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[0:00] Leah Walsh: Hi, and welcome to The Compass, the podcast documenting the struggles of life as an artist.

[0:04] Leah Walsh: I'm Leah Walsh.

[0:06] Leah Walsh: Hi guys, I have a mini episode today because I realized that The Compass has been out for a full year now.

[0:13] Leah Walsh: I missed the anniversary by a week, but here it is.

[0:16] Leah Walsh: So I'm saving the guest I recorded this week for next week.

[0:20] Leah Walsh: Right now I'd like to share a few thoughts, as well as a reading from one of the books on my late summer reading list recommended by guests, Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch.

[0:31] Leah Walsh: Also a short piece by one of my favorite playwrights, John Patrick Shanley, which has been a touchstone for me for the past ten and a half years.

[0:40] Leah Walsh: Please, if you've enjoyed the podcast over the past year, if you could take a moment and rate it on iTunes or leave a review or like the Facebook page.

[0:49] Leah Walsh: It would really help other listeners to find it, and I would appreciate it.

[0:53] Leah Walsh: Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy this special one-year anniversary mini-episode of The Compass.

[1:11] Leah Walsh: So I was thinking I had put out the first episode last year at the end of August, and then I checked, and it was August 12th, which has already passed.

[1:20] Leah Walsh: So here we are a year later, and I just have to say thank you for listening.

[1:25] Leah Walsh: Thank you to all the amazing artists who have been guests.

[1:36] Leah Walsh: The podcast documenting the lives of artists looking for balance in a business that doesn't give them much control.

[1:41] Leah Walsh: What do they do to keep themselves from going to the dark side?

[1:45] Leah Walsh: How do they find balance in their lives when they're making work but not necessarily making their entire living from it?

[1:52] Leah Walsh: This is a space for these conversations with my peers.

[1:56] Leah Walsh: I need to hear their perspectives because I'm struggling with the same challenges.

[2:05] Leah Walsh: I can't say that all the questions I had this time last year have been resolved.

[2:09] Leah Walsh: They still engulf me every other day, but this podcast has given me a much-needed anchor.

[2:15] Leah Walsh: And the responses saying it's been helpful to others has given me so much hope.

[2:21] Leah Walsh: The people who I have interviewed have definitely helped me and have helped others with their observations, their small daily tools, and huge life questions.

[2:31] Leah Walsh: Thank you for sharing your stories and your good and bad times with me.

[2:35] Leah Walsh: It has kept things in perspective over this last long year.

[2:39] Leah Walsh: Also, I look at the over 40 artists I've had on and the long list that I have yet to have on, and I'm just extremely grateful for the community I've found over the past 15 years.

[2:50] Leah Walsh: I'm very lucky to call these people friends and colleagues.

[2:53] Leah Walsh: Thank you.

[2:58] Leah Walsh: This is a short reading from Catching the Big Fish by filmmaker David Lynch, which Dean Muchichito recommended in his episode recently.

[3:06] Leah Walsh: These sections are titled Desire and Success and Failure.

[3:11] Leah Walsh: Desire for an idea is like bait.

[3:13] Leah Walsh: When you're fishing, you have to have patience.

[3:16] Leah Walsh: You bait your hook and then you wait.

[3:18] Leah Walsh: The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in, those ideas.

[3:22] Leah Walsh: The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it's a little fish, a fragment of an idea, that fish will draw in other fish, and they'll hook onto it.

[3:32] Leah Walsh: Then you're on your way.

[3:34] Leah Walsh: Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges.

[3:39] Leah Walsh: But it starts with desire.

[3:42] Leah Walsh: Success and failure.

[3:44] Leah Walsh: In some ways, the more films you've done, the easier it is to make one.

[3:49] Leah Walsh: You become familiar with the process of catching an idea and translating that idea.

[3:53] Leah Walsh: You understand the tools and the lighting.

[3:55] Leah Walsh: You understand the whole process, you've been through it before.

[3:58] Leah Walsh: But it's also harder because when you release another film, it's seen in context of what you've already done.

[4:03] Leah Walsh: It's going to be judged based on that.

[4:05] Leah Walsh: And if you just come off something successful, you feel that you may take the fall.

[4:10] Leah Walsh: But if you come down from something very low, as I did after Dune, there may be zero fear.

[4:16] Leah Walsh: You feel you can't get any lower.

[4:18] Leah Walsh: You may experience this euphoria and freedom that you have nothing to lose.

[4:23] Leah Walsh: You have to learn to find balance in success and failure.

[4:27] Leah Walsh: Success can kill you just as failure can.

[4:30] Leah Walsh: And the only way to have balance in success and failure is to function on that unified field level.

[4:35] Leah Walsh: There's your friend.

[4:37] Leah Walsh: You can't fake it.

[4:38] Leah Walsh: You're either in the field or you're not.

[4:40] Leah Walsh: And when that field is fully enlivened, you can't lose, no matter what happens.

[4:45] Leah Walsh: And with the unified field, he's referencing transcendental meditation, which is also the subject of this book.

[5:06] Leah Walsh: This piece was the introduction to the collection of plays that Savage appears in.

[5:11] Leah Walsh: In the third scene of The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Dad says, the individual life is a dream.

[5:17] Leah Walsh: For me personally, this is a most moving idea.

[5:20] Leah Walsh: It frees me from my fear of death, it puts my ego where it belongs in a place of secondary importance.

[5:25] Leah Walsh: It binds me to the human race, and it binds the race itself to the atoms and the stars.

[5:30] Leah Walsh: Who am I?

[5:31] Leah Walsh: This is a courageous question.

[5:33] Leah Walsh: As a writer and as a man, I am involved in one central struggle to discover and accept who I am.

[5:40] Leah Walsh: I believe all fear has its roots in denial.

[5:43] Leah Walsh: I have, at one time or another, denied everything, every fact of my specific self.

[5:48] Leah Walsh: My parents, my Bronx origin, my Americanness, my Irishness, my appetites, my morality, my need for love and acceptance, my jealousy, my violence, my anger.

[5:59] Leah Walsh: I am not a courageous person by nature.

[6:02] Leah Walsh: I have simply discovered that at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself in order to move forward and live.

[6:09] Leah Walsh: It is like a muscle, and it must be exercised first a little and then more and more.

[6:15] Leah Walsh: All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have.

[6:22] Leah Walsh: A deep breath and a leap.

[6:24] Leah Walsh: Writing is acting, is directing, is living your life.

[6:28] Leah Walsh: I have told you the things I have just told you so that you would know something of my approach to playwriting.

[6:33] Leah Walsh: I see no difference between writing a play and living my life.

[6:37] Leah Walsh: The same things that make a moment in my life succeed, combust, move.

[6:42] Leah Walsh: These same things make a moment in my playwriting have life.

[6:45] Leah Walsh: And when I move in my writing, I have moved in my life.

[6:48] Leah Walsh: There is no illusion.

[6:49] Leah Walsh: It is all the same thing.

[6:51] Leah Walsh: Acting is the same as playwright.

[7:03] Leah Walsh: Thank you for listening to The Compass Podcast.

[7:06] Leah Walsh: I'm Leah Walsh.

[7:07] Leah Walsh: More episodes are coming soon.

[7:08] Leah Walsh: Please look for us on Facebook, in iTunes.

[7:11] Leah Walsh: I'd like to thank the following people for their generosity.

[7:14] Leah Walsh: The Compass Cover Art is by Kim Miller, music by Brendan Spieth, audio assistance from Nick Choxie, and a special thanks to Frankie J. Alvarez.

[7:22] Leah Walsh: See you next time.