Uncertainty, my friend

Uncertainty, my friend, where will you lead me to?

Will it by actions that will tread me ahead

Or

Will you pave way for me 

Like a well-wisher in disguise?

That's the first thought that came to my mind when I was momentarily staring at the blank new post. 

Does an artist's life has to be uncertain? 

Is it really thrilling to not know what lies ahead and yet go on? 

I don't know.

Deep down, I don't find it thrilling because it tests my survival instincts which throw me out of comfort zone and that has started to happen quite a lot. So will it become my new comfort zone then, I wonder?

The day passed by quite quickly and right now while I type this I am feeling the kind of uncertainty that comes with doing a new project where you don't know how it will land up, who will end up working, will it even be made, will it ever come out, what happens if does? There are so many tricky questions that are crossing my mind right now, as if I have given a birth to a baby and now I don't know how it will grow up. Though the baby is not mine originally but I am one of the guardians of that baby who has the responsibility to take it ahead and make something great out of it. I have never done something like this and maybe that is why it feels a bit nervy and new and there is a sense of anxiety as well. Also, I am thinking about the kind of money I will eventually make out of it. I can now very slightly imagine the emotional upheaval a writer must be going through while writing a book or a screenplay because it so fucking tricky space - you don't know anything how it is going to turn out until you have really written something and have it with you tangibly. I get reminded of a great line one of the most innovative screenwriters Charlie Kaufman said : The best thing about your first screenplay is that you wrote a screenplay. That comes from sheer experience of struggling to write a story worth telling (actually I believe every story is worth telling, it is the how you tell it that matters). 

I randomly started to read Andrei Tarkovsky's book Sculpting in Time; just felt like reading it. I found his insight quite tough to understand and whatever I did understand was very very relatable to the kind of things Stanislavski used to say about art: truth of the moment and the characters and the circumstances they are in. I don't know, I just got struck with a sense of relation between the two. 

It is very interesting to read about these legendary filmmakers to know about what they thought about the work they did and what were their POVs and how did they alter with time. It gives a sense of clarity and a direction, and sometimes it just inspires you to create and pursue your work, and sometimes it gets you back on the track of being an artist and finding the truth in the art you are creating. 

Isn't that the biggest question for an artist: to find the truth in what he does? What is truth in art after all? How do you define it? It sounds like an incomprehensible yet a tangible feeling that cannot be conjured in words but only in the gut, but then our task is to conjure it if not in the words then in the visual. That is what I can do: write and act, these are my two mediums of expression which I am going to explore forever in my life hoping that survival does not come across as a hinderance in the work I create. 

Deep work has to begin from tomorrow. 

Big talks and small actions... not a good combination... actions, actions, actions... that is what the world looks upto... what actions you take is what the people see... my actions will decide my fate and it is in my hands only... the sooner I write and spend time with myself in honing myself as an artist - deep work - the better I get at my skills; that is what is in my hands. 

Rest, as I always say: who knows.