Wednesday, June 30, 2010
the welcome
it's not the long walk home that will change this heart,
but the welcome i receive with the restart.
Habitat for Happiness
Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile | Video on TED.com
Create the conditions for happiness to occur.
The goal is not to create happiness. Create a habitat for happiness.
Less talk on the Gross Domestic Product, more talk on the Gross National Happiness.
We need a new way to count.
Happiness is about wanting what you have, not having what you want.
We focus on the pursuit of happiness, as if it's something we have to pursue.
Don't operate on an aspirational treadmill, foster a sense of gratitude.
We are myopically focused on the wrong things.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Time for a bigger tool box.
We need leaders who know what to count.
Create the conditions for happiness to occur.
The goal is not to create happiness. Create a habitat for happiness.
Less talk on the Gross Domestic Product, more talk on the Gross National Happiness.
We need a new way to count.
Happiness is about wanting what you have, not having what you want.
We focus on the pursuit of happiness, as if it's something we have to pursue.
Don't operate on an aspirational treadmill, foster a sense of gratitude.
We are myopically focused on the wrong things.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Time for a bigger tool box.
We need leaders who know what to count.
celebration
You're not in time and space to graduate into higher realms of existence, Andrew; you're here because long, long ago, you already did. And back then you could think of no celebration greater than being with good friends, falling in love, on cool adventures, facing great challenges, and possessing total amnesia... lest it all seem too easy.
Well done. Very well done.
Ungawa,
The Universe
Well done. Very well done.
Ungawa,
The Universe
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
the battle
Rahul Chadha: I just fell from grace.
Saroj Rai: My darling, you have to be standing up in order to be able to fall. I mean, if you keep sitting on your ass, nothing's gonna happen. "Only brave warriors fall off their horses in battle. How can kneeling cowards know what a fall is?" Listen sweetheart, the main thing is, you have to fight the battle.
what a beautiful film.
you in the next room is the only thing worth living for
“Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire.”
-Luis Buñuel
“There is a sort of demon that every now and then makes you want to destroy things, just like that. Sometimes I feel like letting myself go, like getting myself into trouble. Everyone’s got a little spider knitting its web inside. Sometimes it wakes up and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, you want to break things.”
-Catherine Deneuve
“When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy, but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I’d do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That’s what’s at the heart of my music.”
-Nino Rota
“I don’t understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.”
-Ava Gardner
“I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man. I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”
-Walt Disney
“[Walt Disney] has accomplished something that has defied all the efforts and experiments of the laboratories in zoology and biology. He has given animals souls.”
-William Lyon Phelps
The last day of March,
My darling Sleeping Child, I am oddly shy about you. I still regard you as an inviolate presence. You are as secret as the mysterious processes of the womb. I’m not being fancy…I have treated women, generally, very badly and used them as an exercise for my contempt - except in your case.
I have fought like a fool to treat you in the same way and failed. One of these days I will wake up - which I think I have done already - and realise to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself.
There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have racked my shabby brains and can find no answer.
But when people die, those who are taken away from us can never come back. Never, never, never, never, never (Lear about Cordelia). We are such doomed fools. Unfortunately, we know it. So I have decided that, for a second or two, the precious potential of you in the next room is the only thing in the world worth living for. After your death there shall only be one other and that will be mine. Or I possibly think, vice versa.
Ravaged love,
And loving Rich
-Richard Burton in a letter to Elizabeth Taylor
On the increased use of violence in post-war films:
“After the war, there was no longer a sense of family. We no longer loved our flag or honored our country. People no longer believe in hell and brimstone, or even retribution and therefore they do not believe in punishment after they are dead. What could we be afraid of? There was only one thing: physical pain. Physical pain comes from violence and I think today that is the only fact that people really fear. And when we are afraid of violence, then it becomes an element of drama. So, brutality’s now a necessary ingredient of dramatic development and denouement.
We can’t avoid violence because it is everywhere. It should be present in films. But everything depends on the way it is shown. I detest violence when it is shown as a spectacle or when it is used to make us laugh. And that is how it is used more and more on the screen.”
- Fritz Lang, in 1967 interview
-Luis Buñuel
“There is a sort of demon that every now and then makes you want to destroy things, just like that. Sometimes I feel like letting myself go, like getting myself into trouble. Everyone’s got a little spider knitting its web inside. Sometimes it wakes up and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, you want to break things.”
-Catherine Deneuve
“When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy, but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I’d do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That’s what’s at the heart of my music.”
-Nino Rota
“I don’t understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.”
-Ava Gardner
“I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man. I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”
-Walt Disney
“[Walt Disney] has accomplished something that has defied all the efforts and experiments of the laboratories in zoology and biology. He has given animals souls.”
-William Lyon Phelps
The last day of March,
My darling Sleeping Child, I am oddly shy about you. I still regard you as an inviolate presence. You are as secret as the mysterious processes of the womb. I’m not being fancy…I have treated women, generally, very badly and used them as an exercise for my contempt - except in your case.
I have fought like a fool to treat you in the same way and failed. One of these days I will wake up - which I think I have done already - and realise to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself.
There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have racked my shabby brains and can find no answer.
But when people die, those who are taken away from us can never come back. Never, never, never, never, never (Lear about Cordelia). We are such doomed fools. Unfortunately, we know it. So I have decided that, for a second or two, the precious potential of you in the next room is the only thing in the world worth living for. After your death there shall only be one other and that will be mine. Or I possibly think, vice versa.
Ravaged love,
And loving Rich
-Richard Burton in a letter to Elizabeth Taylor
On the increased use of violence in post-war films:
“After the war, there was no longer a sense of family. We no longer loved our flag or honored our country. People no longer believe in hell and brimstone, or even retribution and therefore they do not believe in punishment after they are dead. What could we be afraid of? There was only one thing: physical pain. Physical pain comes from violence and I think today that is the only fact that people really fear. And when we are afraid of violence, then it becomes an element of drama. So, brutality’s now a necessary ingredient of dramatic development and denouement.
We can’t avoid violence because it is everywhere. It should be present in films. But everything depends on the way it is shown. I detest violence when it is shown as a spectacle or when it is used to make us laugh. And that is how it is used more and more on the screen.”
- Fritz Lang, in 1967 interview
the challenge
See everyone, Andrew, as a brand new challenge to fall in love.
Sneaky of me, huh?
Kiss, kiss -
The Universe
Sneaky of me, huh?
Kiss, kiss -
The Universe
Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Volver
Hi Heather,
I hope you are doing well. I just wanted to tell you about a really stunning experience I had this past week. So two days after STAY I started an 8-day substitute teaching gig at my old middle school, Holmes Middle School, in Alexandria. When I picked up the job posting online I really didn't think much of it- I was just really pleased that I got such a great working opportunity (subbing pays pretty well). It was for a Computer class- an elective for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.
I walked into my middle school last Monday and was brisk and quick, didn't do much exploring, just went straight to the class and got to business, much like how I always do when I substitute. In this case, I really didn't allow myself to think about where I was.
But over the course of the 8 days, the building kept nudging me. The children kept nudging me. And by mid-week I started bumping into old teachers in the hallway (who actually remembered me) and instantanously we rolled into memories of the old days, back in 1998 when I was a 6th grader.
I realized that for the first several days I was there I was closing myself off, but eventually the building took me by the collars and forced me to be an active observer and listener.
Heather, when I began to open up in my old middle school, I shattered into pieces... both of tears and golden memories. I saw down the hallways where I was teased and tormented, I walked the path I use to take from PE to orchestra class, I saw the very classroom and by the very locker where I met three of my soulmates... three of my best friends still to this day. For days I avoided this investigation, I moved in and out of the school like a drone. But once I opened up, I felt like a spirit, a ghost of some sort, that was revisiting an older world. Volver. And I saw that stage in the cafeteria, with the glossy wooden varnish, which was the home to my first-ever true experiences with the arts. I performed with the orchestra on that stage, made some amazing friends as stand partners on that stage during rehearsals, and I acted and sang on that stage in our school's theater productions. I could hear the voice of my late orchestra teacher, one of the most influencial teachers I had while growing up.
I found myself thinking for a moment... Oh! If I could just STAY.
Gosh, I'm tearing up now typing this email.
This is holy ground, I thought. For me, for my life, for my experience in this world and in this life, this is holy ground.
Middle schoolers are a unique breed. Such rascals but sweethearts at the same time. And what's exciting is they aren't too jaded yet, like a lot of kids seem to get at the high school level. This past week, when I was nearing the end of my subbing assignment, I participated in Field Day with them, was by their side for their Award Ceremony and helped pass out Popeyes for their end of the year party. The kids worshipped me, "Mr. Hawkins! Mr. Hawkins! Mr. Hawkins!" they hollared.
Hearing the kids shout my name, and say how amazing I was, I felt the energy inside of me shift. It was as if the building was whispering, "I'm sorry you experienced pain here, I'm sorry. But this place loves you, it always has. This is holy ground."
It's one of the most highly diverse schools in the entire area, maybe even the country. It's always been this way. I remember being a 6th grader and being interviewed by the London Times who were doing an investigation on the success of the school with it's diversity.
Such an experience. Such a headrush.
As I walked out on Wednesday afternoon, on my last day, I spoke to the assistant Principal and told him how much I enjoyed subbing here and how much I adored the kids and he said how much they loved having me and so they took down all of my contact information and said that they would contact me in the fall when they need a sub. They said that I was at the top of their lists of subs to contact.
I am constant awe of life and some of its subtle, quiet moments of beauty and healing. I don't know if I'll be able to go back and sub there, it will depend on my job situation in the fall, but if I'm not doing anything else, I think that's where I'll be living until I discover my next move.
PS- Have you heard of the electronic artist Ulrich Schnauss? He's from Germany. If not, look him up on Pandora or YouTube. He has some beautiful electronic, ambient-sythn music that just takes me to another place. Two of his albums, which I have just loved exploring lately, are called "Far Away Trains Passing By" and "Goodbye"
Hope you are well, may the muses be with you,
Andrew
I hope you are doing well. I just wanted to tell you about a really stunning experience I had this past week. So two days after STAY I started an 8-day substitute teaching gig at my old middle school, Holmes Middle School, in Alexandria. When I picked up the job posting online I really didn't think much of it- I was just really pleased that I got such a great working opportunity (subbing pays pretty well). It was for a Computer class- an elective for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.
I walked into my middle school last Monday and was brisk and quick, didn't do much exploring, just went straight to the class and got to business, much like how I always do when I substitute. In this case, I really didn't allow myself to think about where I was.
But over the course of the 8 days, the building kept nudging me. The children kept nudging me. And by mid-week I started bumping into old teachers in the hallway (who actually remembered me) and instantanously we rolled into memories of the old days, back in 1998 when I was a 6th grader.
I realized that for the first several days I was there I was closing myself off, but eventually the building took me by the collars and forced me to be an active observer and listener.
Heather, when I began to open up in my old middle school, I shattered into pieces... both of tears and golden memories. I saw down the hallways where I was teased and tormented, I walked the path I use to take from PE to orchestra class, I saw the very classroom and by the very locker where I met three of my soulmates... three of my best friends still to this day. For days I avoided this investigation, I moved in and out of the school like a drone. But once I opened up, I felt like a spirit, a ghost of some sort, that was revisiting an older world. Volver. And I saw that stage in the cafeteria, with the glossy wooden varnish, which was the home to my first-ever true experiences with the arts. I performed with the orchestra on that stage, made some amazing friends as stand partners on that stage during rehearsals, and I acted and sang on that stage in our school's theater productions. I could hear the voice of my late orchestra teacher, one of the most influencial teachers I had while growing up.
I found myself thinking for a moment... Oh! If I could just STAY.
Gosh, I'm tearing up now typing this email.
This is holy ground, I thought. For me, for my life, for my experience in this world and in this life, this is holy ground.
Middle schoolers are a unique breed. Such rascals but sweethearts at the same time. And what's exciting is they aren't too jaded yet, like a lot of kids seem to get at the high school level. This past week, when I was nearing the end of my subbing assignment, I participated in Field Day with them, was by their side for their Award Ceremony and helped pass out Popeyes for their end of the year party. The kids worshipped me, "Mr. Hawkins! Mr. Hawkins! Mr. Hawkins!" they hollared.
Hearing the kids shout my name, and say how amazing I was, I felt the energy inside of me shift. It was as if the building was whispering, "I'm sorry you experienced pain here, I'm sorry. But this place loves you, it always has. This is holy ground."
It's one of the most highly diverse schools in the entire area, maybe even the country. It's always been this way. I remember being a 6th grader and being interviewed by the London Times who were doing an investigation on the success of the school with it's diversity.
Such an experience. Such a headrush.
As I walked out on Wednesday afternoon, on my last day, I spoke to the assistant Principal and told him how much I enjoyed subbing here and how much I adored the kids and he said how much they loved having me and so they took down all of my contact information and said that they would contact me in the fall when they need a sub. They said that I was at the top of their lists of subs to contact.
I am constant awe of life and some of its subtle, quiet moments of beauty and healing. I don't know if I'll be able to go back and sub there, it will depend on my job situation in the fall, but if I'm not doing anything else, I think that's where I'll be living until I discover my next move.
PS- Have you heard of the electronic artist Ulrich Schnauss? He's from Germany. If not, look him up on Pandora or YouTube. He has some beautiful electronic, ambient-sythn music that just takes me to another place. Two of his albums, which I have just loved exploring lately, are called "Far Away Trains Passing By" and "Goodbye"
Hope you are well, may the muses be with you,
Andrew
Thursday, June 24, 2010
findings this morning
Last night I came home from orchestra practice and spoke with Josette. She asked what music I played tonight and I told her the Danube waltz. Immediately, her face lit up. "Oh! Da Danube! Oh, oh, oh!" And her electric smile started telling this golden story of a golden night on the golden beaches of Cannes. She said she never missed a night at the Cannes nightclubs. They called her name, "Lydia! Lydia! Lydia!" and then she said every night, when the club was opening, they would play the Danube, and she would dance, and the lights underneath the floor would like up and illuminate the club and shine onto the beach, making the sea an inviting pool of infinite wealth. She felt like a princess. Royalty drenched in tight dresses, pumps, cigarettes, gaffawing friends, slick looking boys, sailors, toe tapping and gin dropping. Only in Cannes is there this magic, only in Cannes...
This morning I decided, for the moment, to hell with the ache of her life, forget about the journey. We know what happened. After she left Cannes, everything went to shit. But I'm not interested in psycho-analyzing anymore and neither is she. I'm not interested in talking about the regret and shame which she already lives with too much. Monday we are beginnging story hour, Josette and I, and I just want to hear about the parties. I want to hear about the happiest time in her life. Her life in Cannes, her days when she commanded the night club, conducted her own jazz-band swagger, did the jitterbug with all the boys and with bourdon in her veins, and when she was, like she says, a Princess. That's the story I want to get out of her. That one.
--
I dreamed last night of an old friend. Someone I don't talk to anymore, really, but to someone who I have inistricable ties to and who I owe gratitude, for our falling out taught so much about my limits and my demons. But I wondered why this person showed back up in my dream state? Is it a longing to get back in touch with this individual, or was my dream state last night just some benign jukebox-- sometimes it's like that, no? Sometimes you just dream of old random moments and feelings and people and it doesn't mean anything but that. It's not always necessarily a call to action, right?
This business of dreams is tricky. Sometimes I think they are calls to action, and sometimes I think they are just crazy shuffle machines. Like the ipod shuffle. You have to know yourself to know how to interpret your dreams.
Than I thought, maybe the dream is tied to my ego. I've been doing a lot of internal work lately, deconstructing the ego. And certainly this person is connected to my ego, since our falling out was extrememly emotional and since my ego is tied to my emotional terrors.
Then I wondered, how closely connected are the ego and the subconscious? I think they are intwinded. Perhaps the Consciousness owns the neighborhood, the Subconscious owns a house, and the ego is a tenant. In the basement of the subconcious's house. But the ego is only a tenant! If we are aware of this, than we also realize that the ego's living arrangements, his conditions, are changeable, not nebulous.
Shit can change, shit can change.
--
The Duke's words are true on so many levels, think about it...
"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing."
--
One day Wided and Samer had an arguement about the opera. Samer refused to believe that the arts were only meant for one group of people. He believed that the arts are for anyone, not discriminatory to one particular group. Wided disagreed with this.
And I have to agree with both. Duh, on a really basic level, the arts are for everyone. That's what I believe in my most idealized state. However, Wided is also correct, probably more so. All arts, not just the opera,have been stolen from the masses. Ticket prices say this. Demographics in audiences say this. Enrollment in arts programs by multi-cultural kids say this. Lack of funding to programs say this. The West has said, in more ways than one, that these art forms are only for certain groups of people. Some people are invited to attend and participate and some are not!
It's funny... the opera knows it's in trouble. There was an article in the Post a few weeks ago about how members of the Washington Opera have now begun coming out onto the Mall in full costume and doing spontaneous 15 minute operatice performances to random tourists, in the hopes of luring more people into their seats. Consider the history of the Opera for a moment. It has always been an elite art form, reserved for those bougie Italians and Germans and French. Now the art form is in crisis, as is the theater and the symphonies. It's very possible to see the art form dissolve within 25 years, as the old rich whites are dying out.
I think this shake up is good. I think if the opera and the symphonies and the theater fails, its all of the best. Yes, it will be totally detrimental, but this system excludes so many people, and I think it needs to burn. I think a new order needs to emerge, one that is different and one that includes everybody. We will never really lose the opera, or the symphonies or the theater, but I hope we lose this system. I hope we do, one day.
--
Yes. If Arena stage offers me a position, I will take it. it is a position of a lifetime and it will teach me so many things, across the board. I think all of these thoughts I've been having this week is only equipping me for my future path, whatever that may be. I want to reach out to a lot of people, I am not interested in sucking on the white man's artistic institutional's cock. It's a gross cock. Have you seen it lately? I want to reach out to all people, be it through theater, film, TV, books, lecture tours, teaching, or music. Stories teach people have to live and people need words like they need bread, and EVERYONE should be able to get these things. Free of charge. Open to all. We're all one, why don't people see that? We're all one, and we got to remember that. We've got to.
This morning I decided, for the moment, to hell with the ache of her life, forget about the journey. We know what happened. After she left Cannes, everything went to shit. But I'm not interested in psycho-analyzing anymore and neither is she. I'm not interested in talking about the regret and shame which she already lives with too much. Monday we are beginnging story hour, Josette and I, and I just want to hear about the parties. I want to hear about the happiest time in her life. Her life in Cannes, her days when she commanded the night club, conducted her own jazz-band swagger, did the jitterbug with all the boys and with bourdon in her veins, and when she was, like she says, a Princess. That's the story I want to get out of her. That one.
--
I dreamed last night of an old friend. Someone I don't talk to anymore, really, but to someone who I have inistricable ties to and who I owe gratitude, for our falling out taught so much about my limits and my demons. But I wondered why this person showed back up in my dream state? Is it a longing to get back in touch with this individual, or was my dream state last night just some benign jukebox-- sometimes it's like that, no? Sometimes you just dream of old random moments and feelings and people and it doesn't mean anything but that. It's not always necessarily a call to action, right?
This business of dreams is tricky. Sometimes I think they are calls to action, and sometimes I think they are just crazy shuffle machines. Like the ipod shuffle. You have to know yourself to know how to interpret your dreams.
Than I thought, maybe the dream is tied to my ego. I've been doing a lot of internal work lately, deconstructing the ego. And certainly this person is connected to my ego, since our falling out was extrememly emotional and since my ego is tied to my emotional terrors.
Then I wondered, how closely connected are the ego and the subconscious? I think they are intwinded. Perhaps the Consciousness owns the neighborhood, the Subconscious owns a house, and the ego is a tenant. In the basement of the subconcious's house. But the ego is only a tenant! If we are aware of this, than we also realize that the ego's living arrangements, his conditions, are changeable, not nebulous.
Shit can change, shit can change.
--
The Duke's words are true on so many levels, think about it...
"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing."
--
One day Wided and Samer had an arguement about the opera. Samer refused to believe that the arts were only meant for one group of people. He believed that the arts are for anyone, not discriminatory to one particular group. Wided disagreed with this.
And I have to agree with both. Duh, on a really basic level, the arts are for everyone. That's what I believe in my most idealized state. However, Wided is also correct, probably more so. All arts, not just the opera,have been stolen from the masses. Ticket prices say this. Demographics in audiences say this. Enrollment in arts programs by multi-cultural kids say this. Lack of funding to programs say this. The West has said, in more ways than one, that these art forms are only for certain groups of people. Some people are invited to attend and participate and some are not!
It's funny... the opera knows it's in trouble. There was an article in the Post a few weeks ago about how members of the Washington Opera have now begun coming out onto the Mall in full costume and doing spontaneous 15 minute operatice performances to random tourists, in the hopes of luring more people into their seats. Consider the history of the Opera for a moment. It has always been an elite art form, reserved for those bougie Italians and Germans and French. Now the art form is in crisis, as is the theater and the symphonies. It's very possible to see the art form dissolve within 25 years, as the old rich whites are dying out.
I think this shake up is good. I think if the opera and the symphonies and the theater fails, its all of the best. Yes, it will be totally detrimental, but this system excludes so many people, and I think it needs to burn. I think a new order needs to emerge, one that is different and one that includes everybody. We will never really lose the opera, or the symphonies or the theater, but I hope we lose this system. I hope we do, one day.
--
Yes. If Arena stage offers me a position, I will take it. it is a position of a lifetime and it will teach me so many things, across the board. I think all of these thoughts I've been having this week is only equipping me for my future path, whatever that may be. I want to reach out to a lot of people, I am not interested in sucking on the white man's artistic institutional's cock. It's a gross cock. Have you seen it lately? I want to reach out to all people, be it through theater, film, TV, books, lecture tours, teaching, or music. Stories teach people have to live and people need words like they need bread, and EVERYONE should be able to get these things. Free of charge. Open to all. We're all one, why don't people see that? We're all one, and we got to remember that. We've got to.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Story of the Day
Blank Future
this is a picture of the future & you'll notice that there's a lot of blank space because people haven't made up their minds about it & the future doesn't have a lot of time for that kind of indecisiveness
this is a picture of the future & you'll notice that there's a lot of blank space because people haven't made up their minds about it & the future doesn't have a lot of time for that kind of indecisiveness
more thoughts on theater, campfire, corporation
you know, if you create a new piece... you have think who you're creating it for. Who is your audience? What are you really trying to say, what impact are you really trying to make, and what story/wisdom/ideas are you trying to impart, and, very importantly, WHO are you trying to relay that story/wisdom and those ideas TO??? What conversation are you trying to start and with WHOM?
People create a new show and then they... go to Fringe. Or they sumbit it to a minor or major regional theater company. They get it jammed in the cogs of the system- some make it, some don't. Some are great, some aren't. OR, they go to another festival, Fringe or another sort, either in the States or to one that is hosted internationally.
I think this is... okay. Sure. Yes. Okay... but, um, I am just thinking here... what group of people, what audience pool are the majority of theater practioners reaching out to? What kind of people do theater artists really want to reach? Festivals and Fringes are great.. but at least here in the States... who the fuck goes to those Festivals except theater enthusiasts/supporters/lovers/artists? Of course, I'm making a generalization, but I know for certain, theater events, theater festivals are NOT major cultural or community event anymore. They just aren't. I don't classify it a community event if certain or members or groups within the community are directly or indirectly excluded. The DC Fringe Festival is coming up in a few weeks out here. And these shows will, no doubt, be attended by friends, family members and supporters of the artists who are presenting the works, plus there will be some word of mouth and external publicity, which will pull in some interested theater goers (who can afford the costly $15 ticket) from off the street. But, it is extremely likely that 90+ percent of every Fringe show in the Festival this summer will have at least a few empty seats for every performance.
Are Fringe artists and all theater artists in general happy with this? Honestly?
As an artist, I, personally (and maybe this is just me), have no DESIRE to just communicate to a theater crowd, or to only a crowd that can afford theater. I want to talk to everybody. I don't want to have boundaries of class or race or gender when it comes to presenting my art. Not just my art, but every piece of art, it should be for EVERYONE. Right?? The conversations that theaters start, they should be conversations for everyone. Right?? If I do a Fringe show one day, I will be disgusted if my house is filled with just theater people or upper/middle class folks who can afford the ticket. That doesn't achieve much. They doesn't reach everybody. That reaches a slice of the world, generous citizens, yes, but ones that partipate in this discriminatory theater system.
That will make me sick! Because those aren't the only people I want to include in my conversation. The disappointing thing about the American Theater system is this very issue. The politics of it, the business of, the ego campaign of it... it closes off the conversation to whole groups of people. These communities/groups of people who are excluded, they have no concept what theater is and it's power. They have no concept they could, if the system were different, be welcome to particpate in the conversation, or even to just listen. For some, maybe if they went to a decent public school, have the only experience of theater being sitting in complete boredom during a school assembly and having to watch some play, that no body was interested in.
They're school might have, though, hosted a Diversity Assembly, a Heritage Celebration, or a something like that, as they did at my middle and high schools and university. And this they liked, this was a party! this was open, this was free, and this was a celebration of everyone in the community. This is also theater. This is where theater really lives, and this is what so many theater artists in the world either do not recognize or are so stringently opposed to partaking in... i don't know why, because maybe it isn't "real art" ? I don't know, I'm just speculating.
It's hard. And for years and years and years the American Theater system has built this coroporate structure of theater that is specifically for only a seletive audience pool. But, I think, if the system wants to evolve for the 21st century and really be a relevant force in the culture, in the communities, then it will need to wash away all these aristocratic notions and ideals of theater. These notions have been so ingrained for so long that most theater artists may not even realize they hold on to them so desperately. It's hard, I know, but it will have to be done on a wide-scale. And the TDF and other artistic administrators can work work work at improving this and that, improving the new play track and what not. They can toy with data and theories and "audience development" and all that, but it really will not, I firmly believe, help the theater emerge as a major voice or home in America in the 21st century.
People are constantly looking for stories. They're looking for metaphor and they're looking for answers. This is why people watch TV, invest in home entertainment systems. This is why adults join clubs, sports leagues, have social gathers, chit chat outside laundry mats, over coffee and cigarettes, in street-side churches, weight watches meetings. That necessity to BE APART of SOMETHING has not disappeared within the human genome. But the theater is perplexed because people are not coming to them anymore? Well, well, maybe it's because for decades and decades, the American theater has instilled an idea that certain people were welcome and certain people were not.
People are looking for commuity. And if the theater in the US can make a genuine effor to welcome other commuinities- not just welcome, but invite, and actually GO TO THEM-- then we will see the further evolution of theater in the US over the next century.
And I'm serious. Bring R&J to the apartment complexes. Cast a few people from the community in the play. Bring a new work to a shopping center. Go where the people are, becasue they sure as hell ain't coming to YOU anymore!
People create a new show and then they... go to Fringe. Or they sumbit it to a minor or major regional theater company. They get it jammed in the cogs of the system- some make it, some don't. Some are great, some aren't. OR, they go to another festival, Fringe or another sort, either in the States or to one that is hosted internationally.
I think this is... okay. Sure. Yes. Okay... but, um, I am just thinking here... what group of people, what audience pool are the majority of theater practioners reaching out to? What kind of people do theater artists really want to reach? Festivals and Fringes are great.. but at least here in the States... who the fuck goes to those Festivals except theater enthusiasts/supporters/lovers/artists? Of course, I'm making a generalization, but I know for certain, theater events, theater festivals are NOT major cultural or community event anymore. They just aren't. I don't classify it a community event if certain or members or groups within the community are directly or indirectly excluded. The DC Fringe Festival is coming up in a few weeks out here. And these shows will, no doubt, be attended by friends, family members and supporters of the artists who are presenting the works, plus there will be some word of mouth and external publicity, which will pull in some interested theater goers (who can afford the costly $15 ticket) from off the street. But, it is extremely likely that 90+ percent of every Fringe show in the Festival this summer will have at least a few empty seats for every performance.
Are Fringe artists and all theater artists in general happy with this? Honestly?
As an artist, I, personally (and maybe this is just me), have no DESIRE to just communicate to a theater crowd, or to only a crowd that can afford theater. I want to talk to everybody. I don't want to have boundaries of class or race or gender when it comes to presenting my art. Not just my art, but every piece of art, it should be for EVERYONE. Right?? The conversations that theaters start, they should be conversations for everyone. Right?? If I do a Fringe show one day, I will be disgusted if my house is filled with just theater people or upper/middle class folks who can afford the ticket. That doesn't achieve much. They doesn't reach everybody. That reaches a slice of the world, generous citizens, yes, but ones that partipate in this discriminatory theater system.
That will make me sick! Because those aren't the only people I want to include in my conversation. The disappointing thing about the American Theater system is this very issue. The politics of it, the business of, the ego campaign of it... it closes off the conversation to whole groups of people. These communities/groups of people who are excluded, they have no concept what theater is and it's power. They have no concept they could, if the system were different, be welcome to particpate in the conversation, or even to just listen. For some, maybe if they went to a decent public school, have the only experience of theater being sitting in complete boredom during a school assembly and having to watch some play, that no body was interested in.
They're school might have, though, hosted a Diversity Assembly, a Heritage Celebration, or a something like that, as they did at my middle and high schools and university. And this they liked, this was a party! this was open, this was free, and this was a celebration of everyone in the community. This is also theater. This is where theater really lives, and this is what so many theater artists in the world either do not recognize or are so stringently opposed to partaking in... i don't know why, because maybe it isn't "real art" ? I don't know, I'm just speculating.
It's hard. And for years and years and years the American Theater system has built this coroporate structure of theater that is specifically for only a seletive audience pool. But, I think, if the system wants to evolve for the 21st century and really be a relevant force in the culture, in the communities, then it will need to wash away all these aristocratic notions and ideals of theater. These notions have been so ingrained for so long that most theater artists may not even realize they hold on to them so desperately. It's hard, I know, but it will have to be done on a wide-scale. And the TDF and other artistic administrators can work work work at improving this and that, improving the new play track and what not. They can toy with data and theories and "audience development" and all that, but it really will not, I firmly believe, help the theater emerge as a major voice or home in America in the 21st century.
People are constantly looking for stories. They're looking for metaphor and they're looking for answers. This is why people watch TV, invest in home entertainment systems. This is why adults join clubs, sports leagues, have social gathers, chit chat outside laundry mats, over coffee and cigarettes, in street-side churches, weight watches meetings. That necessity to BE APART of SOMETHING has not disappeared within the human genome. But the theater is perplexed because people are not coming to them anymore? Well, well, maybe it's because for decades and decades, the American theater has instilled an idea that certain people were welcome and certain people were not.
People are looking for commuity. And if the theater in the US can make a genuine effor to welcome other commuinities- not just welcome, but invite, and actually GO TO THEM-- then we will see the further evolution of theater in the US over the next century.
And I'm serious. Bring R&J to the apartment complexes. Cast a few people from the community in the play. Bring a new work to a shopping center. Go where the people are, becasue they sure as hell ain't coming to YOU anymore!
Shut it Down // Pitbull feat Akon
All life I'mma do it and do and if you don't like it its cool fuck you(Aaaa-aaa)Can't tell me nothing now baby I know how to fly(Haaa-aaa)Can't nothing hold me down I'm going to touch the sky (ooo-ooo)Can't nothing no , hold me down(Oo-oo-oo)Can't nothing no, hold me down (ooo-oo-oo)Can't nothing no, hold me down (ooo-oo-oo)Now watch me now watch me watch me shut this thang Sube sube, hasta las nubes, para adelante, no mires pa'tras I hit the check pot check, check, check, check, check, check , chingReal peoples do real things on the road to get diamond ringsMoved up from the streets graduated hustla' on it's way to a entrepreneur undefeated.Now baby save me from the game before replacementmy life's a movie, call me martin scorseseI can get less if you love me or hate me life's a bitch now fuck you and pay meSube sube, hasta las nubes, para adelante, no mires pa'tras (Ooo-ooo)Can't tell me nothing nowBaby I know how to flyy (flyyy)(Haa-aa)Can't nothing hold me downI'm going touch the sky (skyy)(Oo-oo) (oo-oo) (oo-oo)(Wuu-uu)[ Pitbull Lyrics are found on www.songlyrics.com ]Lose my mind now honey now pay me whats you own me my mens A hurricane you should see the way she glow it i dont make it rain i Speak that global warming this same no biggy aint ready to danceNow baby save me from the game before replasmentmy life's a movie, call me martin scorsese I can care less if you love me or hate me life's a bitch now fuck you and pay meSube sube, hasta las nubes, para adelante, no mires pa'tras (Ooo-oo)Can't nothing hold me downI'm going touch the sky(skyy)(Ooo-ooo)Can't tell me nothing nowBaby I know how to flyy (flyyy)(Haa-aa)Can't nothing hold me downI'm going touch the sky(skyy)(Oo-oo) (o-oo)(Ooo-ooo)Can't nothing noHold me down(Oo-oo-oo)Can't nothing noHold me down(Ooo-oo-oo)Can't nothing noHold me down(Ooo-oo-oo)Now watch me now watch me watch me shut this thangIt's my life I'mma do it and do and if you don't like it it's cool fuck you'
Monday, June 21, 2010
theater is campfire, not corporation
Theater is campfire, not corporation.
That, essentially, is my overwhelming response to the bombshell study by TDF entitled OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE AMERICAN PLAY.
Forgive me, for the following posting could be wrought with disorganization, as ideas are coming at me very rapidly. This piece was shattering and illuminating to me on many levels.
Okay, so theater doesn't have a lot of problems, but the American theater system has A LOT of problems. I'm reading this study, and I'm drowning in numbers and pie charts and interviews and data data data data and I'm like... HUH? What?! Hello??? This is theater, we're talking about.
Theater is so basic. It is so fundamental. Theater is storytelling around the campfire. Whether your campfire is in a forest, over coffee, in a warehouse, on a walk along the water, on the beach, in a white sterile room, or in a pulsating, accoustically-magnicificent auditorium. It could be in Greece, Rome, London, Toyko, Paris, Cairo, Fairfax or in the backseat of your Toyota Camry. That's theater, it's campfire. Why all the numbers and graphics? Well, let's see.
This study is wrought with all kinds of issues. Theater companies, artistic directors don't know how to work or relate with playwrights anymore. Playwrights don't know how to relate to artistic directors. A "collaboration in crisis," the book mentions.
Audiences are dwindling. Board Members of theaters, donors and grant givers have more clout than people realize. Commericalism, not artistry, is the undercurrent for these REGIONAL theater companies. They are all little machines, now, where Board Members and donors and grant givers are on the other side of the table providing input and nudges for what the theater company should produce. The artistic director becomes a circus freak, trying to balance the needs and desires of the company's artists, the needs and desires of the company's board and then trying to gauge what will and what will not go for their audience pool. Marketing becomes the theater's most vital tool for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. PLUS, artistic directors have to balance another thing, which many have, but admittingly not all do. And that is EGO. So many regional theater companies are less interested in producing works for their company and for their community. So many plays now are concieved with their future in mind. How much money will this make us? Will our production pick up a ton of local awards and write-ups? Will this production really catapult this playwright? Will the production itself catapult? Will we pave the way for a NYCBroadway production? Will WE be the NYCBroadway production?! On and on and on and on... plays aren't really focused on, the folks are already focusing on the next of the next of the next. Read me?
By the way, the NYCBroadway market is so off the chart, don't bet on that anymore. NYCBroadway is the new Vegas, trying pitifully to be another Hollywood, but ends up looking like a tard little step sister. NYCBroadway is not interested in being the pulse for American theater voices, it is just a commericalized hub. It is producing hits and that's all. The statistic between 1920 and today is stunning. (see below blog post for finding).
My opinion is this. If you have this commericalized mind-set... like if you're thinking about the plays you produce in terms of what amount of success they will achieve, where they will take you, how many awards you'll get, etc., then I think you're in the wrong business. Why the fuck aren't you out in Hollywood with this mindset?? That's where you should be.
American Theater, at some point in the past century, has just become this pitiful corporate machine, like everything else in the West. I use the word 'pitiful' and here's why.
Theater never started out as a corporate being. Like I mentioned, theater started out as campfire. The problem is, it STILL IS campfire. And people in the American Theater system, for years and years now, have been trying extremely hard to make it a corporate machine, and this is why the American Theater system has been failing. This is why the American Theater system has been going on this downward spiral, steadily downward, for DECADES.
Film is corporate. Film has always been corporate, and here's why. Film has ALWAYS been expensive. Since it's invention, with all its cameras and lights and sounds and editing and all that mother fucking shit, film has always been an expensive artform. Which is why there's no surprise big corporate machines, Studios, were created back in the day, early early in film's formitive years. The Hollywood machine is absolutely nuts, disgusting at times, so commerical that it too loses artistic integrity often, BUT, the thing is, it works. That system, as fucked up as it may be, it works for film. It works for film because, after all... films get out there. Films reach people, films and TV make an impact. Films and TV are a vibrant pulse in our cultural bloodstream. Theater, on the other hand, honestly is NOT.
No really, it isn't. Yeah, there might be an amazing play that comes along, blows a lot of people away, but then HBO buys the film rights and then boom! You have ANGELS IN AMERICA. or PROOF. or THE HISTORY BOYS...THE MOVIE! There is a distinction here I want to make clear: stories don't lose relevance, but theater and stage musicals, as the form itself, THAT loses cultural relevance. The History Boys, incredibly successful play, great STORY. The STORY was relevant enough that it was picked up and made into a movie. STORIES are the variable, not necessarily the form. Read me?
The corporate system doesn't work for theater like it does for the movies. It doesn't work for theater, it just doesn't. When you try to implement a system semi-like that into the theater world, you have what we have now in our country. A "collaboration in crisis," to say the LEAST.
Have I lost faith in theater? No, absolutely not. Stories are so essential. They teach us how to live and we need words like we need bread. But I am very disenchanted with the theater system in the US. I need to do more research on how the European system of theater works. From what I gather, a lot of them don't do it like this.
It you want to do THEATER, you have a passion of telling stories, for collaboration, for current events and community and connectivity. If you have passion for money or for nailing a world-preimere play, or nailing an "emerging" playwright... than you shouldn't be doing theater. You just shouldn't.
Theater, really, I think, should be like the numerous European theater companies out there. They're a band of artists and they create their own work together and whenever their process has finished they present their work. They can tour, they can stay based in a community, whatever they like, but that it's clear what their passions are.
I haven't lost my passion for theater, no, not at all, however my vigor and love for the American theater system has rapidly declined within the past 12 hours lol. I want to continue to be an artist and lead a creative life, that is something I don't plan to cease, however, I don't quite know if I want to be apart of this sort of system.
Again, if I went out to Hollywood and tried to make it big, I would expect all this shit. Why? Fuck, beucase its Hollywood. Money and looks talk out there. Get with it. But to deal with this corporate, money bullshit in the THEATER? What's the fucking point of that? Especially when, on a grand scale, theater is not very effective anymore. Well, at least in this country and not to the level that film and television are effective.
You have to have an unyielding intense passion for the craft of theater itself to devote yourself to this fucked up, ineffectual system. I have an intense passion for theater itself, but my passion does yield. It yields because I don't want to get lost in that bullshit. I want to make a difference and I want to point people in the direction of progress. I want to get out there and work. I don't want to write several plays for them to just get stuck in developmental hell in a theater. I don't want to do workshop after workshop for there never to be an ultimate production. For acting and directing in the theater, which I also do, it's a similar predicament. And, I don't want to get trapped in some MFA program- which seems to be so necessary these days- just to get swamped down in debt I'll never be able to pay off because realiztically you live near or just above the poverty level if you are a theater practioner. I don't want to waste time getting rejected in the theater. I'd rather waste time getting rejected in a larger industry, because at least I know that I am on the road to reaching out to people. Does that make sense? I have a large scope and I want to reach a lot of people. Theater doesn't reach a lot of people in this country, not anymore anyway. And it definitely doesn't have the cultural punch it once had. So when you're getting rejected in the theater world, I feel now that it's like so pointless. If I were out in Hollywood, getting rejected, I'd know, at least, that I was CLOSE to reaching a lot of people. Make sense?>
I know that they are so many great minds working right this instant trying to improve the American theater system. In fact the TDF study outlines some amazing new methods and ideas for improving the system-- mainly, actually, improving the relationship between playwright-artistic director-audience-- and there are people in DC theater companies right now who are working at innovating ways to changing things, like recently one DC theater just hired 7 playwright in residence to be on staff!! Yes, that is acutally very amazing.
BUT, there's a long road ahead. And I really don't feel, in my gut, the gusto to jump in and make this muck better. Maybe I'll show back up in a decade if shit has changed, I don't but. But I just feel that it's not my calling to try and help restructure this system. And I'm afraid if offereed a year long fellowship in this area I would go absolutely nuts. I think I might be trapped.
Theater is a poor's man art, and there's nothing wrong with that. People need to understand this. Theater is campfire. It's dances and delights and whispers and shadows and hand-made costumes and characters and story. Okay, duh, yes, I know it's a lot more than that, but ESSENTAILLY, when you pair it down, that really IS ALL IT IS!
To make theater aristocracy is a sham and for 'theater people' to adopt this arrogance and closed off niche of 'theater artists' is ridiculous- those people should be teleported back to somewhere between the Victorian era and the Roaring Twenties, when theater was deliciously bougie and decadent. Those days are done now.
Looking at DC theater, it's like a corporate minefield. Each of the theaters in DC work independly and compete with one another. Yes, there is collaborate overlaps especially among the artists, but basically it's all competition. There's awards seasons, there's the press. But is all so ridiculous, because the majority people that see all the shows are theater people themselves, or if they're not, if they are outsiders and subscribers and such (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of those), they waft in and out, that's what they do, and these number of people, according to all studies, are dwindling more and more each year.
In the TDF study they use the term "ecosystem" alot. Like the ecosystem of the a certain theater community, DC for instance. Again, though, this term 'ecosystem' is masquerading as a commericalized term, is it not? I envison some sort of marshland where all the living organizms are actually theater companies, and everything is fighting to survive and live in the environment. Why has something so BASIC as theater (as campfire) retreated to this feral state? Art and theater is supposed to transcend that feral state, is it not?
The theater system adopted this corporate system, I think?, because it was hoping to mimick the success of film?? I don't know. But the thing is, this system is not working, period. Money, success, all if this is counter-intuitive to the basic, fundamental concept of what theater IS. This is why a corporate system cannot sustain it. Theater is nature, theater is natural, like relgion or hunting or even sporting is natural. It is not a man-made art form. Film is man-made, and expensive, hence why I think it has been successful from corporatizing.
Now, has theater lost it umphf? Lost its power? Of course not. It's just the system. The current system is cororpoate, aristocratic and uninviting to the majority of the population. If a Latina with a low-income, a hardworking honest woman with 2 jobs in her mid-to-late 30's is sitting outside waiting for her bus and sees 2 billboards, one to her right for a classical theater performance in town, and one to her left about the new show premiering Tuesday night at the CW, this is potentially how she would process both of these advertisements.
She'd look at the classical theater ad and might recognize the name of the theater, might adore the costumes, she might even think the whole thing is extremely clever looking... but she won't go and see this show because the current theater system has not made her feel apart of it's community. She inherently knows that by the price of the ticket, by even the look of the ad, that it is simply NOT for her. It's not her community. That's what it tells her. This experience, this knowledge, is NOT FOR HER.
She'll look at the other ad for the show on the CW premiering Tuesday night and if she likes the look of the ad, she'll be welcome to watch it. She feels invited to that world, to that community, because it open to everyone and its free. All you need is a TV. nothing else.
So, I think there are so many problems in this, all around.
I don't think I want to get caught in the maelstrom of this mess. It's aristocracy, yes, but it's a joke at aristocracy, is it not? The aristocractic are wealthy, influencial class of people. They would go to theater and be entertained. Today, the majority of companies are still presenting work under that mind-set, whether they realize it or not (for proof all you have to do is see the high majority of WHITE people in the audiences of these theater companies). It's a joke at aristocracy because it's a joke to think that theater has huge cultural relevance these day. It just doesn. Now remember, I'm not saying that story does, story DOES have relevance. Extreme relevance. But the craft of theater in this country is built within a system that does not compliment it.
A true theater artist, a TRUE BLUE artist of the theater-- not a business guru, not an ego nut, but a true artist of the theater who believed the only passion and answer to life, was hanging out with friends and writing, performaning and creating theater together, wouldn't dream up a theater system like this. They just wouldn't.
They would dream something like what Ariane Mnouchkine has created with Theatre du Soliel, or what Boal started in Argentina, or even what the Cornerstone Theater Company is doing in LA, or the Toneelgroup Theater Group is doing in Amsterdam.
Not this. Not this.
That, essentially, is my overwhelming response to the bombshell study by TDF entitled OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE AMERICAN PLAY.
Forgive me, for the following posting could be wrought with disorganization, as ideas are coming at me very rapidly. This piece was shattering and illuminating to me on many levels.
Okay, so theater doesn't have a lot of problems, but the American theater system has A LOT of problems. I'm reading this study, and I'm drowning in numbers and pie charts and interviews and data data data data and I'm like... HUH? What?! Hello??? This is theater, we're talking about.
Theater is so basic. It is so fundamental. Theater is storytelling around the campfire. Whether your campfire is in a forest, over coffee, in a warehouse, on a walk along the water, on the beach, in a white sterile room, or in a pulsating, accoustically-magnicificent auditorium. It could be in Greece, Rome, London, Toyko, Paris, Cairo, Fairfax or in the backseat of your Toyota Camry. That's theater, it's campfire. Why all the numbers and graphics? Well, let's see.
This study is wrought with all kinds of issues. Theater companies, artistic directors don't know how to work or relate with playwrights anymore. Playwrights don't know how to relate to artistic directors. A "collaboration in crisis," the book mentions.
Audiences are dwindling. Board Members of theaters, donors and grant givers have more clout than people realize. Commericalism, not artistry, is the undercurrent for these REGIONAL theater companies. They are all little machines, now, where Board Members and donors and grant givers are on the other side of the table providing input and nudges for what the theater company should produce. The artistic director becomes a circus freak, trying to balance the needs and desires of the company's artists, the needs and desires of the company's board and then trying to gauge what will and what will not go for their audience pool. Marketing becomes the theater's most vital tool for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. PLUS, artistic directors have to balance another thing, which many have, but admittingly not all do. And that is EGO. So many regional theater companies are less interested in producing works for their company and for their community. So many plays now are concieved with their future in mind. How much money will this make us? Will our production pick up a ton of local awards and write-ups? Will this production really catapult this playwright? Will the production itself catapult? Will we pave the way for a NYCBroadway production? Will WE be the NYCBroadway production?! On and on and on and on... plays aren't really focused on, the folks are already focusing on the next of the next of the next. Read me?
By the way, the NYCBroadway market is so off the chart, don't bet on that anymore. NYCBroadway is the new Vegas, trying pitifully to be another Hollywood, but ends up looking like a tard little step sister. NYCBroadway is not interested in being the pulse for American theater voices, it is just a commericalized hub. It is producing hits and that's all. The statistic between 1920 and today is stunning. (see below blog post for finding).
My opinion is this. If you have this commericalized mind-set... like if you're thinking about the plays you produce in terms of what amount of success they will achieve, where they will take you, how many awards you'll get, etc., then I think you're in the wrong business. Why the fuck aren't you out in Hollywood with this mindset?? That's where you should be.
American Theater, at some point in the past century, has just become this pitiful corporate machine, like everything else in the West. I use the word 'pitiful' and here's why.
Theater never started out as a corporate being. Like I mentioned, theater started out as campfire. The problem is, it STILL IS campfire. And people in the American Theater system, for years and years now, have been trying extremely hard to make it a corporate machine, and this is why the American Theater system has been failing. This is why the American Theater system has been going on this downward spiral, steadily downward, for DECADES.
Film is corporate. Film has always been corporate, and here's why. Film has ALWAYS been expensive. Since it's invention, with all its cameras and lights and sounds and editing and all that mother fucking shit, film has always been an expensive artform. Which is why there's no surprise big corporate machines, Studios, were created back in the day, early early in film's formitive years. The Hollywood machine is absolutely nuts, disgusting at times, so commerical that it too loses artistic integrity often, BUT, the thing is, it works. That system, as fucked up as it may be, it works for film. It works for film because, after all... films get out there. Films reach people, films and TV make an impact. Films and TV are a vibrant pulse in our cultural bloodstream. Theater, on the other hand, honestly is NOT.
No really, it isn't. Yeah, there might be an amazing play that comes along, blows a lot of people away, but then HBO buys the film rights and then boom! You have ANGELS IN AMERICA. or PROOF. or THE HISTORY BOYS...THE MOVIE! There is a distinction here I want to make clear: stories don't lose relevance, but theater and stage musicals, as the form itself, THAT loses cultural relevance. The History Boys, incredibly successful play, great STORY. The STORY was relevant enough that it was picked up and made into a movie. STORIES are the variable, not necessarily the form. Read me?
The corporate system doesn't work for theater like it does for the movies. It doesn't work for theater, it just doesn't. When you try to implement a system semi-like that into the theater world, you have what we have now in our country. A "collaboration in crisis," to say the LEAST.
Have I lost faith in theater? No, absolutely not. Stories are so essential. They teach us how to live and we need words like we need bread. But I am very disenchanted with the theater system in the US. I need to do more research on how the European system of theater works. From what I gather, a lot of them don't do it like this.
It you want to do THEATER, you have a passion of telling stories, for collaboration, for current events and community and connectivity. If you have passion for money or for nailing a world-preimere play, or nailing an "emerging" playwright... than you shouldn't be doing theater. You just shouldn't.
Theater, really, I think, should be like the numerous European theater companies out there. They're a band of artists and they create their own work together and whenever their process has finished they present their work. They can tour, they can stay based in a community, whatever they like, but that it's clear what their passions are.
I haven't lost my passion for theater, no, not at all, however my vigor and love for the American theater system has rapidly declined within the past 12 hours lol. I want to continue to be an artist and lead a creative life, that is something I don't plan to cease, however, I don't quite know if I want to be apart of this sort of system.
Again, if I went out to Hollywood and tried to make it big, I would expect all this shit. Why? Fuck, beucase its Hollywood. Money and looks talk out there. Get with it. But to deal with this corporate, money bullshit in the THEATER? What's the fucking point of that? Especially when, on a grand scale, theater is not very effective anymore. Well, at least in this country and not to the level that film and television are effective.
You have to have an unyielding intense passion for the craft of theater itself to devote yourself to this fucked up, ineffectual system. I have an intense passion for theater itself, but my passion does yield. It yields because I don't want to get lost in that bullshit. I want to make a difference and I want to point people in the direction of progress. I want to get out there and work. I don't want to write several plays for them to just get stuck in developmental hell in a theater. I don't want to do workshop after workshop for there never to be an ultimate production. For acting and directing in the theater, which I also do, it's a similar predicament. And, I don't want to get trapped in some MFA program- which seems to be so necessary these days- just to get swamped down in debt I'll never be able to pay off because realiztically you live near or just above the poverty level if you are a theater practioner. I don't want to waste time getting rejected in the theater. I'd rather waste time getting rejected in a larger industry, because at least I know that I am on the road to reaching out to people. Does that make sense? I have a large scope and I want to reach a lot of people. Theater doesn't reach a lot of people in this country, not anymore anyway. And it definitely doesn't have the cultural punch it once had. So when you're getting rejected in the theater world, I feel now that it's like so pointless. If I were out in Hollywood, getting rejected, I'd know, at least, that I was CLOSE to reaching a lot of people. Make sense?>
I know that they are so many great minds working right this instant trying to improve the American theater system. In fact the TDF study outlines some amazing new methods and ideas for improving the system-- mainly, actually, improving the relationship between playwright-artistic director-audience-- and there are people in DC theater companies right now who are working at innovating ways to changing things, like recently one DC theater just hired 7 playwright in residence to be on staff!! Yes, that is acutally very amazing.
BUT, there's a long road ahead. And I really don't feel, in my gut, the gusto to jump in and make this muck better. Maybe I'll show back up in a decade if shit has changed, I don't but. But I just feel that it's not my calling to try and help restructure this system. And I'm afraid if offereed a year long fellowship in this area I would go absolutely nuts. I think I might be trapped.
Theater is a poor's man art, and there's nothing wrong with that. People need to understand this. Theater is campfire. It's dances and delights and whispers and shadows and hand-made costumes and characters and story. Okay, duh, yes, I know it's a lot more than that, but ESSENTAILLY, when you pair it down, that really IS ALL IT IS!
To make theater aristocracy is a sham and for 'theater people' to adopt this arrogance and closed off niche of 'theater artists' is ridiculous- those people should be teleported back to somewhere between the Victorian era and the Roaring Twenties, when theater was deliciously bougie and decadent. Those days are done now.
Looking at DC theater, it's like a corporate minefield. Each of the theaters in DC work independly and compete with one another. Yes, there is collaborate overlaps especially among the artists, but basically it's all competition. There's awards seasons, there's the press. But is all so ridiculous, because the majority people that see all the shows are theater people themselves, or if they're not, if they are outsiders and subscribers and such (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of those), they waft in and out, that's what they do, and these number of people, according to all studies, are dwindling more and more each year.
In the TDF study they use the term "ecosystem" alot. Like the ecosystem of the a certain theater community, DC for instance. Again, though, this term 'ecosystem' is masquerading as a commericalized term, is it not? I envison some sort of marshland where all the living organizms are actually theater companies, and everything is fighting to survive and live in the environment. Why has something so BASIC as theater (as campfire) retreated to this feral state? Art and theater is supposed to transcend that feral state, is it not?
The theater system adopted this corporate system, I think?, because it was hoping to mimick the success of film?? I don't know. But the thing is, this system is not working, period. Money, success, all if this is counter-intuitive to the basic, fundamental concept of what theater IS. This is why a corporate system cannot sustain it. Theater is nature, theater is natural, like relgion or hunting or even sporting is natural. It is not a man-made art form. Film is man-made, and expensive, hence why I think it has been successful from corporatizing.
Now, has theater lost it umphf? Lost its power? Of course not. It's just the system. The current system is cororpoate, aristocratic and uninviting to the majority of the population. If a Latina with a low-income, a hardworking honest woman with 2 jobs in her mid-to-late 30's is sitting outside waiting for her bus and sees 2 billboards, one to her right for a classical theater performance in town, and one to her left about the new show premiering Tuesday night at the CW, this is potentially how she would process both of these advertisements.
She'd look at the classical theater ad and might recognize the name of the theater, might adore the costumes, she might even think the whole thing is extremely clever looking... but she won't go and see this show because the current theater system has not made her feel apart of it's community. She inherently knows that by the price of the ticket, by even the look of the ad, that it is simply NOT for her. It's not her community. That's what it tells her. This experience, this knowledge, is NOT FOR HER.
She'll look at the other ad for the show on the CW premiering Tuesday night and if she likes the look of the ad, she'll be welcome to watch it. She feels invited to that world, to that community, because it open to everyone and its free. All you need is a TV. nothing else.
So, I think there are so many problems in this, all around.
I don't think I want to get caught in the maelstrom of this mess. It's aristocracy, yes, but it's a joke at aristocracy, is it not? The aristocractic are wealthy, influencial class of people. They would go to theater and be entertained. Today, the majority of companies are still presenting work under that mind-set, whether they realize it or not (for proof all you have to do is see the high majority of WHITE people in the audiences of these theater companies). It's a joke at aristocracy because it's a joke to think that theater has huge cultural relevance these day. It just doesn. Now remember, I'm not saying that story does, story DOES have relevance. Extreme relevance. But the craft of theater in this country is built within a system that does not compliment it.
A true theater artist, a TRUE BLUE artist of the theater-- not a business guru, not an ego nut, but a true artist of the theater who believed the only passion and answer to life, was hanging out with friends and writing, performaning and creating theater together, wouldn't dream up a theater system like this. They just wouldn't.
They would dream something like what Ariane Mnouchkine has created with Theatre du Soliel, or what Boal started in Argentina, or even what the Cornerstone Theater Company is doing in LA, or the Toneelgroup Theater Group is doing in Amsterdam.
Not this. Not this.
His Laughter
The first time his laughter unfurled its wings in the wind, we knew that the world would never be the same
outrageous fortune
I just completed reading the comprehensive study conducted by the Theater Developement Fund entitled OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY. Very illuminating, very distressing. Not a pleasant read. Here are some noteworthy points from the study. My response? Oh boy will I have one. Coming SOON!
A Collaboration in Crisis
- In the US today, it's hard to find theaters defined by a voice and vision of a particular playwright or group of playwrights. Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliere, O'Neill, Brecht, Churchill, August Wilson... all had theatres they were creatively intwined with.
- Houses for art, but few homes for artists.
- Theaters worry about shrinking audiences
- playwrights and artistic diretors don't see the same things at all.
- The corporate has become pervasive, until the theatre as it is hardly resembles the theatre playwrights imagine for themselves.
- There is a "corporatization of decision-making"
- Where vision is required, there is conservatism; where there should be boldness, there is cautious pragmatism; where there could be adventurous engagement with new kinds of writing, there is timid protection of the status quo.
- The lack of an authentic conversation between producers and creators.
- Boards of theaters have been around longer than the theater's artistic directors. (what does that say? imagine what the means) Theaters used to be run by writers.
- No Board goes to an Artistic Director and goes: Can't you be a little riskier?
- Artistic Directors believe there aren't enough good plays to go around.
- The country is overwhelmed with new play developement workshops, development retreats, public readings... but they lack what is absolutely integral to the growth of a play and the fruition of a playwright. A production.
- Is the audience just afraid of something new? Is that the problem (I think not)
- New York is Las Vegas. It is not the home of new plays. It's is a commerical hub. Off and Off Off Broadway, too.
- In the 1920's, a new play opened on Broadway at the rate of around one every other night; in the new millennium, the rate is closer to one every two months.
- There are more good plays wanting productions than places for them.
- The growth of institutions separates artistic directors from the playwrights themselves, with literary departments often standing as institutional buffers. Plays are chosen with input from so many "departments" that the passionate connection between producer and playwright is short-circuited. Artistic Directors often have to comprimise with those who fork over the money.
- How can non-profit producers give their all to each current project when they're constantly projecting ahead to the next and the next?
- Everything is judged on its future life, based on money coming back to the theater over the life of the play. Every play should not be chosen on whether or not it can have a commerical run. "We're packagers now."
- Playwrights are drawn to the idea of having an artistic Home. (as they should)
- "You can make a killing in the theater, but you can't make a living."
- It is, largely, a picture of precarious personal economies, a lack of continuity in relationships with producing theaters, new play developement that does little to further the development of the playwright, a downward spiral of expectations about opportunity and artistic scale, lags and gaps between output and fruition, the attractions of television, and the loss of the "mid-career" playwright in the US.
- Financially speaking, there is no way to view playwrighting as anything but a profession without an economic base. It's not a romantic notion that playwrights must be prepared to be poor. It's a sad fact.
- The average playwright earns between $25,000 and $39,000 annually, with approximately 62% of playwrights earning under $40,000 and nearly a third making less than $25,000.
- "Most playwrights live on theater at a poverty level. A production every other year if you're lucky, or a commission we can't afford to live on."
- Production doesn't Pay.
- The economics of playwriting are akin to those of a hobby; you might make a bit of cash by buying and selling old comic books, but you don't plan to live off it.
- A middle-class life is unrealistic.
- An MFA track filters out whole classes of people, including workingpoor, immigrants, and anyone for whom elite graduate training is off the radar. Seven schools-- Yale, Columbia, NYU, Brown, U of Iowa, U of Texas/Austin, Julliard-- account for almost nine out of ten (!) of the study playwrights with advanced professional training, or 42% of all 250 playwrihts.
- Too many buzz words: emerging, world premiere, new, etc.
- So many theaters contend for so few writers and plays... It is the ego--the desire to be the theater in your area to produce the most prestigous works. Competition is the great motivator.
- People embarrassedly call commissions "the money they pay me to go away" or "the money they pay me to put me on their brochure until they raise more.
- Many theaters substitute developemental activities for productions.
- The production of new plays adds uncertainty to instability.
- In a competitive marketplace, premieres are currency.
- Only the largest, most visible theaters can earn a play a continued life.
- [culturally specific theaters] beyond their work with specific communities of artists and audiences, they regularly struggle with their place in the overall ecosystem of new play production. they find themselves competing with larger organizations for grants, and especially funds earmarked for multicultural work.
- Major regional theaters will develop the work of African American writers, but, she says, they rarely produce it, a sentiment that echos complaints voiced by writers or color.
- For Artistic Directors, "cast size and composition" is the most severe obstacle to producing a play. "Too expensive" is the closely related, second-greatest obstacle. "We're all being trained how not to write 14 character plays."
- Theaters are producing small quartetes, sonatas, intimiate chamber compositions- while eschewing symphonies.
- Miller's Death of a Salesman - cast size of 13, Raisin in the Sun- 11, You Can't Take it With you- 19, Our Town- 51.
- More and more, the right space means a smaller space.
- Audiences are disappearing, yet population is exploding.
- Claims that theaters don't know how to sell things.
- THE audience is now MANY audiences, divided by generation and interest.
- 30,000 subscribers, but they're actually concerned about the 10 or 20 people who give a lot of money.
- In the current system of new-play development, there are few opportunities for writers to get to know theatergoers over time- productions are too sporadic, and ongoing relationships with theaters (and, by extension, communities and ticket buyers) are rarely sustained.
- Corporate theater = marketing.
- A colored playwright: Everytime I do a play, the first question they ask me is, "How do we market to your audience?" So I have to be a marketer? Yes, it seems. (Like many other black, Asian American, Latio, Native American, and Arab-American playwrights, operating in the field where theater staffs are predominately white, he has learned the ropes of culturally-specific, niche marketing.)
- You can't just invite a black audience for a black play and say good-bye to them. You have to make them part of the community. And invite them to see a white show, that Asian show. The same thing with other people. Every time a production becomes a speciality event, it becomes troublesome. (yes!)
- Do critics still count? (yes and no, mainly no)
A Collaboration in Crisis
- In the US today, it's hard to find theaters defined by a voice and vision of a particular playwright or group of playwrights. Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliere, O'Neill, Brecht, Churchill, August Wilson... all had theatres they were creatively intwined with.
- Houses for art, but few homes for artists.
- Theaters worry about shrinking audiences
- playwrights and artistic diretors don't see the same things at all.
- The corporate has become pervasive, until the theatre as it is hardly resembles the theatre playwrights imagine for themselves.
- There is a "corporatization of decision-making"
- Where vision is required, there is conservatism; where there should be boldness, there is cautious pragmatism; where there could be adventurous engagement with new kinds of writing, there is timid protection of the status quo.
- The lack of an authentic conversation between producers and creators.
- Boards of theaters have been around longer than the theater's artistic directors. (what does that say? imagine what the means) Theaters used to be run by writers.
- No Board goes to an Artistic Director and goes: Can't you be a little riskier?
- Artistic Directors believe there aren't enough good plays to go around.
- The country is overwhelmed with new play developement workshops, development retreats, public readings... but they lack what is absolutely integral to the growth of a play and the fruition of a playwright. A production.
- Is the audience just afraid of something new? Is that the problem (I think not)
- New York is Las Vegas. It is not the home of new plays. It's is a commerical hub. Off and Off Off Broadway, too.
- In the 1920's, a new play opened on Broadway at the rate of around one every other night; in the new millennium, the rate is closer to one every two months.
- There are more good plays wanting productions than places for them.
- The growth of institutions separates artistic directors from the playwrights themselves, with literary departments often standing as institutional buffers. Plays are chosen with input from so many "departments" that the passionate connection between producer and playwright is short-circuited. Artistic Directors often have to comprimise with those who fork over the money.
- How can non-profit producers give their all to each current project when they're constantly projecting ahead to the next and the next?
- Everything is judged on its future life, based on money coming back to the theater over the life of the play. Every play should not be chosen on whether or not it can have a commerical run. "We're packagers now."
- Playwrights are drawn to the idea of having an artistic Home. (as they should)
- "You can make a killing in the theater, but you can't make a living."
- It is, largely, a picture of precarious personal economies, a lack of continuity in relationships with producing theaters, new play developement that does little to further the development of the playwright, a downward spiral of expectations about opportunity and artistic scale, lags and gaps between output and fruition, the attractions of television, and the loss of the "mid-career" playwright in the US.
- Financially speaking, there is no way to view playwrighting as anything but a profession without an economic base. It's not a romantic notion that playwrights must be prepared to be poor. It's a sad fact.
- The average playwright earns between $25,000 and $39,000 annually, with approximately 62% of playwrights earning under $40,000 and nearly a third making less than $25,000.
- "Most playwrights live on theater at a poverty level. A production every other year if you're lucky, or a commission we can't afford to live on."
- Production doesn't Pay.
- The economics of playwriting are akin to those of a hobby; you might make a bit of cash by buying and selling old comic books, but you don't plan to live off it.
- A middle-class life is unrealistic.
- An MFA track filters out whole classes of people, including workingpoor, immigrants, and anyone for whom elite graduate training is off the radar. Seven schools-- Yale, Columbia, NYU, Brown, U of Iowa, U of Texas/Austin, Julliard-- account for almost nine out of ten (!) of the study playwrights with advanced professional training, or 42% of all 250 playwrihts.
- Too many buzz words: emerging, world premiere, new, etc.
- So many theaters contend for so few writers and plays... It is the ego--the desire to be the theater in your area to produce the most prestigous works. Competition is the great motivator.
- People embarrassedly call commissions "the money they pay me to go away" or "the money they pay me to put me on their brochure until they raise more.
- Many theaters substitute developemental activities for productions.
- The production of new plays adds uncertainty to instability.
- In a competitive marketplace, premieres are currency.
- Only the largest, most visible theaters can earn a play a continued life.
- [culturally specific theaters] beyond their work with specific communities of artists and audiences, they regularly struggle with their place in the overall ecosystem of new play production. they find themselves competing with larger organizations for grants, and especially funds earmarked for multicultural work.
- Major regional theaters will develop the work of African American writers, but, she says, they rarely produce it, a sentiment that echos complaints voiced by writers or color.
- For Artistic Directors, "cast size and composition" is the most severe obstacle to producing a play. "Too expensive" is the closely related, second-greatest obstacle. "We're all being trained how not to write 14 character plays."
- Theaters are producing small quartetes, sonatas, intimiate chamber compositions- while eschewing symphonies.
- Miller's Death of a Salesman - cast size of 13, Raisin in the Sun- 11, You Can't Take it With you- 19, Our Town- 51.
- More and more, the right space means a smaller space.
- Audiences are disappearing, yet population is exploding.
- Claims that theaters don't know how to sell things.
- THE audience is now MANY audiences, divided by generation and interest.
- 30,000 subscribers, but they're actually concerned about the 10 or 20 people who give a lot of money.
- In the current system of new-play development, there are few opportunities for writers to get to know theatergoers over time- productions are too sporadic, and ongoing relationships with theaters (and, by extension, communities and ticket buyers) are rarely sustained.
- Corporate theater = marketing.
- A colored playwright: Everytime I do a play, the first question they ask me is, "How do we market to your audience?" So I have to be a marketer? Yes, it seems. (Like many other black, Asian American, Latio, Native American, and Arab-American playwrights, operating in the field where theater staffs are predominately white, he has learned the ropes of culturally-specific, niche marketing.)
- You can't just invite a black audience for a black play and say good-bye to them. You have to make them part of the community. And invite them to see a white show, that Asian show. The same thing with other people. Every time a production becomes a speciality event, it becomes troublesome. (yes!)
- Do critics still count? (yes and no, mainly no)
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Bowie
Cameron Crowe: Do you ever relax?
David Bowie: If you’re asking whether or not I take vacations, the answer is no. I find all my relaxation within the context of work; I’m very serious about that. I’ve always thought the only thing to do was to try to go through life as Superman, right from the word go.
I felt far too insignificant as just another person. I couldn’t exist thinking all that was important was to be a good person. I thought, Fuck that; I don’t want to be just another honest Joe. I want to be a supersuperbeing and improve all the equipment that I’ve been given to where it works 300 percent better. I find that it’s possible to do it.
Crowe: What do you believe in?
Bowie: Myself. Politics. Sex.
Crowe: Since you put yourself first, do you consider yourself an original thinker?
Bowie: Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief. The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. I do think that my plagiarism is effective. Why does an artist create, anyway? The way I see it, if you’re an inventor, you invent something that you hope people can use. I want art to be just as practical. Art can be a political reference, a sexual force, any force that you want, but it should be usable. What the hell do artists want? Museum pieces? The more I get ripped off, the more flattered I get. But I’ve caused a lot of discontent, because I’ve expressed my admiration for other artists by saying, ‘Yes, I’ll use that,’ or, ‘Yes, I took this from him and this from her.’ Mick Jagger, for example, is scared to walk into the same room as me even thinking any new idea. He knows I’ll snatch it.
Crowe: Is it true that Jagger once told you he was hiring the French artist Guy Peellaert for the jacket of a Rolling Stones album and you ran right off to hire Peellaert for your own album, Diamond Dogs, which was released first?
Bowie: Mick was silly. I mean, he should never have shown me anything new. I went over to his house and he had all these Guy Peellaert pictures around and said, ‘What do you think of this guy?’ I told him I thought he was incredible. So I immediately phoned him up. Mick’s learned now, as I’ve said. He will never do that again. You’ve got to be a bastard in this business.
-Playboy, September 1976
David Bowie: If you’re asking whether or not I take vacations, the answer is no. I find all my relaxation within the context of work; I’m very serious about that. I’ve always thought the only thing to do was to try to go through life as Superman, right from the word go.
I felt far too insignificant as just another person. I couldn’t exist thinking all that was important was to be a good person. I thought, Fuck that; I don’t want to be just another honest Joe. I want to be a supersuperbeing and improve all the equipment that I’ve been given to where it works 300 percent better. I find that it’s possible to do it.
Crowe: What do you believe in?
Bowie: Myself. Politics. Sex.
Crowe: Since you put yourself first, do you consider yourself an original thinker?
Bowie: Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief. The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. I do think that my plagiarism is effective. Why does an artist create, anyway? The way I see it, if you’re an inventor, you invent something that you hope people can use. I want art to be just as practical. Art can be a political reference, a sexual force, any force that you want, but it should be usable. What the hell do artists want? Museum pieces? The more I get ripped off, the more flattered I get. But I’ve caused a lot of discontent, because I’ve expressed my admiration for other artists by saying, ‘Yes, I’ll use that,’ or, ‘Yes, I took this from him and this from her.’ Mick Jagger, for example, is scared to walk into the same room as me even thinking any new idea. He knows I’ll snatch it.
Crowe: Is it true that Jagger once told you he was hiring the French artist Guy Peellaert for the jacket of a Rolling Stones album and you ran right off to hire Peellaert for your own album, Diamond Dogs, which was released first?
Bowie: Mick was silly. I mean, he should never have shown me anything new. I went over to his house and he had all these Guy Peellaert pictures around and said, ‘What do you think of this guy?’ I told him I thought he was incredible. So I immediately phoned him up. Mick’s learned now, as I’ve said. He will never do that again. You’ve got to be a bastard in this business.
-Playboy, September 1976
Saturday, June 19, 2010
from Adyashanti's End of Your World
True Awakening is the End of Seeking
Part of allowing the rest of the world to wake up is recognizing the rest of the world is free…everybody is free to be as they are. You must give the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—
until you’ve given the whole world its freedom, you’ll never have your freedom.
The only way to get out of that relationship was to start to let go of everything that had gotten me into it in the first place. It wasn’t nice or kind or easy. It was existence shoving a mirror up to my face.
If we are willing to look we can see that Life is always in the process of waking us up.
This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about UNBECOMING WHO WE ARE NOT, about deceiving ourselves. In the end, it’s ironic. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we preceve where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been.
- The very act of trying to get rid of something sustains it. By trying to get rid of something, you’re unconsciously granting it reality. You must perceive it to be real if you’re trying to get rid of it, so that unconscious granting of reality adds energy to the every thing you’re trying to get rid of. This type of clenching can’t be solved through a technique. In one sense, the awareness that there is nothing you can do is the most important realization you can have.
As long as we’re trying, there’s no letting go.
The only thing we can do as human beings is to see that all holding on is futile; all holding on is a veiled form of rejecting who and what we really are.
When you get out of the driver’s seat, you realize life can drive itself. That actually, Life has always been driving itself. It can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.
Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.
When there is a total letting go, a total devotion to truth and truth itself for its own sake, then we find that the very thing we let go of—the dualistic dream, the people we thought we were, the life we thought was actually real—calls to us in a new way. We find ourselves, in a simple and ordinary way, right back in our life. We must leave it so we can return anew. As Jesus said, we must be “in the world but not of the world,” which means to be in the world but not caught by the world.
Humanity is not going to change because we figure out a different system of government. It’s not going to change because of something imposed from the outside, because of noble ideas or grand systems. True transformation always comes from the inside. It comes from awakening. We come to see that the outside world is nothing but an expression of the inside. What is manifest is nothing but an expression of the unmanifest.
Part of allowing the rest of the world to wake up is recognizing the rest of the world is free…everybody is free to be as they are. You must give the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—
until you’ve given the whole world its freedom, you’ll never have your freedom.
The only way to get out of that relationship was to start to let go of everything that had gotten me into it in the first place. It wasn’t nice or kind or easy. It was existence shoving a mirror up to my face.
If we are willing to look we can see that Life is always in the process of waking us up.
This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about UNBECOMING WHO WE ARE NOT, about deceiving ourselves. In the end, it’s ironic. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we preceve where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been.
- The very act of trying to get rid of something sustains it. By trying to get rid of something, you’re unconsciously granting it reality. You must perceive it to be real if you’re trying to get rid of it, so that unconscious granting of reality adds energy to the every thing you’re trying to get rid of. This type of clenching can’t be solved through a technique. In one sense, the awareness that there is nothing you can do is the most important realization you can have.
As long as we’re trying, there’s no letting go.
The only thing we can do as human beings is to see that all holding on is futile; all holding on is a veiled form of rejecting who and what we really are.
When you get out of the driver’s seat, you realize life can drive itself. That actually, Life has always been driving itself. It can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.
Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.
When there is a total letting go, a total devotion to truth and truth itself for its own sake, then we find that the very thing we let go of—the dualistic dream, the people we thought we were, the life we thought was actually real—calls to us in a new way. We find ourselves, in a simple and ordinary way, right back in our life. We must leave it so we can return anew. As Jesus said, we must be “in the world but not of the world,” which means to be in the world but not caught by the world.
Humanity is not going to change because we figure out a different system of government. It’s not going to change because of something imposed from the outside, because of noble ideas or grand systems. True transformation always comes from the inside. It comes from awakening. We come to see that the outside world is nothing but an expression of the inside. What is manifest is nothing but an expression of the unmanifest.
the ego can set up camp anywhere
My mind is like a commuting epicenter. Thoughts, ideas, fears, emotions,opinions, everything zipping around like they're each cars in the Springfield mixing bowl.
They all drive their own car and putter out vapors, these vapors float into the atmosphere of my mind, and many times, I wrongfully grasp a hold onto so many of these vapors and this causes conflict and struggle.
Thoughts are simply toughts. Fears, fears. Vapors, vapors. Period.
They do not define who or what I am. A feeling is just a feeling, period.
To "discover" or follow my destined, natural path, all I need to do is follow the breath, just as if they were the waves.
Like Adyashanti said, when you lay back on the sand aside the ocean, everything naturally becomes a part of you, you take it all in effortlessly-- the waves, the sand, the breeze, the birds, the people, the sun, the breath.
With struggle and conflict, and lactching on to these vapors, brings narrower awareness and stress.
Finding the right course is effortless, it's just allowing the waves to come in and come out, it's just about allowing the breath to come in and out.
With increased awakening, the ego fights back, so more struggle is natural.
But, I too, must take care of my body on several fronts to make myself less ceptible to adopting vapors nad thus struggling.
I must get enough sleep.
I must eat right.
I must exercise daily.
I must remain grateful.
I must continue to breathe.
I must stay truthful.
I must question my teaspoons.
I must ask myself, what is causing rift inside of me? What is causing divison and duality?
I must stive for oneness, and nonduality.
I must strive for effortless flow, for flux, for unconditional love
They all drive their own car and putter out vapors, these vapors float into the atmosphere of my mind, and many times, I wrongfully grasp a hold onto so many of these vapors and this causes conflict and struggle.
Thoughts are simply toughts. Fears, fears. Vapors, vapors. Period.
They do not define who or what I am. A feeling is just a feeling, period.
To "discover" or follow my destined, natural path, all I need to do is follow the breath, just as if they were the waves.
Like Adyashanti said, when you lay back on the sand aside the ocean, everything naturally becomes a part of you, you take it all in effortlessly-- the waves, the sand, the breeze, the birds, the people, the sun, the breath.
With struggle and conflict, and lactching on to these vapors, brings narrower awareness and stress.
Finding the right course is effortless, it's just allowing the waves to come in and come out, it's just about allowing the breath to come in and out.
With increased awakening, the ego fights back, so more struggle is natural.
But, I too, must take care of my body on several fronts to make myself less ceptible to adopting vapors nad thus struggling.
I must get enough sleep.
I must eat right.
I must exercise daily.
I must remain grateful.
I must continue to breathe.
I must stay truthful.
I must question my teaspoons.
I must ask myself, what is causing rift inside of me? What is causing divison and duality?
I must stive for oneness, and nonduality.
I must strive for effortless flow, for flux, for unconditional love
emerson
to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Highlights from the Astro Report
You are drawn to thing that often bring about your undoing.
A person with the gift for outward expression, who could carve a career in writing, reviewing or literary criticism.
Imagination operates fitfully with periods of intense creativity, followed by moments when you are sure your mind is barren.
In love, you vacillate in interest, plunging quite intensely into each new affair.
The key to a more harmonious inner life lies in cultivating the strong will that is inherent in your nature.
There is a tendency to oscalate between two extremes.
Gear you life to occupations when you creativeness can be expressed fully.
Your life will be replete with flux and change, and yet this will not be a source of annoyance as you are most adaptable to situations.
Essentially, you are expansive, guided by intutition and emotion, and falling very easily into elated or depressive moods.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
A person with the gift for outward expression, who could carve a career in writing, reviewing or literary criticism.
Imagination operates fitfully with periods of intense creativity, followed by moments when you are sure your mind is barren.
In love, you vacillate in interest, plunging quite intensely into each new affair.
The key to a more harmonious inner life lies in cultivating the strong will that is inherent in your nature.
There is a tendency to oscalate between two extremes.
Gear you life to occupations when you creativeness can be expressed fully.
Your life will be replete with flux and change, and yet this will not be a source of annoyance as you are most adaptable to situations.
Essentially, you are expansive, guided by intutition and emotion, and falling very easily into elated or depressive moods.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
glimpses
“People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don’t strive or exert themselves. They’re moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field- not only show business- often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. I wasn’t an unloved or an unwanted child, but I was moved around a lot, and then death and cruel circumstances brought many painful separations.”
-Ball, in her autobiography Love, Lucy
On Aging:
”Love affairs, adventures - these become less important and your work takes on greater meaning because it gives you the illusion of still being young. So you have a growing sense of security there - and less in life, where I am increasingly insecure. The public says bravo, but those close to you say, ‘You’re past 60 and you still have the brain of a 10-year-old. How is it possible? How else could it be? The Madonna, when I was born, said, ‘That one, he’s to remain forever a baby and become an actor.’
I work overtime with my fantasies and always have. Fellini said that when we got past 60, there’d be less trouble, more peace. Women are beautiful, but they complicate life. At night, you don’t sleep, you talk, you argue, you make love at 5 in the morning, then drag yourself off to the studio - a madhouse! But now, there’s still no peace, it’s even worse.
Sunday morning, at the beach at Ostia, I see these pretty girls in bathing suits and I go crazy. With my fantasies, it’ll never end, even at 100! Women see more clearly - too clearly sometimes, especially for an actor who does everything to make real something which, in reality, does not exist. In the theater, you turn a lie, a fiction, into a truth, an illusion into a reality. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been attracted to actresses. They understand this.”
-Marcello Mastroianni, 1987
“Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I’m interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it’s a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.”
-Stanley Kubrick, 1972
Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good:
“I haven’t come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.”
-Kubrick, 1960
“Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was in the rest of the damned thing - I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes.”
-Barbara Stanwyck (photo by George Hurrell)
How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
“Gentleman: A man who buys two of the same morning paper from the doorman of his favorite nightclub when he leaves with his girl.”
-Marlene Dietrich (photo by Eugene Robert Richee)
-Ball, in her autobiography Love, Lucy
On Aging:
”Love affairs, adventures - these become less important and your work takes on greater meaning because it gives you the illusion of still being young. So you have a growing sense of security there - and less in life, where I am increasingly insecure. The public says bravo, but those close to you say, ‘You’re past 60 and you still have the brain of a 10-year-old. How is it possible? How else could it be? The Madonna, when I was born, said, ‘That one, he’s to remain forever a baby and become an actor.’
I work overtime with my fantasies and always have. Fellini said that when we got past 60, there’d be less trouble, more peace. Women are beautiful, but they complicate life. At night, you don’t sleep, you talk, you argue, you make love at 5 in the morning, then drag yourself off to the studio - a madhouse! But now, there’s still no peace, it’s even worse.
Sunday morning, at the beach at Ostia, I see these pretty girls in bathing suits and I go crazy. With my fantasies, it’ll never end, even at 100! Women see more clearly - too clearly sometimes, especially for an actor who does everything to make real something which, in reality, does not exist. In the theater, you turn a lie, a fiction, into a truth, an illusion into a reality. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been attracted to actresses. They understand this.”
-Marcello Mastroianni, 1987
“Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I’m interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it’s a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.”
-Stanley Kubrick, 1972
Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good:
“I haven’t come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.”
-Kubrick, 1960
“Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was in the rest of the damned thing - I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes.”
-Barbara Stanwyck (photo by George Hurrell)
How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
“Gentleman: A man who buys two of the same morning paper from the doorman of his favorite nightclub when he leaves with his girl.”
-Marlene Dietrich (photo by Eugene Robert Richee)
Friday, June 11, 2010
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