if . . .

cannot assimilate this despair study it for an artist's despair is not just personal despairing the practice implicates all hope Everytime an actor plays they are asking the question Does the play hold good? And the answer has to be yes it is the condition upon which a actor's life depends.  A River Sutra - Gita Mehta, a novel of quest stories woven into an exquisite tapestry of secular-humanistic philosophy; "It does. It does. I could quote Chandidas, the great Hindu mystic poet. The river in the novel is holy to Lord Shiva, who could be described as a great humanist god of the arts, beyond gender. The humanist tradition is native to India. Zen Buddhist thinking comes, as you know, from the Indian "Dhyana." Zen is a corruption of the term "dhyan," which means awareness. I'm very happy with your characterization. But you know, funnily enough, these constructs I can see only after writing the book. It's such a funny book, it seemed to write itse...

Imaging the Subconscious: A Study of Surrealist Painting Techniques - Brief essay describing various methods that the surrealists used to try to tap into their subconscious mind in order to create their artworks. by Nancy Richter d&P - silence. no words. just pictures, paintings, details and patterns :: note :: ... artists found and released images from their unconsciousness through automatic processes such as decalcomania, frottage, parsemage, and sfumage ... ... looking for the details and patterns in life & the subconscious demands intense discipline - emotions pollute - researching the unconsciousness requires technicians of the sacred ... instruments of the soul? ... Students discussed: Does the mind generate the soul or the soul generate the mind? ... Simply study the details & patterns (d&p) from a center that extends beyond the known.

. . . listening to the rebroadcast of the Massey Lecture 2001 by Janice Stein: The Cult of Efficiency . . . remembering the 2000 Lecture: the Rights Revoution by Michael Ignatieff . . . When we see justice done - for example, when an unjustly imprisoned person walks free, when a person long crushed by oppression stands up and demands her right to be heard - we feel a deep emotion rise within us. That emotion is the longing to live in a fair world. Rights may be precise, legalistic, and dry, but they are the chief means by which human beings express this longing. (the Rights Revoution by Michael Ignatieff)

. . . profound examinations of events from the deeply personal to the broadly global . . . both take time to download & digest . . . we must take time to see . . . look & look & look again . . . A Walk Home & stereopticon

Abbe Normal requests: There's enough warblogs, how about some peaceblogs? . . . agreeing . . . In little reported news today, Saryodaya, a Sri Lankan organization that has long been working for peace, sponsored an event where an expected 500,000 people came together in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, to meditate for peace. Everyone was dressed in white, there were no speeches or speaking, just meditation. In a land where simply being for peace can easily get you killed, joining in this group meditation took courage, and made a powerful statement too. (via Politics in the Zeros / Bob Morris /March 15)

. . . travelling with adolescents i am so impressed with their energy, their intelligence, their wit, their vulnerability . . . watching them work and confront & perform challenging material gives me great hope for the future . . . It is so discouraging listening to the news reports of terror & destruction & senseless murder . . . what happens to us?

wonder what happened ? syntaxerrors : a series of performed lectures Press Release syntax errors are the symbols and letters produced by technology when given the task of translating data from one representational form to another: "Artspeak will present a series of three 'performed lectures', investigating the relationship between authoritative language, presentation technologies and performance art.Three evening events will combine forms of art performance, pedagogical histrionics and conference tactics to create, along with technological tools, a form of cultural practice that confounds the categories of public address with inventiveness and humour. This series will negotiate the systems of language delivery found in performance art, with its history of personal confessional narrative and attention to the body of the Performer, and the passive authority and implied objectivity of the Speaker with her/his disembodied 'meta-voice©^. The series will take place in the h...

The New Theatre Co-op . . . The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter . . . Directed by Susan Williamson . . . with a stunningly caring hand she has shaped a classic of modern theatre into a edgy parable of deceptive & poignant terror . . . . . .brilliant Pinter . . . the cliché, language of silence, made visible by the controlled and imaginative voice of the actor . . . brilliant Pinter . . . each moment, the precise choice of actions shatter our illusions (delusions) that we can celebrate the mundane daily existence . . . beat a drum, dance a waltz, play blind man's bluff, sing an irish song, make a toast . . . our glasses will be broken in the end . . . happy birthday. . . celebrate birth? . . . brilliant Pinter . . . scene after scene gnaws at the borders of our attempts to construct meaning . . . the entire cast flawlessly touches Pinter's claustrophobic, almost archaic and ancient, soulscape with moments of intensity that open into the heart with an ease and immensity. . . ...

Richard Misrach / Battleground Point | via the Robert Mann Gallery

Riddle Poems/ thanks to Alex Schroeder Alone I know the answers all... Alone i know the answers all,
But beware my thousand brothers:
Their noise will never know
Certainty, simplicity and serenity.
Who am I? _________________________ My ears are my eyes . . . My ears are my eyes.
Your fears are but lies. Answers & more .

the utanikki - carry the poem forward 
journal The utanikki is a Japanese form of personal diary, distinguished by its alternations between poetry and prose, its concern with process and the passage of time, its rejection for the need for daily entries, and its fictionalizing of events. :: note :: ... hmmm ... a poetic journal of lived time ... add juxtapositions, slips, spaces, twists, gaps ... a rhetoric of space ... it's cold outside so watch that you don't slip on the ice ... especially in the early morning ... the light burns in the bathroom all the time ... the switch is broken ... the light burns in the office all the time ... the switch is broken ... ... always light but that doesn't help if the alarm clock runs randomly slow missing an hour here or there, when it pleases ... waking late today, running late but still on time ...

O little root of a dream
 you hold me here 
undermined by blood, 
no longer visible to anyone,
 property of death. Curve a face
 that there may be speech, of earth, 
of ardor, of
 things with eyes, even
 here, where you read me blind, even 
here, 
where you 
refute me,
 to the letter. ________________________________ Don't sign your name 
between worlds, surmount 
the manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, 
learn to live. ( Glottal Stop : 101 Poems by Paul Celan. translated by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh, 107 - 108) Asked to submit a favourite ... ... quest to find a new favourite that will live & redefine tomorrow as well as yesterday ... from the Preface of glottal stop H M, N P write: Paul Celan died by drowning. He did it not just reflexively, but transitively: He died by drowning himself. As figures of floatation and immersion recur throughtout the poems, particularly those that refer to writing, it is natural that - like so much else in the Celanian legend - th...

Found at whiskey river The second kind of witnessing is totally different. It is not that you hanker for others' attention: on the contrary, you start paying attention to yourself. You become a witness to your own being. You start watching your thoughts, desires, dreams, motives, greeds and jealousies. You create a new kind of awareness within you. You become a center, a silent center which goes on watching whatsoever is happening. You are angry, and you watch it. You are not just angry, a new element is introduced into it: you are watching it. And the miracle is that if you can watch anger, the anger disappears without being repressed. Witness the witness itself - and... the ultimate ecstasy is created. Start watching your thoughts but don't stop there... One more thing has to be done, one more step: now watch the watcher... Nothing else is left, only you are. By watching the mind, the mind disappears. By watching the witness, the witness expands and becomes universal. via (O...

Missing Feb. 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27

critical writing, as it writes, looks at itself... the screens I read and link to are full of contradictions - wonderful contradictions ... posting onto a site is both ceremonial and presentational, both imaginary and representative writing to know what & where lie the opinion ... discovering what needs to be written in the writing, while writing ... one final contradiction is language itself: one behaves as if I am the creater and master of language knowing full well it is language which creates me ... (inspired by Sartre . Sartre on Theate p. 135-153)

... A beautiful village in full celebration, colourful flags whipping in the wind, lots of food & drink, song & dance, laughter & story telling. Friends calling out to me to sing and dance for it is my turn. I sing and dance finishing to much applause and laughter. I go to the gate where my teacher wishes to enter & share in the celebration. He is stopped by a group of guards. He calls out, "Let me in I want to dance, sing and enjoy the revelries with all of you." "You can't enter," they pronounce, "you are dead!" I am shocked. I can't believe it. I am absolutely stunned. I want them to let him in. They refuse. I want to contact him and the guards let me out. I can get out but they won't let him in. There, in front of the gate, sits my teacher singing. The moment he starts singing the whole village turns black & white as if his exquisite lament, expressing his sorrow, evaporates the colours around us and a grey fog descends ...

... outside the window ... sparrows chatter and flit from branch to branch ... teasing each other ... spring? ... what is about the passage of seasons ... mud-lucious in Just- in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame baloonman whistles far and wee and eddyandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old baloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed baloonMan whistles far and wee e. e. cummings (follow link for proper spacing) ... space is so important ... the space between people, the space between words, the space between lines ... relationship ... shape the space around you ... i do this exercise all the time (i rediscovered when working with pre-schoolers): Look for things on the ground, pick one up and carry it for a while & then put it down somewhere, perhaps in a place carefully chosen, perhaps just an...

Scribblings after a dialogue with an actor the day after closing night: the more I gave, the more I had to give, like some endless source not really giving energy but my spirit - light I hold a different colour & can I share what I hold I enter the core of the space which is a creative place a fullness of reaction, a kind of knowledge, opening myself now I must close to live the life again changed and richer for the experience borrowed the gyre graphic from Visible Darkness : (he called it cheesy but I remember a Lou Reed quote: My shit are other peoples diamonds). play with this / replace objective - subjective with audience - actor ... play with more terms: energy /spirit /concentration /presence the creative space physicalization /fullness of reaction ...

a delightful 21st Century theatrical adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses - metAmorfine - presenting the idea & concept of transformation through the physicalization of water, sex, drugs, music, and the apocalyptic and mundane events of life. . . . from the director Neil Cadger: " . . . Truth is in continuous Transformation."[22.Kundalini, symbol 89. Transformation]" . . . My first concern was to try and find a way to allow the ideas to evolve, while working on things like rhythm and choral speech which obviously have to be done daily. Order and anarchy mingling inextricably. And now, just before the premiere I' m trying to take it further, changing, rearranging, looking for new shapes and frequencies. . . . ." after the show articulating my feelings. . . akin to an intensely interactive google search . . . following seemingly random but intricately woven together facts, images, associative links . . . constructing a linear but deeply textured experience ....