What you do before 9am shows your level of commitment to success. Some people will swim 100 laps, run five miles, write a hundred pages, or build a doghouse before you even wake up. By the time you have drug your ass downstairs to start the coffeepot, somebody else has annexed a coffee-cultivating country. By the time you light up your first cigarette, somebody else has made a major step to curing lung cancer. I myself woke up at 10am today, but I have the day off, so shadddup.
My very first class in college was an 8am Movement class with a whimsical dancing old gay man winter named Jay Jennings. The man was always drinking a thermos of tea that we assumed had shrooms in it. There was also a serious consideration that the crane we noticed around the moat during smoke breaks was in fact, Jay Jennings. Whenever we saw the crane… we couldn’t find Jay… He spoke in a very soft, muzzled, throaty voice that shook along with his jaw and his eyes. Hmm… kind of like how a crane would speak… When he spoke to you, his eyes would dart back and forth between you and the grizzly bear that was sneaking up behind you. It made me very uneasy.
My very first class in college was an 8am Movement class with a whimsical dancing old gay man winter named Jay Jennings. The man was always drinking a thermos of tea that we assumed had shrooms in it. There was also a serious consideration that the crane we noticed around the moat during smoke breaks was in fact, Jay Jennings. Whenever we saw the crane… we couldn’t find Jay… He spoke in a very soft, muzzled, throaty voice that shook along with his jaw and his eyes. Hmm… kind of like how a crane would speak… When he spoke to you, his eyes would dart back and forth between you and the grizzly bear that was sneaking up behind you. It made me very uneasy.
Annnnd …GO! AHHH!! You would perform the piece of crap that you assembled at 5 am because you were up trying to understand the genus specie family clusterfuck of a sunflower until 4! Then came his catch phrase! “This is DOGSHIT!” Which, depending on how high YOU were, would either make you laugh hysterically, or scare the poop out your butt. Note to self: Create a To-Do list. On To-Do list, write down to find a catch phrase.
The great white bird directed me in two beautiful shows, Rocky Horror Show and House of Blue Leaves. (More on those shows later…) He had an amazing sense for stage aesthetic and spectacle. (Shrooms) But his classes for the most part weren’t taken very seriously. I’m sorry to say. If he remembered your name, it was a good sign. I think this is a man who has been teaching for so long that he forgets what year it is and he doesn’t necessarily care either. Kind of like me waiting tables. Somehow, his presence would just ring as inspiration, anyway. Here I am thinking about him four years later and I haven’t even had my coffee, yet.
The thing I remember most about his class, (besides snorting a foot of powdered sugar in a dress for my Eddie Izzard piece) was when he introduced us to the book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
Julia suggested that in order to smash creative blocks, I had to wake up and shit out three pages of writing in long hand every morning. There is no wrong way to do the morning pages, Julia wrote. Whenever I DID do the morning pages, they were most often self-pitying bites and snippets of blob. Why did I eat that NutRageous before bed? I have to lose some weight. Must start doing 150 pelvis throttle lifts every morning.. BACKWARDS. Nobody likes me. I’m going to be a pharmacist. People will like me once I am giving them drugs. But it wasn’t important how self deprecating, angry, stupid or lousy these pages were. The important thing was that they get DONE.
THIS is the big distinction of the artist vs. non-artist for me, I think. An Actor, acts. A writer, writes. An Artist makes art. A non-artist does not. As for the distinction of what is art, writing, acting, and what isn’t… that’s an argument I can’t even begin to find a foot in, yet. The value of that person is subjective, but the POINT is, if you are not doing ANYTHING, than you aren’t going to get BETTER at anything, and you won’t BECOME anything. We occupy a magnificent fear of embarrassment and failure, but if you aren’t willing to be caught pooping out some drivel in public, then how do you expect to conquer yourself. As Michael Costello would say, you have to live in the shit.
So. Remember your morning poop.
Jay Jennings endorsed this idea. And I have recently discovered that Jay is 156 years old. And still teaches movement.
Or take some shrooms?
*photo from http://www.theatreanddance.txstate.edu/department/faculty/jennings.html
Julia suggested that in order to smash creative blocks, I had to wake up and shit out three pages of writing in long hand every morning. There is no wrong way to do the morning pages, Julia wrote. Whenever I DID do the morning pages, they were most often self-pitying bites and snippets of blob. Why did I eat that NutRageous before bed? I have to lose some weight. Must start doing 150 pelvis throttle lifts every morning.. BACKWARDS. Nobody likes me. I’m going to be a pharmacist. People will like me once I am giving them drugs. But it wasn’t important how self deprecating, angry, stupid or lousy these pages were. The important thing was that they get DONE.
THIS is the big distinction of the artist vs. non-artist for me, I think. An Actor, acts. A writer, writes. An Artist makes art. A non-artist does not. As for the distinction of what is art, writing, acting, and what isn’t… that’s an argument I can’t even begin to find a foot in, yet. The value of that person is subjective, but the POINT is, if you are not doing ANYTHING, than you aren’t going to get BETTER at anything, and you won’t BECOME anything. We occupy a magnificent fear of embarrassment and failure, but if you aren’t willing to be caught pooping out some drivel in public, then how do you expect to conquer yourself. As Michael Costello would say, you have to live in the shit.
So. Remember your morning poop.
Jay Jennings endorsed this idea. And I have recently discovered that Jay is 156 years old. And still teaches movement.
Or take some shrooms?
*photo from http://www.theatreanddance.txstate.edu/department/faculty/jennings.html
to me it seemed like you could always tell who actually cared about acting and growing based on how people acted when he would leave the room for 30 minutes for us to work on our assignments. i'm not gunna lie and say that i was always stoked to do the written homework assignments that he gave us, but i always tried to be as open as i could be in the class...
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