The Integral Actor

My excuse for November's silence, or: My New Band, November's Silence

2009-12-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

My habitually obligatory mea culpa for literary hiatus in November now being dispensed with, I will now offer a potential explanation for my departure from the written word.

I was making a movie.

Specifically, I was acting in a film called Separation Anxiety, written by Jeremy Sony, directed by Cole Simon, and produced by John Klein and the exceptionally talented cast and crew of Glass City Films. For two and a half weeks, from 4 November through 22 November, I was paid to do what I love in Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, with an incredibly giving and highly professional team that astounded me not only in their dedication but also in their warmth and congeniality.

So rather than my usual pseudo-philosophical rant, I will try to pen, in brief, the experience of filming. Or however much I can write for today. In the doldrums of December, I may have a lot of time to write at length about the joy that was Separation Anxiety.

Despite the unease and red-faced chuckle that came from being called "The Talent" at every and each opportunity, actors on the set of SA were respected and treasured for their abilities on set. In most performance settings, I've been used to the insular squabbling, the cooperative dependency, the educational patronization of the "let's-get-this-thing-done" enthusiasm that suffuses and drives amateur theatre (and beyond). On the set of my first professional movie, feeling quite attuned and comfortable in my own craft, I suddenly realized how valuable that craft is. And how much others actually do respect it when we're all being paid to produce art (or entertainment, whatever your ilk).

All of the usual insecurities and self-doubts that begin to ferment the instant I pick up the script evaporated as soon as I got on set. My usual fortitude and dose of "damn-the-torpedoes" commitment was instantly shored up by people who had complete, unwavering, and unquestionable faith that I knew what I was doing. I don't know if all young, academically trained actors have felt the way I have, but that sort of faith is a rare, RARE experience. For those of us who have been reared in the dim corridors and aspiring cupolas of the Ivory Tower, faith in our abilities is one thing that was not conferred with our advanced degrees. Professors questioned us like Socrates at the symposium; fellow actors, if not covertly antagonistic, were at best distantly encouraging; and audiences (if they existed at all) were inconstant, mostly bored, and capricious in both attention span and theatrical savoir faire. To emerge from a college-based education as an actor with any sort of performance instinct still intact beneath fossilized layers of "skill" and "technique" now seems like a remarkable feat. To have unerring faith in that instinct seems maddeningly laughable, because the university or conservatory trains us to question and improve our skills -- comfort and complacency are for the uneducated and uninitiated.

And yet, as ugly as those watchwords are to those of the scholarly bent, comfort and complacence were what I found on set. Everybody was happy to be working, happy to be working together, and happy to be doing precisely what they were being paid to do. I'm using "happy" loosely -- there were plenty of times when frustration, discord, or fatigue strained everyone's sense of contentment with his or her line of work. But the entire working environment was informed by the commitment, dedication, and sheer pleasure that individual artists bring to a collaborative effort through the adoration of their own crafts. Our superb DP was thrilled to be a superb DP; our brilliant electrician took great pleasure in his own feats of illumination; everyone, from our lovable producer down to our youngest background actor, loved being a part of the project and giving their all. And each one of these fantastic people had complete faith that I loved the project and would be just as outstanding in my output.

I use the word "faith" so often because there's no other way to describe it. These people didn't know me from Adam when I stepped on set for the first time. Only Cole (and possibly John) had seen me act before, and if anyone else had seen my audition tape, I'm surprised that I made it on set without a few chortles or sidelong glances. But with no rational basis for security in my abilities and none of the overbearing pressure of expectation, my fellow collaborators let me know that they had full confidence in my success and integrity as an actor and an artist. Of course, I approached them in the same way, with faith and openness, but I can say from my perspective that certainty of success was not the only possibility present in my mind as we begun filming.

In retrospect, the whole process feels like a self-satisfying positive feedback loop. While we were all introduced and welcomed to set in an environment of collaboration, inclusion, and faith, our fulfillment of that faith (reinforced by the fact that that faith existed) engendered more faith and even greater certainty of success, which drove us on to even greater acts of generosity and inspired risk. Perhaps it was the sensitivity to initial conditions calibrated so specifically to creating a powerful, moving, group-effort movie that allowed Separation Anxiety to blossom into an exceptionally creative and daring workspace. However the end result came about, it was through the amply rewarded confidence of individual artists in each other that created one of the most positive working environments I have ever experienced and allowed me to come into my own as an actor.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse (poor thing), but I want to emphasize how rarely actors get to feel secure in their craft, especially when they first emerge. I have no idea if my performance in SA will be legendary or lamentable, but I felt really good about it while it was happening, so much so that I didn't think about it while it was happening. I let the part happen, I let me happen, I let the script happen, and I let the crew -- whom, if you couldn't tell, I trusted immensely -- catch it all on film. I still have a lot to learn, invariably, but most importantly, I didn't care about learning more while on set. I didn't care. I didn't care that this was my first lead role in a feature while I was being my first lead role in a feature. I didn't rue that I probably wouldn't be shooting on a set like this one for a long time while I was shooting on a set like that one. I didn't agonize over Personalization, contact improv, or camera technique while I was personalizing, moving, or cheating for the camera. I, like Nike, just did it. And this accomplishment, for me if not others, was life-altering. I could act without questioning, I could perform without fear of rebuke, I could risk without fear of failure. Why? Because I was getting paid to act, to perform, to risk. In a perfect model of laissez-faire, I was trusted to act because I was acknowledged to be the best for that particular role on that particular movie at that particular time. What a joy! What liberation! There will hopefully be reviews, there will hopefully be response, and there might even be feedback from bigwigs whose opinions on these things will doom or save my career. But now I am my only teacher -- no authority figure exists who can alter a percentage point or confer a degree that reflects my status as an actor. It may be the unadulterated capitalism flowing in my veins, but the existence of my paycheck and the film that backs it up testify to my value to a larger marketplace of ideas and abilities, of art and collaboration.

None of which is to say that previously I was not an actor or was deterred from the professional career track. I was paid in the semi-professional (but consequently semi-educational) world of Summer Repertory Theatre, and I'd done not a few plays independent of academia. But the experience of Separation Anxiety, the faith and self-reliance placed on my talents as an actor, changed the way I see my craft and career. A few alterations in the context of my acting, a few minor changes in the attitude and expectation around me, and suddenly my world has changed. I wish every project could be infused with the energy and enthusiasm that a professional, friendly film has -- what could artists accomplish in community theatre or academic theatre or self-produced theatre if everyone was trusted to produce their best work, no excuses necessary? Better yet, what if all artists raised through years of high school and college education could know what it is to have that faith and trust placed in them, so as to make them more engaged, more committed, and more trusting in their own right? These questions are speculative fiction at best, delusional babbling at worst. Of course schools and unpaid theatre will and should lack the working structure of professional film-making and theatre -- that structure is what makes them professional and, in many cases, exceptional. And I'm also extrapolating the extremely beneficial working environment of Glass City Films to all films and filmmakers, which I know from audience experiences is not the case (Transformers 2 lurches frighteningly to mind). But it's heartening to know that the actor's profession is valued, respected, and trusted, and despite every nineteen experiences of disunity, disrespect, and ineptitude, one performance may exist in which the actor is a valued partner, a necessary collaborator, and a working professional.

Let's leave it at that for today. A month of movie-making leaves a lot to write about, so I'll hope that I write more frequently, with the impetus of fading memories to spur me on.

Acting is awesome.

So many stories ... too many stories?

2009-10-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a rather terrible job of updating this blog with any sort of regularity. I thought writing more often and with great frequency would help me sort out the narrative strands and thematic pillars of my life, as well as providing a public forum for the airing of ideas and anecdotes pertaining to the life of the actor in Los Angeles. However, I find that I keep getting busy -- funny how that happens -- and rather than try to rehash the four or five brilliant posts I had in mind over the course of the last month, I decided to take a more comprehensive look at what it is that keeps me (and many others so busy).

Over the past month, I've sent out postcards to casting directors, I've acted a small role in a mediocre rock opera staged by some friends, I've been to four casting director showcases, I've made a few new friends and refreshed contacts with a few others, I've continued my readings of J.C. Wells and Shakespeare (often in the same day), I've been preparing for my film shoot in November, I've built up my coaching business to a modest degree, I've interviewed for a tutoring job, and I've attended a fantastic workshop at Cornerstone with Brett Blair, a guide to the Theatre fo the Oppressed. Some days have been overwhelmingly hectic; others have been luxuriously lazy. I've done a lot of work, dallied away the time on a few video games, spent hours laughing and idling with my wonderful girlfriend, and daydreamed extravagantly about my future, my finances, and all sorts of potential projects. I've had all sorts of stories running through and framing my mind -- stories of current success, stories of dreamt success, stories of present yet-to-do's, stories of past failures, stories of what others want, stories of what I want. All of these stories add up to the grand sum of my existence, jumbled and chaotic and uneven as it is, but unified by my constantly shifting focus as Storyteller of my life.

Which makes me think about what it is I'm doing here in LA. I want to be employed in an industry that tells stories, that tells them in powerful and intelligible and shared ways. I want to keep stories distinct and relatable, all the while maintaining a reputation as a professional and reliable teller of "other people's" stories. And yet it sometimes feels like I can't keep my own stories straight, I can't manage to cram all of my narratives into one brain, let alone one career or one day. I get discouraged by how often my "other obligations" or income interests or leisure delay and supersede my supposed career. Why does my coaching business seem so much more important and defining than the numerous auditions I don't bother to look at? Why does brainstorming another website overcome the desire to fill out more postcards and go through a few more sides? Why does catching up on email overpower my impulse to update this blog?

It's not just a question of procrastination or immediate gratification. As much as those labels provide a reasonable gloss over my halting forward progress, they also fail to account for the myriad ways in which my life continues to unfold in tiny and unexpected ways. My method of self-distraction is not so much a putting-off or an avoidance, but is instead an emphasis on different stories, a focus on another plot, that leaves the main one unresolved for another chapter. In order to fight the feelings of helplessness or uselessness that come with inactivity and frustration, I can't conceptualize a solution that involves "working harder." I'm working plenty hard already, improving and enriching my life story in so many ways that my acting career will invariably benefit by the wealth of experience I am accruing.

Instead, I need to think of a solution in terms of prioritized narratives, the most important stories. Which story do I want to tell today? This week? This month? Which part of my life was the central thrust of this paragraph, chapter, and section? It's okay to have one or two sentences about an afternoon playing video games, or a paragraph about my favorite Shakespeare play of the week. However, that means that if my monthly chapter is about scoring an audition or getting a reputable theatrical/commercial agent, I need to devote some page space to that narrative pretty soon and in thorough detail. Earning money, taking care of quotidian finances and sustenance, and fostering an imaginative life are all essential threads to my life narrative, but I am my own life's author, and I get to decide what the major theme will be when I turn the next page. There may be a lot of stories to tell -- and, at times, seemingly too many stories to tell --- but I determine which stories make it into my account and which do not.

Again, I can't think of myself as doing more or less of any given thing. I can't try to change my life so that I rob myself of some vital idiosyncrasy that defines who I am and how I am. I have to change myself like the author changes a story, highlighting one passage, emphasizing one idea, letting the theme rise to the surface. I still need to use each and every word, punctuation mark, and formatting convention that comes with being an author, but I can shape my story any way I like inside the rules I set myself.

I don't have to fret about procrastinating or upbraid myself for spending too much time on an apparently trivial pursuit. Instead, I just need to find a way to bring another story to the fore, to build another scene that will strengthen the plot I'm trying to create. If October is the month of getting an audition, I needn't blame myself for taking time out of my schedule to coach or to unwind for a few hours. I just need to make sure that the story of getting the audition receives due focus within the story of this month.

It's not a difficult adjustment. It's not a cop-out, either. It's a way to keep an eye on all my stories -- my too, too many stories -- and allowing them to build on each other instead of canceling each other out. Our lives are too rich and full and varied to be reduced to monodimensional shadows of what they formerly were. By giving ourselves the ability to live fully and across all levels of our personal narratives, we allow ourselves to create and follow plots with safety, sanity, and success.

Audaciously Hopeful. Or: Hopefully, Audacious.

2009-09-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

It normally seems way too easy to declaim, "I'm hopeful."

After all, what is hope? How do you know when you have it? What do you do with it once you've got it?

I was asking myself these questions today as I began to examine the rather untenable position I seem to be in. I'm unemployed in an industry that rarely provides any sort of support or regular income for veterans, let alone entry-level practitioners. I'm about to be uninsured in a national climate that seems quite charged and powerfully motivated against reform and open dialogue. I'm starting my own coaching and tutoring business in a tough economy and with the limited resources of the individual, resources that I would like to dedicate to my acting career. What good is hope, especially in the general sense, when life seems statically anchored to the status quo?

It was in this line of thinking that I saw how hope's power lies not in its ability to solve problems, inspire specific solutions, or placate general fear and anxiety. Hope is a powerful force when it serves as an active, driving energy behind everything we do. Hope is essential when it binds and unifies our focus, our intellect, our outlook, and our synergistic capabilities. Hope is more than idealism when it roots itself in the humdrum and the terrifying and organizes the individual will to overcome the mediocre and the inhibitory.

As an actor, I've boldly (and mostly unwillingly) volunteered myself for a life of hope. As an actor, I can't afford to not have hope. Every time I walk onstage or in front of the camera, I have to hope I know what I'm doing, I have to hope the audience (whether the packed house or the producers) likes me, and I have to hope my best performance will unroll seamlessly from my honest, organic self. I can't plan, I can't foresee, and I can't doubt -- any of those lead to an automatic shortfall in performance and a less-than-satisfactory execution of my craft. Every day I wake up, I hope that I can find another acting job, I hope I'll make rent this month, and I hope someone in this city likes me enough to cast me consistently or at least one more time. As I make plans for several more decades of life, I hope that my time and energy will all be efficiently spent, and I hope that I can continue to find the grounds and strength to hope no matter what the future brings.

And this hope is occasionally blind, is occasionally optimistic, is occasionally delusional. But its greatest value lies in the fact that it orients, motivates, and impels me. If hope makes me complacent or lazy, then I must question whether I'm being hopeful or I'm just ignoring what I fear. Hope makes me progress, makes me evolve, makes me want more. Hope integrates me and fuels my integrative capacity as I take in the world around me. Hope requires a certain amount of bravery, because hope sees the obstacles before me and pushes me toward, through, and beyond them. Hope makes me meet new people, remember more faces, send out more postcards, create more websites, and write again on this blog.

Hope is so essential for the actor, not least of all because it makes his craft more exciting, dynamic, and full than the actor who has settled or found an answer. Hope is so essential for the actor because it keeps him moving in a business that mires him in obstacles more often than it boosts him up. Hope is so essential to the actor because it provides an engine for change, self-improvement, and inspiration, even when the obstacles change faster and more overwhelmingly than can at first be comprehended. Hope is not general or impersonal when it takes on the personal characteristics and the flavor of the person who acts.

Hope is for the brave in that it only exists in action, in orientation, in engagement of the world. To be "passively hopeful" is to be not much of anything at all.

So get out there and hope. Hope for an audition by making yourself more available for an audition, by using online tools to get yourself out there, by making yourself visible and memorable. Hope for contacts by being a positive person with whom to work, a courteous professional, and a contact in your own right who follows up on friends, associates, and one-time acquaintances. Hope for success in your craft by using it consistently, polishing it in classes and with friends, and remaining curious about how you can find more ease and do more less.

Hope, and hope actively.

You don't learn hobbies in grad school.

2009-08-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

At least, not most of the time.

Over the past two weeks, I've had the experience of my "hobby" -- puppetry -- attracting the interest of potential performance employers. Perhaps I shouldn't have been as surprised or amazed as I was at first, but for some reason, I thought my Master of the Fine Arts in Acting from a well-known and much-esteemed university would make me much more marketable than my own personal interests. As many times as I had heard the advice and dicta that "you are the marketable commodity that The Powers That Be want to see," I had somehow conflated "me" with the ultra-fine filter of "me" that is my technique. I thought my technique, my acting ability, my own processing of a very generic process, would make me professionally and artistically attractive. And as many times as I had heard and told myself to be uniquely and truly me, I still didn't think of my entire self as sales-worthy, as the whole package that cannot be purchased piecemeal.

I've learned a lot over the past five weeks -- my departure from my nascent blogosphere was induced by four weeks of certification training in Fitzmaurice Voicework and one week of VASTA Conference in New York, all of which will certainly feed and inspire future writings. But for now, I'll have to suffice to say that I questioned, examined, explored, and puzzled the meaning of self and technique quite a bit, especially in light of my recent graduation and the distance now accumulating between me and the idea of formality in acting.

The integral actor, the one I seek to become, doesn't have technique. Technique is the middle stage, the transition phase between unconscious incompetence and unconscious competence. Technique is the set of conscious choices made to overcome the demands of living before an audience (which we all do in daily life, though under different parameters). When we stop considering acting as a human function separate from normal existence, when we see acting as living what's in front of us, technique falls out of play and doesn't need to (nay, shouldn't) be seen. Technique is the transition process, not the end result, and the more I market myself as "a good actor," the more I insist upon killing, embalming, and mounting a living process that is of no use to anyone but me. While taxidermy may not be the best metaphor for performance technique, I certainly have a wall full of trophies that I need to reevaluate -- frequently.

Which gets me back to hobbies. Hobbies, the things we like and do well, are already a part of us. I no longer think about puppetry or playing piano or reading as extrinsic to myself and in need of constant reevaluation and polish. Certainly, I want to get better at all of the above, but the way I perceive them, these little dashes of ink at the bottom of my résumé, that perspective makes all the difference in how I experience myself and my creative passion. When I puppet or play piano or sing in the shower, I'm doing something as part of my life, without needing to mount it on display or consciously separate from "me" in order to perform. My hobbies are me, and they've entered the realm of unconscious competence precisely because I don't make a fuss or publicize or even want to brag about them. Hobbies aren't technique because they're integrated. Perhaps, those who want to see and hire actors look at "Special Skills" first because that's where they have the surest bet of running into the real, good performer, the one who doesn't blend into the crowd of technique-trained prodigies. There will always, ALWAYS be good actors, because there's too much money to be made off of grafting technique onto inefficient spirits. But the great actors -- the great personalities, the great spirits -- are great and rare because those who progress to that stage have engaged on the harder and longer voyage of self-knowledge that transcends (and includes) technique.

In all of my higher education, seven years worth, my hobbies were far less frequently showcased than my ability to technically perform. Even my passion and ear for dialect, the integrated listening/mimicry I loved from a young age, became subject to technique -- and with good reason. But my passion for puppetry, for music, for dialect, for reading, for foreign languages, all were sidelined to the more important issue of improving my ability to live my life under the heat of the lights. Indeed, I would be disappointed if I went through a formal educational setting and didn't learn some sort of extrinsic, universal knowledge with which to integrate myself upwards in the ascending ladder of human existence.

But I also didn't fully explore my ability to integrate downward, into myself, into my hobbies and passions and interests. I didn't balance myself, such that my strong external network of self-improving technique was countered by a similar focus on internal cultivation and appreciation. I don't think the fault lies anywhere but in myself -- perhaps formal education could do more to help students build awareness of internal/external balance -- but I also don't think I could make this awareness adjustment any time but now, outside the academic, technique-driven environment. All I can do now is to encourage other students and actors to cultivate that internal self, that ultimately marketable and exciting and powerful and passionate self that isn't a technique, that isn't a universal, that isn't a "good" actor or artist or human being.

Keep your hobbies.

The Great Divide: Take 1

2009-06-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing about Great Divides in the world of performance and entertainment.

Art versus Commerce.
Personal versus Public.
True versus False.

And so on.

What tires me most about these overextended dichotomies is that they dichotomize the undichotomizable. Simplifying that which refuses to be simplified is a benchmark of the post-Enlightenment paradigm, but I'm constantly surprised by how much artists allow themselves to be sucked into an empirical worldview that embraces mutual exclusion. In my mind, artists should be the clarions for integration and completeness, for those who refuse to settle for the quotidian and acceptable. I reject the idea that Art is separate from Commerce, or that we (all of humanity) need to differentiate between Personal and Public as though they can't occupy the same ideological space, or that True and False cannot be one and the same, depending greatly -- as a wise man once said -- upon our point of view.

The Great Divide that inspires me tonight is fueled by the idea that Art and Commerce, Acting and Business, Product and Marketing, are forever separated by an intractable boundary that cannot be abridged or negated. That which people produce cannot be given to others without much toil, skill, and craft, which is, in and of itself, quite separate from the actual process of production. And in order to anaesthesize the nagging doubt that we might be the cause of the disjunct we experience everyday, we dissociate and distance the elements with which we're familiar. Thus, Art, for all of its potential and glory, is sidelined by poor business skills. Or the virtuostic networker is derailed by her lack of in-the-moment polish. And we're relieved when we can tidily delineate Art from Commerce and claim that only one realm is deficient, or that we haven't yet found a way to tie them together.

It's a bit of an epistemological leap to claim that Art and Commerce occupy a conceptual relationship similar to True and False, but, as with all dichotomies, the key to successful living lies in overcoming the dichotomy. The best way to disenfranchise a way of thinking is to think beyond that paradigm, and dichotomization -- as handy and rational as it is -- is ultimately of no use to the artist. Even as we approach our "professional careers" and still strive to maintain our "personal creativity," we're reaching for expression as full human beings, not as neatly divided Art/Business conjoined twins. To embrace the distinction between Art and Commerce is to empower the mindset that weakens the mind, that subjugates the spirit, that undermines the very creative will that gives birth to human effort. To claim that True and False exist irreconcilably distinct is to ignore the vast potential that exists in the simultaneity of Truth and Will, of fabrication and social acceptance.

Artists -- and especially the actors with whom I'm familiar -- need to stop accepting the dichotomies that define who we are, what we do, and how we earn our livings. We need to reach beyond "Art and Commerce" and find the full human beings who improve society by doing what they do. It's not just a question of living and performing differently -- it's a matter of thinking, of conceptualizing differently, of seeing the world in such a way that opposition can always be overcome by integration and inclusion. I don't advocate for New Age hot air and self-inflation -- I look forward to a time when everyone can see how Art and Commerce, Personal and Public, True and False, can and do coexist in every moment without needing to define themselves by opposition in the minds of their creators.

Let's see what happens ...

Welcome!

2009-06-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

I'm new here.

I've done the Internet journal before. I've attempted to share my thoughts on Life, the Universe, and Everything in other media and other styles. And as I grow and evolve, so too does my outlook on and respect for and horror of the world around me. Today, when I considered the Current State of Events and my place in it (in the shower, my usual reflective locale), I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to share thoughts and words and a community in this increasingly fragmented world, and the Internet still seems like the best place to give it a go. So I'm entering my new world, my new outlook, my new Me, with a new communicative framework and ideological network. The Tyler that opens up this blog today is completely new and uninitiated in the world of greater integration and expression, just as my previous online incarnations were new and fresh-faced in their own worlds, too.

A few founding principles, for me and whoever else may tune in from time to time (welcome!):

1. I do want an audience. No, make that community.

As I said my farewells to my previous Xanga entries, I mildly rebuked my online journal (and, implicitly, others' as well) for assuming that it could give me answers. That writing to a massive, anonymous audience would somehow give me certitude, security, and self-worth in a world that otherwise demeans and ignores me. I was chuckling at my former egocentric self, the one that used an online journal as a place for quarreling and flirting and all the look-at-me-ness I could muster in my very best haughty tone.
While I still feel that online journals are a dangerous lure for egocentric blurring of the Self with an objectified Universe, I do also recognize that the recognizance, acceptance, understanding, and embrace of other people is necessary to make this world a better place. Fairly self-evident, I think. Seen in the light of nudging forward the subjective evolution of humanity, an online journal can be a great place to hammer out ideas, engage in discourse, share points of view, and broaden the spectrum of my own subjectivity and intersubjectivity. As such, I want to have people read my journal, I want people to like it, I want to write in a manner that encourages return viewing and sustained interest. Were I to ponder the imponderables in mountaintop isolation, assuming that my words here were addressed to people I cared little about, I would not only be hypocritical but pretty damn annoying. In retrospect, much of my former journaling seemed to take that tone of voice, as I found little of interest besides my own thoughts.
Bearing my history in mind, I share my thoughts, words, and advice online as a way to expand my understanding of the World and I do so with the conscious knowledge that I want this sharing to be public. Thus, this journal will most likely suffer a paucity of rants, diatribes, stream-of-consciousness, or invective. At least, that's what I hope.

2. I have a favorite quote.

Not much of a principle, really, but this one quote sums up much of my worldview on writing. In his novel 1984, George Orwell gave us this succinct gem, referring to his protagonist, Winston Smith:

"The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already."

Not gut-wrenchingly profound, but a quote I've found extremely apt in my own life. The books that really get to me, the insights that resonate, the facts I remember, the worldviews I quickly incorporate into my own -- anything in print that sticks with me and becomes part of Me was already within me as I read it. Of course, there is plenty of debate to be had whether the feeling of "knowledge" is a result or a cause (or part of the process) of the personal resonance that comes with reading powerful insight, but the idea of resonance sticks out for me. The idea that what one mind expresses I, too, feel and understand and now have the words to express. The resonance, the meeting of minds in an idea, whether by book or blog, shows that the written word has enormous power and potential -- if we're resonant to it in the first place. While Orwell's worldview and voice may have been a bit more dreary than my own, this one nugget of truth feels entirely reflective of experience as I know it.
This insight ties into the foundation of my blogging experience in that I expect readers to like what they know already. In some ways, I can't create new thoughts, I can't claim originality -- and not just because Western thought is "footnotes to Plato." I'm really hoping that someone will call me on recycled knowledge, on newly minted common ore, so that we can begin to understand the ideas and worldviews that unite us and discover what is most universal by what resonates furthest.
I expect that Orwell's quote would also be valid in the contrapositive, and as such, I don't expect everyone to agree, like, or respect what I may share. And having shared knowledge certainly doesn't equate to being able to act compassionately and wisely upon it. It is up to us, we who share ideas and passion and energy and a willingness to make our World better, to expand our subjective awareness and foster collective accord, all of which will hopefully lead to better action.

3. I am becoming integrated.

These four words kind of sum up the epistemological, philosophical, artistic, and expressive viewpoint I have developed over the course of my 24-year life. These words are loaded with the semantic, semiotic, and cultural drippings of my unique educational, experiential, spiritual, and societal perspective, and they reflect my current view of the process of life as I know it. In these four words, you will find most of my bias, my blindsides, my aspirations, my purpose, my history, my educational heritage, and my limitations. Give me a paragraph or four to explain.
First, Principle Three is in English. I'm a 24-year male from Columbus, Ohio, with a rich British and west European heritage. Raised in the suburbs in an excellent primary education system, I attended the Ohio State University, where I got a BA in History and a BA in Theatre (Go Bucks!). My studies of history focused mainly on contemporary Western Europe, with a slant toward the intellectual and cultural histories and diversions in subjects from around the world and time. I also received a minor in French, with a few German classes tossed in for good measure. After undergrad, I moved to Irvine, California, to study for a Master of the Fine Arts in Acting at the University of California, Irvine. After three years of rigorous training and some excellent books, classmates, and colleagues, I graduated last week with yet another new outlook on life. I'm currently hoping to act and teach in Los Angeles, but that has little to do with the overall process of growth that I hope to document in this journal.
Second, Principle Three cleverly uses the words and concepts I like to think I understand, stretching across my entire education. "I am" takes me back to my earliest forays into Descartes and Plato, "becoming" takes me back to my study of complexity theory in undergrad, and "integrated" reflects my current understanding of how the world works and needs to proceed. My interest in the mind and human thought began with philosophical primers and reading The Republic and frat party conversation pieces on the Great Thinkers. It was a period of exploration and memorization, of knowing the right things and saying them in response to the right questions. Needless to say, this was the time during which I did very well on standardized tests.
As I proceeded in my college education, I was overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of knowledge we humans have accreted, and I wasn't coming up with any of it! I was parroting it, seeing its connections, but I wasn't coming up with pithy definitions or brilliant insights. I was really good at synthesizing, at connecting and relating, and it was at this point that complexity theory -- with its focus on networks and mutual interaction and feedback and nonlinearity -- caught my fancy. Existentialism and phenomenology fit well into this worldview, this world of free agents whose very existence is creation and meaning, whether they build monuments or take a nap. It was also at this time that my writing blossomed into networks of ideas and metaphors and relational connections, essays that would take my professors aback and roll off my fingertips and onto the computer screen as though I were typing instant messages.
In grad school, I came up against limitations in even my synthetic abilities. In the world of the stage, knowledge, concrete knowledge and the ability to put it together into the most dizzying of ivory towers, meant nothing if it couldn't be put into a living, breathing, emotional human being. I needed to ground my synthetic abilities in my physical, emotional, and spiritual being. I had accrued so much intellectual/cultural pride in my external and systematic knowledge that I was relatively incompetent with the unreasonable emotions of fear, jealousy, lust, shame, and anger. Thus began (and continues) my search for integral being -- whole, untouched being.
The search continues because I believe, as I have read, understood, and espoused, that the process of self-realization is never complete and that I can no more be something or someone than I can stop being altogether (tip of the hat to Sartre, I'm afraid). Rather, I am always becoming, never stopping, never done, always integrating more or less, always expanding more or less, always welcoming or denying, but never inactive or bound. I refuse to take the rather bleak outlook that I am "condemned to be free," but rather, I am becoming integrated. All the time.

I think three founding principles is enough for now. Really, they're just items we should acknowledge now, before I feel guilt or shame for unconfirmed tacit understanding. Other principles will surely emerge of their own, so I'm quite happy to let them do so from now on.

It may already be obvious that the latest book on my mind is Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything. Another one of those "best books," Wilber summarized and gave me vocabulary for much of Reality as I frame it. What's most important for me to claim and remember is that Wilber hasn't given me a worldview -- he's given me words and concepts that resonate and are already integrating themselves into my being. I create the worldview (and the world!), and the book is a great reference for any and all who may be interested.

The other concept that Wilber offered me was that our understanding of the Kosmos (as he calls it) has, since the Enlightenment, been decisively objective and "It"-flavored. The beloved complexity theory I was so eager to explore and embrace as "the new paradigm" (as I myself called it) is actually just as mired down in objectivity and fragmentation as the "old paradigm." He followed up this persuasive claim with the assertion that the future of humanity relies upon integration of subjectivity and objectivity, individual and collective, into a total state of being -- something to which my acting studies had already made me aware but about which I was hardly articulate.

So this blog, as it grows (or regresses -- who knows?), will hopefully reflect a growing integrated awareness and perspective, based in my subjective understanding of the world founded in my collective social growth and fortified by the objective world as I know it. I hope to write about anything and everything, but I definitely have an eye out for the actor, for the artist, for the thinker, and the future world citizen. Again, as I'm hoping for an audience, I hope not to settle into a Performance Arts Page, but if I stray into niche pastures, I beg clemency.

Thank you.