I confess I have no idea who Sheila O'Malley is at the moment but I am sure I'll feel absolutely dumb in a few minutes.
I am at the moment reading the entry about Cary Grant's acting method, the part where she talks about how the best actors are the most excellent listeners. I just finished the part in the preface where she writes a bit about Humphrey Bogart:
Humphrey Bogart. To me, he is most interesting when he’s listening to someone else talk. Watch his face. Watch him take the other person in, have internal responses to things – you can see all the stuff he isn’t saying. His face can be READ. We SEE his thoughts, his feelings, his responses … But this is only because he’s listening.
I COMPLETELY SEE THAT!!! I have always done that (watch Bogie when he's listening) but I have never articulated it before, especially not in the way Sheila O'Malley did. Geez, I cannot believe she wrote that --- I was just, JUST thinking about this idea a few days ago. Watching an interview of Elon Musk (aka real-life Tony Stark, launcher of rockets into space) and realizing how attractive he looks when he is listening to his interviewer and trying to understand what is being asked of him. He suddenly looks appealing when, quite frankly, he has a geeky face. At first I posited that "people look attractive when they are thinking" but in fact I actually meant "listening". Well, I suppose both but it's more when they are thinking.
I love looking at people listening and thinking (that is to say processing what they are hearing). I do that often in group conversations. I often take the time to look at the listeners and not the one person talking. I, for some reason, enjoy catching those "reaction moments " on a person's face.
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I find that this often happens to me --- I would think of something, just a random, observational idea and, rather coincidentally, I would stumble upon a piece of writing, a movie or a video that sort of validates my thought and stretches it even further for my edification.
May be trivial to some but THANK YOU UNIVERSE for these moments of enlightenment.