the week in review

I could have been here a week or a month. The acting classes involve
exercises and work that I didn't know existed, so it's all pure
discovery, and I've got a delightfully steep learning curve right now.
They are about the whole person, and acting is, I am realizing, much
more than "living honestly under imaginary circumstances." I only
thought I had been stretched before. Being able to look into
someone's eyes and see someone else entirely, or know I have known
them my whole life when we've just met, or demand something or declare
something or cajole, express, whatever - it's changing how I interact
with people in my real life, and it's the strangest feeling of
confidence I've ever had. It doesn't matter what someone's ABOUT to
say anymore, or wanting to hear something in particular in order to
live out a preconceived outcome --and THAT, in my case, is what's
liberating.

It sounds cliche, but it's all about the moment, not the past or the
future. When a moment becomes a past moment, I am forced to move on to
the next one - this is very, very very important in particular for
stage combat. If you fuck up and stop to apologize, someone will get
hurt. If you have to turn and catch a ball that is being thrown at
your face, you have turn, catch the ball with calm, focused energy --
not turn, freak out, look around the room and get hit in the face.
Calm with energy catchces the ball the first time. Freaked out second
guessing gets hit in the face. I learned this, quickly.


You know some people don't want to be read, and it's impossible to
go around being in that 'open' state that you have to be in in order to
'act' well, but I can see how the ability to read behavior and not
fear it (just take it in and decide how to act or react or not act at
all) is the closest thing to actually buiding an observable skill set
centered around authenticity that I can imagine. It's weird and
liberating. I love it. It's also affecting my internal life, which is
what makes acting school, as one teacher put it, "like a month of
relentless therapy." Emotion is, surprisingly, a physical
manifestation - not all in my head, which is also good. I'm
discovering that having a senstitive bodily instrument isn't a
detriment, it's a huge advantage. The body is a plastic
representation of the mind. Calm mind, calm body, commanding presence.
This is useful.