The things the book "THE FUTURIST - The Life and Films of JAMES CAMERON" by Rebecca Keegan and Japanese book "James Cameron - Talks About Film" by James Cameron and Takao Komine told me

Today I'll write about the book "THE FUTURIST - The Life and Films of JAMES CAMERON" by Rebecca Keegan and Japanese book "James Cameron - Talks About Film" by James Cameron and Takao Komine. James Cameron is one of my favorite artists all the time. I love his film "Titanic" the most, and I love his attitude for his filmmaking and life, style to make his imagination realize and challenging spirit. I'll write about them by mainly quoting some passages from the book "THE FUTURIST."

Focus on writing and making

“Cameron found writing a lonely, utterly unforgiving process. "Every thought, every gesture, is judged directly," he says. "And it's very hard to get started, and to stay focused."”

As he says like this, the writing process is so tough, and it's so difficult to stay focused. About when he focused on writing the script of "Avatar" was written in this way in this book.

“Cameron went to his vacation house in Crested Butte, Colorado, to work on the script. After New Year's, he relocated to his ranch in Santa Barbara County to continue writing.

—

Whenever he went, Cameron faced his usual writing demons. "I'm not one of these guys who can write from nine to four every day and have a normal family or social life at the same time," Cameron says. "I need to completely isolate and think about the piece 24-7. This gets harder later in your career, when you're multitasking on lots of projects, and having five kids doesn't help. I still need to bunker completely to get anything good written."”

I can understand his thought because I need to be away from daily life and mood and focus on myself to write my lyrics and compose my music, too. I can't relocate to my ranch like him now. But I often used to go to my favorite cafe with my MIDI piano and Mac and focus on making music by Ableton Live. That enabled me to write a lot of songs. And I always make an effort to stop multitasking by being away from SNS and other media. In the case of James Cameron, he simplifies his relationship to others like this to stay focused on his making films.

“For much of the director's career he has had no agent or publicist, relying instead on a tight circle of colleagues like Lightstorm president Rae Sanchini and Titanic and Avatar producer Jon Landau to mediate between him and the outside world.

—

Cameron rarely lunches or parties and applies none of his laser-beam focus to the Hollywood power struggles detailed in industry blogs or the pages of Variety.”

I think this tight circle of colleagues enables him to focus on his writing his incredible and unique scripts and to make fantastic films. He says that he is very unsociable. And he says he dislikes going parties, and playing golfs in the book "James Cameron - Talks About Film" by James Cameron and Takao Komine, too. And he says working on a film together is a better way to know others' human nature than going parties or having dinner together in the book. And he says he hardly uses his mobile phone and his working companions know that they can't contact him generally in the book. I think this style enables him to focus on his film.

The Spirit of DIY

James Cameron was working with Roger Corman, who is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film when he was young. Corman's low-budget productions have launched the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, and many others in Hollywood. As Cameron was working at a low-budget film project, I think he has the strong spirit of DIY.

“By the time he got to Avatar, Cameron would be holding the camera, editing the footage, mixing the sound—performing almost every technical and artistic task on the film himself except acting.”

I love this indie style because I am indie, too. I make all my music by myself, and I made my music video "Island Girl" by myself. I bought my cameras, lenses, stabilizers and editing software, wrote the script, went location hunting, decided cast roles in a play, contacted them, held the cameras, edited the footage, and so on. This style is so hard. But I believe this enables him to realize his originality. 

“On the Terminator, if an actor needed to have a stunt explained to him, Cameron demonstrated it, without padding. "He jumped on this Honda motorcycle I was supposed to be riding and accelerated and spun around, did a one-eighty to show me what he wanted," Schwarzenegger recalls. "I thought he was crazy." Cameron relied on all the low-budget tricks he had learned working for Roger Corman but delivered them at triple the scale. For a scene where a truck explodes on a downtown street,, he cut from a long shot of a real semi to a miniature on the first burst of flame. "He had everything laid out in such detail that there was no room for error," Schwarzenegger says. "He got so obsessed and so into it, he lived the movie."”

He is crazy. Amazing! Like a boy! This is one of the reasons I love him.

Today I put the pen here though I can't write about all the critical aspects of these books and James Cameron. So soon I'll write about him again. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this. Feel free to leave me a comment.

About "Limiting", "Calmness" and "Emptiness" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki

Today I'll write about the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. This blog post is next to this article, "About "Worst One", "Giving" and "Attitude toward Life and Importance of Continuing" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki". I believe this book gives deep insight into our lives and help us live better. Let's get started.

Limiting

At first, I quote the lines I love.

"You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do. But there is a way. The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity, or to be concentrated on what you are doing in this moment. Instead of having some particular object in mind, you should limit your activity. When your mind is wandering about elsewhere you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature. This is our way."

I agree with this idea. In this modern world, it's not easy to focus on our important things because there are a lot of things we can do. But as the author says, if we don't limit our activity, we can't express anything after all. In the process of making music, I always limit my activity. There are a lot of things to decide by myself. What lyric, arrangement, harmony, melody, guitar sounds, piano sounds, what synthesizers should I use, how should I sing, what kick, snare, hat sound should I use, and so on. So limiting is essential. By limiting, I can find the sound I was looking for. Thus limiting tells us the crucial things for us. So if you have feel that you can't express yourself now, how about limiting your activity?

Calmness

Next, I want to write about calmness. In this book, the author talked about calmness like this.

"A Zen poem says, "After the wind stops I see a flower falling. Because of the singing bird I find the mountain calmness." Before something happens in the realm of calmness, we do not feel the calmness; only when something happens within it do we find the calmness. There is a Japanese saying, "For the moon; there is the cloud. For the flower there is the wind." When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is. But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else."

These passages contain such an interesting idea. Indeed if you are in the noisy crowd, you can't listen to music. And the author goes on.

"When you are doing zazen, you are within the complete calmness of your mind; you do not feel anything. You just sit. But the calmness of your sitting will encourage you in your everyday life. So actually you will find the value of Zen in your everyday life, rather than while you sit. But this does not mean you should neglect zazen. Even though you do not feel anything when you sit, if you do not have this zazen experience, you cannot find anything; you just find weeds, or trees, or clouds in your daily life; you do not see the moon. That is why you are always complaining about something. But for Zen students a weed, which for most people is worthless, is a treasure. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art."

Calmness makes weeds something more than weeds. It makes trees something more than trees. And poems will be born there. This is art.

Emptiness

I think this emptiness is the most important point of Zazen.

"When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To be independent in this true sense, we have to forget everything which we have in our mind and discover something quite new and different moment after moment. This is how we live in this world."

If we don't have emptiness, we can't learn anything and feel freshness. If we don't have emptiness, we can't accept new things, different things. So I think it's important to forget everything. And he goes on.

"So we say true understanding will come out of emptiness. When you study Buddhism, you should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them."

Yes. If we forget or abandon something essential for us, we can bring them back. So we don't have to worry about forgetting. I think the most important thing is to have a mind that identifies what is essential for ourselves from others. In the process of limiting our activity, abandoning, forgetting a lot of things, our mind will be sharpened more and more. And at last we'll find essential elements to us.

Today I put the pen here. Soon I'll write about other parts of this book I haven't written yet. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.

About "Worst One", "Giving" and "Attitude toward Life and Importance of Continuing" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki

Today I'll write about the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. This blog post is next to this article, "About "Beginner's Mind" and "Mind Weeds" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki”. I believe this book gives deep insight into our lives and help us live better. Let's dive into this book.

Worst One

I'll write about the chapter "The Marrow of Zen" at first. I want to pick up my favorite lines.

"When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen. But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So I think that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one."

"We say, "A good father is not a good father." Do you understand? One who thinks he is a good father is not a good father; one who thinks he is a good husband is not a good husband. One who thinks he is one of the worst husbands may be a good one if he is always trying to be a good husband with a single-hearted effort."

These lines tell us the possibility of the worst one. So these passages give me power and encourage me. That's because I think I'm not the best horse. But so I could study music, art, history, literature, English a lot and practice vocal, piano, guitar and the way to make music a lot. And I continue to do so now, too. I often felt that I was worse than others. These feelings grew me. So I'm grateful to those experiences now. I'll think that I am worse than others from now on, too. At that time, I want to remember these passages. So if you ever felt something similar to me, these sentences will push your back.

Giving

In the chapter "God Giving" of this book, the author writes about giving. He writes like this.

"We are, in actuality, giving out everything. Moment after moment we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life."

And he goes on like this.

"When you give something you feel good, because at that time you feel at one with what you are giving. This is why it feels better to give than to take."

Indeed I think it feels better to give than to take. Listening to music and watching films and reading blogs are so fun. But to give my original music, films, blogs are more joyful. So I'm writing these blogs and making music and so on. I agree with the idea. And the author goes on like this.

"We should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new. To do something new, of course we must know our past, and this is all right. But we should not keep holding onto anything we have done; we should only reflect on it. And we must have some idea of what we should do in the future. But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new. This is our attitude, and how we should live in this world."

He says we should forget what we have done. This advice is unique. But it's not difficult to understand this idea. Indeed if we don't forget what we have done, we will be able to create something new and give others something new.

Attitude toward Life and Importance of Continuing

In the chapter "Mistakes in Practice", he writes about mistakes in Zen practice. This chapter is thought-provoking. He writes like this.

"Usually when you practice zazen, you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal. So as long as your practice is based on a gaining idea, and you practice zazen in an idealistic way, you will have no time actually to attain your ideal. Moreover, you will be sacrificing the meat of your practice. Because your attainment is always ahead, you will always be sacrificing yourself now for some ideal in the future. You end up with nothing. This is absurd; it is not adequate practice at all. But even worse than this idealistic attitude is to practice zazen in competition with someone else. This is a poor, shabby kind of practice."

I understand this idea so much that it hurts. But I don't agree with this idea. Indeed if I set my goal and ideal in my mind, I might not attain my ideal now, and so I might sacrifice myself now. But I believe we can enjoy the way and the process to our ideal, goal, and dream. I sometimes feel painful by the gap between my real and my ideal. Nevertheless, I don't agree with his idea. That's because my experiences told me the joy of the process to our ideal, goal, and dream. If I haven't had my ideal, I couldn't complete my album "Timeless" and my music video "Island Girl". There were a lot of tough time to complete them. But every day, I was drawing my ideal. So when they finished, I trembled with joy I'd never experienced. Before I wrote the blog post about Michael Jackson's autobiography "Moonwalk". In that blog post, I wrote about Michael Jackson's attitude toward setting goals. He loved setting goals and achieving them, too. I sympathize with his idea. If you are interested in his view, I recommend you to check out the post "The things Michael Jackson's autobiography "Moonwalk" gives me 2/2".

But after these lines, he writes like this. And these lines are so inspirational.

"Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not. When you are tired of sitting, or when you are disgusted with your practice, you should recognize this as a warning signal. You become discouraged with your practice when your practice has been idealistic. You have some gaining idea in your practice, and it is not pure enough. It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice. At that time, forgetting all about your mistake and renewing your way, you can resume your original practice. "

Let's consider the "practice" as "our life" here. We don't have a teacher in our lives, and we can't find whether our life is adequate or not. But there are ways to find whether our life is adequate or not. If we feel tired or disgusted with our lives, these might be our signs or signals to change our way of living. I love this idea. Yes. It's okay to change the way to live our lives when we feel something wrong. And he goes like this.

"If you find some difficulty in your practice, that is the warning that you have some wrong idea, so you have to be careful. But do not give up your practice; continue it, knowing your weakness. Here there is no gaining idea. Here there is no fixed idea of attainment. You do not say, "This is enlightenment," or "That is not right practice." Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice. Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice."

He emphasizes the importance of continuing here. I agree with his idea. If we continue to do something, we face some difficulties from a variety of perspectives. But at that time we can learn new important things. In my case, I love music. So I've worked on my music for such a long time. I've faced my vocal problem. At that time, it took a lot of time. But I overcame the problem by changing the way to train my vocal at last. I've faced plateaus of piano and guitar and English skills. At that time, I broke those plateaus by changing the way to practice them. I've encountered a lot of other problems and difficulties to continue to make my music. There were a lot of tough times to live. But I didn't want to stop making my music and continue to make music. So every time I faced the problem, I looked for other ways to proceed and finally found the way to proceed. So I say this with conviction.

"There are other ways to proceed. So don't give up and continue to do what you love."

Now I have some problems, too. But I believe I will find good other ways to overcome them. So if you have any difficulties now, you'll find your way to proceed at last.

Today I put the pen here. Soon I'll write about other parts of this book I haven't written yet. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.

About "Beginner's Mind" and "Mind Weeds" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki

Today I want to write about the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. This book gives me some profound insight into our life every time I read this book. In this book, the author Shunryu Suzuki tries to help readers understand the wisdom of Dōgen Zenji, who was a Japanese Buddhist priest, writer, poet, philosopher, and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan by using plain texts and examples. I'm an atheist as almost all modern Japanese people. But I believe this book gives you valuable insight into your life without regard to your religion. So let's get started.

Beginner's Mind

In the first chapter, "Beginner's Mind" of this book, he tells us the goal of Zen. And he says like this.

"In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means "beginner's mind." The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. "

As he says, the goal of Zen practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. But why is the beginner's mind important? He implies the answer by these passages.

"For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."

What did you feel about these lines? I'm calm and feel happiness. That's because these lines tell us that our original mind already have everything. We are likely to try to find what is missing. But we have everything in my mind because there are many possibilities. Indeed I think it's worth being an expert. We try to become experts in particular fields or areas. And we become experts at last. But then we might find that we've lost the joy we felt when we're beginners. I've experienced these in various aspects. So I think it's essential to try to keep my beginner's mind. If I forget the beginner's mind, I'll lose the joy of making music, listening to music, and loving my irreplaceable person. So I love this way of thinking of Zen.

Mind Weeds

In the chapter "Mind Weeds" of this book, he tells us the importance of weeds we have in our minds. In our life, there are a lot of weeds in our minds. Some of them might make you feel low. How will you deal with them? He writes like this.

"You should rather be grateful for the weeds, because eventually they will enrich your practice. If you have some experience of how the weeds in your mind change into mental nourishment, your practice will make remarkable progress. You will feel the progress. You will feel how they change into self-nourishment.—We must have the actual experience of how our weeds change into nourishment. "

I think these passages are important when we think about our way of living. This way of thinking might look like the way of thinking in the article "The way to deal with failures that Walt Disney tells" I've wrote before. If you think the weeds as just weeds, they might be only weeds. But if you consider them as your mental nourishment, they will add depth to your life.

Today I put the pen here. Soon I'll write about other parts of this book I haven't written yet. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.

The way to deal with failures that Walt Disney tells

Today I want to write about Walt Disney. At first, I want to introduce his words I love.

"I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a Mouse."

These words push my back all the time. We hope to realize something big, and I think this is an important thing. I love these words by William Smith Clark.

"Boys, be ambitious."

I've ever lived with ambition. And I possess high ambitions now, too. But at the same time it is necessary to keep in mind that everything starts with a small thing. These words make me remind that. And these words teach me that I could do everything by starting my small action. So when I face some difficulties, I remember these words in my mind. If I do so, I feel as if I could do everything I want to do. Thus Walt Disney encourages me now and then. So today, I hope that this blog post might be something that you can rely on. Okay. Let's get started. I'll write about his way of thinking about failures mainly.

About Failure

When his Laugh-O-Gram Studio went into bankruptcy, Walt might be so tough. And when world war Ⅱ occurred, and his employees took strike action, he might experience such a hard time for him. Almost people might stop their challenge at those times. But he overcame these experience. And he didn't stop his challenge and decided to go to Hollywood to chase on his dream. These strong mentality is from his way of thinking. He thought his failures as not negative things but positive things. Well, I'll quote some of his words about failures.

"It is good to have a failure while you're young because it teaches you so much. For one thing it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you've lived through the worst, you're never quite as vulnerable afterward."

"All my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me."

"A kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."

These words encourage me all the time. It's easy for us to accept our failures as just failures. But he didn't recognize them as only failures. His these words tell us that he tried to think his failure as something essential and educational things. My favorite writer and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, says that we can give it meaning by the way we respond to it. I love this way of thinking. Walt Disney gave his failures meaning also. So he could use his these experience in his next actions. I think this is such an inspirational thing. All of us can use our failures. If we experience a failure, it's okay to find the meaning of the fault. And he says like these.

"In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense of zest for life."

"The victories must not be too easy. Strife to test valor is still an always will be the basic ingredient of the animated tale, as of all screen entertainments."

Yes. If we think our lives are screen entertainments or animations, our failures are essential ingredients to entertain others. And let's overcome them and touch our audience.

About Book

And I love these words about books of him.

"When I was a kid, I read an art book and the author advised young artists to be themselves. That decided it for me."

"Inspiration for what we produce in television and motion pictures comes from reading, observing the world of humans around us and also the animal kingdom."

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot."

"Everyone has been remarkably influenced by a book."

Not only Walt Disney but also my favorite artists, for example, Coco Chanel, Michael Jackson, Karl Lagerfeld, Shuji Terayama and Osamu Dazai are avid readers. I think their reading experience might make their unique personality and art pieces. Reading books gives us a lot of inspiration and leads us to another world where we've never been. So I love reading books, and I have some books which influenced me a lot. Do you have any books that influenced you and change your life? If you have any recommendation, please feel free to leave a comment.

Today I put the pen here. Soon I will write about Walt Disney more and more because I've never written about him enough. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.