A favorite insight to reference when facilitating my Recipe for Genius workshops, is an interview with Sir Anthony Hopkins. In the interview Hopkins shares about a scene he was filming for the movie Meet Joe Black, during which his character has a heart attack. Hopkins tells the film’s director that he has two takes in which to get what he needs for the scene. When asked why only two takes, Hopkins states, “My body does not know the difference between me acting a heart attack, and my actually having a heart attack.” They got the scene in two takes.
The master artist knows how to keep his tools fine tuned and protected. During the Recipe for Genius workshops, we take a look at how the body does not distinguish between what we are imagining we are experiencing and our actually experiencing it. There is a fine line between thriving-in-art and suffering-for-art.
With a few practical tools, implemented as part of your creative process, you can set yourself up to have a healthy and healing experience of yourself as the artist while exploring the full spectrum emotional range of the human experience, without diseasing yourself.
The same could be said for how we live our life.
