Finding The Miracles In Life's Struggles
Posts tagged commercial
Whatever Our Heart Desires Will Come True
01 year
by Alice Lin
in My Life Story
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes
During Chinese New Year, it is customary to wish for someone’s wishes to come true. In fact, we have a saying: “Whatever your heart desires will come true.” Having said it for so many years and always wishing for other peoples’ dreams to come true, I recently started to question why we continue to say this. As I was meditating one day, it dawned on me that the heart is where divinity is. It is where we are connected to a higher authority or to the gods – whatever you believe in, or the inner self. If you wish for something wholeheartedly and nothing else, that wish will gradually appear before you.
Recently, after coming back from the tai chi practice, I hoped and wished that my effort in training would get me a commercial. After all, it had been three years since I had failed a tai chi audition and started practicing more. I wasn’t a master by any means, but I still knew quite a lot.
Just a week later, I was auditioning for a singing commercial. During the audition, we were asked about our specialties and skills. The first person, an Asian man, replied that he was a master in tai chi. When it was my turn, I decided to tell them that I knew tai chi as well. We were then told to stay behind and show them.
I felt good about the audition and, sure enough, I got the callback the next day. After auditioning, I went to dancing class. I was sweating but still felt cold. The temperature dropped suddenly. I knew that I had caught a cold, and lost my voice as a result. I could hardly speak when my agent called me about the callback. She asked me if she should tell the casting director that I could not make it. I had a strong desire to get this commercial involving tai chi, so I insisted on going, whether or not I had a voice. After entering the audition room, I told them that I lost my voice and couldn’t sing. Then, one of the people in charge said not to worry and just to do my tai chi.
The image is from Sports animations and animated gifs.
I thought I had a slim chance of getting the role in the commercial since I had no voice to sing. Surprisingly, the next day, I got a call from the director telling me that I was picked to be in the commercial. In the end, it turned out that our tai chi overpowered the singing, and we did not end up singing. It was a miracle to be involved in a singing filming without actually singing. I was able to replace my inability to sing with my tai chi.
Indeed, our heart’s desire will come true. I just hope that my readers will have the same experience – whatever your heart (and when I say your heart, I mean wholeheartedly) desires will come true, sooner or later. As in the film Cinderella, “a dream is a wish your heart makes.”
Conditioning for Miracles – Acting with Miracles(2)
03 years
by Alice Lin
in My Life Story
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My friends think I’m crazy for being involved with dancing, marketing, writing and acting – especially acting. Why would a person who majored in science decide to pursue acting? Sometimes I ask myself this question, too.
Here’s how my love affair with acting began: One day, my daughter was going to deliver her headshots to an acting agent. My daughter’s husband’s friend had just referred her to this agent, and seeing as though I was curious about the whole acting industry, I asked if I could tag along. My daughter, then in her 20’s, giggled and reassured me that she was old enough to go by herself, but as she saw the genuine curiosity in my eyes, she sighed and agreed to bring me along.
When we arrived at her office, the agent placed my daughter’s headshots in her hand, and then turned to me: “I would like to be your agent,” she said straight-faced. At first, I let out a little chuckle, thinking that she was joking. But then, as I read the expression on her face, I could tell she was being 100% serious. I told her I had no acting experience and that instead, my background was in science. Still, she encouraged me to give acting a try. It seemed like there was a little voice in me telling me to grab this opportunity, to take the risk. Why not? I had nothing to lose anyway.
Within a few weeks, I had my acting headshots taken and enrolled in several acting classes. Pretty soon, I had become a full-fledged actor. I remember one of my best friends came to visit from Texas and told me that she and her husband spotted me in a commercial before she knew I had started acting. She said one evening, as the two of them were watching TV, a commercial came on. “Wait a minute, is that Alice?!” she exclaimed to her husband. The two of them kept rewinding the commercial to see if it really was me: and it was. She was especially excited to get to accompany me to an audition during her time visiting me in LA. For someone who knew me first and foremost as a science geek, to witness me in all of my acting glory was a special treat!
Alice Lin’s headshots
And they weren’t the only friends or family members who spotted me in the commercial. Everyone who saw me couldn’t believe it – how did a bookworm like Alice Lin get into acting? Because of a willingness to take action and take advantage of opportunities, I turned my life around. I did a complete 180 from the field of science to marketing to dancing to acting. It has made my days more colorful and made me open to seeing the constant flow of miracles coming into my life.
I can’t think of another profession that would allow me to step into other people’s shoes the way acting has: I’ve studied and played the roles of a homeless person, a judge, a minister, a maid, a nurse, even a golfer. All of these experiences have caused my heart to swell with compassion for the role every human plays in their own life.
Because of my personal experiences, I have also gained a profound respect for actors. It is not as easy to act as it may seem. I remember one particular audition I went to for the part of a woman’s mother (the daughter was played by actress Lucy Liu). Through the help of my acting coach, I was able to put myself in the mental state of Lucy’s character’s mother. The role of the mother was mentally strenuous; I had to act as though I had been informed that my daughter had died and my other daughter had thought I was going crazy after receiving a phone call from the supposedly dead Lucy. From 12am to 12pm on the day of the audition, I didn’t come out of that mental state. It took me about another 12 hours to get out of it. And this was just for an audition – I can’t begin to imagine how intense it would be to take-on such a role for a major motion picture that would be filmed over the course of a year!
The first film I did was about Asian prostitutes and I landed the role of “Mama San,” a woman who controlled teenaged prostitutes. The director took me to several massage parlors so I could be exposed to the environment that I would find myself in while shooting this film. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to enter any of the massage parlors because they suspected we were undercover policemen. Even still, I had to reach deep within my soul to imagine what such a lifestyle would actually be like. When the film was screened, the audience was shocked that an MIT researcher would be able to act as Mama San to these teenage prostitutes.
As I was in the movie theater watching this film and saw my name on the casting credits, I was so moved that I told myself: “You’ve come a long way, but you’ve done it.” I believe we can all do what comes our way; our biggest challenge is recognizing opportunity when it comes knocking, and then granting it permission to enter our lives. Only then will we start recognizing the omnipresence of miracles in our lives.
The Art Make You Aware of the Box in You.
08 years
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When I went to audition for a motorcycle commercial the other day, I was very shocked as what the producer had in mind for the roles.
Five of us went in and we were instructed that every one of us was in our own box. We were supposed to be the office worker, brick pile builder, banker, jogger and dog walker. We are very tired of being kept in this box ; day in and day out we are doing the same thing again and again. Suddenly, we heard the noise. Looking up we saw the motor cycle passing through, and we saw the happy expression of being free in this rider’s countenance. He is not stuck in a box. We were amazed by his freedom he has because he has no bondage of the box. We are all envious of him.
It is a very simple commercial of motorcycle; they wanted to bring forth the sense of feeling of being free without being kept inside the box. Of course, in this instance, they use the motor cycle as a mean to be out and enjoy the happy, free moment of riding it.
It happened not by coincidence, yet I found it quite interesting. During the audition, we have to bring out the expression of frustration for repeating the same thing again and again. Unfortunately, we seemed to be constrained in this box helplessly. Then, after seeing the motorcycle passing through, we seemed to be contagious by his happy mood. At the end, we took on his care free outlook and enjoyed the realm of openness and freedom.
The most intriguing thing is that I have been discussing this “box” both in my Chinese and English blogs. I wish to bring out the ways of getting out the box for readers. Unexpectedly, the theme of this commercial is concurrent with my desire.
Finishing writing the article about “Narrow house”, I started to realize that our thought have been restricted in this narrow box. After visiting “Narrow house” in Beijing 798 art, we also went to see Erwin Wurm’s another art displays. I did not quite understand his works at that time. I checked the photos again, I finally saw the box.
Just as the pictures show in the following; the square upright box has been dressed with brand name shirts. The artist reminds us that we all have these boxes in our thought which limit us greatly. No matter what we wear, they are hidden inside of our cloth. They can be overlooked easily without our alertness. Suddenly, I realize that the artist,Wurm, is trying to show us a way of getting out of box for our thought.
The square box is dressed in fashionable clothes.
Does it look like human being with legs?
Indeed, it is but we do not see the head. Actually the head (mind) is hidden in the box.
If you still do not see the box, take a look after the cloth has been stripped away.
Now, we know that Erwin Wurm is helping us to get out of the box mentally; the very first step being to make us aware of its’ existence.
I am not the only one who loves the concept of Wurm’s art work. “He is mentioned in the Red Hot Chili Peppers music video can’t stop, in which a sign states that his art was an inspiration for the video. In a recent i Tunes interview Flea is quoted as saying Wurm’s picture of a man with a pencil in his nose was a significant influence on the video .”(Reference)
Wurm said he had always wanted to be an artist. To him it represented intellectualism and a spiritual life, things lacking in the narrow-minded world of his parents and their relatives, who were all clerks, businessmen, and engineers and the like.
Looking at the photo below, which was displayed from the unknown location, it seems that Wurm is trying to warn us to get out of the box in time before the crisis comes. A lot of his artistic works suggest that there is reason to get out of our comfort zone, our box.
Reference: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Erwin Wurm
