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| I know many of the people who read my blog are actors or artists or are involved in theatre. I'd like to share with you a snippet of a conversation I just had with a friend on why studying Acting is worthwhile. I've edited the conversation a bit for grammatical and concision reasons. Enjoy:
Chris: I just had the best acting performance of my life.
Will: NO FUCKIN WAY! What in?
Chris: I was appealing for a thousand dollars in front of a council of like 40 people, and the event is in a week and a half, and I don't have a location or date set for it yet. And they gave it to me anyway because I just went in confident and made them think I knew exactly what I was doing... which, I do. And I don't.
Will: NICE dude. What's the event?
Chris: It's for our October Poetry Slam. We're bringing in a poet so we need money.
Will: Nice.
Chris: But yeah, in 6 minutes I convinced 40 people to give us a thousand dollars.
Will: Hahaha. That's intense.
Chris: I need to call my mom and tell her this acting degree is worth it.
Will: Hahahaha.
Chris: Seriously, that's really why i'm studying acting. Everyday life is as much of a performance as the stage is.
Will: Absolutely. I think acting affords a great opportunity to be observant of human nature, you know?
Chris: Exactly. And to learn how to express yourself effectively. And how to be honest in every moment, even when performing action someone else has instructed you to do--which, i mean, I don't think there's a better definition of freedom: if you can be completely present, honest, centered, and content while doing something that "you" didn't "choose" to do, that's freedom. | | |
| Found this in my notebook just now. It's from a few months ago. I wrote down the name of some of today's most popular drugs and wrote an idea or image that I thought captured the experience of each of those drugs. Some are from personal experience, most are just imagined, based on descriptions I've heard.
Alcohol:
A boulder floating down a river
Cannabis:
A bird flies effortlessly through a sky of quicksand
Mushrooms:
The paint is melting from Magritte's pipe.
LSD:
every molecule is an infinite hallway with infinite doors that each open to any time or place.
DMT:
someone turned the lights out and now there's luminescent squirrels
Cocaine:
God snapped and there was light
Meth:
God snapped and there was a lightning bolt
Heroine:
A chorus of angels sing every moment. A cliche that doesn't know it's a cliche. | | |
| In order to mount to heaven, you used the floor of the inferno to give you your momentum. "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach. The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his struggle to transform into virtue the impudence, dishonor, unfaithfulness, and malice within him. One day Lucifer will be the most glorious archangel standing next to God; not Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael--but Lucifer, after he has finally transubstantiated his terrible darkness into light."
--Nikos Kazantzakis, from "St. Francis"
In that spirit, let us all become sexual deviants,
slaves to our monstrous desires,
so that we may each learn to tame these beasts
and gain the gentleness of saints.
Amen. | | |
| Another Edgar Cayce quote:
"Hence again might that injunction be given the entity not to be too easily discouraged. Brace up! Know in what ye have believed and do believe, but know who is also the author of such. For life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not the goal!"
This is helpful in times of high anxiety. Last night, a line from one of Bellwoar's poems, "You're in a cage! You're in a cage!" kept rolling through my head. It was exactly how I felt. Today, this Edgar Cayce quote cheers me a bit. Being free, being trapped--these are just concepts we impress upon our reality. They are very real concepts with very visceral effects, but nonetheless, still concepts. They aren't accurate to how things actually are. Just because a thought comes through my head with a lot of weight in my stomach doesn't make it true. Just because the thought comes through with high volume, lots of energy, sweaty palms, doesn't make it true. It's like a person with a loudspeaker driving through the streets--we usually treat those people like idiots. So why do we give so much credence to our obnoxious anxiety-stenched thoughts?
I'm not saying they're not real.
They are real.
They're frightening.
Breathe.
They pass. They pass, Chris.
The sun rises, the moon stays in the sky.
The clouds cover it, the street lamps come on.
The crickets sing.
And I will wake up again tomorrow,
another day to live.
"The grave is not the goal." I remember once feeling absolutely certain that all I would ever do in life is fail, and even if I succeeded, I'd inevitably fail because death was the ultimate failure at the end of any momentary successes I might achieve. It shook me like God might, and so I believed that feeling as if it were God.
The grave is not the goal.
Right now is the goal.
This breath.
Ahhhhh....
Success! | | |
| "Being afraid is the first consciousness of sin's entering in, for he that is made afraid has lost consciousness of self's own heritage with the Son; for we are heirs through Him to that Kingdom that is beyond all that that would make afraid, or that would cause a doubt in the heart of any."
--Edgar Cayce
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