Here's a snippet from my @TEDTalks: "Getting attention is addictive. I’ve been lucky in my life to get a lot more than my fair share of attention, and I’m grateful for that, because it’s a powerful feeling. ted.com/talks/joseph_g… [1/10]
But there’s another powerful feeling that I’ve also been lucky to experience a lot as an actor. And it’s funny, it’s sort of the opposite feeling because it doesn’t come from getting attention. It comes from paying attention. [2/10]
When I’m acting I get so focused that I’m only paying attention to one thing. Like when I’m on set and we’re about to shoot and the first AD calls out, Rolling, and then I hear: Speed, Marker, Set, and then the director calls Action. [3/10]
I’ve heard that sequence so many times, it’s become this Pavlovian magic spell for me. Rolling, Speed, Marker, Set and Action, and something happens to me. [4/10]
I can’t even help it. My attention narrows, and everything else in the world and anything else that might be bothering me or grabbing my attention, it all goes away. And I’m just there. [5/10]
THAT feeling, that is what I love, that to me is creativity, and that’s the biggest reason I’m so grateful that I get to be an actor. [6/10]
So there are these two powerful feelings. There’s getting attention and paying attention. Of course, in the last decade or so, new technology has allowed more and more people to have this powerful feeling of getting attention. [7/10]
For any kind of creative expression, not just acting, could be writing or photography or drawing or music, everything. The channels of distribution have been democratized, and that’s a good thing. [8/10]
But I do think there’s an unintended consequence for anybody on the planet with an urge to be creative, myself included, because I’m not immune to this. I think that our creativity is becoming more and more of a means to an end. And that end is to get attention. [9/10]
So I feel compelled to speak up, because in my experience, the more I go after that powerful feeling of PAYING attention, the happier I am. But the more I go after the powerful feeling of GETTING attention, the unhappier I am." [10/10]
Full talk here: ted.com/talks/joseph_g…
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