the clock on the table beside me. It was eleven A.M.

First I want to thank people for subscribing and commenting. It’s great fun to have your words read by people you like and respect. A little daunting at times, too, but I’m not going to dwell on that. A couple of things people wrote in response to my last blog stayed with me and I wanted to say a little about them.

TL (TLDavis) wrote that “Art is not created, it is recognized,” which reminded me of those unfinished Michelangelo sculptures you see with the form emerging from the marble. Wasn’t it Michelangelo who said that the figure lies hidden in the stone and it’s the artist’s job to discover it?

I like these unfinished pieces (this one is called “Dying Slave”) for a few reasons. The first is that, as exquisite as they are even in their incomplete state, they make art seem accessible. Surely even someone like me can make a start—can hack a few chips off a block of granite, even if he doesn’t end up with a David or a Pieta? The second thing I like about them is their magical quality, as if the figures have been summoned from the rock by a spell. To me they speak of the transformative quality of art—transformative in a very literal sense in the case of a sculpture, but also emotionally transformative in terms of the way we respond to the stone after it has been carved. I also think the figure struggling to free itself from the rock is a wonderful and, at least some of the time, painfully accurate metaphor for the creative process.

As usual, Cindy (Tahllulah) wrote several things that caught my attention. She mentioned her own struggle to stay with a drawing and the commitment that preceded it. I don’t often make that conscious commitment to a piece of writing before I begin. Often I try to sidle up to it, mostly so that I can skulk off unnoticed if my courage or resolve fails me. Ya, I’m sneaky that way. But I’m also a fan of the timed exercise and I know that the commitment to write for 10 or 20 minutes can provide the impetus you need to get over that initial hump. Cindy also wrote that each new drawing feels like the first time. Seasoned writers have been known to admit the same thing. In some cases it even gets harder. This doesn’t seem fair. We expect a surgeon to become more efficient with experience, so why not artists? Maybe if you’re going to produce something other than cookie-cutter art—art that risks something and explores new territory—it’s always going to be a tough haul.

Cindy saved the best for last: “Only after one gives up can some progress be made.” But there’s so much to give up, isn’t there: your hopes and expectations for whatever you’re working on, your sense of control, your ambitions for yourself as an artist.

In Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, Stephen Nachmanovitch wrote this in his chapter entitled “Surrender”:

“Unless I surrender my identity, the instrument’s identity [He’s a musician by the way. - Doug] and the illusion of control, I can never become one with my own process, and the blocks will remain. Without surrender and trust—nothing.”

I don’t claim to know exactly what Nachmanovitch means by this but an incident from my own life occurred to me after I read it. When I was in my late thirties and newly in love (Why else would a guy do such a reckless thing?), I took dance lessons with my sweetheart. I got through the waltz, samba and even the tango without too much embarrassment, but the polka defied me. Try as I might I just couldn’t master that syncopated step. As the weeks wore on, and the other couples circled about us in apparent glee, I stumbled along with my increasingly disenchanted partner like my legs were made of logs.

Finally, on the night of our last lesson, as the first strains of the accordion music sounded and I tensed reflexively, the prospect of ever dancing the polka properly seemed hopeless. So I resolved to extract what pleasure I could from the situation. That was the first (and last) time I danced the polka. I bounced and spun my girlfriend around the dance floor like a crazed dervish, totally mystified by my newfound agility. The music ended too soon that night. Something unexpected had happened because I’d thrown in the towel—surrendered my hope of perfection, but stayed to dance the best I could. And maybe that’s the lesson to take away from this story.

And if you've read this far, I think I might owe you some money.

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

I don’t write a lot of poetry, but I’ve written more in the last year than I have in the previous forty. I doubt I’d have been able to do this—and to do it with such pleasure—had I thought of myself as a poet. Something similar happens when I’m working in PhotoShop. Neither activity is without its frustrations but, because I think of myself neither as a poet or an artist, I’m able to endure those frustrations with a certain equanimity. The challenges that are involved intrigue rather than discourage me. I become absorbed in the details.

In her discussion about drawing the human face in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards writes about the importance of leaving behind the symbols we learned in childhood for things like eyes, mouths and noses. While such symbols can be a useful shorthand, they can also get in the way of really seeing what’s in front of us. I think the same warning can apply to writing. It’s easy to fall into the trap of clichéd language that doesn’t accurately capture what we’re seeing or experiencing.

"She was blocked because she was trying to repeat things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn't think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn't recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was obvious she HAD to do some original and direct seeing." Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Sometimes I can become overpowered by boredom. I lose all interest in a project or idea. Am I genuinely bored with the project itself or am I bored with myself and my approach to the material? I think fear is behind a lot of my boredom: fear I’m wasting my time, fear of revealing my abysmal lack of talent and fear of starting something I’m not going to finish … yet again. It’s as if these fears are inhibiting me from throwing myself into the project, like I’m trying to protect myself from disappointment and, in the process, assuring it.

“I had painted and exhibited for years. I folded up my easel, closed my paint box, when I discovered that it was not really my aim to add to the world’s stock of art objects, discovered what I really wanted was to truly SEE before I die. And so I started to draw as if my life depended on it. It very probably did—and does.” The Zen of Seeing

Yup, I know. Maybe one too many "Zen" books. - Doug

Over the last several days, T. L. Davis has posted some thought-provoking blogs about writing. (http://www.livevideo.com/blog/TLDavis) I wanted to respond in a more comprehensive way than the 1000-character comment limit allowed.

I am not nor have I ever been a professional writer. I have not had anything published, though in the early days I submitted a few things to magazines and newspapers. I had my fantasies, both modest and grandiose: of getting a story published in a good literary journal or winning a competition; of writing the kind of novel I enjoyed reading at the time by Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving.

But the writing I did day in and day out, year in and year out—the writing I found myself capable of—was in my journals and it was largely about me and my thoughts. For a while I used to arrive at work an hour early and write my daily entry in longhand, with a cup of coffee at my side from the shop across the street. Now the computer is my preferred method. I do a little editing on the fly but mostly I try to write as quickly as possible, after the practice Julia Cameron introduced in "The Artist's Way." I seldom look at them after I've written them, unless it's to check my memory of a certain incident. I don't scour them for writing ideas. I don't have literary ambitions for them. They are frequently boring, even to me. Mostly they're a habit. Sometimes I write them when I'm not in the mood and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I wonder whether, if I'd written something else instead of spending all this time on the journals, I might have had a career as a writer. My suspicion is that writing them has kept me sane—at least my own brand of sanity—although there's evidence it has also fed my obsessions and preoccupations, too.

In case writing seems a little too much like brushing teeth, I should add a couple of other things. Even though I try to avoid doing too much of it in the journals, I like manipulating words. I like crafting a sentence so that it says exactly what I want it to say in the way I want to say it. And, slightly embarrassing to admit, I also like typing: feeling the keyboard under my fingers and hearing the purposeful clicking of the keys. It makes me feel lively and productive.

The writing that most satisfies me these days and, truth be told, has always satisfied me, is writing for an audience of one, either myself or someone I care about. In the latter case, it might be an e-mail or a message in a card. Seldom more than that. I write something that I hope will amuse them or move them or, at the very least, mean something to them. For me writing is very particular.

Last night I went to see "The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly," the movie adapted from Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of the same name. I read the book when it first became available in English in 1997, a few months after it was published in France. It seemed such a remarkable accomplishment that I found myself skeptical. Was this some sort of literary joke played on the gullible? Apparently not.

In December of 1995, at the age of 42, Bauby was felled by a stroke that left him paralyzed from head to toe. Aptly called "locked-in syndrome," the victim is imprisoned inside his own body: able to think, hear, see, feel and experience the psychological torment of his situation, but unable to move or communicate. Bauby's salvation, if you can call it that, was his left eyelid—the only part of his body he retained control over.

Through the dogged efforts of his therapists and a transcriber provided by his publisher, he was able to dictate the book. The alphabet was recited and he would blink his eye when the letter he wanted was reached. In this painstaking way the 129 pages of "The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly" were written.

At the time of his stroke, Bauby was the editor-in-chief of Elle, a popular fashion magazine. He was a busy guy: overseeing the daily operation of a large magazine; maintaining relationships with his former lover and their two children, as well as a girlfriend and an elderly father; indulging in the culinary and cultural pursuits available to a sophisticated Parisian of means in the late 20th century.

Contrast this boisterous, frenetic carnival of a life with Bauby's life after the stroke, tethered to a respirator (a fact absent from the film), confined to either a hospital bed or wheelchair, unable to even swat flies that settled on him, subject to the whims and insensitivities of his caregivers. In one scene I remembered from the book, Bauby is fanatically absorbed in a soccer game on television. An attendant casually comes into the room and flicks off the TV without consultation, leaving Bauby both apoplectic and helpless to express it.

And yet through it all Bauby finds meaning. Makes meaning. Becomes a keen observer of the minutiae of his current life and a connoisseur of the memories of his former one. After the movie, I felt profoundly grateful that I could breath on my own, stretch my limbs, and share my thoughts about the film with my friend without having to arduously blink my way through each word a letter at a time.

I almost didn't go out last night to watch the lunar eclipse. It was cold, -12°C (10°F), and the balcony was covered in four inches of snow and ice. I could imagine slipping on the ice and careering over the railing to my death, haplessly clinging to my tripod.

Two things lured me out of the warmth of the apartment: first, that I'd remembered the eclipse at all; second, that the thick mantle of cloud that had covered the sky earlier in the evening had moved off to reveal a sky with the kind of pristine clarity only possible on a cold winter night.

The temperature was well below the recommended operating temperature of my camera but I reckoned I'd only be out for a few minutes. The moon was high in the sky—awkward to adjust the tripod and to sight the camera, but perfect for observing free of atmospheric interference, which distorts things as you get closer to the horizon. That also meant the moon looked small, something my paltry 3x zoom couldn't do much about. The photo to the left was the first shot I took (a 4 sec. exposure) and proved to be the pick of the litter. In the photo, the out-of-shadow crescent appears as an ungainly bulge, but to the naked eye it was an elegant sliver emerging from the bronze disk of the eclipsed moon. The second shot was taken about twenty minutes later and the part of the moon still in shadow looks like an afterthought—the dome on a streetlight or a kid's beanie.

So, I'm glad I went out to see the eclipse. Afterwards, when I'd cleaned off the feet of the tripod and delivered my snow-clogged shoes to the boot mat, it seemed like a small effort to have made for such a rich reward.

The other day, I came across an address that Joseph Brodsky gave to students about boredom, which was an excerpt from a larger article published under the title "In Praise of Boredom." On the face of it, it seems defeatist and grim. Why in heaven's name should boredom be tolerated, let alone plunged into? Perhaps this piece appeals to the contrarian in me, in the same way Phillip Lopate's essay, "Against Joie de Vivre", did when I first read it.

http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/2005-May/003252.html

I was especially taken by the phrase that appeared at the end of this line:

"The worst monotonous drone coming from a lectern or the most eye-splitting textbook written in turgid English is nothing in comparison to the psychological Sahara that starts right in your bedroom and spurns the horizon."

I think "… spurns the horizon" captures the claustrophobia of boredom—that sense of being hemmed in by your circumstances or character or any number of other things, so that the future seems like a mirage.

Boredom—dealing with it, enduring it—is something that often comes up in meditation. I suspect everyone who has meditated for more than five minutes has confronted it; those feelings of entrapment and futility. The advice I've come across most frequently, as far as meditation is concerned at least, is not to identify with it. To observe it as if it were outside yourself, like a cloud scudding across the sky.

On the other hand, Brodsky seems to be encouraging a kind of identification with boredom, the opposite of contemplative detachment, but I think both approaches suggest that accepting and observing boredom might be a fruitful path, not only because it is part of the human condition but also because it has something to teach us.

Hope I haven't bored you (or maybe I do),

Doug