Create Your Own Whirlwind

With my late friend and mentor Richard Douglass Johnson, who taught me one of the lessons that has guided my creative life ever since: “Create your own whirlwind.

I moved to New York in 1980.

At one of my very first auditions, I was in the bathroom warming up my voice when a man came in and told me to keep it down.

Well, okay then.

I had no idea that when I walked into the audition room, that same man would be sitting behind the table.

His name was Richard.

He would become the stage manager of one of my first jobs in New York.

More importantly, he would become my friend, my mentor, and, as he put it, someone who took me under his wing.

Richard taught me many things. But there was one piece of advice I carried with me for the rest of my career.

“Create your own whirlwind.”

I was a young actor who had come to New York to be chosen.

Chosen for the role.

Chosen by the director.

Chosen by the producer.

Chosen at the audition.

Richard understood something I didn’t yet understand.

You can’t build an entire creative life waiting for somebody else to choose you.

He had come to New York to be an actor himself and eventually became a stage manager. He understood both sides of the business: what it took to perform and what it took to keep working when you weren’t performing.

He had also been mentored by the great Woodie King Jr., so perhaps the lesson had been passed down to him before he passed it down to me.

Create your own whirlwind.

Don’t wait for the phone to ring.

Make something.

Write something.

Produce something.

Learn something.

Call somebody.

Plant a seed.

That became the model for my life.

And I’ve passed Richard’s advice along to many young artists I’ve had the privilege of mentoring.

Now, more than forty-five years after that encounter in an audition bathroom, I’m still doing it.

I finished my sixth year of teaching at NYU and entered the summer thinking I might finally have a little time to myself.

So naturally, I created a whirlwind.

I rebuilt and reorganized my website.

I updated my acting and directing reels.

I worked on a book about an acting technique I’ve been teaching for years.

I organized decades of songs and creative work.

I started putting my intellectual property and estate in order.

And perhaps most importantly, I started looking carefully at what I’ve already created instead of constantly asking myself what I should create next.

None of those things, by themselves, seemed particularly earth-shattering.

They were seeds.

And then the emails started coming.

One conversation led to another.

Something I had done weeks earlier suddenly produced an opportunity today.

A piece of work I’d organized led me to another piece of work.

One tree started bearing fruit while I was busy planting another.

And suddenly I looked around and realized:

Richard’s whirlwind was spinning again.

Over the years, I’ve developed my own version of his lesson:

Plant many trees. You’ll always have fruit.

Not every seed grows.

Not every tree bears fruit when you expect it to.

And sometimes you’ll forget you planted the damn thing.

Then one day, there it is.

Harvest time.

So, especially to the young artists who may be reading this:

Don’t spend your life waiting to be chosen.

Audition. Absolutely.

Submit.

Knock on the doors.

But while you’re waiting for somebody to open one, build a door of your own.

Plant something.

Then plant something else.

Create your own whirlwind.

More than forty-five years after Richard first gave me that advice, I’m still doing exactly that.

And right now, I’m enjoying the harvest.