true foundation - another note to an actor

In my various notes to students lately, i am finding that if i read them as messages to myself, I learn a great deal... today I sent a message to a student in response to a report assignment - it is their monthly evaluation of how their own physical practice is going. So far my 4th year acting students have been writing very well though out examinations of their practice. One student, however, wrote me a brief statement... more or less: I failed, I am disappointed, I will try again.

This students work has felt a bit in a lull- something familiar to us all and I wrote back:

I would encourage you to take a deeper look at your process. If you are not able to get to the work you had planned, then maybe the work is to ask yourself WHY?

Are you:
depressed
angry
rebelling
lack work ethic
afraid of success
afraid of failure
over tired
sick
in the wrong work
uninformed

If you are happy with the way things are then maybe none of these things are true- but if you are not- are any of these things resonating? If so- then this is the work... adjust your practice to INCLUDE addressing this issue.

If the building you are creating keeps collapsing, then you need to examine the foundation... it can be very hard to tell oneself the truth

Without truth, you cannot grow...

not pushing

I managed to find an hour in the studio and I was able to really move from a deep visceral place. I was also able to see how much I push from the muscular system. It is an old habit that is hard to break. I wrote some notes to another faculty member about an older- very mature actor, who is afraid of confronting old patterns, and what I wrote could easily be a prescription for myself. I want to make real change, but i can see how deep the old patterns are. It takes a great deal of vigilance to begin from a new place. I also realized, however, the advantage of age... there are less big bogs of emotional muck to get through as I feel my internal viscera... i do not seem to run in to as much cathartic emotional release (unless that is because I am working so rarely- but I don;t think so.) It feels like when i manage to work authentically and follow the real 'guts' of my impulses they lead me to:

-releasing physical pain and stiffness (although I have to be careful not to head for pain, but sit just before sensation and feel through the blood/breath etc... inside the muscles etc)... the healing aspect of the work

-a real desire to move towards 'God' and all that that means... no good words for this... 'the realm of being' versus 'heedlessness' (BUT I have to be careful here to sit in 'powerlessness' as this can lead to an INTENSE desire to ACT- which is GREAT!!! but I can then get hooked into superficial responses to this that still feel old... so I must be patient and go deeper... but this is SO useful and can spur me on to great things... IF I can maintain faith and purpose... that is the tough part... the follow through

- the simple pleasure of oneness ... where the two things above come together...

I very much look forward to daily practice- which will not start again until end of April... tomorrow I will check out a studio space on Toronto Island where I hope to work for 6 weeks almost daily and I cannot wait!!!

notes to an actor re: emotional workout

actors have a very valuable excuse to literally make space in their lives to consciously, physically, vocally work with their emotions/feelings/thoughts in metaphor.... as you do this, you will uncover very valuable information about yourself that you can offer to your audiences- as they may not have the skills/time to do this kind of work- you can model it/hold it for them... the deeper you go, the more consciously you do it, the richer the gems that you mine will be that you can offer

Notes to a student asking me about meditation as a part of their warm up and daily routine and feeling like she wasn’t able to be present in stillness

try movement meditation... (the slow walk we used in class, walk on a rope, take 5-45 minutes to stand up)

try using music.(one song over and over or get some music intended for meditation.. I don't have any great selections off the top of my head)

try calligraphy... (write one important word over and over again)

try a mantra (saying something over and over)

a yantra (something you look at like a mandala- can be used as meditation – or any image you like)

try holding a stone or any object and seeing it, feeling it for a long time....

there are lots of different kind of meditations...

every culture has used all of these above and many more in different forms-
make meditation as fluid and fun as you are allowing your warm ups to become!!

experiment!!

also make sure that your spine/heart/breath etc are really warm BEFORE you meditate (like a yoga class, which is ultimately getting you ready for stillness but our contemporary materialistic culture has turned it into fitness alone) and do the work from my class (which is pretty basic- and is part of yoga, part of mindfulness meditation, is pretty simple and universal and actually, to do for real, quite difficult...)

HAVE FUN!

notes to a student regarding how to stay alive during long still times on stage

keep the tension fluid- neither always fully relaxed- or always held
think of the stillness as very active- and maybe give yourself a very long term engaged task
look for the someone in the audience who is... fill in the blank with something really compelling for yourself
the person who I do not know now- but who will be one of my best friends for life... something fun and that provokes you to FEEL and therefore move internally...

In any case, your internal viscera- should be shifting and this will hopefully help make the stillness more alive- also really remember gravity and how much it constantly is changing- don't go numb to gravity- you are still moving, as you always are- but it is just more delicate- great meditative practice!

Joshua Tree National Park Day 6 Oct 14/10

I didn't walk today... I worked and read... I read The Priceless Pearl, written by Bahiyyih Khanum about Shoghi Effendi's life- a critical person in Baha'i history and a writer who I admire more than any other I think... the book brings me to tears regularly and I am in awe at all he accomplished...

I am feeling better... my healthy animal is healthier and I feel energy again in my body and health even! This was the right thing to do- I may not know yet what I am going to do next exactly, but I am clearer and I have one more day of gorgeous desert before heading home where the challenge will be to keep up some kind of healthy physical/prayer practice for myself, as the two are so linked for me now... High park may see a lot of me!

Joshua Tree National Park Day 5 Oct 14/10

I started a longer trail late in the day again and wandered around a few shorter trails earlier in the day... did some easy boulder scrambling... I drove to the Cottonwood side of the park through the largest, most deserted part... very barren and then the vegetation changes dramatically and there are some lovely new kinds of cactus and 'trees' here. I decided to take the trail to the Oasis... a trail they suggest 4-6 hrs for and I started at 3:30, so really I had about 3 hours. I always forget how early the sun goes down here. I decided I would turn around at 5, giving me enough time to get back. I have been walking very slow here, something I consider a triumph, enjoying every moment, not rushing... not just a result of my older aching feet, but that helps slow me down. When I hit the one mile marker, I realize I have done that mile in 20 minutes without trying so I decide maybe I can do the whole trail and I start picking up the speed in case the trail starts getting harder at some point or heads uphill. So now I am cruising, not really looking at anything, end gaining, pleased that I am getting more exercise than I have been walking slow, hooked right back into an older way of doing things. I'm walking really fast for awhile, legs are warm because I have been walking a lot today, so I am moving fast and I almost walk right by a tortoise without noticing and I stop. I have been wanting to see one of these for years, and I almost walk right by. So I hang out for awhile with this guy, he puts his head in before I get the idea to take a picture... I wonder how many things I have missed moving so quickly and I resume walking more slowly again, start feeling my breath again as I walk, laugh at myself and enjoy the scenery for real again- which is stunning. I have lost some time hanging out with the tortoise so I assume I will not be able to make it all the way to the oasis, but then I hit the 2 mile marker and I have made really good time. So once again I think- I can do this, I don't want to come all the way out here and miss the punch line of the trail... supposedly tall palm trees in the middle of the desert... a gorgeous oasis. So I start clipping again. Funny I should be headed for an oasis... I come from water, Nova Scotia and Ontario are full of water. I am not here for the water, I am here for the desert. So I am moving fairly quickly and somewhere between the two mile and three mile marker I suddenly realize the three mile trail BEGINS at the end of another trail that is easily another mile - so I have miscalculated. Now I have to think hard about making it to the oasis, so I pick up my speed more..
I haven't looked around since the tortoise and I glance up and it is gorgeous, but I keep going fast, looking down... and then I round a corner and I can see the trail ahead of me and it is long and no oasis... and I stop. I look down- there is a snake. Now as a lover of snakes I am thrilled. I have seen one other snake in the desert in Utah, a beautiful black and white king snake on red sand... not a poisonous snake. This snake is different, smaller and poisonous, maybe not deadly, but poisonous.

But I have to get a picture, cause of my 10 year old son... cause every time I see something like this I wish he was here and I get my camera and I take a picture, but it is too far away, so I get closer and take another one, and then closer to take another one... and he moves towards me with that sound designed to terrify any living creature and it works... and I do the appropriate thing that my adrenaline tells me to do, I back up really fast. Now I am wondering again if I should proceed or go back, it is 4:45... and I wonder if this snake is a 'sign'. Now I am here looking for 'signs' - big new ideas for my life, but I am very skeptical about the whole nature of external signs, but just as I am thinking about this I see a rabbit… and I think of Harry. Harry was a Mi'kmaq man I knew as a child in Nova Scotia. My mother believed in signs; she did crazy things based on signs… drove me nuts. I am rational person, sure I am a Baha’i, I pray and I believe in the ultimately mystical nature of life and yet I need things to make logical sense, to be scientifically sound. I more and more see this as a limitation, but nonetheless… I still think the mystical stays… mystical and does not move the material world in magical ways, it may move it scientifically… but rocks do not levitate and snakes do not appear for my personal specific spiritual edification.. So then this snake is just a snake, people see animals on trails randomly, or because they go at the right time of day and walk quietly… but them there is Harry and Fred… Harry would appear – at our house – as people often do in the country, unannounced and often when we needed him in some way. He was a healer. Harry always had some odd root of something in his pocket that he would put under your tongue if you were sick or tell you to make a tea with. They often tasted awful and were intended to cure. Later in life I was able to identify one of them he put under my tongue as golden seal…Harry appeared once in my life when my sister and I were staying with friends of family because out mother was ill. I don’t know why he was there, I can’t remember – but remembering the nature of Harry and his heart… I can only assume he was checking in to see how we were doing. Harry did not say much. I think he never said anything unless it was important. He was one of those people who would visit and sit silently in the living room… Harry got up and went outside to see the woods outside this house… there was an island across some water in a lake by this house and it had an inviting path. You could easily walk from the shore through the water to this little and I was maybe 11 and I decided to show this to him. I loved this little island. We went across the water and started walking down the trail. We were both silent. He stopped at one point and listened and gestured me to stop. He said ‘no animals’ and kept walking but listening and looking around. He stopped again and listened carefully…. ‘no animals’ and he gestured that we should go back. He didn’t say anything else, I just knew that this was not good. Fred was another friend of the family from the M’ikmaq reservation near our house in the valley in Nova Scotia. He was a Baha’I and my mother had informal prayer meetings at our house once a week and sometimes he would come. If he came- he would telephone and tell us and this meant that we should start praying while he ran over. His running was his praying. When he arrived we would maybe say one or two more prayers and then we’d have coffee (instant with evaporated milk for Fred) while we had filtered coffee with real milk. Once when he was over, he stayed for the longest time. We quietly wondered if he would ever leave…finally a huge flock of crows landed in the trees around the house… making a racket. Fred said ‘the crows are here’ and he left.

The first day I was here I say so many animals. It felt as if the desert was welcoming me- that the animals had come out to say hello! We are so glad you are here! It was a good day. It made me feel as if I was where I should be. Despite the fact that it was likely totally circumstantial… and yet I knew it was good. So is this snake a sign? Now you’d think the snake would be a sign to GO BACK. Don’t move towards the snake…It’s a poisonous snake after all. But being a woman, the destroyer of the world, I think it means go forward! Eat the apple my dear… but while I am contemplating this and watching the snake move on his way, I decide to go back. It is close to 5 and I do not want to be rushing on the way back and anyway… I can let go of the oasis- I have seen a hawk, a tortoise and a snake! So I go back, I don’t run, like Fred, but I am praying.