McDonald’s – Pam Grout

Do your art. No matter what. No matter where.

December 11, 2017 14 Comments

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”—Kurt Vonnegut James-franco-mcdonalds3

Creative capital is my jam. I wrote about it in Thank & Grow Rich. My latest book, Art and Soul, covers nothing else.

Unlike financial capital, creative capital is virtually unlimited. It has no floor, no ceiling. And every last one of us has total access.

We don’t need money to get started, or certain conditions to be in place. We access our creative capital because it’s there, because it’s who we are.

I read a cool story about James Franco yesterday. He hosted Saturday Night Live last week, was just nominated for a Golden Globe for his new movie, The Disaster Artist. It’s about filmmaker, Tommy Wiseau, who is willing to do whatever it takes to access his creative capital.

Like the filmmaker in the movie, Franco let nothing stop him from pursuing his art. It didn’t matter that he had no money, no acting roles, no degree. He didn’t even have a car when he moved to Los Angeles to attend a hole-in-the-wall acting school. And, because he’d been fired from two previous jobs, he couldn’t even get a job waiting tables. That didn’t stop him. He was determined to follow his dream.

He finally landed a job at the one McDonald’s near the ratty apartment he shared with two friends.

And guess what? He practiced his art there.

“I was given the late shift drive-thru position. I wore a purple visor and purple polo shirts and took orders over a headset,” he says. “But soon I started putting on fake accents with the customers to practice for scenes in acting class.”

He tried Italian, British, Irish, Russian, Southern.

“People actually found them persuasive. I was asked to give Italian lessons to a cute young woman who thought I was from Pisa,” he says. “And I went on several dates as a thick-tongued kid from Bed-Stuy, even though my only brush with the actual place had been through watching “Do the Right Thing.”

Within a few months, Franco’s determination to mine his creative capital won him a commercial for Pizza Hut. He has been working in the business ever since.

The point is, there really is NO EXCUSE for not answering the door when the muses say, “Knock. knock.” You don’t need money. You don’t need the right equipment. You don’t even need talent, as Franco’s character Wiseau clearing demonstrated with his movie, Room.

Creativity is the province of all of us.

So roll up your sleeves. Get started today.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

The universe is like the order taker at McDonald’s. It can’t give you a Big Mac if you keep ordering an Egg McMuffin.

February 1, 2014 30 Comments

“Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.”–Plautus

I’ve missed you guys. I’ve been busy polishing up E-Cubed, the follow-up book to E-Squared, and decided that since I haven’t been here on the blog for awhile, I’d post a brief excerpt from the new book.

It’s from an experiment about how our words have power and how they prophesy the future.

In a nutshell, it’s an experiment to prove that you can’t talk lack and poverty and expect an abundant life. You can’t continue to harp about how bad everything is and expect it to get better.

Enjoy!!!

When I turned 50, I threw my hands in the air and basically decided that my life was over. My many years of being a tall, hot blond were about to come screeching to a halt. Or at least that’s what I kept telling everyone.

Having supported a friend who is older than me through menopause, I knew good and well what was coming. My skin was going to wrinkle and shrivel up, my ovaries would do a disappearing act and my emotions were about to compete with the Coney Island Cyclone for number of ups and downs.

I was like Paul Revere, riding my “woe is me” horse through the night, “Menopause is coming. Menopause is coming.”

One day, while rigorously going through yet another book on how to cope with this horrible affliction, I finally got it. I am prophesying the future with my words and expectations.

My insistence on looking for signs of impending doom, my repeated chants of “Is it me? Or is hot in here?” were paving the way for a difficult transition into a new phase of life. Even the name of this very natural life cycle (crone, anyone?) lays a stone in the road ahead.

I snapped the cover of that book closed, called my friend and said, “Thanks for loaning me that book on the symptoms of menopause, but I’m coming over right now to return it.”

From that point on (except those times–yes, Taz and Jim, I did occasionally still get bucked out of the saddle), I began to declare and still declare to anyone who will listen:

“My best days are ahead of me.”

“Girl, you are looking SO GOOD today!! (that’s when I was talking to the mirror)”

“I’m getting stronger and younger-looking every day.”

“Health is flowing through me like the River Jordan.”

Joel Osteen tells the story of a high school buddy of his. This guy was the star of the football team. He had thick, curly hair. What we girls used to call “a real hunk.”

Every time, Joel asked him what he was up to, he’d say “Oh, not much. Just getting old and fat and bald.’

“I must have heard him say that 500 times,” Joel says. “I hadn’t seen him in 15, 20 years and ran into him the other day. And you know what? He ended up being a whiz at predicting the future. He was old and fat and bald.”

Pam Grout is the author of 16 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.