Have you heard of this? I was just told that my friend did a CHORD cutting ceremony. I was listing to the description of what she did and I said to myself and perhaps out-loud, that is my class. My class is about getting to a place in myself to both cut chords and allow others to attach. It is more of a puppet thing than anything else. I am the puppet, these are my chords and these are now cut and now I look for other chords other strings to hold me up and what I have found ..
I have found that WHAT those strings are attached to makes all the difference.
Attache them to a person and there will always be a possibility of disappointment, Attachment to an idea and there is a chance that idea may cease to serve you BUT if you attach it to you… how I see it is a go into my song with a hook attached within me…I do the piece as I move through the STORY i find where the hook is attached and in what angle and with kindness I remove the hook. Then I take the hook and I re-hook it…I reattach it…I sort of place it in my heart and say….ok what if I was connected here on this story to my self – to my heart…what would that look like and most often…I awake form my piece and I feel freedom from everything and self sustaining energy and clarity but fresh and new and vulnerable clarity. NOT yet knowing of how powerful it is but I know this journey.. I have done this with thousands of people and stories and lies and versions of Self. I have become accustomed to letting myself go in order to find true self hooking into myself..
As artist form the theater and film world start to take a closer look on the way we create my need to question it goes quieter and I find myself in a NEW space in a new conversation with OLD friends that are new to me but old to my soul and the conversation is brought to me…offered to me and I say wow. Someone is talking ME to ME…and I feel joy and my lines vanish and my worry for why no one ever defended me disappears as I count the thousands of hooks I placed back into my heart to guide me and pull me home and I say..i BELIEVE in YOU…I can depend on you…If you fall I will catch YOU I will be waiting….TIME AFTER TIME.
I work with memories. New ones, old ones, false ones and forced ones.
As an actor I have come to understand the power of believing a thought.
if something “isn’t working” during rehearsal…it is usually traced back to a belief system that the actor has. Their belief is then tweaked until the actor gives the director the reaction they are looking for. ( pleaser)
I was recently in rehearsal for a HOT and CURRENT and RElATIVE play. I also believed it was a funny play and that I would enjoy the work. I went in with both feet.
As we began rehearsal via zoom and a I started working in the role…researching the role..I came to see that the funny part was for the audience…the role was much darker. I proceeded with caution.
I began brush shoulders with my character, but didn’t want to fully commit to her thought process. I know myself. I get stuck in character easily. I knew that as soon as I sat down with her belief system, my own personal belief system would be adjusted. We I had two months till the play even officially opened. I was cautious because in that that time I would be traveling with my family and I didn’t want this role one my family vacation and not me. THis has happened to me in the past and it wasn’t something i wanted to experience again.
After the director kept saying
“i see the role and then I don’t …you go in and out…”
I informed him of my decision to move slowly and take my time becomign the role. I told him my process, my weakness and why I needed to go in and out during the three hour rehearsals.
For him to speak to me as Susie when we were doing notes in between runs and not as the ROLE.
I said..”when we are in real rehearsal, a week prior to opening, she will be here.”
I felt we were in a good place and I trusted him and hoped he woudl trust me.
But, then he started doing the classic and very effective AS IF techniques..
this is where a director asks you to relate to the story from a aspect of your own story. As if STEVE your husband was the one dying…etc etc. It happens innocently but it is so effective tha tis hard for anyone to resist. Memory is easily manipulated when you believe you are in a trusting space.
I HAVE OFTEN SPOKEN TO MY STUDENT OF THIS.
Do not let someone destroy your healed stories.
Walk into a smokey bar you will get second hand smoke…it is hard to avoid if it is happening..
Do not allow directors to use family dynamics to activate your perspective of pain in order to relate to the character and then project that to the audience. Your pain in limited at best and vengeful and not conscious enough to artfully navigate. Image and be inspired by another’s pain..in order to empathise and create colors and depth…You are not the deepest well of emotions. Your imagination is. Trust it.”
That would be picking at a wound that has healed and has a scar..it is demonstrative to your core sense of self/family and hurtful to you as an artist.
Actors do not need to feed off their own personal pain in order to act
Rehearsal then became in person and eventually was in MY SPACE. That is where the very talented director began to associate my life and my characters. All of a sudden the scabs that were healing begin to be picked at. My healed family relationship I worked years on re-remembering for a kinder brighter present began to quickly unravel and to warp.
Memory is a game and it is easy to remember pain..pain is the easiest emotion to access. Especially of a person one you devoted much time in pertetruatin. It is essentially a HABIT
It was a huge lesson for me to experience…playing the most antithesis person I could. get my head around her story and then having the amazing experience of being in a room with a classic director that uses emotional recall.
I also felt it is almost impossible for a director to trust an actor will get there if they have never worked with them before and this was also part of it.
I tried to express the concept of trust but TRUST in elf is really the important part of this. I watched myself resist his technique. I knew so well but due to my familiarity with it…part of me secumbered. I wanted to please him after all and soon enough my anger for my past perpetuated family stories opened up
I have since had to let go of this role…in order to preserve both my perspective of my family and my respect for my own process of creating character. How an actor builds their story is i-personal. How they get needs to be visceral chosen and understood my the actor in order for them to get THEMSELVES out.
It is like a consciousness hypnosis we do to ourselves. we get in then we can get out…
If you are being told how to remember something…you can early loose your hold on your own version of the story.
This technique and all the issues it has is proved in the work of memory recall and even in police intvetigate. Being in a room long enough with someone who wants you believe something will force you to believe it. Especially if you feel you are safe, that they believe you…that they are not forcing their will on you.
However..most of us are always manipulating people. We are doing it to each other all the time. We believe that if you believe what I believe they we are seen and heard…connected..we exist…
( think first dates)
Memory is able to be manipulated.
So if you want a JOYFUL life…re-remember your past…recreate a loving perspective of your childhood. Search and find the LIGHT..WHY?
WHY NOT?
I don’t think we can ever truly be content with our present …unless we are content with the past.
This is NOT about finding the pain and perpetuating it…vilifying people….holding them accountable..
It is more about challenging yourself to see the light, changing your perspective on your present state in order to SURF in joy, and then grab that RAY of sunshine and view your past through it.
SO- I believe we are free to change who we are by changing what we have been told, sold and belief about our past. This works both ways, often flipping back and forth from pain to peace…Eventually one must win..
Lets choose peace
Therapist need us to remain in pain in order to sustain their business..
I am challenging you to rewrite a past story…
1)own your own ability to perpetrate other people..even and especially by your negative thoughts.
2) Choose joy
3) Release those that have perpetrated you from your negative hold by asking them to forgive you for holding them in a negative role for all these years…limiting their ability to heal.
Ho’oponopono Prayer
X ( name of the person you are holding as villian)
Please forgive me
I am sorry
I love you
Thank you
We are who we are because of the way we have formulated the story.
Science and research has proven that our memory is scattered at best.
Pain, real or imagined, is held in the body
Manipulate yourself to be joyful..release the pain for your own well being.
why not?
WHY THE FUCK NOT.
childhood bliss
THrough my SURF process we learn to trust and channel a foreign version of pain , one that will not hit up right against our recently healed stories and then UNHEAL them.
When wondering where the truth lies I suggest finding an actor to discuss the situation. WHY?
Well, we are trained in great story telling…we are trained to find the Achilles heel of the character..we are trained to cover it up and we are trained to allow it to destroy things..even our own happiness….for the sake of DRAMA…EGO…ENTERTAINMENT…PRICE OF ADMISSION.
We love this the way an archeologist loves digging up memories…we love this because we thrive of relationships and positions and then the CLIMAX…the resolve the resolution….we thrive on the ART of telling a really great story…
Most actors would rather a REALLY great story then a happy one…we bend to the excitement…so if you implore us to examine your story…we will mark your drama you angst and how YOU as a participant are perpetuating it….and if you own our diagnosis… you will instantly be set free…because the curtain will close the lights will come on and everyone will be board …watching you…and that…is when you are in flow…a ripple on the ocean…nothing to look at here….
BUT not many can remain in that state long..it borders on boredom.
however kind and loving and whole and peaceful it is…so
Find a loving actor to talk with and I promise you you will see you life in the most beautiful way and the people in your life for exactly who they are and why they are in YOUR play… you will be able to step back and watch..and enjoy and direct and adjust as you see fit…
well…you can only adjust your character but in that the whole story is shifted and sometimes it is just that look…that turn of the head…that entrance a moment t00 s00n or t00 late that changes the vibe –
I am building my one woman show out AT LAST. It is going to be about the archetypes I play, we all play, and how I flow in and out of mine…and at the end it will show who I am…at my core…without any of those roles by a proces of straining out the Bullshit..
I am thinking it is like trying to explain a lemon…in order to tell someone or show someone what a lemon taste like and feels like you have to put it in relationships…how it reacts to things and the thing it reacts to will have an opinion of the lemon…based on what they are…how aware of who they are and what the lemon is without it..
SO if I am the lemon…and I show how other “people” think of me all the while being the lemon…from their interpretation..their experience…I think that will show will be really multidimensional concept of the layers a person has..and how we may want to stop identifying with any one too strongly.we are all a combination of all our stories and in that not any one story at all.
I have asked my freinds to collaborate with me…I am thinking if I shall ask my family…I suppose I will-
I have my own footage of these past four years..and in the end I will truly answer and prove the question I asked in the show I did “WHAT IF: An experiment in pieces. I suppose I am putting the pieces back together again now…
So we shall see Can you analyze a person the way an actor would analyze a character….
And the answer is YES and the follow up is but do it through the eyes of LOVE…never analyze anyone without LOVE..
It is cruel and unkind and although we all are just stories of other people’s perceptions of us..even our own perceptions of ourselves..these are the worst stories that hold us the most…best to go through love….because we are all PURE energy…trying to pretend we are SOLID MATTER….and that in itself is an Oscar worthy Role we are all playing.
Keep up the smiles and the loves and never stay too long in a painful situation or story…as it takes just that long to get out of it…Ho’opononopno it away…as soon as you feel your little EGOS grasping for center stage…
WE are more like the paint on the wheel game colors and shades twirling on an axis creating…
It feels like getting a massage but a soft tissue one where Nothing feels like it is happening.
That is what CONTENT- feel like…and FLOW is that with a soft wind at my back…
It is a flow state and it is hard to manage IF you don’t respect it. Honor it…
It has taken me a while to simply enjoy the GO WITH THE FLOW but this past summer I became aware of what it feels like, who challenges it in my life and what I do to Sabotage it and why.
Let me walk through it using the SURF process
Four steps that are taken if desired softly.
S- I am in flow- the world is providing me with everything I need at every moment
U- I understand that being micro managed in other peoples homes is tough and makes me want to have my OWN vacation home- something to grab onto-
A fellow actor offers me a role in a film he is doing about an unhappy wife who brow beats her husband and I take it without a thought. Jump at it- FAST and WITHOUT CONSIDERATION…a high comes over me and a feeling of aggression towards anything that is FLOW or building or helping comes over me..I instantly have NO patience for being KIND and I get angry and sad…
R- I think about the feeling and walk around it and quiet it…and then the guy in the film backs out and I slowly think about it and back out as well and then this cool peaceful feeling—saying NOT to acting like a jerk in someone else’s story.
F- THe wind is bare able again and I smile at my mom and my husband and my family and I am content…
I tried Botox a few years ago. It was great all my lines disappeared and my age went down at least five maybe even ten years. It was amazing…the first time when it went well but the constant returning to the Dr’s office became a drag.
“ THose lines must be driving you crazy” She comes toward me with a vile of relief and the movement of this repetitive action begins to scrape at my internal chord. My chord that was growing stronger..or wanted to. THe desire to know myself.
I decided to try and see what life was like without it…it sucked I grew ten years older over night and felt the power of my prowess dissolve. I expected the frequency of the Male Gaze to drop but it was the female smirks I was now receiving.
Lines on anyone’s forehead are starting to drive people crazy it seems and trying to communicate with loved ones whose expressions were limited was beginning to bother me.
I have chose to explore the road… as best I can… without FAKE things in me. Without limiting my movement and without disgracing my experiences. I am ok- I can’t say I am fully at FLOW with it- but I believe it is the aging process more than anything.
I google reasons not to do it just to keep me centered in the journey but it is harder than I imagined. Becoming OLD in Miami at a day and time when youth and the young hold the power.
I suppose it is part of letting go of a power that perhaps wasn’t mine to begin with because in the end your can’t loose what was never yours.
Me Myself and II studied acting in school since I was in 5th grade. I loved it. Learning how to become another person was fascinating to me and I became an expert at it.
The reason I am not going to “perform” ever again is that it is based on lying and deception. A tool that has allowed me to grow OFF my center. Off my Authentic point.
Learning to become another person to the best of your abilities is freeing as it allows you to look back on your OWN character with new perspective. THe issue is when you PLAY the CHaracter so long that you have forgotten which is the real YOU- the real authentic self.
Charge is powerful- wether it comes from applause or likes or money- It helps you feel like you are alive. THe problem is that sometimes that charge is plugged into the wrong outlet – not LOVE – but rather PAIN- FEAR- SEX- and you are simply creating a FALSE version of yourself.
The healing art of acting -when used to let go of characters rather than add characters is a beautiful tool for me- a process I enjoy sharing with people who desire to KNOW THEMSLEVES FULLY AS WELL.
THe story -the way we connect to ourselves, to each other, to our past and to our future seems like the logical place to start when you want to let go of pain in your life. G0 to the point of entry.
But GO as An actor Goes towards a role. With a notebook and curiosity and lots of respect and love for the story. If you judge it the story will go fuzzy.
I love using music and movement and it has been how I healed ALL my pain. I am not angry or angst UNLESS something enters into my immediate life and it is not for me- THEN I get angry and angst and I address that STORY ASAP. BUT there are no layers involved usually- it is just a toxin that came in and because my air is clean I feel it and it bothers me…and I try and get it out ASAP.
This process came to me through my own personal experiences and yesterday I was pointed in the direction of narrative Psycology and from what I read this is the umbrella of what I came to realize and explore in my SURF MEthod.
As an actor trained to hold story to access emotion I eventually found this troubling when my own father past away and I was holding the pain and the injury and counldn’t understand why I wasn’t letting go.
What was revealed to me was that I was trained to use pain as motivation. Anger as inspiration and I believe now that our society has absorbed this training in our content and as a society are being programmed through our PROGRAMS to do the same.
Subconsciencly i couldn’t let go of the pain because my internal actor was harboring it in her tool kit. I finally found this story within myself and kindly and softly sat down with HER and said. Listen…even if we never act again you can’t carry this pain with you my love, you Won’t make it. She released that was a truth and though my SURF movement process slowly and thus the idea of relief set in.
I learned through this idea personally and by training others that empathetic acting is much more interesting but the only way to insure you aren’t hurting yourself and others by “USING IT” ( a line in acting to tap into your pain and use it for your role) is to know you have cleaned your plate of all the HYPER CHARGE STORIES you have..
LEtting go of anything that you hold as a version of WHO YOU ARE is what this is about and many people do not SEPERATE the STORY from theirselves. If feels like a death, a MELTING away and even having been doing it for years it never gets easier but the process goes faster and the relief lasts longer.
Last night I followed a sign and went to a movement studio in MIami called the Republic of Movement and as we began the first game A smile crossed my face…I found a gold nugget that is in the movement itself kind and not demanding and honest and not forced. Exactly what I have internally found within myself.
MY question was- How do you move from GRACE…well last night I found out…Beautifully and Slowly.
I was the lead in a play a few years ago and during one final run before we opened I made an internal independent decision to make the character more forgiving.
After the run we sat for our notes and our director just stood there. All the hard work we had rehearsed the past three week was gone. Nothing. He was not even mad it seemed he was just helpless.
Before he began to give the notes I raised my hand. I said, “ That was my bad.” He looked at me and said “Thank you for being able to own that and never do that again.”
See-
None of the other actors could play their part because I wasn’t playing mine. The DRAMA we were trying to play out became a light hearted story. Not what the director was going for-
Change your ROle Change the Genre of your story.
We can’t remove stories in our lives. That would be more of a denial situation and can get really dangerous but we can decide to change our role in the story as soon as possible.
Try playing the Character that doesn’t allow the other actors to play against you.
The STORIES stay the same but your part in them shifts and if you are willing to let go of
How can you do this in your own DRAMAs?
CAn YOU make an independent internal decision to be a more forgiving character in one of your Stories?
Would that be so bad? What would you gain? What would your loose?
What Role would you be and would that be OK? Woul should still exist if you chose a different motivation?
