Posted on: 02/25/2024
Hello World! I took acid earlier this month. Or last month. It was very lovely. I sat there and let go of all the silly clutter I'm so used to carrying around with me, and my mind feels well and clear. If you're autoplaying music, you'll be listening to what is my favorite song right now. I have a few favorites. Poison Girlfriend, Doopees, Salami Rose Joe Louis, and Earthe...
Posted on: 01/07/2024
Today I layed on my floor and chose that I'd lay there until I cried. It didn't take too long. After I did I found it much easier to breathe. It is difficult for me to cry, so sometimes I have to force myself to do it.
Small digression. I've been working on moving my nature of existing to be less introverted. Living well for me is balancing rationalization and perception. Balancing living from my gut, my head, and my heart, so there there is no gross imbalance in my nature of being. This way of thinking of it, gut, head, and heart living came to me while considering acting, and I do mean it in a literal sense. There are so many ways that human pecularities manifest it is foolish to attempt to generalize, but I have noticed in myself and in others a few primary ways of existing/reacting. Those who react with their head, heart, and gut. I am a head liver, and my heart and gut frequently are neglected.
Back to crying. Crying brings clarity. To cry I must sit with myself, truly WITH myself, as in in a literal sense, being in my own company, and I must sit with the things I am running away from. Crying is a cathartic coming to terms with the truth of a situation. When I cry I learn how to live. When I am living well I am crying often. So I will more often now when I am feeling wrong, lay on the floor undistracted for as long as it takes for me to cry. After crying I found my breath. External living. Gut and heart living. Body living. Breathing consciously, that is being conscious of your breath, your belly moving up and down. What is the first part of our body to react to stress? To fear? Sadness? Our breath quickens, slows down, becomes weak.
Posted on: 12/25/2023
I've been having very symbolic dreams lately. I had one a few days ago. I was Carl Jung, Freud was there. He gave me a bunny as a gift, but I didn't want it. He said "Pet the bunny." I said no. It was sitting on my bed afraid, clearly not wanting to be touched. He told me to pet it, he moved my hand close. I pulled away. He tried and tried to force me. I kept declining. I said this is the problem with people and loving, they are so focused on expressing love in certain ways that they neglect how others want to express love, how the recipient receives love. The bunny went away. Then there was a puppy, both were white as snow. Little baby puppy was so excited, so eager to be affected for. I pulled him onto my bed and played with him, let him teethe on my hands. I looked at my left palm. I had a painful splinter. I woke up thinking it was all real.
Jung calls dreams "compensatory" and speaks to their ability to push our brains toward equilibrium. I am a believer in the healing power of sleep. What doesn't feel at least a little better after a nap? Our brains. These half-asleep gentle giants walking hypnagogic, silly. I'm reminded of a quote from Ursula Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven"
"Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moon-driven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking…
Posted on: 11/26/2023
Welcome to the first blog post. Today I will rant about a topic on the mind to inaguarate my having a website and a blog! Today's thoughtspew is on acting. The problem with the modern world of acting is something I have a hard time putting my finger on. Truth be told, this is the first time I've really given it a go. Between the way theater is taught to young children at school, creating presentational habits that are well ingrained-- To the audition process, which can be likened to being served up, a cadaver to be feasted on by your betters. A good world for art would be a world without betters. To me, art is like being naked in a room full of people who are also naked, and you're all really normal about it. Other animals always are.
I often get nervous before in-person or Zoom auditions, most of the time I don't even like the scripts. The way it is structured seems to encourage this, it truly is an audition. If I were a director, casting director, I would sit my actors down, get to know them, relate to them. Engage with them on the story and character in a way that retains the art in the process. A performance is just that, acting at it's highest can be more than performance, it can be real life incarnate. This type of audition process and directorial style does exist, but it's more likely going to be found working in indie scenes or among very successful artists where the audition pool is very small to begin with. It is hard to give this amount of care when hundreds or thousands of people might be auditioning.
In this way, it is my own fault for the nervousness-- it may not be of my making, but my fault it is, a fault that consumes my days overcoming. I've had days. Weeks. Months. All shining-- of living as being. The sheer confidence it brought me, it is astounding to me now but it is so simple. Something that words cannot convey alone, it must be experienced. I seek to experience it every moment. I search for it and search for it. When I've had it, really really had it, acting, auditioning, it becomes as natural to me as life, which comes even more natural in this place as well. I'm still working on finding my way. But I've found it. I know it exists. I know I can have it.