loose fruit

It's like a pile of ideas but if I had my druthers I'd flesh them out into bigger things. But for now, here they are.

It occurred to me recently on the table the parallel between massage and social change. In the following ways.

1. If you identify where the problem is, how can you ignore it?

As massage students, we’re given a protocol of how things are supposed to go with a client on the table. This is generally just used as a place to start and then as we learn more and more techniques we’re encouraged to make up our own sequence. However, it’s really easy to get stuck in a repetitive routine because it becomes habit and muscle memory. But trigger points and tension can’t be missed. They interrupt the flow and demand your attention. Maybe you give them a little extra attention, but often the therapist just does a little bit of work on them an then goes back to the sequence.

I didn’t become a therapist to avoid problems, I did it to help solve them. Read the body, find the issue, put your focus there.

2. You have to have a complete picture before you can figure out the proper treatment

It’s not just the interview, the intake form, your medical history, SOAP notes and reading a body. It’s understanding their state of mind, their eating and exercising habits. If they want sustainable solutions, it’s not enough to apply pressure to the problem area, you have to help them in a way that they’ll be able to understand why the problem happened and how to avoid or minimize it in the future. Also it’s why eastern massage appeals to me, because sometimes just your hands aren’t the solution.

3. You need lubrication but not too much.

With no lube, no one is happy. The body resists what you have to offer, the therapist can’t do their job and everyone comes away grumpy. Too much lube, the client can’t feel anything and the therapist feels like they’ve done something without actually having done anything.

If you enter any situation too aggressively you aren’t going to accomplish anything. If you enter it in a way that is too perky or too optimistic that doesn’t see things for what they really are, you’re only paying lip service to making a change and the thing you’re trying to help won’t feel any effect from your efforts. Also they’ll hate you.

4. Make sure you cover the sensitive areas.

Stay focused on the task at hand, not everything needs to be exposed in order to get the job done. This might seem to contradict number 2, but there’s a difference between being informed and making someone feel unsafe. Part of the work goes into figuring out what counts as what.

I was watching a TED talk about the brain and how it's built to make connections. It made me think about the internet and how any one thing leads to so many others, either getting you thinking about other stuff or being full of links and ads to take you directly to other stuff. I'd love to do a thing ("performance") in that vein. I saw a show once that said it was based on that idea, but I didn't see that in what they presented. Mostly I saw my friend as Jane Fonda.

Also this

stretched in the shade singing

If I have learned one thing over and over it is the simultaneously uplifting and disheartening lesson that you cannot count on anyone or anything. I realize how that sounds, and I do partly mean it in that way; I have been let down by many people and institutions and I should just learn not to depend on people or things. This is hard when you’re trying to build communities but you don’t trust anyone. The key to it, I’m continuing to learn, is to make sure that you are capable of achieving whatever it is on your own. Don’t make your only goal in life to be hired by a specific theatre company, make the theatre you want to make by yourself. Or at least be able to.

But I also mean that you can’t count on anything in the way that you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of my favorite things about life, in fact. That you just never know. you can try and plan but there’s no guarantee that those plans will play out uninterrupted.

Recently I’ve been making a lot of declarative and decisive statements.

I will quit my job.

I will move out of philly.

I will go to massage school.

I don’t do that very often. I tend to be (definitely try to be, I know I don’t always achieve it) a go with the flow kind of guy because you just never know and I like to see how the story plays out without my hand necessarily making the decisions. But once in a while you have to assess a situation and take decisive action. I feel this is an important thing to be able to do, at least to not be afraid of. But there’s a reason I don’t do I it very often because living by PRINCIPLES and DECISIONS that you can’t go against don’t necessarily allow you to get what you need. Anne Bogart talks about the violence of making decisions and boy is she right. By making one decision you are eliminating all other possible decisions.

So I did move out of philly and I am going to massage school. But I’m sort of back at my job. And it turns out it’s the best thing happening right now. It’s nice to be in a comfortable place where I know how things work and people know and trust me and I know how to get my job done. Being there in this current stage of life is allowing me a freedom I never had before. I have the freedom of not really having to care. This isn’t the only thing I have “going on” right now so when the show’s over I can walk away and go back to my life leaving those feelings in Philadelphia.

I met someone. We’ve been flirting and seeing other casually for a long time now. Every once in a while we’d get to spend some more serious time together and every time I’d come away feeling revitalized and like the best version of myself. So today I decided to make it serious and extended the invitation to move in together. they’re called the Zen Book. It’s full of potentially cheesy affirmations and verses that speak in a voice I need to hear right now. What’s really coming through right now is the idea that my greater spiritual responsibility is nothing. Is to listen and sit and be. Also it smells like my favorite bookstore where I bought it.

This is maybe getting off topic. But by listening and doing nothing I was able to hear that actually that decisive violent decision to leave my job was maybe what I needed in the moment I made it, but that staying with the job is actually proving to me an amazing thing. It allows me to…well a lot of things actually, but the best thing it allows me to do is sit back for a second and have a big strong hearty laugh at the world and its foibles.

I think this stage of life (at least this part of this stage) is about humility. Is about swallowing any pride I may have had and addressing my needs in this one moment. I don’t care what anyone says about my decisions. Because who knows what will happen tomorrow.


in that spirit, here's a thing that a lot of people will think is stupid. But I like it because it makes me feel small and inconsequential to the enormous swirling madness happening all the time without any input from me.




Blessings.

guuuh

Ok, look. Generally I try and stay away from debates about identity politics since it's such a sensitive issue and it's extremely hard to not enter territory that people take very personally (hello, identity.) I have lots of opinions that I feel strongly about for myself but really I feel like people should have the right to define themselves however they choose. That is their business and no one else's and I do not need your opinion yelled at me, people on the internet.

Having said that.

The thing that is making me upset right at this moment is people who care about identity politics feeling ashamed that their behavior is not in line with their beliefs about their identity. This is a generalization to introduce who I am talking about specifically, namely women who believe in and preach strong self-proclaimed "feminist" (in quotes because I have my own issues with the label and wouldn't volunteer it on my own, not because I'm rolling my eyes when I say it) opinions feeling bad that they enjoy moments of romance and traditionally feminine things.

Enjoying the Royal Wedding does not change who you fundamentally are. You can still believe the same things you did yesterday.

I didn't pay any attention to it myself because I just wasn't interested (I hear there were great hats though) but there is no shame, repeat NO SHAME, in enjoying it. If you are a man or woman who identifies as a feminist, if you are not, these things do not matter.

Mostly I am worked up about people who create beliefs that make them feel good and then can't do things they enjoy or want to do because they feel like they aren't compatible with those beliefs. There are probably many situations in which I would disagree with that statement that I haven't thought of or am not directly talking about right now, but that's where we are right now.

Bottom line, please stop being ashamed of who you are.

But while we're sort of on the subject and because it's been a long day, let me also say that just because you are a straight-presenting gay man and just because we are friends, these things don't give you the right to grab my ass or my tits without my permission. Just sayin.

Soapbox over. Blessings, all.

For me? You shouldn't have.

So the art world, like every other world or community, is made up of several pieces. Camps of people who believe different things about art, who it's for, what it's supposed to look like, what it's supposed to mean, IF it's supposed to mean anything, all those things. I wouldn't know what to do if the community suddenly decided these walls needed to come down and we all suddenly agreed on everything because part of what I love about it is how often I can change camps without having to overhaul my whole self or fill out paperwork or anything. But some days man...some days.

This leads me to say that I'm thinking about accessibility and performance. Like academia, too often you get a lot of people talking about things "for the people" and then talk about it in language that only they, other academics or artists, understand. All full of jargon and what not, hegemony my ass. So too in art you get a lot of folks that want to make art that is so about their own self-expression that they don't care how it is consumed by their audience. Then of course that leads us to the other side of if you get too preoccupied with your audience then you lose what you were originally trying to say. So it's about balance, properly conveying your ideas in a way that the audience receives so everyone feels like can understand what happened, even if they have differing opinions or experiences, which of course they will.

This is especially true of political art. If you are trying to accomplish something by producing some artwork, trying to sway people or influence an institution or what have you, you want to be understood. The Man will not feel affected by a thing that he "just doesn't understand" because he's not "with it." (I feel like by definition the Man isn't with it.) It's one reason I like commedia dell'arte so much. It could simultaneously reinforce and reject the status quo. It's a thing that was designed to appeal to everyone, a thing that everyone could enjoy on some level or other.

This is turning into just a pile of thoughts again.

BUT into that pile we throw other ideas of narcissism and responsibility. And the clown. There's a certain degree of narcissism necessary to become a clown; it's so centered on the clown performing, even if it's a clown that's more reactionary like Buster. It's hard to clown about the world at large, at least in lecoq clown terms, because it's about the world that this clown creates and exists in. The clown isn't responsible for making good choices. In fact it would be an excruciatingly boring clown if she went up there and did the Right Thing all the time. She is only responsible for herself, even if she's decided that her purpose for being there is to keep things proper (oh no the boat is leaking, I'll just plug that so no one notices. Gah! Now there's a leak over there! I'll just stick a toe in there and we'll be fine. Oh no...)

I think one reason there's something of a clown resurgence these days (new vaudeville as it's called by other more official sources) is that our culture has become so individualistic, we've decided/been told that the most important thing in the world is our opinion of things and we are being responsible citizens by voicing those opinions and making ourselves heard and therefore happy. Everyone thinks they're a clown and a comedian and a commentator and a critic and a...carburator (because...it also starts with C.) And this, my friends, is just not true. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but no one is obligated to express it.

So now I've plopped myself firmly on both sides of the original issue, accessibility. Art should be a thing that everyone can enjoy, but not everyone needs to create it because some people should just shut the hell up. I have no answers, friends. If you have something to say about the world, a feeling you need to express, I encourage you to do so in a way that feels good. I can't guarantee that I will like it or agree with it, nor can I guarantee that I won't resent you a little after you've done so. I will just keep being one person.

And as usual, here's a thing that's great. I put it here because it's a thing that may not be accessible to everyone but is so because it's so plainly stated that anyone can have an opinion about it.

Pulling the sky

A moment of self-indulgence. But then this is a blog...what else is it for.

It's amazing how reading the right thing at the right time will bring you back from the brink, lower your heart rate and make you look around and realize you're doing ok.
I've been reading "Carry Tiger to Mountain: the Tao of Activism and Leadership" and it's just tops. It helps the reader to negotiate these two seemingly contradictory ideas of activism, which is telling you to...ya know...act and taoism, which is so much about listening and not doing. It's really terrific and I love the writer's voice, he has a great combination of earnestness and straightforward storytelling mixed with a sense of humor.

In the chapter Retreat to Ride Tiger he quotes Thomas Merton saying,

So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises. From stillness, action. From action, attainment.

Then I revisited my notebook from HPI, the program I did last fall, and found a document given to us at the end that sort of summarized the big ideas of the program as well as giving us lists of books, films, blogs and such of things that we should check out to inspire us. Love those Headlong folks.

It also had a page addressing presence with a list of things to think about. Among them:

Be interested, not interesting.
breathe and be simple
have No Idea, do not anticipate

I sometimes worry that I'm rationalizing, justifying a life that could easily look like laziness, but it doesn't feel like that's what my life is, so I try to let that go. I read things like that quote and these ideas and realize that what I'm doing with myself isn't actually as big a problem as my television would have me believe. (seriously, the more I watch TV the angrier I get. and I am all about TV. conundrum!) These things that I read feel like my life, so it's nice to see someone else give it a name.

blessings, all.

like webster's dictionary we're kyoto bound

I realize I've written about this before, but it occurred to me again today just how totally brilliant Sesame Street is.

Two of their specials, and ones that were permanent fixtures in my childhood, are Big Bird in China and Big Bird in Japan. It would be so easy to do cheesy hokey tour guide stories where characters visit important and famous landmarks and just exclaim "wow! this is beautiful!" at every turn. Maybe there are a few comparisons to how Americans do things, a little bit of explaining to put it in a context that Americans can understand and handle, but it's always positive and exciting. But not Sesame Street.

Sesame Street isn't afraid to present a more realistic experience. Big Bird (and Barkley) are of course excited to be in this new country but then immediately upon arriving are confused, disoriented and frustrated. In Japan he gets separated from his tour group with very little money, no concept of the alphabet or language and sings about being homesick. In China he has a goal (find the locations that appear on a scroll) but he doesn't have any idea where to start and, again, doesn't know how to ask anyone for help. In both, he makes a native friend who help him find his way around and teach him a few words of the language.





In each country he visits a preschool to show kids (just like you!) at play and in class, how they learn, what they learn, and that there are kids everywhere doing things that very much like the things you do.

Ultimately he completes whatever goal he sets out to achieve but here's my favorite thing, both incorporate a big piece of the culture's folklore. In China he has to find all the locations on the scroll before the sand runs out (of an hourglass that Barkley wears around his neck) and at each location he gets a clue from the Monkey King that will lead him to the Phoenix bird of China. He hears the legend of the Phoenix from a storyteller and upon finally meeting her asks her to sing the song from her legend.



Plus this is the most adorable.



In Japan the friend he makes is a mysterious woman who appears and disappears suddenly and who often stares off into space looking sad. Big Bird comes to learn that she too is leaving Japan when he is because she's actually Kaguya-Hime, the Moon Princess, whose story Big Bird watches performed at the preschool he visits.



So now the kids watching this video have a sense of what China and Japan look like, what some of the people are like, what the languages sound like, and a little of what it might be like to live there. If they were to go to these countries or meet people from these countries, they'd have some understanding of their culture. It's like someone coming to America and having heard the stories of Santa or the Tooth Fairy (Note: I say this with an incredible ignorance of what stories I know that are uniquely American. I know that Santa's story has roots in other culture's stories and other manifestations in different traditions. But you get the idea.)

I don't pretend that these videos completely explain the Chinese or Japanese experience, but since their target audience is the under 6 crowd, to have kids that age have a deeper understanding, more than just facts to parrot back, of a different culture is such a great way to get their brains thinking about people who aren't in America, especially in these dangerously xenophobic times.

So big ups, Sesame Street. And here's an unrelated but still Sesame Street classic that still gets me.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth

The universe has been telling me to write lately so I'm trying my hand at that. It's a strange journey since I write everyday but never with the intention of it being read, except for the sparse additions to this little scrapbook here. But it's a great new challenge and I'm trying not to psych myself out about it.

So here's some great poetry. None of it mine, just great inspiration.

A Blade of Grass

You ask for a poem

I offer you a blade of grass

You say it is not good enough,

You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do,

It has dressed itself in frost,

It is more immediate

Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem

It is a blade of grass and grass

Is not quite good enough.

I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.

You say it is too easy to offer grass

It is absurd

Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem

And so I write you a tragedy about

How a blade of grass

Becomes more and more difficult to offer

And about how as you grow older

A blade of grass

Becomes more difficult to accept.

-Brian Patten

Wound Cream

Perhaps it is the way Love’s promoted;

You’d think it came in a jar,

Something that could be spread

Over all that bothers us,

A heal-all, a wound cream,

A media promoted fairytale

Gutted of darkness.

Though its contradictions

Nail us to each other

And the hunger for it

Can be our undoing,

We still use it as a prop,

As proof we are living.

How hard to do other than

Give it precedence, forgetting

How friendship outlives it,

Commits fewer crimes,

Wears its name at times.

-Brian Patten

Mime is money

So I’m doing an informal study of the different classifications of mime, the differences between mime, pantomime and corporeal mime and what not. It's a lot of quibbling over semantics, I feel, but interesting. If confusing.

For once thing, Etienne Decroux had a school where they taught corporeal mime, which is different from pantomime. Pantomime is what Marcel Marceau did…but Marceau was a student of Decroux. So...there's that.

Here’s my attempt at the definitions I’ve been sifting through.

The performer has been told to pick a flower.

A pantomimist would do it by being in an empty room, would bend over with thumb and forefinger together, make the motion of plucking a flower around an invisible shape, straighten up, hold their empty hand to their nose and inhale. There is no object and the performer is making very literal gestures to indicate a place and series of actions, like a story. The audience says “oh, he’s picking and smelling a flower. I get it.”

A mime-actor would walk into a room that had a flower on the ground, bend over with hand outstretched, squeeze the actual flower between their fingers, remove the flower from whatever it’s sitting on, straighten up, hold their hand with the flower in it to their nose and inhale. There is a physical object in their hand, the performer interacts with it limited by the laws of physics we function around everyday. The audience says “ok, so he picked a flower. I’ve done that.”

A corporeal mime would move their whole bodies, stemming from their trunk, using abstract motions that represent the greater universality of picking a flower. Perhaps it's a statement of man's interaction with nature. There aren't specific characters or locations or events, just feelings and ideas evoked. The audience says "Mmm, yes...I too interact with nature. How fragile is that balance. This inspires me to write a poem." Or something.

I have a hard time not describing corporeal mime in derisive language because...I think it's kind of stupid. Maybe that's not fair, maybe I just don't get it. But in my opinion it places itself squarely between dance and theatre, not lyrical enough to be have the grace and thought process of dance and not detail and character specific enough to give the audience something to relate to that theatre has. So it becomes murky and unspecific. It doesn’t feel like there’s any emotion behind the actions either, instead it prioritizes accuracy of execution over feeling. Who wants to watch someone go through the motions? It feels like it’s supposed to represent “fighting” or “love,” but it’s so universal that it’s bland. It points to the thing it’s representing rather than shows it or asks us to engage at all. Why should we care? How is this a new perspective on fighting or love? Clearly I'm not a fan.

Watch and judge for yourself.


But anyway, my feelings about corporeal mime aside, it leads me to thinking. I wonder if these things, these categories, get so muddy and cross-pollinated, that they lose what makes them interesting to watch and then the piece because about the form rather than the content. Instead of drawing you in and making you feel things, you’re distanced and going “this is very well done corporeal mime. I see that they’re using ____ technique and I think that’s because ____. It’s well executed and this is what the technique is about, and I see how those ideas are being illustrated by those motions.” But…who wants to see that? Only other theatre nerds like me even know the term corporeal mime, so who really wants to see an evening of technically well executed corporeal mime? At a certain point I just want to see something engaging. Not necessarily dumbed down, but give me a reason to care about it.

There I go with my feelings again.

Really the question I'm interested in is this thing of form and content. If the content isn't engaging, it often becomes about the form. And maybe that's not a bad thing, maybe that's the level you want to engage the audience in. I feel like that's the whole idea of Brecht or Noh theatre, it becomes about you the audience member noticing yourself consuming the performance. So long as that's intentional and not some accidental byproduct of a poorly planned out performance.

Anyway that's enough me being a grouch. Here's a cool thing.