Structure begets Chaos (the good kind)
Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
—Gustave Flaubert, via MacSparky.
If you’re hoping to get creative, you need a so-called “trusted system” to help manage the stuff of everyday life, and more than anything you have to stick to it. That’s the regular part. It’s the daily habit of doing, and getting past the chores of email and life management that can so easily eat up your whole life. After years of resisting, I’ve finally gone with the (expensive) system of OmniFocus on my devices, and so far it is helping. Based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done, it seems like every blog on the web blathers on about this stuff non-stop. When in doubt, blog about your trusted system!
I promise not to do that. But now that I am thoroughly bourgeois (I’m wearing plaid shorts for Chrissake!), I’m ready to be a total artistic Bohemian!
Eric Armstrong is the voiceguy. Eric is a dialect, voice, speech and text coach based in Toronto, Canada, where he normally teaches full-time at York University’s Dept. of Theatre. Eric has been teaching voice for the actor full-time since 1994, and has taught in Canada and the US, at the University of Windsor, Brandeis University, Roosevelt University, Canada's National Voice Intensive and York University. He has worked for nationally and internationally recognized companies such as Crow’s Theatre, Volcano, SoulPepper, & Canadian Stage in Toronto, and The Court Theatre and Steppenwolf in Chicago. Eric holds a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal) in Theatre Performance, and an MFA from York University (Toronto) in Acting. His mentors were David Smukler (York, Canada’s National Voice Intensive) and Andrew Wade (Royal Shakespeare Company). He has also studied at the Drama Studio, London, and Il Stage Internazzionale di Commedia dell’Arte in Reggio Emilia, Italy. He’s a long time member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, where he has served on the board, as a conference planner, photo editor for the Voice and Speech Review, Founding Director of Technology and Internet Services, and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles, essays and reviews for the VASTA Newsletter, the VASTA Voice, and The Voice and Speech Review.