The head of a dead cat

I was listening to this lecture by Alan Watts, who's a lecturer, interpreter of Zen Buddhism, philosophy and theology and what not in case you didn't know, about the idea of the Self as Play. It's a really interesting lecture that meanders a bit but I'll see if I can summarize some of the points he was making, at least the points that piqued my interest. He said that the Self and all that is is maia and that maia is an illusion, so therefore the Self is an illusion. And as an illusion, it serves no direct purpose, it doesn't work or try, but instead it plays. In fact the Japanese would say that someone doesn't die, they play at dying.

He continues on saying that because the Self is an illusion it's pointless to try and figure out what one's Self is. It's only when we stop trying to figure out what our Self is that our Self does us any good; when we stop and let it play. In my imagining of this idea, if we were to try and determine the Self, one could only discover oneself in letting it do and be, rather than trying to force it to be something we've decided it IS or should be.

Naturally this leads me to think of clowning. for a change. I'm thinking again of the argument between clown as free form playing and improvised self-expression vs. plans, practice and routines. I've already said here that I'm an advocate for the latter, I just find it more personally satisfying and I think modern clowns discount its benefits. You need to get from A to B...but how you get there is where you can play. I might say though, as one who believes in the clown as more than just a thing you do but a thing you are, that to discover oneself AS clown through play is totally valid.

Still with me? ok, moving on.

He also says that measurements are an illusion since, essentially, they are. They aren't a concrete thing ("you don't see inches lying around") but in fact they're "elaborate systems of cosmic bookkeeping."

So I was thinking about this idea of measurement as illusion in two particular senses. One, in terms of performance. I took a class a little while back called Scripts and Scores (I feel like I may have mentioned it here before but I can't remember). If I can insult my teacher and summarize that too, the class was about creating performance of a dance/theatre variety and the ways in which we record it. As in, how do you represent the performance to someone else in a physical form for them to use as a guide? do you draw stick people dancing around? Do you set it up with panels like a comic strip breaking down each step? Do you write it out like a screenplay with who says what, what each scene looks like, etc.? Do you make a box with strips of paper and pull them out randomly? Is the box itself the recording? Often it seemed like the recordings were just as important as the actual performance. At the time it just felt frustrating to find creative ways to represent what we were doing since I would find a system that worked and just wanted to work on the performance, not spend time making its record interesting to look at, too.

Today, after the fact, I can appreciate the value of doing this, and it led me to think about the fact that the ways in which you record something, commit it to paper or whatever, deal with what the performance essentially IS. what IS movement? what IS sound? Do I need to draw movement lines around a stick person or put in sound effects a la Batman? If I wanted to represent long pauses would I need to draw the figures with lots of space in between? And then would I need a key in the corner to make myself understood?

Now this is great for a class in which we're encouraged to represent abstract ideas, like movement and sound, in new and creative ways but what if we applied this to other things in the world? What if quarterly reports came in expressive paintings or fortune cookie fortunes taped to oranges? No interpretive dance, though. I'm tired of that joke.

unrelated story, my friend once wanted to advertise for our school's literary magazine by writing the name on little rubber bouncy balls and throwing them down a hallway. If it wasn't such a blatant safety hazard it would be the way I advertise for everything I'm a part of.

Anyway.

So the other way in which I'm thinking about the illusion of measurement is what if we applied this to ourselves? What do we each measure our lives in? and yes, we could get all RENT about it and measure in love and whatever, or we could put on our big girl panties and actually think about it seriously. I'd say I probably measure mine in cups of tea, moments of stillness, days my hair looks good, laughing, and muffins. Although muffins would be a greater measurement, one I wouldn't expect to occur as often. Like a year.

So as always, onwards and upwards. It's really exciting to read and listen to ideas that can apply to performance and art and creation as much as it applies to life. You should all check out Alan Watts too, he has a lot to say about everything. And he says it well.

And if you stuck around til now, here's something for your troubles.