Ceci n'est pas un pipe

I just erased this entire entry and am going to start over. Completely.

Class today - I don't know about anyone else in the class, but I rediscovered something inside of me that I had entirely forgotten was there. We were experimenting with being entirely within our own senses, experiencing everything fully, right there, the smell, the feel, the sound, the taste. As I listened to the brick wall and felt it's pockmarks and dusty nuances, I looked up at it and realized I was honestly delighted and surprised to see paint marks smeared above me, something I'd never seen before. There was this childlike joy in seeing everything, really seeing it, really knowing what was around me and finding something new in the mundane.

We went outside and did the same thing, and I was initially overwhelmed with everything I'd always known was there and never noticed. The dirty snow piles that remained felt like painfully cold little marbles, the sound of my shoe splashing lightly in the mud was such a happy sound, there were soft, tiny bird feathers entwined everywhere in the ivy gripping the walls, the leaves smelled damp and alive. Each tree was like a different page of giant braille. Everything smelled cold.

But what really struck me about everything in class today was that I honestly found joy and excitement in staring at the details, noticing things I'd never seen, exploring in a way I hadn't since I was very small. I want that enthusiasm about everything. I couldn't stop smiling, even while we got wierd looks from the "normal" student body.

The purpose for us wandering around like children was this: To play experience and truth onstage, once must live experience and truth. If you're playing a scene on the deck of a boat, perhaps sailing across the ocean, you have to be able to remember and feel again the movement of the floor beneath you, the smell of the ship and the sea, the wind on your face, just edged with a bit of salt spray, whether the wind chilled you or the sun warmed you, if the air tasted like fish or like salt, how the water wrinkled and sparkled out in front of the boat, how it foamed and roared behind. If you live that truth onstage, the audience will believe you.

So actors need to live the moment, be aware of everything at all times. Be constantly at work in some state of being, observing, living, noticing.

Break a leg to V, again.