I need start with this: this concept just blows my mind! I'm still trying to figure out how to explain it, so please bear with me. Enjoy!
"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's how you carry it."--Lena Horne
Our society is corrupted by the idea of success. How could success, an ideally good thing, ruin our society? First, let me explain what success is. Success is the achievement of an endeavor. It can be seen in competitions, awards, and not surprisingly, pretty much everywhere. The point of this article: there is no success without failure, and failure sucks. Our world is driven by success, but what about when people fail?
In the art of improvisational theatre, instructors always tell improvisors, "It's okay to fail." As much as a I agree with this teaching method, one thing always feels wrong about someone saying this. Failure is a great learning tool, but when we keep pushing ourselves to succeed, failure is inevitable. And to be frank, failure, no matter how much you fight it, does hurt.
We all understand that failure can push us to great achievements, but what is the ultimate goal? In my own experience, I fail every moment of my life, and part of me is broken by that. We live in a world driven by success, but does that mean everyone in the car is failing? Thank you improvisation and the improv community for teaching me the way out of this sad reality: enjoying life for what it is.
Why do people do improv? Is it to win something? Is it to gain glory? Is it to release? Everyone has different reasons, but I think the richest improv to perform and watch is the improv in which the actors are just enjoying themselves. To be a great improvisor, we need let go and let our inner-child take over. We need to remember the times when everything was art.
As a child, we didn't instinctively have this idea of success, we just loved experiencing and discovering the world--and that's all that mattered! We didn't find out about what failure was until society smacked our face with it! Can we go back to that mind frame before we learned about failure? To the times of bliss and enjoying the wonders of life?
Of course, setting goals in your life is important, but what if instead of living trying to achieve something, we lived to just experience life? We need to live life like it was art. You can never master an art, but you can learn how to get better at it. In all art forms, the goal is never to be famous or to beat out the competition, it's to learn your craft and attempt to master it knowing beforehand that it is impossible--and of course, being content with that. Failure is an unfortunately inevitable part of a broken society, but is it also one of the greatest gifts? What if failure didn't exist, would we appreciate anything? Failure hurts, and our society has learned to live with it and to use it, but what if we got rid of the concept of failure? Would the results be amazing, or would they be catastrophic? I think they would be amazing. But hey, that's just my observation.
Human Life: Live life as if it was an art.
Insight: Our society is structured on success, but oddly enough, failure influences us more.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Human Life: Objectives
In life, we all want something one time or another. It's human nature. Sometimes our objectives can clash with other people, thus causing turmoil and anguish in our life, but if we can balance what we want and the wants of others, we may be able to reach a state of bliss.
In improv, there's this teaching method for scenes called CROW. That stands for Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where. Each in their own respect has significant power in a scene. None of them can survive without the other, but for this blog observation, let's take a look at Objective.
In an improv scene, objective is "the clash or synergy of different characters' motives--the blood of the scene." What the hell does that mean? Well, in other words, objective is what each person wants in the scene, giving them motive for action. In a scene, it's important to identify what the objective of all the players are on stage, especially your own. When this is achieved, the richest scenes can come alive on stage, and the audience appreciates it. Imagining the audience once again as a reflection of culture, we can see more into human nature.
A funny thing about human nature is that we see things from one perspective--our own. We don't see into the minds of others, and thusly, empathy is vital in the connections to other human beings. To live a truly happy life we need to try to always be aware of what others are feeling and thinking. And even more importantly, we need to know what we are thinking. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. To live a rich life, we need to know who we are and why we do certain things. In a Buddhist perspective (I'm not Buddhist, but the human life insights are brilliant), observing our self as another person can be beneficial to human life. Woah, I know, I threw a metaphysical idea out there, but what if we did do that? If we saw ourselves as other people and identified our motivations and inspirations? This, combined with the awareness of others' perspectives, can lead to a powerful result. Know your objective--know the objectives of others.
Human Life: Empathy towards ourselves and others is important in a foundation for living a full life.
Insight: In our society, people only tend to see from one perspective.
Feel free to comment on that little box or on facebook---->
In improv, there's this teaching method for scenes called CROW. That stands for Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where. Each in their own respect has significant power in a scene. None of them can survive without the other, but for this blog observation, let's take a look at Objective.
In an improv scene, objective is "the clash or synergy of different characters' motives--the blood of the scene." What the hell does that mean? Well, in other words, objective is what each person wants in the scene, giving them motive for action. In a scene, it's important to identify what the objective of all the players are on stage, especially your own. When this is achieved, the richest scenes can come alive on stage, and the audience appreciates it. Imagining the audience once again as a reflection of culture, we can see more into human nature.
A funny thing about human nature is that we see things from one perspective--our own. We don't see into the minds of others, and thusly, empathy is vital in the connections to other human beings. To live a truly happy life we need to try to always be aware of what others are feeling and thinking. And even more importantly, we need to know what we are thinking. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. To live a rich life, we need to know who we are and why we do certain things. In a Buddhist perspective (I'm not Buddhist, but the human life insights are brilliant), observing our self as another person can be beneficial to human life. Woah, I know, I threw a metaphysical idea out there, but what if we did do that? If we saw ourselves as other people and identified our motivations and inspirations? This, combined with the awareness of others' perspectives, can lead to a powerful result. Know your objective--know the objectives of others.
Human Life: Empathy towards ourselves and others is important in a foundation for living a full life.
Insight: In our society, people only tend to see from one perspective.
Feel free to comment on that little box or on facebook---->
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Insight: Connections
Restaurants are weird, but we go. People gather in unfamiliar environments for what? A good meal? Or maybe it's the server and the luxury of being served? Or maybe it's the ability to spend time with other people? Hmmm...now we're getting somewhere.
To look into this phenomenon more, we can look at a great crowd pleaser improv game called First Date. The game works like this with variations depending on the performance: a couple from the audience comes to the stage and tells the players on stage the story of how they first met and the details of their first date. The improviser then continue to perform that first date. As an improvisor, you will quickly notice that the entertainment value of the game doesn't come from following the exact details given, but rather, they come from the interactions between the couple and others.
Now, what does that have to do with real life? You may have guessed it, but the answer is in the interactions and connections that are made at a restaurant. People don't just go to a restaurant for good food and a place to get away; they go for the people. People do go to restaurants alone, but those experiences really are outliers in this observations as they happen rarely in comparison.
According to a study I recently did in grad school, three categories of reason to eat-out rise from the rest: service, food quality, and people. Service and food quality are important, but the winner is people! Individuals don't just go to restaurants for the service or the food quality, it's for other people. More specifically, it's the connections that are made with others that you go with to the restaurant. Think about it: why go to dinner for a date, especially a first date? Why do we order drinks even thought we know they are overpriced? Why do we make sure the service is good? The answer to all these questions is that people enjoy connecting to other people, and a restaurant is the perfect environment to do so in. We make sure every piece of the experience is ideal to connect.
Insight: People go to restaurants to establish and maintain lasting connections.
Feel free to comment. I would love to hear your thought!
To look into this phenomenon more, we can look at a great crowd pleaser improv game called First Date. The game works like this with variations depending on the performance: a couple from the audience comes to the stage and tells the players on stage the story of how they first met and the details of their first date. The improviser then continue to perform that first date. As an improvisor, you will quickly notice that the entertainment value of the game doesn't come from following the exact details given, but rather, they come from the interactions between the couple and others.
Now, what does that have to do with real life? You may have guessed it, but the answer is in the interactions and connections that are made at a restaurant. People don't just go to a restaurant for good food and a place to get away; they go for the people. People do go to restaurants alone, but those experiences really are outliers in this observations as they happen rarely in comparison.
According to a study I recently did in grad school, three categories of reason to eat-out rise from the rest: service, food quality, and people. Service and food quality are important, but the winner is people! Individuals don't just go to restaurants for the service or the food quality, it's for other people. More specifically, it's the connections that are made with others that you go with to the restaurant. Think about it: why go to dinner for a date, especially a first date? Why do we order drinks even thought we know they are overpriced? Why do we make sure the service is good? The answer to all these questions is that people enjoy connecting to other people, and a restaurant is the perfect environment to do so in. We make sure every piece of the experience is ideal to connect.
Insight: People go to restaurants to establish and maintain lasting connections.
Feel free to comment. I would love to hear your thought!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Insight: Success
There's a very good improv game called ABCD that can tell a lot about humanity.
In this game, there are four players, each labeled as A, B, C, or D. The first player (A) comes out and establishes where they are, not necessarily having to use words, the second player (B) then establishes a relationship, the third (C) establishes the conflict, and then the fourth (D) resolves the conflict.
You may be wondering why I decided to post the rules to some fundamental training improv game. The answer is this: the keys to the success of this game are B and C--and there is something there we can learn from life and communication. True, the other letters have there responsibilities, but that's not what the audience finds interesting. The audience loves watching people in some sort of relationship and then having something that causes their relationship or goals to hinder themselves.
In the performance of improv, the audience is usually a pretty good reflection of the cultures around you. There is great insight to be taken from improvisation, and I'm bound to find out what those are. People love to see strife, but they more want to see success.
We, as humans, love to see that people have to work for what they want in life. We feel bonded to those people, and even sympathetic. Think about it, don't we want someone to deserve what they receive? When we see those who inherit large amounts of money, we often have two emotions: jealousy or pity. We are jealous of those that receive something unworthily, and we feel pity (which transfers to anger) on them if they never were to know what work is. The world is a weird place and human behavior is such an interesting area of study.
Insight: People appreciate knowing someone deserves success.
Is this an obvious insight into the world? Yes, it is. But this blog is just getting started! Feel free to post any comment. I would love to hear your thoughts!
In this game, there are four players, each labeled as A, B, C, or D. The first player (A) comes out and establishes where they are, not necessarily having to use words, the second player (B) then establishes a relationship, the third (C) establishes the conflict, and then the fourth (D) resolves the conflict.
You may be wondering why I decided to post the rules to some fundamental training improv game. The answer is this: the keys to the success of this game are B and C--and there is something there we can learn from life and communication. True, the other letters have there responsibilities, but that's not what the audience finds interesting. The audience loves watching people in some sort of relationship and then having something that causes their relationship or goals to hinder themselves.
In the performance of improv, the audience is usually a pretty good reflection of the cultures around you. There is great insight to be taken from improvisation, and I'm bound to find out what those are. People love to see strife, but they more want to see success.
We, as humans, love to see that people have to work for what they want in life. We feel bonded to those people, and even sympathetic. Think about it, don't we want someone to deserve what they receive? When we see those who inherit large amounts of money, we often have two emotions: jealousy or pity. We are jealous of those that receive something unworthily, and we feel pity (which transfers to anger) on them if they never were to know what work is. The world is a weird place and human behavior is such an interesting area of study.
Insight: People appreciate knowing someone deserves success.
Is this an obvious insight into the world? Yes, it is. But this blog is just getting started! Feel free to post any comment. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Introduction to the Scene
Hello all. My name is Angelo Camacho. I graduated from Gonzaga University in May 2010 and am now attending graduate school at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California.
I've lived quite the life, but this blog isn't about what I did one day and what I ate--this is something more. I'm an ad student, and I'm using this blog to record my insights and observations about the world. You see, that's how I operate. I take what I see from the world and make stuff from from it. I'm an comedic improviser on my spare time--so creativity and discovery are very important in all areas of my work. Hope you enjoy the work and insights I will be posting.
Thanks for viewing!
I've lived quite the life, but this blog isn't about what I did one day and what I ate--this is something more. I'm an ad student, and I'm using this blog to record my insights and observations about the world. You see, that's how I operate. I take what I see from the world and make stuff from from it. I'm an comedic improviser on my spare time--so creativity and discovery are very important in all areas of my work. Hope you enjoy the work and insights I will be posting.
Thanks for viewing!
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