Some people need cold hard truths from their friends. They ask them to give it them straight, to not hold back, to cut deep if they have to.
I do not need Cold Hard Truths from my friends. Truths, sure, but more than cold truth, I need warm waves of love. I need assurances and validations. I need my friends to remind me of my greatness, to show me my better self when the world seems to working so hard to make me forget it.
In one of my student scenes today, once the actors finished their lines and/or had been killed off, they started fucking around. They threw their paper swords at each other, pretended to cut each other’s throats. It’s such a curious lack of awareness of the eyes on you. They seemed surprised we could see them. Sometimes we think that if we don’t want people to see us we are somehow invisible.
With my students, I think, there are many among them who are used to not being seen at all. They have an invisible status at home and so can sometimes be unclear that their voices and movements and choices have an impact on other people.
In the pep talk Scott gave me last night, he told me a story of how he responded to the flurry of words the somewhat crazy director threw at him one day. He just let her talk until she ran out of things to say. Then he said nothing.
She barked at him, “You’re just looking at me.”
He said nothing. She shouted, “Aren’t you going to say something? Say something!”
Which, after a pause, he simply said, “Tell me more about. . .”
I admire this strategy. It compels a person who seemingly only wanted to talk (and not listen much) to activity seek a response. It would seem to make them listen.
I find I am often railroaded into talking before I’m ready or before the other person seems ready to listen. I end up feeling like I have no authority to have the conversation I want to have because I am so busy responding to what’s being thrown at me.
Hamlet’s choosing Rosalind’s way here. She tells us at the end of As You Like It that her way is to conjure us. And she begins with the women. For me, conjuring conjures up images of magicians and smoke and potions and spells and an unreasonable amount of handkerchiefs. It brings to mind pulling things out of thin air.
I guess conjuring isn’t that far from writing. You bring to mind something that wasn’t there, pull the image of a giraffe playing basketball, for example, right into the forefront of your consciousness. Or in this case, Hamlet conjures up the memories he and his friends have in common. He wants their camaraderie, their affection, their shared history all in the room with them. So if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are going to betray him, they do it with their past and their consciences and their memories at hand.
How to ride a bike.
How to knit.
How to crochet.
How to change a tire.
How to do the Australian Crawl.
How to pick someone up off the floor.
How to paint with oils.
How to use Photoshop.
How to raise funds.
How to hold my own in the face of an extrovert’s strong energy.
How to dance salsa.
How to invest.
How to make enough money to invest.
How to tour the world.
How to do the Lindy.
How to do calligraphy.
How to have faith again.
How to dream again.
How to, once more, surge forward in the face of impossible odds.
The problem with experience is that it does tend to beg this question. It becomes a little harder to just DO things. Shows, for example. In the beginning, you just dive in because it seems like it might be fun. You think, “I want to make a show! I have this play and I have this skill, let’s just do it!” And you do. And you discover how much work it can be and how much heartbreak there is to encounter along the road and how when it’s all over, those may be the only things you take with you. So the next time someone proposes “Just putting on a show” you cannot help but ask, “To what end?”
Might this be an ironic “good”? Or the kind of good that you use when you want to hide what rat bastards you find the King and Queen to be? Or perhaps just a formal good ? The kind of linguistic extra word because it scans well. Like, is King Wenceslas actually good or does it just help the meter when you’re talking about him? Seems like good is the sort of word you add when you’re talking to a king trying to convince him to do something nice for you.
I wish I could call people on their stuff as well as Hamlet. I see a great deal more than I can ever say. I catch people lying. I see people hiding. I see exactly what they really meant. But I rarely say anything. I just note it and move on. On the occasions that I say something, when I catch someone out, they will often call me a mind-reader. But I don’t read minds. I read bodies. I see the confessions in the muscles and contortions of the face.
At a certain point in madness, it becomes time to send for help. The tornado of the thing starts to pick up everything in its path and stats to feed on itself until the people close to the tornado start to become the tornado too. It takes someone outside of the path of the tornado to reach in and offer a hand that isn’t caught in the spin.
This is one of the things you have to learn in school. I’ve seen many teachers who, when faced with a students’ hand up will first ask them, “Is this something about what we’re talking about? Is it on topic? Is what you’re about to say appropriate?”
And it is remarkable to see hands come down, to see them solving the problem of when and what to speak about in school. It seems as if it should be perfectly natural to understand how to stay on topic but it must be taught. And I know a lot of adults who didn’t learn it.
Archive 1980–2024
Feldenkrais for Artists in NYC
You aren't stuck in traffic. You are the traffic.
The Hamlet Project 