We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Paul Major. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Paul below.
Paul, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
‘Success’ is a tricky thing to define, because it’s ultimately so subjective, and fluid. When I was in the fourth grade and getting a lot of positive attention from classmates while I was hamming it up on stage — classmates who otherwise saw me as a shy, quiet kid — success was just another word for the adoration of peers.
As I reached the tail-end if my teens, a real love for storytelling was starting to develop and ‘success’ became a word for how well/real I could understand and perform a scene, so the concept took on an introspective tone. But, of course, I had stars in my eyes too.
When I left college and started beating the pavement, headshots in hand (they were printed, in those ancient days), I thought of success as simply being able to pay rent as an actor/writer.
Now I define success as how well I can tell, or help tell, a story, and how well I can navigate through life in general. So I’ve been rejecting a larger idea of ‘success’ in favor of something more granular and day-to-day.
To that end, what does it take? Honesty — what am I able to do, where do I need to challenge myself to grow, am I communicating correctly, and setting expectations correctly, with everyone I’m dealing with? Am I operating out of love or fear? Even asking myself these questions regularly, I stumble. But that only proves to me that success is a real discipline to continuously develop, not a goal to be attained.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’ve ultimately been ‘a creative’ my whole life. In truth I think we all are, but our paths sometimes take us on journeys that don’t seem very creative, or creatively fulfilling, on the surface.
Interested in all aspects of storytelling, and often of filmmaking in particular, I formed Visual Medium, LLC, in 2013. A boutique production company in Hollywood, the focus of VM is on small outside-the-box projects. To the end of being left-of-center, VM’s new brand Strange Far Places has launched on youtube.com/@strangefarplaces, where it will offer a variety of ‘High Strangeness’ content. If you have some content that you think would fit, and you’d like to partner, email submissions@strangefarplaces.com and we’ll take it from there!
Coming from an acting/writing foundation, I’ve been most proud of several VM productions that have helped fellow artists attain union membership with SAG-AFTRA.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
We’re just you engaged in building a life on even shakier ground.
We’re often, by family, friends, culture, etc, encouraged — or even forced, in some way — down roads that seem more stable, if boring, but as we get older certain things become clear.
Mainly, for me: tomorrow’s not promised. In that sense, whether we live as creatives or not, nothing is truly stable. We’re all mortal, and none of us really know what’s coming next. We can plan for a rainy day, and there are a lot of examples of that working out very well, but, in the words of Lanford Wilson, ‘you walk down the street a brick falls on your head’. And then what was all of that planning, and all of that restraint away from living your hearts desire, for? Were you really building something, were you really bettering yourself, or were you just afraid? It’s not a rhetorical question, just one I think worth asking and periodically revisiting.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Despite all the uncertainty and hardship of this life, I feel that I’m living an honest life. Honest in terms of doing what I’m aligned with internally, and honest in terms of participating in an endeavor — ‘storytelling’, to use perhaps the broadest term — that is fundamentally important to contextualizing the human experience. For all the criticism leveled at actors and creatives, sometimes rightly, we ‘carnies’ are providing something that would completely desaturate the experience of life if you lacked it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://paulmajor.com
- Instagram: @pauldmajor
- Twitter: @paulmajor
- Other: https://visualmedium.net https://strangefarplaces.com
Image Credits
Paul Vroom, Matthew Martin, Brett Richards, Cameron Bigelow