Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Week 104 - The V Word
(This one rated R for language)
Dear Lexington friends,
It's been a few weeks since the scrambled eggs and the pancakes and the lemonade and the writing/acting/directing madness of upstate, but I've finally gotten my act together to check in with everyone, and I hope this email finds you fine and dandy and enjoying this week's wonderful Republican National Convention wherein the Elephant party will surely nominate a coke-snorting C-student once again to lead the free world into the future.
But I digress.
I write this weekly epistle to you in an effort to stay connected. Originally, I used my weekly letter to try to keep in touch with friends back home (some of them even wrote back) and while I may occasionally plug a show or two, the main idea is to keep in touch. If you'd like to stop getting the letters, please reply to this email with the heading 'Get Lost' or something similarly colorful and I will take the hint...
DAVE 6 PRESS presents:
Week 104 in the Big City
Ah, friends, the last week of Summer. A time for reflection.
One Last Look At Lexington: A story I have not shared heretofore. A wonderful story about love, life and the V-word...
My third week at Lexington, one of our teachers offered a lovely morning yoga class for those of us able to get up at 7:00 a.m. (I think she got there at 6:00 a.m. and did an hour of yoga herself before instructing us - she's amazing.) Anyway, I'll admit I was going to the class just to try and make a good impression on the teacher - this was foolish since I am the world's worst yoga-er. I can't touch my toes - haven't been able to since college and karate class, but that's not the point. The point is, at one point in the class, towards the end, everybody's nice and loose and feeling flexible and Shane's breakdancing in the corner or something and the instructor tells us to get our hips nice and low, low, low on the floor, and then she tells the women, quite distinctly, that their vaginas should be nice and open. And while my first instinct was to laugh, as that particular phrase was not one I'd ever heard in polite company before, I did not laugh, because in her delivery of those words, the teacher made it clear that she was in love. She loved all the vaginas in the room, and she loved them more than anything else in the world. At that moment there was peerless, unparalleled vagina love in the universe. If you're wondering where the love was that day - it was in the Barn Theatre in Lexington, NY.
Now, there's more to the story than the gratuitous use of the word vagina numerous times in the preceding paragraph. The love shown in that yoga class made it dawn on me that there are two essential forces in the world: the creative and the judgmental. The reverence for the vagina was expressed out of general reverence for the creative force, all creative forces in the world. So now, if I think back to the morning of vagina love, and I judge it as merely funny, I am missing the point. If that's all I take away from the moment, 'ha ha, she said vagina' then I am missing worlds of wisdom, and I will never be as intelligent as the teacher. In fact, were I to make a joke of it, I would make myself dumber. If I were to go for the easy laugh, I would lose the experience. Nothing against comedy, heavens no, but any time anybody stops AND POINTS and says 'that's funny,' he misses the point, because he is judging instead of participating. The best comedy includes everyone. And that returns us to two weeks ago, when Rom Linney told me to write truth instead of writing jokes. Making cracks about people, art, their speech, their appearance, is not just bad. It's getting in the way of the creative. And that's why the artist and the critic will never see eye to eye. One creates, the other judges. Now, the artist who uses the critic to get better, and the critic who appreciates the screaming demands of craft made upon the artist, these people are the enlightened ones among their respective clans. A bad review, if it's honest, can be a gift. A good review, if deceitful, is a curse. So don't come to my show and tell me you loved it if you hated it, but don't come to my show and take pleasure in the awfulness of my work either.
Things to say when you see a friend's show: I list below some examples of what the friend says, and how the actor/writer/director interprets the compliment.
FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: Don't pity me.
FRIEND says: I liked that piece you were in when you didn't talk.
ACTOR hears: When you speak, your acting gets worse.
FRIEND says: Great costumes.
ACTOR thinks: If you're looking at the costumes instead of watching me, the play is crap.
FRIEND says: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR thinks: You didn't like my work before?*
However, if the actor is having a good night, the reverse is often true.
FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: I know.
FRIEND: I liked the piece where you didn't speak.
ACTOR: My command of my craft is so powerful and amazing, that I can rivet the audience with my very gaze.
FRIEND: Great costumes.
ACTOR: Yeah. The costume designer used all my ideas.
FRIEND: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR: Get used to it. I'm on my way up, baby.
Do I have a conclusion? Creativity is the positive force. Judgment is too often the negative. The world needs more creativity than judgment. So, actors, next time your teacher speaks with reverence about something you don't understand, listen and do your best to keep up. Friends of actors, you have a tough job. You must always tell the actor they were wonderful, but you can never lie. ¶ 9:55 PM
Dear Lexington friends,
It's been a few weeks since the scrambled eggs and the pancakes and the lemonade and the writing/acting/directing madness of upstate, but I've finally gotten my act together to check in with everyone, and I hope this email finds you fine and dandy and enjoying this week's wonderful Republican National Convention wherein the Elephant party will surely nominate a coke-snorting C-student once again to lead the free world into the future.
But I digress.
I write this weekly epistle to you in an effort to stay connected. Originally, I used my weekly letter to try to keep in touch with friends back home (some of them even wrote back) and while I may occasionally plug a show or two, the main idea is to keep in touch. If you'd like to stop getting the letters, please reply to this email with the heading 'Get Lost' or something similarly colorful and I will take the hint...
DAVE 6 PRESS presents:
Week 104 in the Big City
Ah, friends, the last week of Summer. A time for reflection.
One Last Look At Lexington: A story I have not shared heretofore. A wonderful story about love, life and the V-word...
My third week at Lexington, one of our teachers offered a lovely morning yoga class for those of us able to get up at 7:00 a.m. (I think she got there at 6:00 a.m. and did an hour of yoga herself before instructing us - she's amazing.) Anyway, I'll admit I was going to the class just to try and make a good impression on the teacher - this was foolish since I am the world's worst yoga-er. I can't touch my toes - haven't been able to since college and karate class, but that's not the point. The point is, at one point in the class, towards the end, everybody's nice and loose and feeling flexible and Shane's breakdancing in the corner or something and the instructor tells us to get our hips nice and low, low, low on the floor, and then she tells the women, quite distinctly, that their vaginas should be nice and open. And while my first instinct was to laugh, as that particular phrase was not one I'd ever heard in polite company before, I did not laugh, because in her delivery of those words, the teacher made it clear that she was in love. She loved all the vaginas in the room, and she loved them more than anything else in the world. At that moment there was peerless, unparalleled vagina love in the universe. If you're wondering where the love was that day - it was in the Barn Theatre in Lexington, NY.
Now, there's more to the story than the gratuitous use of the word vagina numerous times in the preceding paragraph. The love shown in that yoga class made it dawn on me that there are two essential forces in the world: the creative and the judgmental. The reverence for the vagina was expressed out of general reverence for the creative force, all creative forces in the world. So now, if I think back to the morning of vagina love, and I judge it as merely funny, I am missing the point. If that's all I take away from the moment, 'ha ha, she said vagina' then I am missing worlds of wisdom, and I will never be as intelligent as the teacher. In fact, were I to make a joke of it, I would make myself dumber. If I were to go for the easy laugh, I would lose the experience. Nothing against comedy, heavens no, but any time anybody stops AND POINTS and says 'that's funny,' he misses the point, because he is judging instead of participating. The best comedy includes everyone. And that returns us to two weeks ago, when Rom Linney told me to write truth instead of writing jokes. Making cracks about people, art, their speech, their appearance, is not just bad. It's getting in the way of the creative. And that's why the artist and the critic will never see eye to eye. One creates, the other judges. Now, the artist who uses the critic to get better, and the critic who appreciates the screaming demands of craft made upon the artist, these people are the enlightened ones among their respective clans. A bad review, if it's honest, can be a gift. A good review, if deceitful, is a curse. So don't come to my show and tell me you loved it if you hated it, but don't come to my show and take pleasure in the awfulness of my work either.
Things to say when you see a friend's show: I list below some examples of what the friend says, and how the actor/writer/director interprets the compliment.
FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: Don't pity me.
FRIEND says: I liked that piece you were in when you didn't talk.
ACTOR hears: When you speak, your acting gets worse.
FRIEND says: Great costumes.
ACTOR thinks: If you're looking at the costumes instead of watching me, the play is crap.
FRIEND says: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR thinks: You didn't like my work before?*
However, if the actor is having a good night, the reverse is often true.
FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: I know.
FRIEND: I liked the piece where you didn't speak.
ACTOR: My command of my craft is so powerful and amazing, that I can rivet the audience with my very gaze.
FRIEND: Great costumes.
ACTOR: Yeah. The costume designer used all my ideas.
FRIEND: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR: Get used to it. I'm on my way up, baby.
Do I have a conclusion? Creativity is the positive force. Judgment is too often the negative. The world needs more creativity than judgment. So, actors, next time your teacher speaks with reverence about something you don't understand, listen and do your best to keep up. Friends of actors, you have a tough job. You must always tell the actor they were wonderful, but you can never lie. ¶ 9:55 PM
