I think there are various kinds of exhaustion, the physical being the least of it. Moral exhaustion is bad; imaginative exhaustion might be worst of all. The body contains all kinds of energy, and sources of energy, channeling it in unimaginably complex ways. At the very top of the biological pyramid, we’re—the conscious or symbolic level of the body/soul—left to try to infer what the rest is doing. It’s strange, basically mystical, and maybe the very source of interestingness in life, the source of dynamism. We can’t know too much; we can’t know too little about what’s going on.
The greatest pleasure right now, in my life, I think is, is the process of analyzing characters with actors in the rehearsal room. That seems to be like a great relief—a practicable and practical way of dealing with life’s pressures and pains. I like the distance, the cool rationality, the puzzle-like dimension of exploring personality. I like that you can talk openly about things, vis a vis a character, that are repressed, hated, attacked in ordinary discourse. Values can be addressed, created, deconstructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed again without the expectation that one must say the right thing in the right way.
I think, incidentally, that I have a problem with saying the right thing in real life… for its own sake. Even when I try, it’s obvious that I’m lying.