2011/05/19

Milton Glaser - on the fear of Failure.


In professional life you must discover a kind of identity for yourself, that becomes a sort of trademark; a way of working that is distinctive that people can recognize.

The reason for this is that the path to financial success and notoriety is by having something that no one else has. Kind of like a brand ( one of my most despised words)

So what you do in life in order to be professional is develop a brand, your way of working, your attitude that is understandable to others.

In most cases, it turns out to be something fairly narrow...

..and then you discover you have something to offer that is better than other people have, or at least more distinctive.

And what you do with that, is you become a specialist.
Then people will call you to get more of what you've become adept at doing.
So if you do anything and become celebrated for it, people will send you more of that.
For the rest of your life, quite possibly, you will have that characteristic and people will continue to ask you for what you have already done and succeeded at.

This is the way to professional accomplishment: you have to demonstrate that you know something unique, that you can repeat, over, and over and over until ultimately you loose interest in it.

The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it basically doesn't aid in your development.

The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure. People begin to get better when they fail. When they move towards failure they discover something because of it. They fail again and they discover something else. So the model for personal development is antithetical to the model for professional success. As a result of that, I believe that Picasso as a model, is the most useful model you could have in terms of your artistic interest, because whenever Picasso learned how to do something he abandoned it. As a result of that, in terms of his development as an artist his results were extraordinary.

MAKING SOME NOISE

I started this blog essentiallly as a collection of my different interests and works. And today I am here to add my foray into the Audible arts. Voice acting. I've had an affinity for audio books and podcasts since my college days when I moved to Manila and had access to a relatively faster internet connection and the acquisition of an iPod. I still do enjoy music in my audio consumption, but I will admit to its lesser frequency of plays. As a fan of radio as medium you understand that the reason you listen to the radio is less for the music but more of the personalities eminating from the speakers. And What a personality I found that day when when I searched Comedy on iTunes on the BBC page. Russell Brand Radio 2 Show.

After that I became a fan. And the show became a constant companion during sleepless nights of finishing plates, projects etc. The internet was literally a gateway for me, the classic works of literature read by the best voices in the industry were now taking up the majority of my iPods memory space. And the number has been growing.

Then a few years back an event was held for the Local Voice Acting industry held by the leaders in the Voice Acting industry. And ever since then I have had it in the back of my mind that I could be part of this industry... now I actually have taken the initiative and have recorded my voice.

Here are a few samples:

If you consider yourself a comic book fan, you should know who Alan Moore is. I you dont, read on here.

Seeing what he looks like especially to me was quite jarring, what more the first time I heard him speak. I thought the trees of middle earth had a child in England. Anyway he appeared brefly on BBC The Wow Signal reading a message for our galactic brother. I never heard the audio but I Saw it as an opportunity to pay homage .

After which I kept to my Sci-fi bend and being a fan of Blizzards Starcraft. I went in search of its lore.


And to my utter joy while perusing one of my many favourite sites I came upon an oddity that could only happen in this generation. A theatre company know from Tennessee thought of crossing James Cameron's cinematic masterpiece with Shakespeare. They posted their script and I did a reading. I was very happy hear back from them and give me a crack at their second released script.


And I have been asked to do my first reading of a short story. Which was released this month. have a listen.

Since then I have taken a bit of a hiatus, since my studies must now take precedent. But i have been able to have fun on the side.



Rest assured more is to come.