Such Great Heights

Yesterday was a Sunday, and I've relished those Sundays in the past few years that allowed me to sleep in, do a crossword and generally rock the low-key rockin'. I generally hate to rehearse on a Sunday night. Someone always wants you to. It's driven by desperation, largely. The scale of production I generally work on in the city doesn't pay one enough to quit his or her day job, so the folks managing schedules are confronted with a barrage of money-making conflicts. No one wants to rehearse early on Sunday, because of God. Also, because it follows too close on the heels of festive Saturday night. So someone invariably suggests Sunday night for rehearsals, and I invariably have to say, "Oh yeah, no, that's my knitting-circle night," or some such. Yesterday I had a rehearsal at mid-day, which was okay. If the trains hadn't been wearing their special helmets, I might have even made it on time.

Cirque Boom

has been requested to perform at a

benefit

for

NYFA

, and I and three other performers were requested by Ruth Juliet Wikler-Luker to participate. One

Ms. Cody Schreger

is joining me for acrobatic duets, largely of the standing variety, owing to the constraints of the space. True to Cirque Boom form, we're playing energetically eccentric characters. I'm playing a tormented, mute poet, immigrated to America some years ago in a quest for a new love; Cody his first lover from "The Olde Country," venturing to America for the first time in the hopes of bringing him safely back into her embrace. This is all an elaborate excuse for flamboyant gesture and expressive acrobalance. We met yesterday in an apartment/studio in Brooklyn to refresh our (read: my) memories and choreograph.

I

hurt

today. And it is a

good pain

.

Approximately three years ago,

Kirkos

, a circus-theatre-et-al. troupe I was a founding member of, effectively folded. A little while later, Ruth of Cirque-Boom fame left the country for a year. These were my two core sources not only for "acro" exposure and practice, but for my expressive physical activity in general. In the intervening years between then and now, I've kept busy and tried to apply all I learned between 2002 and 2005 to other shows I've worked on and in workshops I taught. I worked so hard at that, in fact, that I had come to believe that I was maintaining my practice sufficiently, if not with as great rigor or regularity. It's amazing how complacent a person can become if he or she only wills it to be so.

I've written here before about the good ol' days of my acro career, when I was young(er) and doing handstands in the corridors of my day job with

Friend Melissa

(see

12/5/07

). The emphasis of that writing was craving a return to that level of activity and physical maintenance, which has been a strong desire for me as well. What I learned from Sunday, however, is that part of the reason that's been so difficult for me is that it's been all me. I mean, not

all

me. On the occasions when we're working on a show together, Friend Heather and I train in acro a bit, and Friend Geoff and I both have a love/hate relationship with jogging, etc. What I mean to say is, I've discovered I've been missing more than the exercise. Last summer I worked myself into a muscle-bound frenzy (not so's you'd necessarily notice, mind you) for my part in

As Far As We Know

, but I wasn't building anything but myself, and it faded.

Sunday's rehearsal was even in a space that reminded me of

Friend Kate

's loft, where Kirkos met and tumbled about. It was in a, shall we say, less-developed section of Brooklyn, in a converted space with plenty of raw-lumber beams and old factory floorboards about. We climbed the stairs, removed our shoes, laid mats and started warming up. The warm-up wasn't just to loosen our joints, or "awake" our physical sensitivity, it was serious -- stretching out and warming up muscles and tendons that would soon be asked a lot of. We took our time, chatted, doped one anothers' stretches if they looked good, as a group will when they've worked together before and don't need to acknowledge social conventions. After a good, long warm-up, we began.

I'll skip the details of development. Suffice it to say that we choreographed quickly, everyone throwing in ideas and interpretations. Within minutes, I found myself performing tricks I had forgotten I'd known, and doing some I hadn't been able to do years before. The sensation was incredible. I'm not at this time in the greatest shape of my life, but working with an experienced acrobat like Cody made everything easier, and it does seem as though I've gotten stronger in some regard over the past few years. Though, by the end of the two hours, I was definitely quite winded. And, as I put it above, I

hurt

today.

All this leads me to conclude that it's past time for me to be regularly involved in this training again, whether I can find a group to join, or have to start one myself. The common approach for most of my acro friends of late has been to team up with someone who they can count on, train and prepare for performance opportunities with. And that's well and good, and works great, but I need a group. I need a community that can sustain itself even when I'm off in Italy, applying the skills from that group to my commedia dell'arte work. And it may be up to me to form it.

We may even have to meet on Sundays.

It's a Long Story . . .

The Aviary has a new feature to the left (to the lef'!): Links to my shared items on

Google Reader

.

Expatriate Dave

introduced me to Reader, all from across the Atlantic and everything, and for this he must die. Dave, you are a sunumabitch, and must die, for now I have a tremendous difficulty justifying any time spent on the activities of my actual day job. Dave's imminent demise notwithstanding, now you can quickly view other 'blog entries and online articles that have piqued my interest of late. It's a nifty way of citing my sources and streamlining some of my brain activity not necessarily related to

The Third Life

(r); though really, it all relates. Plus, my 'blog is about ten-to-twenty screen shots tall, so I could probably insert one of Shakespeare's histories to the lef' without scraping bottom.

I have hoped and searched for a way of making this style of 'blog wider in format, so that such would not be the case, but it is as yet in vain. I am nerdly, but not in a computerly way, and shan't venture to edit the html myself. God no. Imagine the potential losses!

I do go on. And on. And on. (And on. [And on. {And on.} And on.] And on.) And, I on. Wait. What? I on. Hold on. I--on. I . . . woul- on! On on on! Look at my goings on! ON!

The above is an abstract sort of summary (get it?) of my mental processes. I may be way off base here, but I think this aspect of moi is a big part of the reason I experience so much frustration in learning other languages. I am at once in love with order and complexity. I appreciate specificity in ideas, but strongly resent the inability to wiggle within formats and the mediums of expression. So I'm rather stuck on English -- that most ambiguous of languages -- rather than html, or Italian. In part because I learned it first, hence I have "wiggle room" that no other language can compare to sans decades of study, but also because its value is ingrained on my conscience. English means the script of a new play I've been cast in. English means communication with my loved ones. English means western literature. I heart English.

That is part of why I write at such length on almost every subject I address here. Most of my entries, I'm well aware, would not pass the mustard (intentional abuse of idiom; because I can) with any English teacher in his/her right mind. Most of my ideas can be summarized in an abstract (ah ha!) of about twenty-five words or less. I write on these ideas in meandering, playful ways because I'm improvising on a theme. (I

knew

I should have stuck through to Jazz Band! Where's my trombone...?) I'm improvising on a theme because I enjoy it, and because it's the best way I know of surprising myself with my own conclusions. There's almost nothing empirical about the process, when I'm doing it right. Generally speaking, I'm a little too cautious to become a

Dirk Gently

altogether, but there's something to be said for not determining the end before you've begun.

I suppose I have mental processes on the brain because I've been helping

Fiancee Megan

with her thesis paper. Last weekend was spent by-and-large helping her compile and organize data, actually. (It's fun to pretend you're in school, if you can reach that state of feeling as though it takes a certain load of decision-making off of you.) It had been a while since I had dipped toe in that kind of scholastic world, and I was reminded of the comforts and drawbacks of ideas such as determinism, causality and the empirical/scientific processes. Simply put (or so I hope), most school environments depend upon concepts of quantification and objectivity in order to function to standards, which concepts have varying degrees of use or relevence to any given lesson. They gots to grade you, and you gots to learn somethin' from its. I'm not faulting empiricism at all. How could I fault something so useful? Neither, however, do I consider it the Omega to every question's Alpha.

Consider a school paper. Generally speaking, the student is supposed to state an objective and hypothesis, then do this and that to prove the hypothesis, preferably using hard data and citing other opinions. In the end, a conclusion is drawn. The conclusion needn't be conclusive, nor even agree with the hypothesis (though some teachers insist on revising one end or the other until they match, which is so stupid it makes me want to scream), but no one likes to feel dumb and most people, by the end of working on something, like to feel they got somewhere relatively significant. So a conclusion ties it all up. Like a well-crafted play, there's a beginning, middle and end, with no dangling doubts or questions. Pretty. Concise. Let's us bronze it, and put it on a pedastal.

Though it has been reprinted onto numerous magnets, mugs and mouse-pads, I'm still a big fan of this excerpt from Rilke's collected letters to a young poet:

"I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

One of my biggest problems is that it's hard for me to admit that I don't know something. It's not that I can't do it; it's that it pains me to do it, which is in some ways worse, or at least more complicated. So I practice not knowing things all the time, even as I'm trying to learn more and more in the hopes that by the time I'm 80 or so I won't have to endure

not

knowing quite so much. Until then, loving the questions is a pretty effective approach to ignorance. At least that way, the questions get asked, of myself as much as of anyone else.

Update

(not minutes after I posted; see reader sidebar article)

:

Ira Glass agrees with me...

"Indeed, that might be the single biggest reason that This American Life has more in common with the documentary films of

Errol Morris

or the writings of

Studs Terkel

(both oft-cited Glass influences) than with any network magazine news program: It follows its sources where they lead, instead of using people as props to support a premise that’s usually been decided upon before the actual reporting has even begun."

Converse

In a similar spirit to yesterday's post, I'm writing today about oral tradition. (Where is my mind? Oh yeah, there it is: in the gutter again. Besmirched.) Yesterday I wrote about how important it was to continue our habits of learning from people directly, sans email or books or carrier/passenger pigeons. One of the ways to maintain this kind of good habit is to make as much conversation as possible. This, I recognize, is a tricky proposition. New Yorkers may think it's particularly dangerous for them, what with all the hurried, irate and/or insane types we have smunched (is SO a word) together. I would argue, however, that there's a trade-off there. New Yorkers are more accustomed to having regular contact with strangers and psychos than some, and we learn stronger coping methods for dealing with them. Plus the psychos are generally easier to spot here, I think. Not that a psycho can't look average, but here you can at least rule out a certain segment of aluminum-foil-hat-wearing sorts as being perhaps not the most coherent conversationalists.

Friend Chris

once suggested to me that wherever I go, I should talk to people about what they do. Post office, elevator, subway, etc., every day we come in contact with professionals, and most of them are pretty eager to talk about something they can be an authority on. Get in the habit of talking with them, and you both benefit -- a report is established, greasing the wheels for any other transaction, and you may learn something to boot. I try to remember to do this. It often backfires. I don't have the most unimpregnable ego in the world, and when I get a negative response from someone I don't know, I'm more inclined to let the talk drop than pursue it. The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that a negative response is often a stock response, and can be wispy-thin. Get past it, and there's every possibility that you'll find something interesting or moving on the other side.

I also find that everyone --

everyone

-- is sending out invitations, all the time. There's so much information coming off of people that it's amazing. Even without eye contact with someone, you can start to form an impression of what they most want in terms of communication, be it sympathy, enthusiasm, agreement or something wholly unique. (And with eye contact: forget about it.) The tricky part for me has always been balancing what others want with what I want. When I was younger I had this problem a great deal more often, but it still happens to me now and again. Now its not so much that I blindly subserve to everyone (is SO an expression). When I was younger, I would often get into this conversation with my friends:

"Whatcha doin', Jeff?"

"Building a canal out of a single cinder block."

"Oh. How's it going."

"Well, it's okay. It's kind of hard, though. And slow going. And I'm not sure what purpose it will serve. And I was supposed to go play Dungeons&Dragons(TM) with some other pubescents today, but I guess I can't now."

"Oh. And why are you doing that?"

"Because someone I only just now met wanted it done."

"Oh."

"...what?"

Now it's more a matter of not quite getting across (to myself as much as anyone else) just how important the really important things are to me. So I do a lot less painful self-sacrificing, but every now and again I'll get to a point in something at which I'll suddenly explode. "Why am I not getting what I want?! Why are your wants automatically more important than mine?! Why are you doing this to me?!

Oh!

I never

told

you what I want?! I ... I didn't, did I? Oh, ah ... whoops. My bad. Sorry for spitting on you just then. Um. I can't do anything for you, can I? Build you a canal, perhaps?"

It's taken me a long time to learn, and it's a continuous "practice" for me ("practice," in this usage, as in the yoga sense, in which "practice" is a nice way of saying "something I can't do

at all

yet, but just keep trying, anyway") to remember, that everyone's a little bit psycho, in their own way. We all occupy worlds inside our individual heads that have nothing to do with the rest of the world, try as we might to deny it. And it's scary, the possibility of tripping upon someone's inner world. It may be less a fantastical trip to Oz, and more a nightmare ride down the rabbit hole. There's just no knowing.

The thing is: The more you risk that, the more you're living and learning. Be it Oz or somewhere

really

weird, at least you're going somewhere. No one wants to go nowhere; not if they really pause to consider what that would mean. Having the courage to really talk and really listen is supposed to be what actors are all about. Lord knows, I'm not the best at it. A few months ago I was sitting around with a cast at NYU, waiting in their luxurious lobby on the seventh floor for our director to show up. Two of my fellow cast members struck up a conversation. It started out a little irritating -- "Who do you know?" "You don't know him? How can you not know him?" -- but they eventually got to matters un-network-y, and began talking about the city. One of them, a rather young woman, said, "I don't understand how people can just walk around all day, plugged in to their earphones. That's just stupid. They're missing so much." I discreetly attempted to shove my iPod deeper into my coat pocket. "I know. Why would you live here, and shut all of it out?" So I'm trying to engage more with my fellow man. It's good practice.

But dang it, on the subway I'm keeping my earphones on. It's not that I prefer

The Mars Volta

to my fellow man, but . . . well yeah. It kind of is. Practice, practice, practice!

Inherited Knowledge

Yesterday, at il day jobo, my boss asked me to add up some numbers and attach them to their respective back-up. So I fired up the computer calculator (this in spite of playing

Brain Age

for the Nintendo DS of late), added the numbers and wrote them on post-it notes to afix. When I turned them in to my boss (Me:

Well, she should be impressed with

that

speed-of-return...

) she informed me 'twould not do. She needed to see the calculations. Oh. Okay. I'll do it in Excel. No no, says she, we don't want to attach whole sheets to the papers, just a little slip. Use my

adding machine

. Oh. Okay. That shouldn't be a problem.

My dad's an accountant, and I associate these machines with him. You've seen them, even if you've never had cause to use one. They're like over-sized calculators with a spool of receipt tape atop, that prints out what yer' computin'. They make a very distinctive noise that usually indicates someone who is deep in concentration. When you enter a figure into yer' computin', it prints it with a brief gear-y, scratchy sound, and when you want to pound out the final total, it makes these sounds for considerably longer (having as it generally does more to print at the end) as though to say, "Congratulations! You're one major step closer to whatever you're doing!" Interestingly enough, these machines also have the addition and equation symbols on the same, over-sized button.

Cut to me, twenty minutes after my boss' request, pounding my head in frustration as I try to figure out how to get the adding machine to PRINT the G.D. TOTAL. Every number I enter automatically prints to the paper as I press the big addition/equation button, but when I get to the end of the line . . . what am I supposed to do? When I press the big a/e button again, it simply adds the previous number to the line again, thereby ruining that particular slice of tape. It seemed so convenient and obvious to me before, combining those functions. Every time you hit it, your running total appears on the screen. Now, though, it is my enemy. They should be separate buttons! Does the manufacturer get a deal on

buttons

if he makes one over-sized? WHAT the HELL?! After many minutes of flicking mysterious switches experimentally, trying to interpret all these "M-" buttons and generally doing what I do to figure something out with Microsoft programs, I notice something. In the column of function keys, there is one labeled "x" and one labeled "*". Huh. In my (computerized) mind, those are both symbols for multiplication, so I didn't find either out-of-the-ordinary when regarded individually. When I noticed both were there, I tried pressing "*".

Success! All praise "*"! It even printed a sub-line that illustrated

how many

figures were added together to make the total! I could make-out with my adding machine!

It would not be a lasting relationship, however, infused as it is with such opposing passions, so I relented in my desire.

It reminded me of something I had been reminded of earlier in the weekend as well. I was watching

Elizabeth

for the first time, with

Fiancee

Megan

, a movie I had long intended to see. There's quite a good amount of classical dance in that film, and Megan said she thought it must have been strange, knowing all the same dances. This reminded me of something

Friend David

(Zarko) often laments -- that we don't all know the same dances anymore. Dances. Adding machines. What does it all mean?

Nothing in particular to the nouns, or even all the words of my little meandering story. It's in between those words.

There is something rich and important in passing knowledge from person to person, with no intermediaries or tools involved, and something richer still in passing knowledge between people who have a relationship. That's not to say that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket because you can Google or Wiki world history as you need it (...and why, I ask myself, did I not simply Google adding-machine instructions...); I think the ability to access information instantly and specifically is an amazing boon to human culture. Plus it makes moving easier, what with needing to haul about fewer reference books. The only problem is, when we take a break from correspondence courses and search engines, and even encyclopedias, and engage in someone from whom we learn, something different happens. Something good, and difficult to put into words. I wrote that I probably wouldn't have learned acrobalance as I have if it hadn't been taught to me by

Friend Kate

(see

3/14/08

). Perhaps I'd know more dances --

care

to know more dances -- if I had a community that regularly met in order to share them.

I'm sure a lot of men have had the experience of coming upon a challenge and thinking, "Huh. I'll bet if I paid more attention to my dad when I was young, I'd have this licked." I've also had plenty of experiences which I've come through and thought, "Whoa; glad dad taught me that." (This perhaps most notably the several times I had to save my old computer by fixing things through DOS; also every time I get a compliment on knowing how to tie a full Windsor.)

Friend Todd

is excellent about striking up educational conversations with everyone he meets, a trait I most admire and try to cultivate in myself. In many ways, this is part of what's so important about live theatre. I don't know who's teacher and who's student in that scenario, but I do know we're all there with a little time to get to know each other, and learn to push each others' buttons.

Balancing Act{ing}

Rewind to 2001, before the towers fell; months before, in the spring. Shortly after my one-year anniversary of having moved to New York, I got two jobs that have fundamentally affected every bit of acting work I've had in the seven years since. The first was that I actually found enough bravery (or naivety) to attend an open call for a touring company that required singing. The result was a production of

Der Talisman --

a flippin' MUSICAL, of all things -- which happened to be directed by some dude named David Zarko. This dude wasn't even at my audition or callback. He was a freelance hire. David, of course, went on to become the producing artistic director of

The Northeast Theatre

, where I have gone on to do the lion's share of my professional theatre work to date.

The other formative gig was a show I've mentioned here before,

Significant Circus

, directed by

Kate Magram

. In the years since, Kate and I have shared other collaborative efforts and developed a pretty rad friendship to boot. Amidst all this work and play, it can be easy to lose track of who did and said what and when, and how we got to where we find ourselves at any given moment. (That's how it is when you are involved in a true collaboration to create a play, too. Someone will ask you, "Whose idea was it, the dancing donkey in Act Four?" and you'll reply, with great conviction, "I have absolutely no idea.") What amazes me, when I stop for a moment to consider it, is this one thing Kate contributed to my life. I can point to it, which is part of what makes it so remarkable. Look! Right there, it is!

In a word: acrobalance.

(In a compound word, I suppose I should say.)

Yeah. That stuff that has gotten me work, and that all the actors I've worked with in the past five years know me for? Kate's fault. All about Kate. Didn't know a thing about its existence prior to knowing Kate. Furthermore, because I learned it from Kate, I have loved it more than I otherwise would have, and it has had more influence over the rest of my life than it likely would had I learned it from someone else. Some of the most amazing things I've done on stage, some of the best, most interesting ideas I've come up with, never ever would have had a chance of existing in real life without Mz. Magram. It baffles me a little. She has changed me as an actor and person. Let me explain.

I have never been an athlete. In fact, and spent a good portion of my earlier years as a portly chap. When I was around 16, grandpa's genes kicked in with a vengeance and I lost 40 pounds in a few months. Suddenly I could move easier, and looked more the part for more central roles in plays. In college, I realized I did truly dig incorporating my whole body into parts as much as possible (and, still occasionally, more than is necessarily called for). I also realized that I didn't have any particular technique(s) for doing so. In college, and after graduation, I tried different things, and they were all good -- stage combat, Suzuki, Viewpoints -- but none of them thrilled me. I wanted something I didn't know. Ever feel that way?

I was lucky enough to find it. As I recall, part of what won me the part in

Significant Circus

was that I did a diving forward roll on a concrete floor in my audition. (A similar move cemented my audition for d'Artagnon in college; apparently a willingness to risk debilitating injury is like catnip to directors.) Then I got to my first rehearsal, and Kate asked me to balance myself against the feet of a beautiful woman while we lowered me down to kiss said beautiful woman.

"What?"

Acro-balance, partner balancing, however you want to term it, has some basics. These are what Kate taught me, and what I teach all over the place now as part of workshops for

Zuppa del Giorno,

and to sort of pay forward all the free training she gave me.

1. Shared responsibility. The name "partner balance" is in a way more apt, because the essence of all the postures and moves is to distribute weight between two or more people in a way that looks impressive and/or beautiful, and uses one another's weight and effort in tandem. It requires a great deal of communication between partners, verbal and physical, which can be tricky to learn. In fact, there's no way to take responsibility entirely on one's self for any aspect of it. More significantly, there's no occasion in which you can blame the other for anything. There is always something more you can be doing to help your partner(s). This is shared responsibility.
2.  

1. Half the ability lies in trust. Never mind all those trust games you played in high school, or at the team-building workshop you were subjected to on some three-day "weekend." In acrobalance, generally speaking, the base needs to be responsible for making the pose balanced, and the flier needs to be responsible for maintaining a strong shape (and both are responsible for communicating [see above]). Control freaks beware: Nothing wrecks a balance faster than a flier trying to change the balance, except maybe a base who refuses to adjust. And you'll be doing it again and again with this person, which as we know is long-term trust which, as we know, is as challenging as it is rewarding.
2.  

1. Drawing straight lines into the ground. There's no defying gravity. Maybe you can make it look like there is, but there ain't. There are moves that require enormous strength and control, but the most important basic skill one can learn is to create a benevolent relationship to gravity. Get that down, and any move is open to you with a little effort. So straight lines. Straight limbs can hold weight by grounding it into the ... uh ... ground, and angles that direct weight toward the ground are more stable and architecturally sound.
2.  

1. Always be spotting. We get tired, and we are used to having to fight for our own time to relax, so it's not surprising that people tend to let down their guard when they're not in the spotlight. Acrobalance, though, is high stakes. You're working as a group to achieve something, and trust is a twenty-four-hour necessity. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be ready to catch someone else when they fall. Not if; when.
2.  

1. Down. Things go wrong. People are fallible. Physics is complex. When something is flirting with F.U.B.A.R. -- and more so when you're intentionally, repeatedly approaching that something -- you need to have an agreed-upon vocabulary. When the fit hits the shan, we say "Down!", and that's what we do. Safely. Together.

Pretty simple stuff, but as with any simple, broadly applicable ideas, they make for a good regular practice. I have been practicing these with some regularity for years now, and teaching them to others. These "others" probably promptly go out and try the same moves whilst blithely forgetting these five concepts behind them, but, I don't know; I've found that the harder I work on moves, the more I need to remember these guide points. I need reminding of them, but I'll never forget them, because Kate taught them to me so well. Especially the first one.

I think it's pretty obvious how these concepts apply to life in general, and acting in particular (keep them in mind; explore the possibilities; from Kate to me to you, gratis [you're welcome]) so I won't spin on much longer here. This is just to say thanks to Kate (and to her friend, Leah) for reminding me once again of important keys to finding balance.