Monday 26 March 2012

Before I read

Today before I read my emails, or check twitter, or gloriouspeople.ning.com, or spin any other of the daily plates...

I'm just back from  three-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It was short - compared to the more usual ten-day courses, where one undergoes quite a transformation from everyday life. However, it was long enough for me to witness once again how distinct and beautiful it is to be with other people who are not speaking or making eye contact.

I realise that might sound a bit absurd.
Like - "it's okay to be around people as long as you don't have anything to do with them".

And maybe that's a part of it - that our lives weren't there to get in the way. We had no pens or pencils or phones or books or maps or letters or make up or fancy clothes or music or dancing or internet. Instead, just our bodies, in a space, practising meditation, eating simply, sometimes walking, and sometimes resting. Making no sound, and making no eye contact with each other.

And you might imagine that because we weren't talking or making eye contact, that we weren't really present with each other. But on the contrary, we were all holding a space together - and much more aware, in a compassionate way, of the other people in the space.

I think what it comes down to is this:

No-one bumped into each other.

Not with words or bodies.

Because there was space to be both in our own bodies and with others.
And this is a rare combination out here in our lives.


At the moment when we knew we were about to start speaking again, to make eye contact, to be with each other - there was a sense of anticipation. An excitement. But there was also a re-learning. A quick refresher - so quick it was barely perceptible - on how to mask truth with language, how to cover shame and embarrassment, how to be a girl or a boy or another kind of container.

This moment of reprogramming was barely perceptible. But the shift back into our everyday lives was immense. And within minutes, we were all navigating our worlds again, getting ready to head homewards, making friends, passing judgements, asking how the experience had been, asking how to get to the train station. Separated by communication.

So this post is a reminder - to me, mostly - to taste words more carefully. To remember that underneath all the layers of pens and pencils and phones and books and maps and letters and make up and fancy clothes and music and dancing and internet - there is always just a person, walking into the world.

Thursday 1 March 2012

On the value of doubt, reflection, uncertainty and not knowing (quiet people especially welcome)

These are notes from a session I called at Improbable's 2012 Devoted and Disgruntled event...

I place a lot of value on spaces for reflection and doubt - and listening. And by Sunday morning, I hadn't really found a way for those spaces to be present at D&D, so I called this session.

What I didn't do was think much about how I might actually create the kind of space I was craving within a very loud room where lots of other conversations were happening simultaneously. I'm really grateful that so many people showed up and stayed present with the discussion - and can only apologise that the idea didn't occur to me earlier, when I might have come up with some brilliant way to create a more conducive space where we didn't have to shout. Nevertheless, we talked of...


Not knowing as a process in life

"There is so much we're supposed to know"

Engage with 'not knowing' as a process of moving forward - our constant movement between spaces of knowing and not knowing and how we might allow the value of each affect the other - the value in consciously putting oneself in a space of not knowing - but also needing a clear sense of self when valuing the space of not knowing. Which can feel tricky!


Relationship to Failure

Someone pointed out that uncertainty and doubt are always present in a rehearsal or making process - so what's the big deal?

Perhaps those spaces are always present, but at some level we are hardwired to think of spaces of uncertainty as spaces of failure. What transformations occur when we continue to inhabit these spaces instead of moving through them as quickly as possible towards a resolution?

What is the relationship between placing oneself in the unknown, and listening or empathy? What if leaving my own certainties allows me to be more in the world?

Thinking about timescales (and referring back to Simon Bowes' session on "It's going to take years") - what if something that appears to fail in the short-term eventually represents a really important shift in thinking?

Long timeframes towards change.

Again, how do we allow this kind of thinking to be something a wider audience can relish?

Audiences

There's no lack of makers interested in addressing these questions - but how do we respond to these spaces as audience members?

What does it mean to create a piece of work where the audience is free to be reflective and journey into a space of not knowing? How can we avoid slow, reflective spaces being antagonising or boring to audiences? Especially within a theatre context (as opposed to live art, for example, where this is more common)

Maybe we need to think more about how a piece of work is framed/introduced, how an audience is prepared for a piece of work. Thinking through audience expectations that are set up through the medium and its traditions (different in visual arts / live art / theatre), through the space (theatre, gallery, page, browser) and how the audience move through it, and therefore also the way that time operates within that space.

It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass - Anne Carson


Re-educate

Someone spoke of the importance of re-educating. My notes aren't great on this bit - but I think this relates back to the idea of frames, of thinking about the wider frame of presenting a piece of work, and acknowledging the notion of re-educating within a creative thinking process. If I want to really change the way audiences watch this work, what can I do to let them know?


Slowness as Resistance

Slowness is a resistance of narrative / expectation / speed / knowledge.
Sometimes that resistance hits the wall of a fast world. Matt spoke of not being able to engage with my show, Glorious, not because of an unwillingness, but rather an inability.


Transparency and withholding

Theron noted the difference between work where artists and audiences are entering a space of not knowing, and work where the artist is in a place of knowing and the audience is entering a space of not knowing.

We talked about transparency, and the extent to which knowledge is withheld from an audience - and how this is handled.

We didn't (but I wish we had) talk about manipulation of audiences, and whether this is desirable or unattractive or inevitable.


Gentleness can be counterproductive

Simon proposed the idea that maybe we're too gentle and worried around creating these alternative spaces. Maybe as audience members we sometimes want to be faced with an obstacle we can't get around. How do we create a culture that acknowledges that audiences can feel grateful for challenge and having been pushed?

We talked again about spaces before or after a difficult performance - the space for audiences after Internal by Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Geod, for example, or the lead-in to Coney's works.


Walking

We went for a walk at dusk.