The Captain Jack Sparrow Effect: How unlikely actions yield outstanding results
In any discipline I’ve ever been involved in, there are always certain exercises that seem completely abitrary and useless. Amateurs, people with an amateur attitude won’t try them. Their egos won’t allow them to. They say that they’re above that, they’re good enough they don’t have to do these stupid exercises. Successful people will do these exercises with discipline, because they’re humble enough. These are the exercises which yield the greatest results. This is what I call the Captain Jack Sparrow Effect.
so i herd u liek piratz lulz
Now most of you probably know who Jack Sparrow is, but just in case: Captain Jack Sparrow is a character from a movie called Pirates of the Carribean. An Admiral who captures him declares him as “the worst pirate who has ever lived”. After he escapes through a series of ridiculous moves that no sane man would perform, everyone says “That is the best pirate who has ever lived!”. You see, he’s not restricted by convention. He’s crazy like a fox.
When I was doing drama, we would gather in a circle and do warm-up exercises. What this involved was saying a bunch of repetitive nonsense phrases over and over. “bidiga bidiga bidiga”. Singing high notes and low notes. Pretending your mouth was a lighthouse shooting a big beam of light in one focused direction. Jumping up and down on one foot. Screaming. Walking around the room and looking at a random object and calling it something it’s not. e.g. You look at a poster and say out loud “tea kettle”.
Say we were warming up for a play. It would be at about this stage that some old guy would say “Can I go now?”
I or someone else would say “No, this is important.”
“Important? I think the whole thing is rather silly.”
“Fine if you don’t want to do it, you can leave.”
And he would. Amateur. All these exercises look ridiculous. You feel like you’re in a cult when you’re in the middle of them. But all of them warm up the vocal cords, the diaphragm, the tongue and lips. And more importantly, they all bring you into focus, and suck you into the current moment. Ridiculous? No. Fucking brilliant.
A couple of months ago, I step up into the club and I run into some guys from the local Layer.
“Oh man I just can’t get into state. I don’t know what it is. I just can’t get into state.” He means he can’t get happy, into the zone, focused into the moment, so he can talk to girls putting his best foot forward.
“Well hey man, I know a great way to get into state. It’s called Magic Ball.” Actually, it’s another exercise from drama. You pretend you’re bouncing a ball, play hackey with it, pass it around, bounce it around off the walls. So much fun.
Dude gives me a look like it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. (By the way if you’re reading this dude i think you’re a cool guy – just trying to demonstrate a point here)
Okay Mr Cool Man.
okay mr cool man. you think you look like this?
A couple of hours later I’m bouncing off the walls, being ridiculous, having fun without caring, talking to every girl who walks past. I see dude and he says “Man, I’m not in state… I just can’t get into state.”
“Dude I told you: Magic Ball,” I say with a huge grin on my face. I don’t think he did get into state that night.
The first time I went to see my singing teacher Rob, from Vox Singing School, he said “Okay, this is going to sound a little weird, but I promise it’s nothing gay. I want you to stretch your jaw by putting three fingers in your mouth height-wise.” I said okay and laughed, and I did it.
rly ulook like this
The next exercise he got me to do was singing scales and making a sound like I was crying “Wah wah wah wah!”
Eventually he would get me to stretch out my diaphragm by exhaling while lying on a size 3 basketball.
In three months, my singing voice had improved tenfold, much quicker than I expected. A lot of people wouldn’t do these exercises, or at least wouldn’t do them whole-heartedly, for fear of sounding stupid. As for me, I’ve been stupid so many times my brain is stupid-resistant. I can endure massive amounts of stupidity.
How much potential progress have you lost in your pursuit to look cool? Probably a lot. So, the moral of the story is, never be cool.
No, wait, the moral of the story is, never let your fear of looking like a douchebag detract from your own personal growth, and ultimately your success.
This is Kurt Springer signing off and saying take care of yourselves, and each other.
Related Posts:
Comments (5)
Very valuable information, it does all help.
How was Transport kurt?
[Reply]
pretty gangsturr
[Reply]
he tried looking to cool, and he actually looked to cool for school and got booted out.
[Reply]
but really you look like this
[Reply]
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/2008_pt2/08_chinprep.jpg
but really you look like this
[Reply]