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.

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.

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.

Reading all these books on introversion has made me think about all the ways our education systems favor certain types of engagement and expression. On the teachers’ side, I have heard things like, “How do we get so and so to talk?” and as a student, I have felt the pressure, the inquisitive looks, the sense that someone is waiting for me to speak, the overenthusiastic response when I do. Education can feel like a constant coercion to speak.

Conversely, there have been periods in which I was the only student speaking in a class, moments when I was always the first one with my hand up. That was in my more extroverted period, I guess. But I am not any less intelligent or thoughtful than I was when I was the Hermione Granger of Developmental Psychology, I just questions my motives for speaking more. I speak when I feel I have something real to contribute or an honest question, not just an excuse to her myself talk.
I honor anyone’s right to be quiet. Mine especially. I have done all the speaking I need to do for a little while.

We gathered together a lovely group of women for our audition/rehearsal/playtime workshop. They came because we asked them and they seemed to all have a glorious time, which is what I wanted. It was extraordinary amount of work to gather them together and an extraordinary amount of work to facilitate. Lots of them said, “We should do this every week!” Which might kill me but pleased me a great deal none the less. The fact is we should do it every week. But it would be too expensive to rent that space so often and it would cost a lot of my energy, too. I’d like, though, to have a consistent and delightful group of actors like those we saw on Saturday to play with and create something gorgeous and fun and exciting.
All it takes is an invitation.
And money and labor.