Translator: Yara Toledo Reviewer: Denise RQ
So, it's 2009. I'm 25.
I'm an actress living in New York City.
I have an agent, so it's obviously going really, really well for me.
(Laughter)
I'm going to be the next Anna Paquin.
That's actually me on the right, and that's Anna on the left.
That Hunger Games book that everybody is reading right now,
when they turn that into a movie, I'm going to star in it.
I have plans. Meticulously planned out plans.
On March 17, 2009, I wrote an email
to a fourth cousin once removed I had never met.
It read: "Hello Betsey! My name is Emily Simoness.
Clayt and Joan Ryder are my grandparents. Jen and Tony Raabe are my godparents.
I live in NYC and would love nothing more than to visit Ryder Farm.
Might I come up to the farm the 28th or 29th of March?
Would it be alright if I brought a friend?
I can't wait to meet you and see the farm I have heard about for so many years!"
This email right here is basically the beginning of the end of every plan
I ever had about being a famous actress.
Hi, my name is Emily Simoness.
I'm the co-founder and executive director of SPACE on Ryder Farm,
a non-profit artist residency program
located on a 220-year-old working organic farm in Brewster, NY.
Since SPACE's founding five years ago, we've played host to over 575 artists,
working on 180 projects in development.
We've hosted Tony Award winners, Guggenheim fellows, Obie Award winners,
Pulitzer Prize finalists, and a MacArthur genius.
I wasn't in The Hunger Games.
(Laughter)
I actually didn't see The Hunger Games.
I was too busy running a non-profit.
And running that non-profit was clearly not my plan.
I'm here today to talk to you about plans.
I'm also here to talk about paths.
The way I see it, a plan is the deliberate way forward you're forging for yourself.
A path is a course or direction that presents itself to you,
a route that you may not have forged yourself.
Plans are important; I wouldn't be here, chatting with you all about plans,
I certainly can't make a Power Point without plans.
I think that sometimes, in this life and in this business,
we get so caught up in and bound by plans
that we forget to look out for, stay open to paths.
Our fears and trepidations about a road less traveled
stop us in our tracks.
And keep us living lives that are safe and tidy.
Lives that follow a very specific and narrow plan.
SPACE on Ryder Farm would definitely not be in the world,
if in March, 2009 I had not seen a path.
So let me get you up to speed. I'm from Minnesota, born and raised.
As a kid, yeah, Minnesota.
As a kid, I heard from time to time about this far off place
in New York State called Ryder Farm.
And it'd been in my mother's family since 1795.
To the young version of me, it was folkloric, mythical even.
And on the East Coast, the part of the country
I associated with the Kennedys and sophistication, exclusively.
We never visited, though.
Meanwhile, I was getting very into acting.
I left Apple Valley, Minnesota
(Laughter)
for Drama school at the North Carolina School of the Arts.
And then, because that's what you do when you're going to be a famous actress,
I moved to Brooklyn. It's nice, it's classy.
So, here I am in Brooklyn. And it occurs to me,
"Hey, Ryder Farm is in NY State. I should go check it out."
So I wrote that email to Betsey, my fourth cousin once removed.
She and John Ryder, her husband,
are actually the only two Ryders that live on the property.
They run the organic farming operation.
So I emailed her and she said, "I'd love to have you, come on up."
The plan: on March 28th, 2009,
my up-for-anything buddy, Sarah and I
took the 1.30 PM Harlem Line train to Brewster.
My never-before-met cousin Betsey picked us up at the station,
and five minutes later, I clapped eyes on Ryder Farm for the first time.
Ryder Farm is 138 acres of fields and pastures.
There's a half-mile of lake frontage.
Organic veggies are grown on a 12-acre plot,
but the vast majority of the land is uncultivated.
The fields are overgrown with grass and wild flowers,
the woods that cover much of the property are dense and dark.
One huge discovery I made that day, there were these amazing structures.
One in particular, dating back to 1795, when I opened the door for the first time,
it was clear it hadn't been lived in or taken care of for a very long time.
Here's what didn't happen:
I didn't take one look at the expanse in front of me and say:
"I'm moving to Brewster and starting a non-profit artist residency program.
(Laughter)
Here's what did happen:
I looked left, I looked right.
Looked left again, and I thought,
"Holy cow, this place is amazing."
I'm definitely coming back here.
And because I'm an Aquarius, which means I'm industrious,
I thought, "I should definitely do something when I come back here."
You know, plant an herb garden, paint a wall,
make a flower bouquet, something like that.
In retrospect, that idea, that seedling of something like that
was actually the start of SPACE on Ryder Farm.
And the days, and weeks and months that followed that first visit,
I was thinking about two things:
One, my centuries old family farm was in need of a lot of TLC.
I mean, girlfriend needed a real facelift.
Two, as a actress working in new plays,
I was very well aware of the lack of time and space
that emerging artists had to work on their art.
None of us, me or any of my near and dear artist friends
had the resources we needed to do the work we so desperately wanted to do.
By that summer, my thoughts had solidified.
I'd hatched a plan. A sensible plan.
I asked the family, I mean, my fourth cousin once removed
I just laid eyes on for the first time,
if I could start a non-profit artist residency retreat program
with the initial conceit being that my scrappy artist friends
would do capital improvement in some structures,
thanks Spackle and Home Depot,
and in exchange, we get to work on our art.
They said something to the effect of, "Sure..."
(Laughter)
And SPACE on Ryder Farm was born.
So how do you get from 13 of us, scraping, and painting, and sheet rocking,
and scrubbing, and cleaning, and worming our way around red tape
with absolutely no money, to SPACE as it is today?
For the answer to that question, we turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said,
"If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell,
or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs
than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house,
though it be in the woods."
Word got out about SPACE.
A place an hour north of the city where you could write your play,
compose your musical, maybe write your novel in peace and serenity.
First season, we had 48 artists.
Second, we had 100.
And somewhere between 2011 and 2012,
I turned around and realized I hadn't acted in months.
And I didn't miss it.
I was too busy running an artists non-profit.
Now, I know how we all crave the lightbulb moment.
I'm sorry folks, I'm not able to give it to you.
For me, there wasn't a lightbulb moment. There was a series of lightbulb moments.
Or, to frame it differently,
a colleague years ago told me about the shower test.
Whatever you're thinking about in the shower, day after day,
week after week, that is most likely what gets you going,
and probably what you ought to be pursuing.
Guess what? For me, SPACE on Ryder Farm.
Now, I'm not saying to all you actors out there to stop acting.
I mean, Al Pacino, that guy should definitely keep acting.
And Meryl Streep, she seems to really be on to something.
And in case there is any sort of question,
I'm very well aware that not everyone has a long-lost East Coast family
and a secret farm, waiting for them on the other side of the rainbow,
and if they would only stop doing that thing that they had spent
their whole lives trying to do, they might just find it.
Aborting mission is not the point.
The point is that by being open to other possibilities,
those outside my best-laid plans,
my life was fundamentally changed.
The path that presented itself to me was so much bigger
and gave me so much more than I ever could've imagined.
I came into contact with my extended family,
I built an organization that turns five years old this year.
I've had the Proud Mamma moment of sitting in the audience
of 30-plus shows that were developed at SPACE on Ryder Farm,
The SPACE team has built an outdoor stage,
rehabbed three buildings, put a dock on the lake.
In the coming years, we'll roll out initiatives that will look at
the intersection of arts and organic farming,
the preservation of open space, and programs that put artists
in direct communication with NGOs and activists from around the world.
None of this would have happened had I followed the plan.
And public service announcement, paths are not easier that plans.
Just because the road presented itself to you, it does not mean
it won't fight you walking down it, every step of the way.
Adversity is everywhere.
And anything worth doing is going to be chock-full of it.
I mean, the blood, sweat and tears we poured
into the renovation of that farm.
The struggle to assemble a board that believed in SPACE as much as we did.
Our ongoing relationship with the Ryder family, the municipality.
Fund raising! Dear God, the fund raising!
But when I look at the particulars of this road,
at the kind of fight it was asking of me,
I realize that I was built for it, suited for it.
This path was enlivening, it lit me up.
It is work, and it's work I love.
Our business, show business, requires tremendous focus,
arguably, a single-mindedness.
My challenge to all of you here today is to not let that focus blind you
to other paths that may present themselves.
Don't dismiss the opportunity
because it doesn't align perfectly with your plan.
If you're on the prowl for a bolder, more expansive life,
the invitation might be there to live it.
Wander a little.
See what lays a little bit ways down a different road.
Because it's possible that it's something great,
something you're built for, and from that place,
you may be poised to make your biggest contribution yet.
Turns out, I wasn't supposed
to don designer gowns at the Golden Globes.
Muddy boots are more my style.
Thank you.
(Applause)