Jon Ferguson's Words of Buffoonery

I have to give credit where credit's due and say that I titled this blog buffoonery because of Jon Ferguson.  When I took a workshop from him I was challenged yet delighted by his theme that mistakes are a gift.  With every exercise we performed we had to turn, as ourselves not a character, and face the audience whenever we made a mistake--thus sharing that experience with them.  Having grown up fighting for perfection I found this to be a (literally) entertaining slap in the face.  "The purpose of this class," he said wryly, "is to make you see that you're a complete moron...and that's a beautiful thing."  

Not long before that I was challenged by a lovely woman named Cheryl who said that humility is really offering my gifts in their imperfection rather than constantly playing them down. Wait, humility means I should be onstage?  It means I should sing?  It means I should write a blog...

As I study theater, I see this thread forming that says process, process, process not perfection. Some people say theater is all about ego and getting the applause, and I can't deny that in some cases that is true.  But in a bigger sense, I think, theater is about serving,  about being vulnerable...

And about learning to not take yourself so seriously! [Gigantic Finger Pointing at ME]

Journalists Imprisoned in North Korea

Journalists imprisoned

Facing an upcoming trip abroad I remember being told by my professors that we must be respectful of our host country because we will be subject to their laws.  For some reason this had a hard time sinking in for me.  Perhaps it is a hidden sign of my American sense of entitlement, but I couldn't imagine a country being able to hold me for some insignificant act that they consider illegal.  I subconsciously feel sure some sort of negotiations could take place, and yet here I am faced with this article where two women journalists have been charged with 12 years hard labor in North Korea. When it sinks in that North Korea can do that, it's a terrifying thought.  As they explain that many people die within their first 3 years in this gulag, when they share that one of the women were talking to her husband--a husband she will not see for 12 years?--I realize I somehow see the Supreme Court as ruling over the world rather than the United States.  But no, and that makes me wonder if my idea of living in peaceful surroundings is only a thin veneer?  Perhaps we are not so invincible as we seem to believe.  Perhaps we should stop living in our precariously thin protective bubble and start being involved in this tumultuous world.  Or at least start caring.  I should start caring.

Bombing in Baghdad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8120272.stm

I have finally begun to read the news on a regular basis and I am continuously shaken by how little I know of the world and how little I realize the suffering that is taking place as constantly as my breath.  Wars are being fought, wives are murdering their husbands, children are literally starving to death, planes are crashing into oceans, peaceful political protesters are being attacked and arrested, hands are being amputated for stealing.  I just don't understand how it is possible for me to live in complete indifference to this.  There is a part of me that believes violence and deep suffering is no longer real--that we have come to some happy plateau--how can I be so removed from the world?  

Here is a short article about a bombing in which 70 people were killed--70--and they get hardly as many words to commemorate them.  Here I sit giving more voice to my thoughts than 70 lives snuffed out.  

Beat Hotel

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8118155.stm

I just read this article and though I have not had much interest in Beat culture previously, I was intrigued.  I was interested to learn about the Burglar with a Camera, a landlady with light bulbs on her desk glowing according to how much electricity was being used in each room, and the author who put pages in order at random by dividing them into several wire baskets.  There is just something compelling about people whole-heartedly defining their life by their philosophy, even if I think it's a little nuts.

I am so intrigued by people's ideas, especially how they explain their world.  I think art is an incredible medium for exploration of ourselves.  Perhaps you don't think you identify with art, but I would ask how many movies have flavored your view of the world, your ideas, your very speech? 

 A lot of times I come across art I don't really resonate with until I learn the story behind it. Like Mondrian.  His blue, yellow, and red pieces held no interest for me--until I heard an art history lecture about them.  When I learned that they represented his ideas about the balancing basic forces of nature--and especially when I learned that he only walked in right angles so as to stay in harmony with these forces--I was fascinated.  I think what I really love is people, people exploring, people trying to understand.

Why I'm writing

“To experience seems not quite enough for us, we want to know what we’ve experienced; we yearn to analyze it, debate it, even, at times, doubt and refute it”

-Joyce Carol Oates

There is just something inside me that needs to write.  I was told that the untangling of our thoughts happens when our pencil pushes across the paper--granted I am not using a pencil but I still think the metaphor is apt. So I am writing to process, but more than that, I want to reflect my thinking off others. Others have experience, insight, perspective that I don't have and I can learn from.  I believe that we each have unique purpose and reflection of truth, and, therefore, the more stories we learn from each other, the more fully we understand life.  And I just have to believe there is a point to all the things I'm learning and observing every day--that I can use them for something.  So I will be wrong, ill-informed, ignorant, but like an actor onstage or a member of a choir, I want to make my mistakes loud so I can learn from them instead of feigning perfection while all the time feeling completely lost and uncertain.

And, on a less lofty note, I just want to make myself start writing in complete sentences again. 

 

Beginning of Scéawendspræc

Names I've found are an incredibly powerful thing.  Simply note the difference in running across an acquaintance you recently made and knowing their name as opposed to not.  At least for me, I am far more likely to talk with someone whose name I learned, even if I don't remember it.  In some cultures they have many meaning-filled names and will share personal ones only with their family--and the most personal with noone else at all because of their meaning and power.  So I felt naming this blogging endeavor a particularly challenging task.  I delved into Old English eventually  to find a lofty name concerning the arts.  The name I found, Scéawendspræc, means speech of an actor--or buffoonery.  It seemed to fit.