Rachel Rutherford

The last day of 2011

2011-12-31T05:26:00.000-08:00

What a glorious unexpected crazy huge fucking year.

Change in a chaotic system begins imperceptibly, in tiny motes, at the edges.

In the first year of theatre, I did not know it was the first year of theatre, either. The whole time, I thought I was going back to Microsoft in six weeks. I did not know that I would do nothing but theatre for four years, and stay in thrall to theatre for three more years, even after returning to work. Or that I would spend a year in Europe studying it, and become an ensemble theatre director with a sure hand for Chekhov and devising physical theatre. I did not know any of that.

2011 has been that kind of year.

one day you're eating

mulberries, then -- you're on a
strange road with strangers

This was a year of rending. Things I had held true of myself, I could no longer hold true. Things I had thought and believed, I no longer thought or believed. New, more coherent, more explored pieces of systems of ideas had appeared.

I can point at all the things that happened this year, and yet, I cannot see the pattern. Only points of light.

Points and points and points of light.

When you inject energy into a closed system, there WILL be changes. You cannot predict where or what the changes will be. But you can, with absolute certainty, predict that there will be changes.
-- Benjamin Ellinger

I got sick Christmas day with a high fever, and for six days lay in bed, drinking only water, sleeping 20 to 24 hours a day. I was processing, and moulting, burning, fitful, restless, consumed. Solve the puzzle, I kept thinking, as I rolled in fiery slumber. Solve it. But after days, I realized it was not solvable. Trying to, even from the depths, just spiked my fever higher. Finally I let it go until I could think again.

I have leveled up. I have left the level of Do It Alone and entered the level of Do It With Others. Few of my reflexes or habits work, and almost all of them are anti-patterns. It is the shift to working as a system, not a node.

This was my desktop background all year:

A tsunami isn't a tidal wave but a series of waves—or wave train—in which the first isn't necessarily the most dangerous. Seen from on shore, a tsunami may be more like a rapidly rising tide than a series of giant breaking waves.

When you start to play together and evolve, the first thing that happens is that all your old habits break. It is destruction of a precise and remorseless magnitude.

If I had to name 2011, I would say it was The Year Of Entering The Discrete State Change.

Auditions

2011-02-26T17:30:00.000-08:00

I attended the Theatre Puget Sound General Auditions this year. I was a yearly auditor from 1999 - 2001; this is the first time I have attended since then.

This was TPS's first year of "going digital." Auditors received all the actors' headshots and resumes printed out, on regular non-photo paper in a binder, along with a CD of the same. The headshots were numbered, in audition order.

What I noticed is, I have shifted.

I have "leveled up," as gamers say; I have grown. I am committed. My commitment level at DigiPen is intense, as is the commitment level of the students I am working with. They have committed four years of their life, and eighty thousand dollars to this work. I have been here three years, and it has gone by like a spring week. What I notice is that most of the non-equity actors do not register on the same scale of commitment (although many of them likely are); they do not have that solid day-in, day-out feel to them. Interestingly, the Jet City Improv company actors do; they look at home on a stage, real, connected, alive; they look like equity actors, like company actors from other countries. But overall -- only the equity actors feel right to me.

I have gone pro. In all respects.

I felt matter-of-fact about looking into how to hire and pay them. I talked with Rik Deskin, our Equity contact, and said I would be sending him an email. If this is something I can afford, he will work it out with Los Angeles, who handles all the Seattle equity contracts.

DREAM: Black and gold octopus statue in the square / TPS actors

2011-02-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

I dreamed that I was in an old stone, thick-walled Polish building -- as if in the Krakow main plaza, overlooking the square. I was looking out through a quiet window (although there was no window; just open air).

The square was covered by the statue of a giant octopus, with its head over 8 feet tall in the center, and the tentacles raying crookedly out to 8 corners of the square. The gold had been burnished in places, by years of children sitting on the tentacles. The head was also gold, with a black patch or leather cap covering about 1/3 of the head. The cap was made of leather (most likely), or possibly obsidian.

The octopus statue had two eyes, which gazed my direction. As I watched, the octopus blinked its eyes, and winced its head slightly, softening; then it straightened back up.

I was horrified to realize that it was alive. I felt like we were torturing it. It seemed calm and peaceful, though, and did not seem to be in pain. I ran down to the sea, and brought back a container of water, which I poured on its leg. I could not remember if octopi could live out of water or not; I thought not, although in the dream they clearly could, as this octopus had been there for years.

I realized that the octopus was almost entirely made of gold. Over 85% of it was solid gold, like the Tibetan buddha statues. If I could turn the rest of it to gold, it would come back to life, and return to the sea. Almost all of it was healed (gold), except the third of its head which was covered in, and made of, black leather or obsidian. (From my window, it looked like obsidian from my window, but close-up, it looked like supple well-used black leather.)

--------------

INTERPRETATION

The octopus is me.

I have almost completely healed. But something -- a third of my head? -- still needs to be healed. I am not in pain, but am not alive either; and am not in my element. I am respected, loved, a fixture, a thing of formal power and beauty; a central part of the town square. I am almost entirely immobile. I am big.

I think the missing third is theatre; or body; or love; or the three, melted into one. The other two thirds, software/games and Core Protocols, are rich and fully developed. The other two thirds also refers to Ben and Chris, my DigiPen partners, who seem more fully realized to me.

I decided to hire actors from the Theatre Puget Sound regional auditions, to develop my next piece with and on, at least to the staged reading level.

You can never enter the river the same way, twice.

This is different, all right.

One semester into Goddard's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts

2011-02-15T19:59:00.000-08:00

I have completed my first semester. It was a rough, but illuminating ride.

I had not planned well for how to add a fulltime graduate program to my already over-full life; so in the middle of my first semester, I fell blazingly sick, until I figured out how to interweave the two.

The Goddard MFA is pretty consistently a 5-semester practice of increasing clarification. What people come out with is always related to what they come in wanting -- but it is distilled, purified, shifted in some way.

I entered my MFA with a focus on high-performant ensembles and the Core Protocols; but found in the first semester that my connection to theatre had deepened while dormant. I have shifted.

My current two areas of focus are Theatre Directing/Devising and Writing; the high-performant team work is a topic of much of the writing.

All of this sits, like a jewel in a rich and glorious setting, in the ever-fertile, ever-changing software laboratory of my dreams, which is the DigiPen Institute of Technology, and the software programmers and game teams I teach.

There is a line, in the Brad Pitt movie, "Legends of the Fall," after all the drama of the first couple acts is done, and before the drama of the final climax has begun -- which goes: Then Tristan entered into the sweet heart of his life.

That is how I feel. I am in the sweet heart of my life. If I were to stay here for 30 or 40 years, it would feel like an extremely short time. The rounds of the DigiPen year are as deep and orderly as at a monastery, and the personal practice is as intense; it feels like the Odin; it feels like me. I find that the longer I work here, the deeper I blossom.

I have found that most rare of things, a true rich creative home.

MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College

2010-07-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

This is the campus where I will be getting my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. It is the old Fort Warden grounds, in Port Townsend, Washington, which Goddard College rents for their Intensive Residency programs.

I love this place. I attended a week-long Jazz Composition and Arranging workshop there as a junior in high school. They hired a U.S. Marines band to play our compositions.

I have twice before applied to MFA programs. In 1994, I was accepted into the University of Oregon's MFA in Printmaking program. In 2004, I was a finalist at Yale's MFA in Theatre Directing program and had completed the interview before I withdrew. In both cases, I decided not to go.

I think what stopped me, in the end, is that neither one felt like software; neither the students and teachers were software developers. I am a hybrid. I am both a traditional artist and a software creator, to a professional level; and it has been my life's work to figure out how to create a life with these in it.

If I am creating anything, I want to be creating it with software developers. This is true even if the thing I am creating is a choir, or a theatre troupe, or a symphony, or a company. It is just as true, however, that if I am creating art, I want to be creating it to absolutely the highest standards of that art.

GODDARD'S MFA PROGRAM

The best fit I have found so far is a meta-program, Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. This is a rigorously structured design-your-own-degree graduate program. It is perfect for someone who knows what they want, and wants to pursue it intensively.

Goddard was a traditional college for decades, before they decided to close their traditional programs and focus only on Intensive Residency programs. They had been the first to invent and pioneer the Intensive Residency model, with their legendary Creative Writing MFA. This spawned more than 40 similar programs in schools across the US and Europe. Thirty years later, Goddard decided to close their traditional programs and focus solely on Intensive Residency offerings. Their goal is to become the best Intensive Residency college in the world. "You are lucky you had such an immaculate record as a traditional college all those decades," said their accreditation board, "Or we would never let you do something like this."

This means I can stay in my house, in my life, working at my beloved DigiPen, and still get my degree. Every three weeks I submit a packet of work over the internet. Twice a year, all the faculty and students fly in for 8-day Intensive Residencies, during which we have showings, seminars, 1-on-1 meetings, semester reviews, and design the next semester's work. It is a two-and-a-half year program, three years with permission.

Goddard's focus and discipline is on whether you is following your own authentic artistic path. They do not care what medium you work in, or whether you move from one medium to another; they encourage your work to have a social component, as all art is connected to the world. They care strongly that you do the work; that you have intentional practices; that you do your work at a professional level; that you contextualize and articulate your work; that your work is authentic; and that you are establishing practices which will carry you as an artist for the rest of your life. Three years is not long in the life of an artist.

THE MFA IS A TERMINAL DEGREE

The MFA, Master of Fine Arts, is the terminal degree of the creative and performing arts. A PhD means you are an expert scholar of the field; an MFA means you are a virtuoso performer of the field. Concert pianists, painters, dancers, and writers get MFAs. In the academic world, scholars teach scholars, and performers teach performers. With a PhD in theatre, you teach theatre history. With an MFA in theatre, you teach acting or directing. An MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts is a good fit for the work I currently do, which is teaching game creators, in year-long project classes, how to make games.

I have noticed that people who truly long for an MFA or who truly long for a PhD, are always correct about their choice of degree. The PhD students profoundly love knowledge, research, scholarship. The MFA students profoundly love creating, in ever more skillful fashion. I don't think it matters which one you get, as long as you choose the one you love.

THE FOCUS OF MY MFA

This brings us to today, July 5, 2010. I have gotten the financial work done. I qualify for loans. I am half-way through my application. And I am walking around thinking deliciously about, "If I could do an MFA in anything, what would I do it in?"

I am definitely a creative artist. I have spent 40 years in these fields:
Music - 15 years
Dance/Choreography - 10 years + 8 years of sports
Art - 14 years
Writing - all my life
Theatre/Directing - 12 years formally, but grew up with it; wrote my first plays at age 8
Videogames/software - 30 years
High-performant ensemble creation - 13 years

I walk around thinking about this all the time:

What do I want from my MFA?
How shall I structure my MFA?
How can I involve DigiPen students in this?
What would be even better than that?

My MFA audition at Yale in 2004

2010-07-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

In 2004, after living at the Odin for two months, I flew to Yale for my interview. I was a finalist for their MFA in Directing program.

At home, I had directed a lot of Chekhov, so of the scenes Yale offered, I chose one from "Three Sisters." I asked Eugenio for permission to borrow the three Odin apprentice actors to explore the scene. He agreed.

I will talk more about that another time.

One day, I got into the small car in back of the theatre in Holstebro and got driven to the airport. The next morning, in New Haven, I found a flower shop and bought a vase full of fat yellow tulips.

The audition allowed us to bring two props. I brought an ordinary Danish good-quality cream-colored cotton tablecloth edged in lace, and flowers.

Yale was beautiful. Stone, and heavy, and bright-washed with March sunlight.

The room for the audition was industrial. It had a white ceiling with giant air conditioning ducts suspended from it, also painted white. Some of the rooms had black rubber flooring; our room had hardwood, or linoleum; I forget.

What I remember is how busy and fast-moving everyone was -- the actors, the auditors, the students.

"We probably won't get to Chekhov today," I thought, as we set up the room. I find Chekhov emanates out of the actors, once they have become settled and pure. I did not think we would likely achieve this in 30 minutes.

The auditors sat at a table. Three men and a woman. I and the two student actors who had been provided worked in front of them, in a big empty space with a table and two chairs. The actors were a man and a woman who had memorized the lines, and had volunteered to do this rehearsal in addition to their already-busy schedules. They were eager to do well, and to impress their teachers; nervous that they would fail.

I sat them in a circle. I gave a short opening talk. It was not very good. I was nervous and had not prepared remarks. I gave up, stood us up, and started the familiar walking and statues work, to connect and ground ourselves. It helped, but was still happening at that frantic busy surface level. The actors faces were in grimaces, rictus smiles or fearful concentration. "Don't think," I kept saying in a soothing voice. "Don't think. Don't think. No one is thinking. This is all happening by itself."

Okzy. So, okay.

We start the backstory improvs. I want to create some time for them to experience their true life, their authentic memories of Moscow, from whose roots this play sprang -- the play within the play that no one will know but them. "We are going back in time, to when the family lived in Moscow. To the first time Vershinin came to visit, when Masha was a little girl, which she still remembers. This was an extremely unimportant event. Very trivial. Let us see this ordinary moment." I had had the actors set up a beautiful upper-class family living room. It had a cream-colored tablecloth from Denmark, and a vase of yellow tulips on the side table. Vershinin came to visit. They had their moment.

We went forward in time. We had another ordinary moment. They started to get more comfortable as the work took hold.

"And now, we go forward a bit more, to when the family is about to move away. They have been packing the house. They will be moving soon. Vershinin comes to visit again." Before we started, I had asked the actors to move all the furniture again, as if it were being prepared for packing. They folded the table, moved the items to the side.

"And in this visit, it happens that Vershinin and Masha have a private moment. Perhaps it is unimportant. It is a moment no one but Masha and Vershinin will ever know happened. Please go outside the room, and have this moment. Do not return until it has happened. Take your time."

The actors were nervous and excited. They glanced at their teachers, at me, and left.

We sat in silence.

It was the first peaceful moment I had felt at Yale.

I sat on the floor, 15 feet from the judges, my back to them, watching the door. The judges sat at their table, watching me and the door.

Minutes passed. No one moved.

The room was sunlit. The air was white. You could hear traffic, the rumbling of the pipes, voices, but the noise was muffled. Sunlight. Silence.

"Oh," I said, suddenly, turning to face the judges. Their eyes brightened, and got happy. "Did you notice how -- " and then the actors came back in. The judges' faces fell, bereft.

What I was going to say was, "Did you notice how much better the set was when the actors thought it didn't matter; when they were just getting the furniture ready for moving, and not trying to make it look good?" I never got to tell them; a Chekhovian moment.

The actors were better after their time alone. Still not fully grounded, but they had glimpsed the dream and were feeling its gravitational pull, starting to vanish.

I worked a bit more, but my time soon ended. We thanked the actors and they left.

The judges asked questions. I answered. It was like we were all puzzled by something; we couldn't find the comfortable vein of talking. Then one of them said, "Rachel, do you want to come to the Yale School of Drama? Don't think." "No," I blurted. "It would cost $100,000 and then how would I start my theatre?" We all rustled and relaxed. "I thought there was something off," said the woman who was the head of the program. "But I couldn't put my finger on it."

We were all relieved.

My "No" was correct. But the reason I gave was only partially correct; there was also something about This is not my home and This is not how I work and I don't want to leave my house in the woods and most fundamentally, This is not a fit.

We sat and talked companionably for the remaining 20 minutes.

"Good decision," said the head of the program. "You are on the rare slow road. Don't get off that. Here, we are on the fast road. We are training them for American theatre, which is like an aircraft carrier -- you have to get the plays UP and ON and LAUNCHED and you only have a few weeks to do it all."

At the end, they all gave me their business cards.

"I think we will be hearing a lot more from you," they said.

And then, matter-of-factly, cheerful at having had a tough decision make itself so cleanly, they walked refreshed back into their busy lives.

I folded the Danish tablecloth, picked up the vase of tulips, and walked outside, relieved to find myself in clean air, and free.

At one point during the questioning, I said something about the actors. They asked me what I thought of each actor. I answered. These were long and thoughtful answers, because I was searching for each answer as I was saying it; reflecting on the actors and who they were becoming; looking at them with Russian and Odin and bootcamp eyes. This was probably the most informative part of the entire audition. They knew the actors very well. They could absolutely calibrate my responses. It was in this answer, of everything I said or did, that they could most clearly see me. I also had the clear sense that some of what I said they agreed with or already knew, and some of what I said was new, unusual. There was that "hmmm" of interest.

Rest in peace, Torgeir Wethal

2010-07-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

Torgeir Wethal, one of the founding actors of the Odin Teatret in Denmark, passed away this week. His funeral was Saturday, July 3.

The Odin made a video to honor Torgeir. It shows him from age 17 to 60. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/odinteatretarchives1

Here the pictures which feel most like Torgeir to me. Some of these are from the video, some are from the website. The final one is from my favorite Work Demonstration of his, "Dialogue Between Two Actors," a presentation with Roberta Carerri using an Ibsen text.

This is how I remember Torgeir.

I have three songs for Torgeir.

1. A lullabye, in case he gets scared. Slumber My Darling by Alison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma.

2. A beautiful hymn, sung by a beautiful girl, in a beautiful church. Amazing Grace by Leann Rimes.

3. A rocking girls-night-out celebration by an all-woman band. All The Single Ladies (Rehearsal) by Beyonce. I figure Torgeir will be so happy to get to heaven, and be young again, and healthy, and free -- that he would love to go check out the single ladies.

Two years passed

2010-07-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

I dove into DigiPen, and vanished.

Leaving Microsoft to join DigiPen

2008-09-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

I left Microsoft at the end of June, and started at DigiPen one month later. My last day at Microsoft was the same as Bill Gates' last day. Here is the goodbye message I sent, with updated email addresses at the end.

From: Rachel Rutherford [mailto:rachelr@microsoft.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:20 PM
To: Rachel Rutherford
Subject: Moving on

Hi all –

I am leaving Microsoft to join DigiPen Institute of Technology as a full-time professor in their Game Design & Production department. This Friday is my last day. Stop by Millennium E cafeteria this Friday at 4:00 for an informal send-off for me, Hakim, Shun, and Bill (couldn’t resist that last one). BYOWhatever. Also, please send me your contact information at: realrachel@aol.com.

This is my third time leaving Microsoft. I left once to direct theatre for four years. Once to direct theatre in Europe for a year. While living at the Odin theatre in Denmark, I went into town every Saturday to play games at the internet café. I was such a regular that one night when the café was locked, and dark, and full of gamers (for reasons I never knew, not speaking Danish), they wordlessly unlocked the door and waved me in to the cave.

This time I am leaving to join DigiPen, which is more like a small theatre company than one might think. I have taught there for over a year, and the caliber of their game developers must be experienced to be believed. DigiPen is the top game college in the world, and largely unaware of it. Dingy, hot, small, unprepossessing, crammed into half of a Nintendo warehouse, full of computers, haggard luminous programmers, glorious emergent games, a monastic single-mindedness, and a bone-deep fatigue. Over 6,000 apply, 200 get in, 60 graduate. It is a conservatory training, a special forces one – elite, grueling, punishing, virtuosic, and culminating in a graduate-level math/physics/computer science education with four year-long, 3-to-5-devs/team, completed games.

I believe that inside this training, inside game development itself, a new kind of artist is being born; a new kind of art. I am the kind of pan-craft artist/scientist/player I am educating and creating.

Games demand so much. Artistry – visuals, music, space, interaction. Thought – physics, math, code. Abstraction – the ability to build cathedral-engines of code. Engineering – the ability to build functional structures which ship on time. Goodness – spirit, feelings, delight, play. Teams – presence, integrity, conflict, passion, phase-shifts. Games – the angels-on-the-head-of-the-pin asymptote of fun and play, of laughter, of desire. “Games are software theatre,” says Benjamin Ellinger. “An architect looks at a system and thinks, “What can we remove?” says Chris Peters. “A team is not enough; you need a conscious team, one with the tools to bootstrap itself, which knows how to increase the rate of its own iteration and joy,” says Rachel Rutherford. “Your brain will unfold it all, just give it time to do its work,” says Jason Mai. “Videogame development is the most dense and diverse creation medium currently available and that's why I do it,” says Sean Gubelman.

If your idea is not recursive, you are not working at the level of maximum efficiency.

Back to how I joined Microsoft. I had worked at Xerox PARC, and at Apple; had played on a men’s ice hockey team for 8 years, had my own game company, and co-designed a high-end realtime video-editing system. In March 1994 we sold our house in the cinnamon sun-grass of California, and moved home to the rain. I had offers from Microsoft Research, Kids ITV, and Kids. I chose Kids, got given kids adventure games, and have been in games ever since.

I have worked on Kids Adventure Games prototypes, Goosebumps: HorrorLand, Goosebumps: Say Cheese And Die, Dreamworks Interactive, Mustang, Reach for the Stars II, NBA Inside Drive 2003, NHL Rivals 2004, Mythbots, You Know It! Trivia, Solitaire In Motion, More Solitaire, Hop It!, Firefly, and Fable 2 Pub Games. I am grateful to have known the people of Kids, Microsoft Australia/Games, Sports Games, Action, Arcade & Strategy Games, Casual Games, Carbonated Games, and all the artists – mmm, the artists – developers, testers, program managers, user researchers, managers, marketers, financiers, and hardworking good-hearted smart people of Microsoft.

I would like to thank Microsoft veterans and alumni Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy, for having led the turn-around of the Visual C++ group, which development environment makes these games possible; for founding McCarthy Technologies, the 10-year team lab in which the Core Protocols system for high-performant teams evolved; for training me to be an Associate Core Director of that system; for enabling me to give two Software Development Bootcamps at Microsoft, Team Zero and Quality Without A Name; and for showing what it means to walk the path of integrity and limitless thinking.

See you tomorrow in MillE caf at 4:00. Bring me flowers. Bring really loud music. If you can’t make it, send me a link to your favorite music and if possible, a YouTube video of it.

rachel

Rachel Rutherford
realrachel@gmail.com
rachelr@digipen.edu

It's my birthday!

2008-05-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

I went to bed happy, and woke up happy.

today is DigiPen graduation, v1.2

2008-04-27T10:00:00.001-07:00

Today, people who went to school here:

Are driving over here:

To graduate:

And to thank Christopher Erhardt & Michael Moore, among others:

For teaching that enabled wonderful creations like these to emerge:
Aether

Hollowpoint

Rex Texas

Behemoth

Synaesthete, IGF award-winner

... and many other beautiful games.

Congratulations, class of 2008.

------------------------------------
[Later that day]

Here are some pix from today's graduation.

hey, look, our Firefly game is in a video

2008-04-14T17:40:00.001-07:00

Last year, I made -- well, no, I got us the chance to make, and Joshua blessed, and Jason laughed and exec-produced, and Peter liaisoned, and John gave us a game idea so we had something to build, and Dex did all the heavy lifting and got the bugs and game up and running, and Shun had the firefly idea, and Rick and Stephen and Justin and Shun and Steve made it BEAUTIFUL, and then we were out of time so there's no audio but there you go -- (and there was that one magical CarbAll meeting where we turned out the lights and in the blackness, the quiet breathing silence like we were suddenly on some camping trip, there were eighty fingers delicately touching, touching, touching, to try to guide the shy fireflies into their jars) -- well, as I was saying, we made a demo called "Firefly" for the playtable.

So my group made the demo, and the playtable group upstairs loved it, and installed it on a bunch of machines, and then in a feverish joy of amateur marketing, decided to make some videos about it.

This was a one-take video, upstairs, in the hall. "C'mon," I said, grabbing all the artists. "They want us to show our game on a video, let's go."

I thought it was going to be put on YouTube, but it actually made it onto our official Microsoft Surface website, which you can check out here.

Ours is this one.

i am a wikipedia author, programming with butterflies, xkcd, Nureyev, mom, DigiPen

2008-04-14T14:39:00.001-07:00

We were having our last CarbAll meeting. Carbonated Games had disbanded the previous day. "So what should we do for closure?" I asked. "Update the Wikipedia page." said Chris Peters.

I thought that was a great idea. So I did.

Listen, if you are not a programmer by nature, messing around with some system where a) it's all in public, all the time, publicly rollbackable to every single time you have ever saved, b) you can't delete anything, and c) you're pretty much always live -- is a little scary. Like having the keys to drive the North American continent, when you really haven't mastered the Volvo yet.

("What happened to our servers?" "She took them down." "All of them? I thought we had three-country backup." "She got typing wild. We don't even know what she put in there. One minute she's adding the Firefly demo, the next minute all hell has broken loose, and it's like the goddamn Titanic in here." "What are we gonna do for an encyclopedia now?" "Google probably has something." "Or China. They're big. They've probably got some filtered SETI overlord thing where every search entry returns, "Have a green tea bun, dear. I SAID, have a green tea BUN." "I'm outa here." "Or maybe Google China, they're probably ahead of the curve." "Did you even READ "Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia?" They're like the database of all databases. Give 'em a week, it will be reconstructed." (A silence.) "Hey, you know... with that kind of server solidity and a little avatar work, Wikipedia could be a great casual MMO." "Yeah, but they'd have to rebalance it.")

So anyway, I updated the Carbonated Games page.

Then I noticed, reading the "History" tab, that you could see everyone else who had ever updated that page. I clicked on one, and up came a bio page with little boxes like this:

I was hooked. One all-nighter later, I knew what userboxes were, and had made my own page. Second Life does it for some people. For me, it's having a lemonade stand in the wikiscape.

Have you read the rules of Wikipedia? I used to wonder how Richard Stallman did it. How do you wade in and tackle all of humanity's fear, shortsightedness, and greed, and still stay true to your principles? Sturgeon had it right, in Baby Is Three -- when we grow up, we need to join and help. It's Gandalf and the Balrog, and no way around it -- you gotta grapple with your Shadow, to get whole.

Wikipedia is humanity's bitch -- or monk, same thing -- and they serve with grace, integrity, good humor, fair play, steadily evolving rules. I am going to donate. Now I am a wikipedia patron, not just an author.

Which reminds me.

This was one of the big things I learned, living at the Odin Teatret. To have your theatre flourish, you must give it away. So every person who walks in goes, "This is MY theatre." You are their monk, their mule, their sun-blessed servant, and all of you turn your blind faces to the light. When I first went to the Odin for the Odin Week workshop, they assigned each of us a piece of the theatre to clean. I had the blonde stairs at the far end of the foyer. Once I owned those stairs, I owned the theatre. I was the theatre. If you touched the theatre, you were touching me. Everything changed. Because of this one ethic in my head, I made whole rafts of decisions differently. This is the most efficient upstream act I have encountered.

Leonid Anisimov said, "Affect the space first."

Eugenio Barba says, "Everyone in the theatre, cleans the theatre." This MAKES you affect the space. And, as soon as you do that, your perception of the space changes.

While I am on this long and random walkabout, check this out: xkcd.com. I just discovered this webcomic -- "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" -- and am addicted. Click the comic below to enlarge.

This strip reminded me of me -- half assembly coder, half so-abstracted-to-infinity-that-when-you-think-it-it-exists. I am a naturally upstream, chaos-dancer kind of creator. In theatre. In software. In companies. In relationships. It's all Indra's Net, all the time. We're all waves and particles, so go splash in the paradox and don't forget to pay your electric bill.

It is just like the Odin. Water the plant over here. Walk onto the plain blond expanse of floor over there. Lie down. Tell the truth. Move the truth. You are the truth. You are a piece of harmony in a small chaotic system, in a large chaotic system, and you are a chaotic system. Rest. Do your work.

I think for me, theatre is the metaphor I needed to understand life. Not acting, not playwriting, but the whole dense complicated art-plus-business-existing-in-the-real-world gestalt of it. That gave me the three levels of meta I needed to understand my life: The gestalt of me. The gestalt of theatre. The gestalt of life. That's why I am a director -- the director gets to sit right in the middle of the entire gestalt, and go everywhere, and talk to everyone. It's like a license to learn. License to play. Same thing. (My and Joshua's shared vision is: Play. Polish. Perform. Repeat.)

I set up my mom's Mac. I'm at home, she's at her house, we're both in front of our computers. I am talking her through how to get to YouTube. "Type this. Now, in the little white box, type, "Nureyev." Now, click the second one down, his young Russian years."

Silence.

My mom took me and my brother to the ballet when I was young. Not all the time. Just when Nureyev was in town, or the Joffrey. It was such a strange, urgent, exotic powerful escape from our barely-out-of-lower-class life. We were pilgrims there together, open-mouthed at the beauty and music and male sexuality, the carnality of it. Ballet was our bacchanal, our Mardi Gras. Half my boyfriends have looked like Nureyev. The other half look like my brother or my dad.

"Oh, he's so young," she said. "And that's..." "... Les Sylphides." "No." "Le Corsaire." "Yes."

Watching the young dead man dance... whom we had both seen when we were young and he was not dead, and he was the most powerful man we had ever seen live... my mom is 74 and still correcting me on details... this is a good moment.

"I grew up in the wrong generation," she said, reveling in YouTube. "I would have loved this." "Yeah, but your generation has pensions. Retirement. You're living on the water, I'm going to be doing software till I'm 90." "But you can turn into millionaires. That never happened in social work." "Good point. Okay, I'll take my field."

And Nureyev leaps, and falls, and raises his head, and sits staring at the camera, troubled, imperious, unsmiling. No wonder I like introverts. And gay men. And SPs. And Russians.

So here's the thing. Or part of the thing.

Teaching at DigiPen is awakening and alivening me to games in a way I did not knew was possible. The last time I felt like this was in my early 20's, when I lived in a group house in California with 13 people, where everyone was a programmer before the PC or Mac even existed. I worked at Xerox PARC. Ken worked at SRI. The other Ken worked at Stanford AI Labs, or at least hung out there a lot, as did Julius, who spent all his time writing fast fourier transforms on the board, cooking eggs, and playing classical guitar. Warren was writing the first graphical adventure game at Atari, incensed that the creators got no royalties, and bringing the machines home, trailing wires, so we could play them in the living room. Elaine was riding her horse and going to Stanford Business School, and Richard Stallman came to visit, and Danny Hillis came for chinese food, and the guy from Lawrene Livermore brought the video of his robot with knees that could walk on water, and I had an account at MIT-MC and was playing piano at ballet studios at night -- and it was okay --

it was okay

to be smart.

I mean, really, no holds barred, as fast as you wanna be, with no apologies, smart. Scorching trails, blackwater connections, calculus problems that solve themselves while you sleep, choreography ideas that make me cry, smart.

Being with Teresa, Terrence, Lyon, and Ben felt like that again. Just one big ahhhhhhh.

I didn't realized I had retreated back into hiding, until I started immersing in DigiPen. The programmers, the people, the facebook pages, the conversations, the living density of ideation and demanding practice. (Oh. Duh. It's just like a theatre: train AND make a performance. The Odin actors do physical & vocal training half the day, then rehearse. The DigiPen programmers do math and physics half the day, then work on their game. No wonder the results are good.)

I get so warmed up, in this surrounding, that I can parse densities of information, translate from the codetalk, see the drifting icebergs and fiery winds in the mental structure, see its weak points, its lattices, I can see the unseen so clearly that I can start to make my own maps and inferences from it, gaining insights from territory whose roots I can't even grasp.

Being with me, Ben, and Chris is like being in one big brain. We are kind of slow, still, not optimized yet, but comfortable. When you add me, Ben, and Chris to DigiPen, you get catalytic combustion. The environment strips us. We spark and transform the environment. It starts to be like we are all one BIG brain. A nearly completely unoptimized one. Connected, but unoptimized. Alert, but unawake. What do you call something of nearly infinite potential power? As if tectonic plates could suddenly slip with such friction that they sparked into a volcano, and the whole earth rearranged, dancily.

And that's just going there a couple nights a week. Like some community college gig, except now I have my own badge and login and everything. And, just like the community college -- and the Wikipedia, and Nureyev, and 1700 and PARC -- I am falling in love.

So fun, to be this young. To be this old. This wild. To be alive at this time, in this river of high stakes and creation.

Teresa and Terrence were bemused that I kept going back to work. They would always find me and Ben at work. "We are not used to people who are so passionate about their work."

For passion, I need whiteboards, webcomics, a sparkling array of brains, and no leash.

Well, that's ONE thing I need.

****************************************************************8
[A couple hours later.]

This post is the first picture of the integrated me. Where games and dance and comics and family and DigiPen and Microsoft and theatre are all mixed up together in one Jumbalaya Rachel, and liking the flavor.

I am finally becoming the person I always hoped I'd be.

this is heaven

2008-04-12T21:26:00.001-07:00

sitting at a fast computer
warm air on my feet
the window open
cool night air pouring over my face
frogs creaking

pepperoni pizza, hot buttered corn, chocolate chip cookies waiting

a whole night to write
after sleeping all day

this is heaven

this year felt three years long -- from I to we

2008-04-11T14:06:00.001-07:00

In the last 12 months I:

- helped ship Solitaire In Motion for the Web
- shipped Hop It! for the Web
- shipped Firefly demo for Surface
- did Art planning for Fable 2 PubGames for Xbox 360
- went through 6 reorgs in 12 months, losing most of our people
- underwent the dissolution of Carbonated Games
- team-taught as a booted team w/Ben & Chris at DigiPen
- saw the DigiPen games catch fire
- executive-produced 22 games by 80 developers at DigiPen
- led a Bootcamp appetizer for Joshua with several booted guests
- co-led a Bootcamp for Octo, a French software company
- paid off over $28,000 in personal debt & all credit cards
- had my old car die, bought a newer old car
- bought a new Franklin and three beautiful bags
- started looking into Goddard's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts
- met Teresa & Terrence, changed my view of what is possible
- connected more deeply with Lyon and Cecilia
- practiced the alignments of Faith, and Valuing Myself
- discovered girls nights out & Twice Sold Tales with Larissa
- had Jeff leave for college
- sponsored Urban Research Theatre & Beacon Hill Arts Center
- discovered Emerald City Scene, a young theatre/film company
- had 4 software companies spring up around me
- set up a new computer at home and a Mac for my mom
- met my brother & niece on their college-research trip
- helped with nearly 30 resumes, internships, & jobs

This the year I went from an "I" to a "we". From feeling isolated to feeling connected but teenagerly awkward at it.

Working with Jason last year was the start of this. It was scalding to again and again realize that my way or my thought was not necessarily the best; and nor was his. It was only the back-and-forth that got us to the good stuff. It is the same with Ben, Chris, and me. Now I don't even think, I just reach for their brains. Any two of us thinking together are not even in the same league as the three of us. Without Ben, we don't have the steady forward pouring of goodness, integrity, strength, joy. Without Chris, we don't have the swift rigor, laughter, love, the furnace of creation. Without me, we don't have magic, danger, transformational growth, art. Game, tech, team. Game designer, architect, theatre director. Wizard, sorceror, shaman.

This is why it had such a big impact when Joshua left. He was reflexively good at the connection. He kept reaching out and connecting with all of us. I tried, after he left, but felt like a thin-filament tracery of what had been a thick & thriving circulatory system.

I have taken a few weeks off. I am home now and sleeping a lot. With each day of sleep, my strength & spirit return. I feel like spring -- fragile, new.

The games created by the DigiPen programmers are stunning. This year was dreamlike, where at Microsoft the department fell apart in slow-motion around us, while at DigiPen everything we touched flourished.

This is how it happens. The cedar falls, and from its stump sprout huckleberry, ferns, salal.

this is the purpose of a wave, v1.5

2008-04-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

do not mourn the wave
that crests and breaks
this is the purpose of a wave

I eat fresh tomatoes, avocado, white cheddar cheese from Ireland

I am the hope
lost for three years
of a new way of choruses

I am the seed
born in three years
of unknowable combustion

Listen:
Only train the ones who want it
Train them all, only a few will go deep
You cannot know who will emerge as the Ones
It is not your job to know
It is your job to answer to the Ones
to be dragged to strange and tender greatness
by their hunger
for learning
for blue-grid tilt-maps, auto-generated subtitles, clouds of pink debugging visualization lights, specular playthroughs, for wikis and basecamps and commits, for scrums, and nature walks, and will you please be more prepared, and thursdays is the only time we matter, you can't miss thursdays
for one yellow clothbound book on computational fluid-dynamics
for enough hard problems please oh god for me
for not to waste their lives
for formal shy silent patient insistence on my presence
not like actors at all
except in their wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting to be more
their willingness to devote all their waking hours
if only
someone would show
the strange elusive path

i know the path
but not from this direction
we dowse together

struggling
in our native tongues
a discourse marked by shocks, rudeness, missed connections
shot with wonder

they explain the separating axis theorem
the filigreed math
how the physics works, the bounding boxes and collision detection
why all the physics breaks
how the GPS works, and the phone, and the debugger
and i say
you matter
that is not good enough
that is not good enough
that is not good enough
that is better
you have one thing to do in the remaining three weeks, which is you must design a series of revelations to lead the player into your game
i am very proud of you
you are like lions or like clydesdales

they are like moonlight

this is the purpose of a wave

yet i am still the hope
of a new way of choruses
which is different now
because i have learned to write a thing and do it
because i have colleagues
who can do things
i don't even understand

and i have given up
on them understanding mine

we just go together
down the Ways we each can see

blind
blind
blind
growing more strange, more trusting, powerful, remote

and every tuesday at 11pm
a bacon cheeseburger with a side of ranch
an IBC rootbeer float and a double-burger with no bun
a blue-cheese burger with no onion straws & no steak sauce
a strawberry lemonade and a chocolate shake, coffee when the meal comes
and oh do you have some napkins we could write on

this is the purpose of a wave

facebook

2007-11-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

You can also find me on facebook.com. Just look up "Rachel Rutherford" and invite me to be friends.

Rachel's poetry

2007-10-29T17:06:00.001-07:00

I made a new blog over my vacation: Rachel Rutherford Poetry

Most of these are chained haiku -- each verse is a haiku, and the overall poem itself also has the same kind of space in it, a leap. Other forms used are sestinas, sonnets, metered, and free-verse.

I pulled out poems from 8 blogs. The categories are listed down the side. To see all the poems, click All. To see just the good ones, click _Good ones. These are in reverse chronological order, most recent first. Some are dated, most not. This blog does not include poems written on paper, or any poems earlier than 2004.

Rachel's resume

2007-10-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

I updated my resume for DigiPen. It looks like this. Not very traditional, but a cheerful description of games, theatre, and the Core.

an architecture of light

2007-09-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Phillip Gerard, in How to Write a Book That Makes A Difference says building a novel is like building a cathedral. The main problems are to figure out 1) how to get it to stay up, and 2) how to make it have light.

"The problem is to build an architecture of light," he says.

He says both structures involve building an intricate scaffolding, which in the end is dismantled and no one sees.

And that you build a novel, like a cathedral, twice. The first time through is just to get a structure that stays up. The second time is to give it light. He says you cannot tell what your novel is, or how to give it light, until you have that first whole structure in place.

making while teaching while studying

2007-09-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

I love being in the center of three intersecting circles, where I am:

making the thing in one arena, while
teaching how to make it in another arena, while
studying how to make it in a third arena.

In 2001 I was:

directing Medea, while
teaching acting in my BCC class, while
studying directing in Bart Sher's Directing Lab.

I was studying rehearsal, while rehearsing, while teaching how to rehearse. In these intensive-growth phases, I stop writing. I am changing so fast I can't monitor. I feel guyed and stayed, gyroscopically stable at the nexus of forces. I feel in my right place in the universe. In this state, I am the map. As soon as I see it, the light sparks and fissions through my interior map, instantly reforming it, and reforming me. This dissemination of light, reformation of the map & self, continues while I sleep.

In 2007:

I am making a game at Microsoft
while teaching how to make games at DigiPen
while studying how to make games from Jason Mai and others

My unconscious is fed so much fantastic coherent stimulus, it's as if it were getting fed pure dream. It is incredibly, complexly efficient.

For one with eyes to read the subtext, Efreinov was right -- the best plays in the world take place in real life. Gorgeous, haunting, dripping, resonant, full-grown, feral, wide-awake humans in play. I hear the scenes and the subscenes while I am in them.

Theatre is circles of Feeler-Actors: people who take action, and who feel, both kinesthetically and emotionally. Game-creation is circles of Thinker-Makers. People who think, and who make in the image of their thought.

Feeler-Actors understand layers of evocation. Thinker-Makers understand levels of abstraction. I am both. Innately, more of a Feeler-Mover, but enough of a Thinker-Maker to be addicted to insight and learning.

Thinking, feeling, touching, and moving are implementation-free. Theatre and games are nearly implementation-free; almost as light as it gets. Built from thought, movement, action, light, electricity, sand, plants, and water.

Eugenio Barba says every artist who goes far in his own practice, develops specific terms that are necessary for that practice, that arise from it, that precisely describe it -- and that these terms are often inscrutable to outsiders.

To find the picture above, illustrating intersecting circles of game creation, I googled for "x,y,z, 3D". I didn't find anything, but it led me to a beautiful mindmap. I gave up on x,y,z and started researching mindmaps. Deep in the mindmaps, I stumbled across the perfect x,y,z illustration; it was a picture of a gamebox.

Synchronicity? Nexus of forces? Intersection.

perhaps my words, books,
insights from lean sages -- are
things all parents know

I think and feel, make
software games and theatre --
fluent, translating

integration is
a remorseless journey -- not
one thing can be saved

except the memory
of how to make a sword,
of the swordmaster

A lie creates drama

2007-09-15T22:16:00.001-07:00

A lie creates drama.
Two truths are the source of drama.

Ten cities in ten years

2007-08-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

I met a guy who is living in 10 cities in 10 years. Seattle is his third. "Every May I pack up and move," he said. "I give myself June & July to make friends. Then I pick a job and settle in." Las Vegas and Chicago came before. San Francisco is next.

"How do you pick the cities?" I asked. "However," he said. "I'm young. That's why I can do this now." "I feel the same," I said, "Because I'm not young."

home

2007-07-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

When Jeff moved out, I did too. I stopped going home much, spent most of my time at work or with friends, and moved everything I cared about to my office.

With Dorothy moving in, I notice I am starting to gravitate back home. I took my plants home. I set up a computer at home. I am gradually beginning to set up two bases for myself, rather than only using work for everything.

I think I am essentially nomadic. That my sense of home is tied to people, not to place.

games as art, DigiPen student games

2007-07-21T22:24:00.001-07:00

The DigiPen students in GAT 400 had 11 weeks to learn XNA & C# and build a game prototype. We asked them to build their games around "One Cool Thing."

One = focus
Cool = desire
Thing = it exists, you shipped it

They chose:

Jetpacks
Deformable terrain
A specific classic arcade game, built from scratch
Bullet patterns
Every country in the world
Jump physics
Phototropism
Helicopter modeling
Color subtraction
Cooking recipes
Target practice
Control-matching
Music-driven battle mechanics
Music-driven procedurally-generated terrain
Puzzle combat
3D flythroughs

It didn't matter what they picked. What mattered was that it was a) specific, and b) sprang from desire.

The process went like this.

1. Start
2. Code appears
3. The game starts to emerge
4. Keep building
5. Some Really Fun Unanticipated Thing appears
6. Veer to follow that
7. Tidy up what's there -- splash, art, audio, UI, menus, dialogs

What made it art is: They would veer to follow what was emerging. Art is the search. The dialogue with one's creation.

On our game at work, we have done a faithful job: pursued the mechanic, sculpted it into a cheerful, workable game. But at its heart, our game does not spring from someone's specific desire & longing. It's the difference between "This guy" and "This guy with whom I am strangely fascinated."

Desire. Specificity.

work, computer at home

2007-07-21T00:33:00.000-07:00

Work is hard right now. Lots of new stuff, lots of deliverables and learning curves, as we drive toward shipping. Hard, but straight on my spiritual path.

Over a thousand people have played our game. Their comments form a murmur of humanity. Love it. Hate it. My type of game. Not my type of game. What's that little white thing? I don't get how lives work. Can I play this on my phone? Hey, check out my high score.

It is Saturday, July 21, as I am editing this. I am sitting at home, having just set up my computer. I have not had a computer at home for a year. Adding a computer is like adding a window.

update, green fruits as big as cantaloupes

2007-07-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

My DigiPen class is finishing up. We see the final presentations of the games tomorrow. Pretty exciting. This is like being in a sorceror's art class -- it's hard work, like sorcery, but the end result is art. The students have no clue how good they are, how pure, how innovative, how disciplined, how strong.

I just finished taking two courses from Excellence Seminars, The Pursuit of Excellence & The Wall. "Seminars that inspire & support you to do, be, & have more of what you want."

My new roommate and I are settling in well. Jeff, my old roommate, got accepted at Washington State University, and has moved to Pullman to study poetry.

Work for the past year has been a demanding spiritual practice. Completing each spiritual phase reveals the next. This phase, the end-game of shipping a product, requires day-by-day spiritual practice. It never gets easier. It just keeps getting more granular, more attentive, more revelatory, more plain. It is a lot like physical theatre, in that regard. "The floor is my best teacher," says Roberta Carreri of the Odin Teatret. Here, "The game is my best teacher."

green fruits as big as
cantaloupes bow Maui trees --
imminent sweetness

a flower of flowers
in the lei of leis -- moon
hangs molten yellow

there is no splash like
this one Now! Here! Let cool salt
waters silk your hair

if the day was spent
in sand, let evening seas wash
over you -- say Yes

a general store, a theatre

2007-06-04T00:42:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who bought an old general store, built in 1915, which he is gradually rebuilding into a beautiful 50-seat theatre. And by beautiful, I mean shaped for theatre -- original high brick wall as the backdrop, original barn-flooring for the stage, and cupped intimate hearth-like seats. The most perfect space for Chekhov I have ever seen.

Today I went and helped move lights. Today he put in two windows, a back porch, and cleared out the front "store" area. Our efforts don't really compare, but I like being part of it.

In this prosaic difficult fashion, a theatre is being born.

teaching XNA & the Core at DigiPen

2007-05-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

I am co-teaching a game programming class in XNA, C#, and XNA Game Studio Express this summer at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. DigiPen is an up-and-coming conservatory for games, offering degrees in:

Associate of Applied Arts in 3D Computer Animation
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Production Animation
Bachelor of Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation
Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering
Master of Science in Computer Science

I am co-teaching with Ben Ellinger. Ben is teaching the programming part, I am teaching team techniques drawn from the Core protocols & theatre. Ben & I are a booted team, so teaching together is bootstrapping us at several levels. This summer class is preparation for the big 9-month game class that starts in the fall.

Shared vision: Wind transforming into heaven: Become the quality without a name
Ben's alignment: Passion
Rachel's alignment: Love
Class goal: Using the Core protocols, XNA, & C#, build a great game.
Focus: Focus on *one* aspect that you optimize for greatness.
Structure: Every week, 1) a technical lecture, 2) protocol work, and 3) versioning & perfecting the games. The final week, present games to an audience. Three guest lecturers on special topics.
Collaboration: Students can work on teams or alone; or on multiple teams.

UPDATE: A week later we added Chris Peters as a third co-instructor.
Chris's alignment: Love

50 years, 50 teachers

2007-05-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

This week of turning 50, I honor 50 of my teachers.

1. Mother, Joan Rutherford. "For work, buy an olive-green wool suit from Canada. Do what you say you'll do, when you said you'll do it. If you have to take personal time, take it at 11:30."
Work hard.

2. Father, George Rutherford. "Anything you want to learn, you can find in a book."
Play hard.

3. Brother. "It's not how many situps you do, it's how slow you do them. Then it's how many."
Love your kids.

4. Niece. "No matter how bad a day you've had, dance class will make it better."
Keep trying.

5. Actor, Rick Hoge. "To buy a flowering cherry, use the nursery the landscapers use."
Devour beauty.

6. Philosophy teacher, Patt Hawthorne. "A haiku is not just 17 syllables. A haiku is 17 syllables and the space for god."
Write in your journal every day.

7. Chemistry teacher, Jerry Bennett. "If the math is too hard, fiddle with it till it gets easy."
Science & math are easy.

8. Ballet master, Wendy Shankin Metzger. "Move your back back. Keep your knees over your ankles. In arabesque, let the back move."
If you dance all day all summer, you can catch up with the others.

9. Margaret Knowles Conrad. "Men are beautiful."
Love.

10. Writer, Madeline L'Engle. "Size doesn't matter. A mitochondria, a cherubim, a girl, a man, a black snake, and a galaxy are the same."
Think big, wonder bigger.

11. Writer, Rumer Godden. "'Pax,' it said, carved in a crown of thorns on the stone gate to Brede Abbey. Note, it is 'Not the world's peace, but My own I give to you'."
Seek the divine.

12. Drummer & marine biologist, Jeff Parkhurst. "I don't even remember that Emerson Lake and Palmer solo. But my body does."
Play music your whole life.

13. Network architect, Ken Harrenstien. "If you grow up in Hawaii, no place else is ever as lovely."
Be as smart as you are.

14. Saxophonist, Mark Friend. "Have sex, water-ski, rehearse, work. That's a good day."
Create good days.

15. Computer scientist, Robert Poor. "Look at how this code is structured and commented."
Beauty is integral.

16. Software test engineer, John Dimmick. "Nibble. Do a little bit every day on a big project."
Do chores Saturdays, take Sundays off.

17. Art director, Jerome Domurat, "Tools affect the process."
Your job is to learn how to do your job.

18. Computer scientist, Adele Goldberg. "If people ask whether you will edit technical journal papers for money or for free, always say for money. The papers will be better."
Bring your twins to work.

19. Ice hockey coach, Dick Hocking. "Let's not get hurt out there."
There is such a thing as a bad day, and that's when injuries happen.

20. Suzuki master, Robyn Hunt. "Move without disturbing the air."
Your body knows how.

21. Drawing teacher, Michaele leCompte. "Art is not about what it looks like. Turn off the lights and draw."
Every drawing is beautiful.

22. Theatre director, Bart Sher. "Explode the symbol. Keep unpacking the meaning."
Don't use one chair on stage, use seventy-five.

23. The Oracle of Obsessed With Sodoku. "Look for patterns. When you start to solve things in one area, it will spread. You will start to solve things in other areas more easily."
Go meta.

24. Chef & painter, Radmila Sarac. "If the food is not good, the whole event is not good."
Everything counts.

25. Actor and painter, Kris Strong. "You have got to be in character. As yourself in your livingroom. As your character on stage.
You are scrupulously protected by your ethics.

26. Software program manager, Lyon Wong. "All you need is one."
Commit.

27. Master therapist, Jim Rapson. "One of the hallmarks of organic growth is, we never see it coming."
Persist.

28. Painter and illustrator, Shane White. "Work out every day."
Love your body.

29. Computer scientist, Danny Hillis. "Go to your lab and make stuff.'
It is fun to be a grown-up.

30. Writer & physician, Anton Chekhov. "Only the truth can heal. Only the truth can cure."
Be tender.

31. Actor, Mark Williams. "Being in the Special Forces and making theatre are about equally hard."
Shakespeare has power.

32. Master calligrapher, Thomas Ingmire. "Calligraphy is mark-making."
Make your mark.

33. Concert pianist, David Kaiserman. "We will spend the next two months only on how to drop your arm onto the keyboard."
Start at the beginning.

34. Mathematician, Bill Gosper, "Sometimes I write letters that are nothing but equations."
With friends you can go faster.

35. Theatre director, Konstantin Stanislavski. "Everything is easy once you are in the zone. The trick is how to get in the zone."
Keep experimenting.

36. Choreographer & Olympic athlete, Lee Eisler. "Don't bore me."
The transitions are the dance.

37. Theatre music director, Peter Sills. "If the actors can't sing it, slow it down until they can sing it five times in a row."
The only way out is through.

38. Teamwork Researcher, Jim McCarthy. "The unconscious never makes a mistake, especially when it is painting."
Trust your intuition.

39. Teamwork Researcher, Michele McCarthy. "If you only got one thing out of this week, and that one thing was to learn to Ask For Help, that would be $5,000 well spent."
Take what works and feed it back into the system.

40. Painter, Wes Hurley. "You look very bad in this portrait right now. You will look much worse before I finish."
Change your last name to match your partner's.

41. Singer, Bono. "When I started talking to world leaders to save Africa, I didn't know how. So I studied Martin Luther King."
Ask for help. Study people who are good at it.

42. Theatre music director, Zhenya Lavy. "I can teach anyone to sing." Her actors can start singing at the same instant, in far corners of the stage, while doing acrobatics, with no pitch given, in perfect tune.
Excellence is the only option.

43. Theatre director, Joseph Lavy. "This piece of the text is a Latin prayer. It is pronounced like this. It means this. It is sung like this.'
Prepare thoroughly before the actors even enter. Put it in your body, then put it in theirs.

44. Theatre director, Leonid Anisimov. "Affect the space first."
Look to Nature.

45. Game designer, John Miller. "Try to get your problems to converge."
Solve it fast. Solve it again. Version the solutions.

46. Game designer, Ben Ellinger. "Injecting stimulus and energy into a closed system increases the likelihood & frequency of phase shifts."
Going fast is more fun.

47. Computer scientist, Eric Fleegal. "Faith is the seed of all recursions."
Relish complexity. Embrace spirituality.

48. Games manager, Joshua Howard. "Regularly broadcast state, to stabilize the org."
Love in all directions.

49. Software architect, Jason Mai. "Your brain will unfold it all for you. Just give it time."
Look at everything at 4 levels of meta. Then slow down and look again.

50. Big wave surfer, Laird Hamilton. "You don't surf the big waves alone. For the big waves, you need a team."
Do the art you love. Joyously. Safely. Uncompromisingly. With your friends. Boom! Bim! Bam! Boom!

No wonder I am resonating to Laird. Laird embodies the teachings of my mom, my dad, my brother, and myself:
Work hard. Play hard. Love your kids. Do the art you love, with your friends.

Laird Hamilton, big wave surfer

2007-05-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

I have been studying Laird Hamilton, the best big-wave surfer in the world. He sees surfing as an art-form. He has evolved his sport to the point where it now requires a team on jet-skis, and he has begun creating new kinds of boards.

Laird Hamilton

Laird on most massive wave ever surfed, Teahupoo, Tahiti 2000

Laird on the red dirt road to Peahi, his home break in Maui

Laird with wife, pro volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, & daughter Reece

Laird and Gabby horsing around

Laird in his shop

Laird is resonating to me for several reasons.

1. He looks like my brother. They are both outdoorsmen; at ease with tools and nature; in their 40's; in lifelong good shape.

2. I feel like him. The fascination he has with waves, I have with people's emergent transformation while creating art. Transfixing, massive, swift, deadly waves.

3. He is a full-grown man.

4. The thing he loves doesn't pay. He has figured out how to make it pay. Just go far enough, smart enough, safe enough, uncompromisingly enough, with a committed team.

You don't surf the big waves alone. For the big waves, you need a team.

-- Laird Hamilton

5. He married someone equally striking and unusual and had a baby. This is a bigger wave than the ocean.

6. When I look at him, I see the athlete I am becoming.

new do

2007-05-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

I switched to a new and different blog template. Updated my profile. This template lets me categorize posts.

Solitaire In Motion ships

2007-05-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Our game has shipped! Solitaire In Motion is now available free, as an online web game for the PC. It is a languid, drifting, simple variation of regular solitaire. Go here to play it on games.msn.com, in the Card & Board category.

Unlike most solitaire games, you don't have to play red on black. You can play any color on any color. Click special float-by bonuses for more points.

This initial version is a special limited-edition featuring Wal-Mart's sponsorship. Later versions will go back to being the plain game.

I like Languid Mode for its music, Active Mode for its run-building. Sometimes I open the game to Languid Mode and let it run, just to hear the classical guitar play. Stan LePard is the composer & guitarist. Shortly after recording this lovely intimate soundtrack for us, Stan flew to Prague to record a whole orchestra playing another of his compositions for a different videogame.

Also, here is an interview about Solitaire In Motion with its Executive Producer, Jason Mai. We have similar jobs, so reading this -- especially for my family -- will give a better feel for what I do at work.

Click here to download the game & begin.

Two ways to play & a Tutorial. Click Carbonated Games logo to see credits.

The main game. Click floating cards to build runs on the draw pile.

The credits float by, too. These are some of the team members.

africa africa africa africa africa africa africa

2007-05-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

I just read the latest in Alexander McCall's mystery series, The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency. After the last sentence, it says:

africa
africa africa
africa africa africa
africa africa
africa

That is why these books are so popular. At their heart is love -- love of Africa, of Botswanaland, of acacia trees and bush tea and sky.

These books are a trickle of soft. When Africa is in our hearts, we will take care of her. Because then Africa is me, here, in the book I will pass on to my mother about the traditionally-built lady detective, and her assistant wearing shiny maroon-with-bows resignation shoes.

To have people care for the theatre, say the Odin, You must give it to them.

snowy road

2007-01-12T23:46:00.000-08:00

My road looks like this. Has all week.

If 2006 was the year of dreaming & rooting, 2007 feels like the year of waking up. Reality feels bright and close.

Witness to the Odin

2007-01-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share this comment on my "Odin Posts" and my reply.

john hunter said...
Hi Rachel,

I'm a student at Royal Holloway University, London, and I just thought I'd write to say thank you for sharing your wonderful experiences on the Odin with us in this beautifully written and thoughtful blog.

Your experiences have been the source for a lot of my research on the Odin, and your personal touch and reflections have been infinitely more useful to me than any text book.

Thank you for sharing!

John
Student, London
7:06 AM

Rachel Rutherford said...
John --

Thank you. I have read about Royal Holloway. I love that the spirit of the Odin is touching you, and thus, them. May the touch and spirit and truth-in-bodies of the Odin spread from you further, like ripples in a net of light.

Eugenio's books kept me alive for three years. When I felt most desperate or isolated, I would read his writings. His search, his craving for the search, and his commitment to the search, comforted me.

Roberta Carrerri said, at the beginning of Odin Week, "We have invited you here to witness the Odin. So you know this has existed."

To witness.

You, too, are becoming a witness of the Odin. I encourage you, if it feels right, to attend an Odin Week and experience the transmission directly. The Odin will not be here forever; theatres, like performances, are ephemeral.

May you continue to follow your path faithfully, wherever it leads.

rachel
12:12 PM

Happy holidays

2006-12-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays and a peaceful new year.

what a year

2006-11-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

I am having a year like my first year in theatre. Where I was completely absorbed, and could not get enough of THIS... even without really being able to describe what "this" was.

Looking back, I say, "That was my first year of theatre." At the time, I just knew I was studying acting, writing a play, taking improv & movement & clown & mask, producing a festival, directing a play, producing Leonid's troupe's visit, and going to Russia to see the Moscow Art Theatre on its 100th anniversary.

This year, since March, has been just like that. Booting, working on a booted team, connecting with the McCarthys, setting up the next bootcamp.

Slow good work, at an extremely rapid pace.

resting on a Sunday, bee, corpus christi carol

2006-10-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my office. It is clean, silent, empty; Sunday night, 8:37pm.

No, says my inner self. No work tonight.

Instead, I've been listening to Kelly Joe Phelps play the blues while driftily browsing. I have read about perfect numbers; the theory of relativity; how to calculate your net worth; Naropa's buddhism-based MA in Divinity; Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujiah" in concert; a library of essential dlls; photos of Devon marshes & moors; the ruined abbey & crypt at York; Venice's red roofs & stone waterside doorsteps; and the inside of Andrew & Gennie's new house.

My underconscious is chewing on something. Not work.

This is the first rest I've had in weeks. I wonder why today is so restful.

I think because this phase has finished, and the winds are coming. My projects are in hand, the nights are icy, my relationships are cleaning up. Even the earth has shifted; it's winter now, and all my windows are open.

Cold air sheeting through, two loads of laundry done, dishes washed, oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies baked, fresh tunafish with purple cabbage chilling in the fridge. I visit my mom next weekend.

Even my bones are relaxed.

--------------

Someday you will meet something that brings you to your knees, says Natalie Goldberg. And you will finally find your voice.

Theatre was that for me. I think intimacy, the intimacy I am now capable of, will do it again.

I took a quiz recently that asked, "How often do men 10 years older than you hit on you?" The answer is almost never. But men 10 to 20 years younger, all the time.

I find that when my days are full of theatre, I am liquid in technique; steeped in the difficulty of how bodies move and light falls, of how two people touch. Times like now, though, I know what theatre is about. The currents & complexities, intimacies & strangenesses at work illuminate Shakespeare's courts. It's never black and white. It's always interconnected, shaded, incongruous. Small fierce intact weather systems, marked with grace.

--------------

Today a yellow-jacket flew in my open dining-room window. Lumbering, mazed with cold, it buzzed and crawled on the window pane, heading away from the open air. I tried to shoo it out with a sheet of paper. It buzzed angrily and headed even more determinedly the wrong direction.

I cupped the paper a couple inches behind it. As I watched, it suddenly stopped buzzing and began furiously to wash its nose and face. I was reminded exactly of an old woman who, rushed and flurried, stops for a cup of tea and to powder her face.

I waited while the old-lady bee finished her toilet and got calm again. Then I slid the paper next to her, so she had to step backwards onto it. I poked it out the window and she sailed off. Or he; who knows with bees.

I'm heading home. I'll leave you with Jeff keening the Corpus Christi Carol. First read the lyrics below. Then click the link, lie down, shut your eyes, and let him sing to you.

He bare her off, he bare her down
He bare her into an orchard ground

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

And in this orchard there was a hold
That was hanged with purple and gold
And in that hold there was a bed
And it was hanged with gold so red

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

And on this bed there lyeth a knight
His wound is bleeding day and night
By his bedside kneeleth a maid
And she weepeth both night and day

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

By his bedside standeth a stone
Corpus christi written thereon

-- Old English, arranged by Benjamin Britten for male soprano, sung by Jeff Buckley

a teacher made of mud

2006-10-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

Ever read The Mahabharata? There's a story about a boy who wants to be a warrior. He goes and finds a teacher but the teacher keeps putting him off. So the boy builds a copy of the teacher made of mud and he washes it every day, and he learns to do his thing. And the whole symbolism is that the teacher is inside. I made teachers out of Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, Dylan, Judy Garland. I learned about phrasing, pitch, everything.

-- Jeff Buckley, 1993

Some of my teachers are made of mud. See-through mud. Jeff Buckley is one of my teachers made of mud.

I have a Eugenio from his books, made of mud of sun and moonlight. I have a Eugenio who is a sharp, present man in sandals, blinking and watching the actors.

tracking mastery, Jeff Buckley

2006-10-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

The first year of theatre, I was soaking & changing beyond recognition -- but it wasn't until a year later, when I began teaching, that anyone could see the change.

Right now at work is like that. Working on a booted team, I am absorbing task and product like they are the hidden word of god. My dreams are changing. My project is changing. My relationships. My perspective.

Alan Watts, one of the first western writers of Zen, says in his autobiography, "I have written 20 books, and they all lead to the same place. Each one starts from a different point on the hub, follows a different spoke to the center."

The easiest way for me to show what I'm learning would be to give examples from my work projects, which I can't do.

What can I tell you.

I work seven days a week. Sometimes I make myself stay away on Saturdays, but when I do, I pace for hours, thinking about work.

I track the work itself. But mostly I focus on the first derivative of the work -- on how the mastery of this compares to & informs the mastery of theatre directing & theCore/bootcamps. Any shift or illumination in one system ripples & radiates through two others. It is these systemic insights that are keeping me riveted.

I love talking to my brother; his masteries are of fishing, boats, wilderness, oceans, and children.

I am reading Jeff Buckley's biography. Jeff's story is like a Greek tragedy or a commedia -- I can scroll backward and forward, from laughing blond child with eidetic music memory, to the man vanishing in the undertow of the Mississippi river. Backward -- silver spandex pants at his first high-school gig. Forward -- renting a Memphis house to write in. Backward -- taking breaks from working at the cafe to get up & perform, crowds spilling into the street. Forward -- Half hour Kanga Roo jams at the end of each concert.

Backwards. Forwards.

My death awaits me as surely as my birth. Between, I balance on this green moment.

Backwards: Working in Carbonated Games, just after she had moved into that new office. Listening to country music that night she was lonely, when Jason, Joshua, Rich, & Brett were out of town.

When Jeff Buckley sings he transfigures, an artist lost in the labyrinth of the song, finding his way inward & upward to the holy end. Lost, lost, lost, true, true, true.

It looks like what I am doing is creating software, but actually I am following a Song as alluring and mysterious as Jeff Buckley's.

It is 1:00am. I am stopping now. I will write two project status reports, a group status, a monthly update, and a project doc before I go home. Today has already had 9 hours of meetings and writing three other docs. Tomorrow begins in 6 hours.

Whatever feels like prayer, I like to do constantly.

On my left hang the Medicine Buddha thangka painting; an iron tibetan gong engraved with conches; a photo of a prayer room with Jerusalem buildings painted on its wooden walls, its crossbeams overhead latticed with wisteria, open to the sky; and a picture of my last bootcamp's v1 painting that looks like primordial interstellar fire.

you are made in the image of what you desire

2006-10-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

-- Thomas Merton, Trappist monk

the Tarot said November

2006-10-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

On my birthday I got a tarot reading for the upcoming year. The general arc was: "May through October is about integrity; doing the right thing, which will also be the hard thing. November it all comes together -- everything flowers in November."

working hard, growing lots

2006-10-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

I am spending 90% of my attention and time at work. Working hard, growing lots, never home. Getting strong.

a tree in my livingroom

2006-10-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

Friday they trimmed the branches by the powerlines. I found a magnificent vinemaple, as large as a small tree. Its trunk is the girth of a flagpole, spreading gracefully into 4 or 5 branches of delicate small Japanese-maple-like leaves, reaching 15 feet high and 18 feet wide.

I have been having this vision lately that my inner self -- whom I often visualize as a house -- has sprouted a tree from its floor, is peeling its roof back, and is growing the tree up through the center of the house toward the sky.

I couldn't wait to try it out.

I brought the tree inside, and did slowtens carrying it for two hours.

I felt like Dunsinane woods incarnate. When I moved, the whole tree moved with me, leaves trembling. Looking up, I gazed through a crown of leaves. Tadashi Suzuki says, When you turn, turn the whole world with your spine. I turned like a flower opening, mesmerized, watching the tree wheel above me, my house insubstantial behind it, for the length of a CD.

After a while I stood the tree in a bowl of water, standing upright against the cathedral windows. It is almost two stories high. Then I did slowtens inside it looking out; entwining between its branches; lowering until I was lying on the floor gazing up through its leaves. I saw:

- two leafy branches in the foreground; beyond them, dappled with leaves, my wall of theatre books. The tree looked real, the books looked like a dream. Like standing in green Narnia, looking back through the wardrobe
- a tree inside a window inside more trees
- a tree more real than my house, bursting with life inside the house
- a tree more real than my art table, standing stiff & pale beyond the leaves

It was the first theatre I have made in a long time. How do I put the spectator inside a tree? Can the spectators be Dunsinane? From which vantages does a tree retain this incredible impact? What would be better than a tree? How could I imperil a greek chorus?

A day later, the leaves had lost their fragrance. Two days later, they crisp and droop.

Last night I made art for hours, listening to U2's Rattle & Hum video over and over, drawing myself as a flowering tree.

I am working at the meta level almost constantly. Work projects and home ones look translucent, as if they are part of a play I don't realize I am creating, but which is shimmering into being.

Burn team

2006-10-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have a friend, Danielle, who acted in my Medea a few years back. She works a lot in Seattle, and has since also become part of a professional burn team. If your movie or outdoor event needs someone, a professional stuntperson, to be set on fire, you can hire their team. She is the one who burns -- who is dowsed and set alight. There are four other people on the team, each with specific responsibilities to make sure the fire is safe, and that she is. The worst that has ever happened is once she singed her eyelashes.

An actor's resume has:

- all their stage roles
- all their film roles
- any backstage, design, or tech roles
- education & training
- Special Skills

The Special Skills section gives directors an idea of the actor's unique skills. If the actor can play guitar, for example, or juggle, the director might put those in the production.

The audience often does not realize how much training actors have. Here is the Special Skills section of Danielle's resume.

Special Skills
Singing, scuba diving (cold water/drysuit, wreck diving, rescue diving), swimming, footfalls, fire burns, stair falls, air ram, fighting for the camera or stage, high falls, bulldogging, ratchet work, riding jet skis, intermediate Spanish language, typing, computers, trapeze/aerial dance, horseback riding, skiing, softball, volleyball, yoga, dog training, basic wire work.

Passed basic proficiency with the Society of American Fight Directors in single sword and unarmed combat (2003), smallsword, broadsword, rapier and dagger, knife fighting (2004), and Quarterstaff (2005).

Her amount of stunt training is specialized & unique -- but almost any actor you see at the Rep or the Intiman likely holds similar Fight certification.

what are slow tens & shakuhachis?

2006-10-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Suzuki training with sticks

This is a brief overview -- a glimpse, not a full description.

Suzuki Training is a physical theatre training created by theatre director, Tadashi Suzuki. From the SITI, Saratoga International Theatre Institute site whose artistic director, Anne Bogart, is a long-time colleague of Tadashi Suzuki's:

SUZUKI METHOD
Developed by internationally acclaimed director, Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki Company of Toga, the Suzuki Actor Training Method's principal concern is with restoring the wholeness of the human body to the theatrical context and uncovering the actor's innate expressive abilities. A rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Japanese and Greek theater and martial arts, the training seeks to heighten the actor's emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on the stage. Attention is on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening the actor's breath control and concentration.

Slowtens are essentially a form of radiant ultra-slow walking. You only do these after you are dripping with sweat from an hour of hard physical movement. Like classical ballet floorwork, which is only begun after an hour of barre, slowtens are only done after the body is supple and hot from an hour of Walking, Marching, and Statues.

When you see people doing slowtens, they look like driftwood moving. Their glances are fixed, their gaze luminous, their bodies caught in windswept positions. They seem to not so much wade through space, as drift through it. They move like underwater statues. You want to, and can, examine the actors very closely when they are in such a state. They are like a suspended moment of a person, transfixing.

Slowtens used in performance

Robyn Hunt, my Suzuki teacher, in slowtens in The Water Station

Moving inside this form makes your thoughts as radiant and slow as the movement. You are not thinking, but slow truths arise.

Don't think, don't think, don't think. Don't know, don't know, don't know. Don't think.

One point of the training is that power for an actor arises from the earth. Connected to the earth, an actor can do anything.

Another point is to learn how to let the truth arise in each moment. Don't plan. Don't know before you get there. The truth of each moment discovered in that moment is far more wondrous and real than any forethought.

If you can learn to move this way, you can learn to live on stage, and in the world.

Performers at the end of a shakuhachi

Shakuhachis -- so-called because the song to which this part of the training is taught is played on the shakuhachi bamboo flute -- are the same ultra-slow-mo, moment-to-moment movement, but these begin with the actor lying collapsed on the floor.

When the music starts, the actor 1) slowly oozes upward to standing, 2) drifts to the front edge of the stage, 3) drifts back, and 4) sinks infinitesimally slowly all the way back to the earth. Extremely difficult and exacting.

As Roberta Carerri of the Odin says and Robyn Hunt, my Suzuki teacher, would agree, "A fall of even a millimetre is a fall."

Medea was a Highwayman

2006-10-07T03:40:00.000-07:00

I did slowtens last night, using work projects as my visualizations instead of Hamlet & Ophelia, to the soundtrack of my Medea.

The thing is before my eyes
Learned from no rumor or lies:
Medea, without city or friends
And nowhere where pity extends --
O how you must suffer

Let a man rot
in an odious lot
if he never unshutters
his heart to the cleansing
esteem of another --
he'll not be my friend, no never

I did slowtens last week at work, in the room where we'd just finished a long team meeting. I moved like a drowned statue, wading in ultra-slow-motion from one corner of the room to the other. Flipcharts, tables, walls wavered, became flimsy in comparison to the pouring slowtruth, the keening vocals.

Whatever you want to memorize, do slowtens through it.

I have done slowtens through my mother's kitchen while she was cooking; from the back wall of the ghost-lit Seattle Opera House to the stage.

Last week I did them from one end of our small conference room to the other, amid bamboo stalks, leopard glass, orange gladiolias, stickybacked flipchart papers, cokes, tablets, markers, diamond-patterned chairs, whiteboards, turquoise fabric, The Timeless Way of Building, and Lorenna McKennit singing my father's favorite poem.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight
over the purple moor
when the Highwayman came riding
riding, riding
when the Highwayman came riding
up to the old inn door

Medea was a Highwayman. I am unshuttering my heart.

Slowtens are, for me, a harbinger of change. When I start to move physically, life moves are not far behind. I am doing slowtens, paying my bills, cleaning my house, running four projects at work, and dancing.

Joel on software

2006-10-01T04:41:00.000-07:00

Paul, one of the developers on my team, turned me on to this guy Joel Spolsky, who writes a column called "Joel on software." The straight scoop.

I borrowed Paul's book, Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity.

006. booted team-PMs

2006-10-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

Cymbeline

In theatre I learned best when I was:

- assisting or studying with a master director, while also
- directing my own play, while also
- teaching an acting class.

"Theatre is a received art," said Bart Sher during a Servant Of Two Masters rehearsal one afternoon. "Theatre is a received art," I told the students that night whom I was directing in Electra, and promptly taught them commedia techniques.

There is one chair in a rehearsal room for the Assistant Director. It is reserved for a young director to absorb the ecosystem of rehearsal. I love this chair. I sat in it for years, watching Mark, Leonid, Burke, Andrew, Lee, Bart, Vanessa, Nicolette, Robyn, Joseph, Jennifer, Eugenio.

The first day of rehearsal I would shiver, imagining that god had created the entire universe to give me this moment. The whole earth, all humans who have ever lived, theatre, Shakespeare, my parents; educating every person involved, creating this building & theatre, paying everyone, and bringing them all to this room this Tuesday, to incinerate in the truth of this text -- just to teach me.

Rachel. Meet Cymbeline, whispers god.
You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens than our courtiers
Still seem as does the king.

When I was assistant-directing, I would cover my paper with notes & sketches of what the director was doing. In the margins, I would write the principles I was abstracting.

PRINCIPLE: When teaching actors to sing, stand in a circle close enough that the song vibrates your body.
PRINCIPLE: When teaching actors to sing, don't talk. Sing.
PRINCIPLE: 1.5 hours of open voice-work/exploration in rehearsal triggers more breakthrough than 8 hours of straight rehearsal.
PRINCIPLE: Lining up shoes neatly outside the rehearsal room door shapes rehearsal ethics.

I'm doing the same thing now for a team of booted program managers, who are team-PMing their projects. The form changes, but the Work is the same: How to create ultra-high-performance ensembles which incarnate & create the Mystery.

PRINCIPLE: When doing something you don't know how to do, say "I don't know any other way to do this, other than to just start and go through the whole thing."
PRINCIPLE: Boot the team then boot the product.
PRINCIPLE: Have a booted team boot the team.
PRINCIPLE: The more unknown the task, the more iterations of studying it you should plan in the investigation phase.
PRINCIPLE: To understand a system, examine three levels of its meta plus a fourth to verify.
PRINCIPLE: Finish the biggest thing every meeting.
PRINCIPLE: Begin finishing the project before you start it.

Those apply precisely to directing a play.

005. a booted team is like having a computer

2006-09-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

The difference of working on a booted team and an unbooted one is like the difference between having a computer & the internet, and not having it.

It is almost indescribable, the difference in the kind, quality, and rapidity of work.

I feel like Johnny Appleseed. I can plant two kinds of apples. Green apples, which grow up into theatre ensembles. And reddish apples, which grow up into booted teams.

That is a fun and funny thought.

Maybe there's a third kind of apple coming. Something less structured, more intimate, more rawly alive. Something that is being born in an office with a small round table, a steady stream of people, visualizations as I fall asleep & wake, and many walks to the river.

phase 2 ends here, the Odin crouched like a cougar

2006-09-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

The previous post with the painting completes phase 2 of this blog. It represents a v1 integration of art, theatre, software, and wealth.

I almost ended the blog there.

But the Odin is crouched like a cougar on my shoulder, its gleaming gaze on the moonlit path before me.

There are lessons of the Odin I have yet to fulfill.

"Phoenix 11" - team painting

2006-09-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

The team & our painting

Jason, Peter, Rachel

Left

Middle

Right

This is a team painting by a booted, i.e. ultra-high-performance, team. This is the 7th version of the painting. It is 15 feet long x 4 feet wide, acrylic on watercolor paper.

yesterday, today

2006-09-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched a DVD of Yo Yo Ma (cello), Daniel Barenboim (piano), and Itzhak Perlman (violin) playing Beethoven's Triple Concerto. It was like a strange chamber music piece for 70 players -- 3 soloists and an orchestra. Daniel conducted from the piano, a Steinway grand with its top removed. They all followed each other by listening. Barenboim had his back to YoYo & Itzhak. Yo Yo Ma followed Itzhak intently, and Itzhak, so lame he had to haul himself to his chair with crutches, both legs in braces, led peremptorily.

It was the crutches that did it. Everyone there was playing in the face of death. Yo Yo as always, listened attentively. He listens to Itzhak. He listens to Daniel. In the beautiful soft beginning to the third section he listens even to his own cello, to hear the melody emerge.

Bootcamp has finished. I have the familiar hunger, hollow, & bleakness that follows a closing performance.

Yesterday was glory and joy.
Today, a blackened burn everywhere.
On the record of my life,
these two days will be put as one

-- Rumi

I have keys to three houses

2006-08-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Mine, plus two I'm housesitting. I could sleep in Seattle, Bellevue, or Carnation tonight. I slept in Mukilteo last night. Went up to visit my brother, who is in town from Alaska for work training. Had a great steak dinner, looked at the water, caught up.

004. go to your studio and make stuff (to BenS)

2006-08-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Ben,

Talking with Ania was my first calibration in a long time. I had expected to feel a longing, an envy, that she is immersed in a rich & vibrant theatre company and I am not. Instead, I felt a profound equality. I am incredibly involved with my own theatre company -- with founding it, creating its second performance, shaping its form.

"You know how, when you're making a play, you are only fully alive in the rehearsal room?" I said. "How any time away from the rehearsal room is just waiting until you can return to it?" "Yes," she said, heartfelt, alight. "That is how I am with this bootcamp," I said. "It is the most real thing I'm doing, the edge of my work."

We had gone to Snoqualmie Falls that afternoon. Sunny, swarming with tourists. We climbed out to the foremost rocks, looking straight across the water to where twin falls crashed. "That is you and me," I said, gazing at the two. "What are we becoming?" Where the water falls, there is great spray, a deep pool, a broad and shallowing river coursed with rocks, the winds away.

She sang lightly an ancient Greek song, a ululation, as we stood in the spray. I stood beside her, shoulders touching, so I was within the song's small circle. I sang an underharmony, a bass with wail-attack that then droned. I cannot follow this kind of singing, only find its ground. I took pictures of her in front of the waterfall. The best was one without the falls, of her leaning against a rock higher than herself, looking like a piece of the rock.

That night we ate steaming mushroom spaghetti over fat ravioli, with sharp white cheddar cheese, toasted bread, cold carrot slaw with pepper, hot peas & corn, chilled water, tea.

She is the first guest I have had for a meal -- for whom I have provided the meal, where we sat at the dining table, and ate.

"Are you always like this?" she asked, as we drove to the airport a few days later. I nodded. "Whenever I am making a performance," I said. More accurately, whenever I am making a company that is making a performance.

Microsoft is itself an orthogonality. Making games for Microsoft is like the monastery making bread to sell in the town; not its primary work, but necessary.

"Find some work to do for the town which is not theatre," said Julia Varley, at the Odin. "Find another way to connect."

Meeting Anis is the first time I have met someone from an Odin, who although away from their Odin, like me carries their Odin within; and is, in fact, their Odin. We were a little piece of god meeting a little piece of god, as particles of god.

You wrote, "Just do it. Find the space any way you can. Just train." Mine is the same -- "Just do it. Find the space & the people who want to transform into a company, any way you can. Just train & make a company who is making a performance."

The next level is to "Just do it" for the highest level -- for clear upfront contracts, for solid support, for the beautiful space in nature, which this work requires. Which I require, to generate this work.

I am readinga writings on nature by Thomas Merton, the Franciscan monk. The sections are: The seasons... the elements... the sentinels... sanctuary. The sections each have several chapters, except Sanctuary which has only one: the forest. "The forest is my bride," he writes. At one point he is walking through a 2-mile forest which someone has just given the monastery. Deep in its heart, he says that just being here is enough to bring any human to enlightenment. To center, to peace.

I live on 5 acres of land. My house, garage, woodshed, & yard are all crept near the road, on the front part of the first acre. Behind, the other 4 acres slant down to a stream, then stretch up a long wilderness hill. My land ends at the top of the hill, where I have only been once, the day I bought it. My neighbors have left theirs wild as well. In the woods between us live a bear, several deer, raccoons. I love being part of a silent complicity, sanctuary for a bear.

Last week I discovered a well-worn trail across my land. It leads up from the stream, wends beside the house, then out through the tall-grass & blackberrries to the pond. I follwed it, bemused, to where it vanished into the reeds by the water.

"That's not a pond," observed Aric two years ago. "That's a big hole in the ground that will eventually widen out until its flat, and everything will fall into it." He is right. The bench has fallen in, and the bank, and it's heading for the trees. "Fix the pond" is on my to-do list.

When Staniewski was ready to found his theatre he rode all over Poland, rural and populated, on a motorbike, looking for the place most conducive for a theatre. He eventually chose Gardzienice, in the most rural of eastern Poland. The next city to the east, I believe, is Kiev. "His motorbike broke in Gardzienice," said Ania.

That is the phase I am entering. The search for where to found this company. I am already founding it, by doing the work.

The biggest thing different about this bootcamp is how saturated with reality it is. In a usual bootcamp, people create paintings; performances; things you can create in a week-long offsite. In this one we create things in the real world.

Do we need a consciously metaphoric form, like theatre or bootcamp, as a lens for reality? Or would any form do? Again, I return to the monastery as my model.

I am a monk of theatre. As are you. Of theatres which do not yet exist, because we have not yet created them; or, are creating them each time we go in the studio. But monks in a lineage, nonetheless.

You say your work in the studio is to prepare the space for the one who will come. You are the one who will come. Being in the studio, you are already beginning to arrive.

Go to your studio and make stuff, says Fred Babb.

rachel

003. completing, changing form (to BenS)

2006-08-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

dear Ben,

I feel half-embodied.

I enter this work through chakras 1, 2, 6, and 7 -- base of spine, pelvis, third-eye, and crown. My central three are almost missing -- stomach, heart, voice.

I need my stomach, heart, and voice.

This bootcamp completes next week. I feel I have worked out with only my right side for two months. My left side did not get exercised. It will not, until the form changes. I will change the form next bootcamp.

Radmila brought Saint Andre's cheese. A strong brie the colour of butter, with warm French bread and fresh peaches, which we ate on white-iron tables behind the cafeteria.

In bootcamp, we are making a painting 20 feet long and 4 feet wide, all of us painting on it together. It will go through 5 versions. We used up all my paint, bought more.

There is a point when a phase of work completes. Whether I am done or not, I feel a small click in my chest, saying "That's finished." I ignored the theatre click for more than a year, but it was finished that whole time. "This is my last bootcamp," it said today. Click.

I need a new form, or to extend this one. Something is completing beautifully. Many somethings.

Tomorrow I am going to Snoqualmie Falls. I'll hike down to the water, walk on the rocks, & get my first massage. The massage is the heart of the sun -- the door I never go through which is the only door remaining.

My body is the door remaining. Pulling blackberries and washing windows. I left my house where I left my self.

The hot sweet cup of tea made at home, barefoot on wood floors, in forest silence, restores me.

At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, there were only so many hours a day I could practice piano, before piano thinned out and I needed to walk, to eat, to sleep, to swim, to go hear McCoy Tyner play, to talk. After a year, I left the Conservatory completely, walked into the Oberlin Dance Company, and stayed for 2 years.

I wonder what it is, that is completing.

On the round table in my office sit a broad-leafed plant; 3 bamboo stalks in an earthen vase with shiny dark green dragonflies; a Polish bowl of tangerines, peaches, apples, and oranges; my Tibetan mala; a tablet; a color printout of our painting; and a bag with crackers, ham, & cheese.

rachel

002. actors & software developers (to Joseph)

2006-08-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

I am really writing all of you. Anyone can comment. Picking a specific person helps me write freely.

dear Joseph,

That said, actors go much farther in the work than booted people. Booted actors outdistance both by nearly an order of magnitude.

Actors feel and move. Actors know the cellular precision of the body. They understand kinesthetically and spiritually, the spectrum of human strangeness. They can enter & traverse the Mystery. An actor knows the difference between the truth, and any shade of falsity. An actor lives the levels of evocation, knows how they arise, where they root in the body. An actor IS the search. An actor craves & is nourished by the astonishing and poetic layers of truth.

Software developers think and talk. They know the atomic precision of thought. A thinker gazing at the entire map of reality, can illumine & shift it with an insight. A thinker knows the power of meta. A thinker scales; any problem can be comprehended, entered, sifted. A thinker is an instantaneous zoom lens. What they see, they comprehend. A thinker IS the search. A thinker craves & is nourished by the astonishing and poetic layers of truth.

I have one system that gets to truth through bodies. Another that gets to truth through thought. I am both -- a kinesthetic who can think. I think with my body. I solve my hardest problems by moving, by having physical contact all over me, or both. I am delighted & fed by thinking. Receiving thinking from a gifted thinker is like standing in a waterfall of god. Thinking feels like wet light.

I want run labs to combine the two.

I need a company that craves both. The Microsoft people in my acting classes are gorgeous -- brilliant, hungry, gifted, soft, fluent in languages & skills. Once they stop trying to squeeze everything through the tiny pipeline of their minds, and start using their whole human sentiences, they are amazing.

Recursive ideas are the most powerful.

How do you get people to own a theatre? Give it to them. Those who cleaned the Odin, owned it. I own the Odin still. I wonder if I own Microsoft. Not in the same way.

=====

My game team created a stunning presentation last week. We transformed an entire space -- furniture, fabrics, plants, music, Tibetan temple rug, antique wood carry-box from China, prayer flags, slate ikebana vase, green and orange 20-sided dice, a clear glass pendant with the diamond sutra engraved on it in Chinese, green & yellow folders of handouts, agenda on the whiteboard, luminous 8" x 11" color photos of each team member caught gazing away from the camera, projector, laptop, network, good speakers, working code to demo, and -- "Here's the progress on our game, here's the options we recommend, here's the guidance we seek."

I dressed up. Black coat, white cotton blouse, tight faded jeans, black boots, hair pulled back, red glasses, silver necklace; and on my left wrist, a string of worn tibetan mala beads, a red watch, & a blue rubber bracelet saying COURAGE.

Version your way toward the vision.

=====

A monastery is the closest analog I have for a theatre laboratory. The Odin is the closest I have experienced. In a monastery, the monks are both cast and crew; there is no duality.

There is no duality between mind and body. There is no duality between product and process. If I change how I think of these, all will melt into something slicingly precise. Naming a thing creates the thing.

Microsoft resembles monastic life in its spartan nature. We are focussed on our practice of thinking and doing, and we are strong at it. We don't, however -- in my opinion, that is; I do not speak for the company on this or anything -- have the pure shared vision that connects straight from the core of the earth, through all sentient beings to god, that a theatre does. There is something good and pure here, though; a skein of light emanating from the people. An innocence.

=====

Sometimes I think I am constructing labs to learn how to love. Some people just know how to love. I am off studying it, wending my way toward it. I suspect that my brother, holding any of his children, knows more than I with all my theatre. He knew when he was five he wanted babies. I knew when I was five I wanted to be an artist.

Love has many names.

"You know all these tricks with people," said a friend at work. "The trick is love," I thought slowly the next day.

The softer I become toward myself, the softer I am toward others. One of the requirements of a buddhist monk founding a monastery, is that they must feed and nourish themselves first. Not to the scarcity point, but past that, to one of gentle abundance. "In this way, you will develop lovingkindness, and be able to spread it."

The tibetan monks say "mind" and they tap their heart. "Lovingkindness," the lamas say, tapping their heart. "Train the mind," tapping the heart.

Actors become parched, worn to the bone, by financial poverty. Although they are immersed in sacred practice, in meaningful work, their spirits erode under the constant financial stress. At this point, they can no longer make truthful art. They become crippled, skewed, and their work fails to nourish.

Software developers, by contrast, become parched & worn by time poverty. Although immersed in financial plenty, and engaging work, their spirits erode under the constant stress of too little time. They do not have time with their families, their bodies, their dreams, their friends, or their communities. "When can you come to dinner?" I asked a friend at work once. "In 20 years," he said, not joking. They become crippled, skewed, and their work fails to nourish.

Or, rather, in both cases, *I* become crippled, skewed, and my work fails to nourish.

The human spirit needs its full mysterious sustenance.

The Odin has enough money, enough time, enough space.

"What would you create, if you had the gift of creating sanctuary?" I asked Juval. "A sanctuary of sanctuaries," he said.

How do I create a sanctuary for me? Which is, in turn, a sanctuary, a spiritual foundry, an oasis & fresh spring for the world, a ceaseless source of spiritual renewal & financial wealth -- with a company of gifted and evolving artists/thinkers/makers?

How do I make a company that enables me to grow up all the way, become one of the great-oak, fully-realized humans -- and so, the company, and so, the audience, and so, the world?

Working with my bootcamp team at work is transforming me. A tiny instance of a company, for a tiny fraction of time -- but a source of radiant light & power, nonetheless. I am yeast. If I am added to a group of people, we all become something incredibly more, unpredictable, different. I can't do it alone.

Before Brett and I moved in together, we were both isolated. We kept our doors & shades closed. The day we moved in together, our door opened, the shades opened, plants sprang up everywhere, and a round table appeared for guests. Who is the yeast? Who can tell.

It's fractal, of course. ("Isomorphic," says Jim.) Cleaning my kitchen is cleaning the company is cleaning the world.

With that, I'm now turning to cleaning at Microsoft -- write my review; write meeting notes; and write v1 of how two people can form an infinitely fractal & recursive shining school of greatness, creating great games & great teams.

Tomorrow I go see Ania. I don't have your home number, Joseph. I left a message on Zhenya's cell, to see if we can hook up tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. Let me know. Work (best) = 425-705-8405, or email realrachel@aol.com.

"Garrrrr-DZEH-neet-seh," says Ania, rolling the r's.

rachel
ps. There is no duality between actors & software developers either. There is no duality in me.
pps. Booted actors are the fullest expression of me, that's why they go farthest -- they are getting the very best of what I know. It's only my fear that stops me from making everyone I teach a booted actor.

fractal music

2006-08-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

001. booting (to Joseph)

2006-08-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

I am going to try the, "Write to one person & let everyone else listen in" method of blog posting. Anyone can comment. This is just a technique to write more freely.

Dear Joseph,

You know how an actor works and works, and then one day enters a phase of transition, where masks and blocks start melting away? Day by day, the actor is more supple, strange, fresh, true. I watched Laurence, doing dance-theatre by day and Suzuki training by night, transmute. He became molten. "You are almost ready to work naked," observed Lee. There was no "no" left, just a steady radiant "yes."

That's where I am.

Much is asked, then more is asked.

After 18 years of developing software, I found myself in a small start-up, McCarthy Technologies, running week-long team labs called Bootcamps. These were conscious experiments in how to reliably & reproducibly create ultra-high-performance teams. Students had to form a team, use the protocols, and ship something Great in a week. Assignments were recursive, the results astounding. Stanislavski's ideal lab.

We gradually evolved a system of protocols called "theCore," that worked. Lithe, angelic, brutal, joyful teams -- as carelessly interactive as a pack of 10-year-olds, with the maturity & grace of adults -- were intentionally creating Greatness.

The basic effect of "booting" is a huge "first reduce noise, then send signal" clarity. Rapport improves by an order of magnitude.

Think of the difference between rehearsal and daily life. The purity & sacred rigor of rehearsal. How clearly signal is transmitted in a deep rehearsal, versus how noisily & muddily signal is transmitted in normal life. Now imagine that people in daily life were working in the same aware & heightened state as rehearsal; that they could do ANYTHING as well as actors can walk & sing. That's what booted teams can do.

This is bliss on earth, to work & create with people in this state.

"Our problems were created with our current way of thinking," says Einstein. "To solve the problems, we must think in a different way." Booted thinking is thinking in a different way.

"As a director, you have a different complicity with the actors than with the staff," said Eugenio. "You don't have to," I said. "But it is very unusual." "I have never seen it," he said.

People working on a meta-level, a heightened level, are working much more powerfully than on the direct level. When you focus on the meta-level, you get the direct-level results almost for free.

You think it's hard to describe Grotoswki's work, try describing this.

But oddly, of everyone I've met in theatre, Grotowski is the closest to what I'm doing. "I walked out of paratheatre into theatre," I told Eugenio.

What do you call it when all of life is theatre? When a wild human can, just as an actor stands naked in the work, stand naked in their life and work in the same aware-yet-surrendered way an actor works?

I have found that any Way requires scrupulous protection, a classical system of training, meticulous practice. In scripted theatre, the actor is scrupulously protected by the text; in physical theatre, by the form & levels of evocation. Here, the protocols of theCore provide that scrupulous protection, make possible the stunning release.

It lets people be gods & mortals at once, to simultaneously BE the entire fractal system in their own bodies. I stumble on earth, I stumble in heaven, I stumble in my karma, all at once.

It's the endless knot. Everything IS all connected, all the time. It's Indra's net.

========

One day I was thinking about how to do a perfect clap. The most authentic Rachel clap possible.

First I visualized directing an entire production of Hamlet, ending with Fortinbras surveying all the dead bodies and clapping once.

Then I thought, no -- MY perfect clap is I walk into the theatre. The stage is empty. The house is full, expectant. The whole audience stands up, performs a play they have never done before, spontaneously & perfectly, and as one -- claps.

That's the Rachel clap. That's what I can create.

========

I have created software since 1979, computer games since 1989.
I have created using theCore & led bootcamps since 1997.
I have created theatre since 1998.
This year, 2006, everything is combining.

I can work with wild humans with the same presence, force, Art talks, laughter, compassion, & results, that I work with actors. Everyone looks like actors to me.

My true image of me at Microsoft right now, is an ultra-slow-motion film of a match falling into a lake of gasoline. My level of awareness & work, when applied to this quality & brilliance of minds, is compoundingly incendiary. Not fire, but wildfire.

Let us burn.

========

Such work requires a pristine foundation and self-care.

I started booting people at work. I am now in a group where everyone in it is booted, and working at that high pure level. I have a waiting list of people who want it. I am choosing by who wants it the most, and who, in my archaic bootcamp/rehearsal eyes, is likely to stay the course.

I am booting for my own joy.

I am booting like I rehearse.

In a month, or six, I will have better language for this.

This is why you have not heard from me. I am engrossed in the most fascinating rehearsal process, and I have no language to describe what I am doing. "What is this system?" asked Ania. "It is... mutuality," I said, a correlary from Staniewski's Gardzienice philosophy.

========

Radmila is in Tibet. "I went to see the monks," she said. "I asked a blessing for you and your bootcamp."

Hope you are well. Love to Zhenya & Catherine.

rachel

rehearsing at work

2006-08-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

Teaching bootcamp at work is like rehearsing at work. Exhilerating. Creating conscious people to work with -- and then working with them -- is fantastic.

francis dancing

2006-08-02T00:51:00.000-07:00

"Walk me to get coffee," I said to Francis, one of the developers on my team. "Okay," he said. We walked down, talking about programming languages. While we waited for the barista, I noticed Francis was swaying. His eyes were glazing off into space, his white t-shirt hanging limp, and his feet moving in an absent-minded slow crossover.

"Are you dancing?" I asked. He goes dancing & kung fu 5 times a week. "Yes," he said, still staring at the ceiling, moving dreamily through the steps.

sleepless, Ania, joy, Uma

2006-08-02T00:10:00.000-07:00

I wake up at 5:38 every morning, with no alarm. I leave work between midnight & 3:30am. I need more sleep.

My officemate, Brett, said he'd go to the gym with me. We start tomorrow. Then I'll sleep more.

I bought a dayplanner today.

I feel spread across the galaxy. Worn thin with ecstasy, with lack of container, with weariness. Teaching bootcamp at work is like acting in open air. It takes forever to build a paltry fire, compared to the crucible of an offsite.

I have moved to new level of integrity, and now lots of things grate on me. I made of list of "THIS needs to be destroyed..." "... so that THIS can be created."

I am keeping a budget.

Ania is here, Gardzienice incarnate, and I have only seen her the first weekend when Seattle was unholy hot -- which, Kipley, is an exception; we're generally not humid, and YES you should move here, move everyone here, Carmen & Cornel too -- and I was dripping with sweat and she was not. She is liking the Skinner intensive. Ben, write me -- or write her -- and get the phone number where she is staying.

I feel like a sailboat that is turning through the wind. Where you point straight into the wind, the sails lose their force, luff, then just lay horribly limp while you saw with the tiller, until finally, faintly, you have come through it, and the cotton begins to billow again. That's what I feel like -- like I have come through some great laxness, and now the sails are starting to fill.

My alignment -- my personal tuning fork right now -- is Joy. I am focussing on what brings me joy. Turns out, there's a ton of clean-up to wade through to get to Joy.

Katagiri Roshi says the purpose of structure in our lives is to outgrow it. "We create it, we use it to support us through a very specfic stage of growth -- and then we must destroy it, to create the next one." He also calls this, "Pouring our snake spines into a bamboo pole."

I have many structures that have served me for years, which it's time to destroy.

Scott Peck, author of If you meet the buddha on the road, kill him says we put ourselves in pickles, to force ourselves to grow.

I have created a great pickle for myself right now. If I were just living in it, it would make me crazy. But looking at it as a lab which I have created -- "How DO I deal with this person at work? The same way I always have, leading to the same results? Or try something new?" -- lends it interest.

Life is like a dream I keep forgetting I'm dreaming. Only the bootcamp parts, my family, and my most intimate friends seem real.

I saw My Super Ex-Girlfriend. In all of Uma's last few movies, I keep having the same feeling -- I can't look away from her, and yet she is SO much bigger than this part. I wish someone would write a part that wreaks her.

I wonder if I could write a part Uma couldn't play.

I'd have to give her a partner she couldn't keep up with.

two of my teams at work

2006-07-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

2006-07-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

associate core director

2006-07-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

I am now an Associate Core Director of the McCarthy Technologies system. Only one step away from the top certification, Certified Core Director. The only thing I'm lacking is having booted an entire organization.

interviewed for a book, I write best by speaking

2006-07-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

Fran Fisher, founder of The Academy for Coach Training, is writting a book on the Living Your Vision process, working title: Release Your Brilliance.

She sent me the list of interview questions. I responded in writing, then today we had a phone-interview to follow up. She and I are surprisingly aligned.

I noticed the difference between my written answers -- which were careful and edited -- and my spoken answers in conversation, which were boundless, authentic, true. It's the same thing I've noticed in this blog.

Maybe I should be writing my book by talking it.

Bono - there are stories to tell that are not songs

2006-07-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

I was looking for people who are fully expressed as a team, fully expressed as themselves, and fully expressed in the world. People like I am becoming.

Reading Kipley's blog turned me on to U2 and their lead singer Bono.

I just read a great book of interviews with him, BONO in conversation with Michka Assayas.

This is a stunning book. It's someone who's made it all the way to rock-and-roll stardom, change-the-world activist & ethicist, and family guy who takes his kids to school. A man and an artist who has grown up all the way, and is fully himself.

Bono knew Michka well. This is their liesurely & reflective conversation over three years.

"I don't think of U2 as a band that makes music for 20 thousand people. I think of us as a band that sings to one person in their ear, in their headphones, as they are going to sleep."

"I don't want to be naked and vulnerable on stage. But I can't hit the high notes unless I am."

"Ordinarily, I would not make a book like this. I would rather go be with my kids. But if I can make this a book for my kids, it's worth it."

"I'm a person who actually doesn't like to look back in my work, in my day, in general. But maybe this is the moment. There are stories to tell that are not songs."

-- Bono

bootcamp & theatre

2006-07-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

People who have learned theatre from me first go way further with theCore. They enter hungry, soft, limitless, trusting, true.

Whatever I'm headed toward, I need to teach theatre first.

home, work, bootcamp, i am the eightfold path

2006-07-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Jeff has moved out. I changed the answering machine to my voice.

I made the livingroom into an art studio. It has a big white table at one end, and couches opposite for gazing. I sleep in the small bedroom downstairs. I have no vision for upstairs. The winds are still settling.

Work is absorbing. I am doing my game project. And I am leading a Bootcamp to teach the McCarthy shared-vision system, "theCore," to two other program managers. I called it a cross-divisional best practices group. Like a great-winged seabird, it is lifting. Everything is converging. Theatre, bootcamp, vision teams, life-coaching, software. It feels like one big rehearsal room, except what we are making is our lives.

I am, finally, trained.

Ania arrives this Friday. I pick her up in the evening.

In my office, eight yellow flowers spray from the shale base.

Morgan, my life coach, graduated from the Academy last week. I went. It regrounded me with the Academy. And with Morgan, who lives in Oregon.

I have new eyes to see with, but no words for what I see.

joy, wisdom, instinct --
paint the wall yellow, make way for
babies; all lives change

i am the eightfold
path, iron arms outstretched, shiva
fingers mudra-soft

the electric bill
and the monastery are
equally my own

sanctuary makes
a sacred place to breathe; built
new each fumbling day

if i went to Tibet
i would only miss the
blond boardrooms of home

where souls like starsails
furl and catch, bellying to
terrifying skies

Fixed the Odin Teatret links

2006-07-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

I fixed the links in the post with all the Odin links. This has many of my favorite writings, especially the "Odin zero" thru "Odin 7" posts.

I've lost 18 pounds in the last 6 weeks

2006-07-03T00:44:00.000-07:00

It doesn't show yet, but I can feel it when I move and sit. I fit in my slimmer jeans again.

My pattern is, I do all my growing ahead of time -- over a long time, typically -- then make all the changes fast & easily. I think that is happening with my body. Suddenly I don't feel heavy any more. I feel long and lean and like my body just needs to catch up with the rest of me now. Weight is melting away.

It has coincided with greater alignment at work. I am doing meaningful work of great joy, that requires and extends my theatre & team skills.

rachel and her portrait

2006-06-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

rachel

2006-06-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

dowser, team lab meets theatre lab

2006-06-25T02:08:00.000-07:00

I feel like a dowser looking for water.

Through inexplicable grace, I am getting to teach a small team at work "theCore", the McCarthy system for ultra-high-performance teamwork. I studied teams in labs with the McCarthys for 6 years. I studied ensemble theatres in labs for 7 years. Doing a new lab that extends this work, I feel joyful and strong.

My next experiment will be to teach a group of software folks theCore AND ensemble theatre techniques, and make a piece.

On other fronts, my game project is going well. We're using the Agile project-management system, with monthly Sprints and daily Scrums, and progress has leapt forward. Once the team settles down, I will offer it theCore as well.

my new office

2006-06-24T02:26:00.000-07:00

The view from the door

Our plants and Brett's desk

Rachel

Brett

The view out the window

My view

Akropolis's Oedipus shines

2006-06-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Oedipus and Jocasta

Oedipus and the Wheel of Fortune

[Photos by Julia Salamonk]

I saw Akropolis Performance Lab's Oedipus Saturday. I am seeing it again this Saturday.

Get tickets now; their shows are selling out. They have just added an 11pm show Saturday 6/16.

For tickets call Brown Paper Tickets, at 1-800-838-3006.

Full show info in this post.

More pix (& some spoilers) here, at www.myspace.com/akropolisperformancelab then click "Pics".

Mature audiences only; some nudity.

It was a double pleasure to see Akropolis -- with their Grotowski-lineage exactitude of physicality & harmony -- tackle something as infinite and iron as Oedipus. If you like Greek tragedies, you will love this production.

Akropolis productions are consistently world-theatre productions. It's like seeing one of Ariane Mnouchkine's or Robert LePage's productions -- the work is at a miraculously exacting standard of physicality and evocation which continues to nourish, stimulate, shock, feed, resonate for weeks afterward. Oedipus is no exception. It meets the shining standard established by Akropolis in their Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Jeanne The Maid, Song of Songs, and Macbeth.

The show is getting rave reviews. Look up this production on www.seattleperforms.com, and click the "Reviews" tab. I am overjoyed to see Akropolis finally starting to get the recognition and following it deserves.

The house in which this was performed was perfect. High-ceilinged, old wood floors, formal wallpaper, beams. It felt like the play had sprung, in living sprites, from the empty wood floor, to perform and vanish. Like a spring rain, saying "Oedipus was here."

I found it a surprisingly intimate production. There was not a lot of trapping or formality between me and Oedipus, the king. Instead, there stood this lean chiseled man, wrestling with his duty and his conscience, on a bare floor.

I heard once of an Antigone performed in the canyons of a National Park at dawn. "It felt not like a play, but like a ritual," said the spectator. "A ritual that takes place every dawn, somewhere in the world, and I had just happened to stumble upon it."

That's what this Oedipus was like. Somehow, between the cracks of the world, Oedipus sometimes issues forth and takes form, to ceaselessly try to solve the insoluble. Again he marries Jocasta. Again he discovers the truth. Again he vanishes. I wondered about the house we were in -- if it had older bones, older truths. Perhaps it is no coincidence where, on this earth, Oedipus appears; perhaps the cry can only ring forth where the cry has already been heard.

now is the time to give me roses

2006-06-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

Now is the time to give me roses,
not to keep them for my grave to come.
Give them to me while my heart beats,
give them today while my heart yearns for jubilee.
Now is the time...

-- Mzwakhe Mbuli

writing to one person (Odin)

2006-05-31T22:17:00.000-07:00

Most of the earliest posts of this blog about the Odin, did not start out as blog posts. They were originally emails, to some particular person.

I love those posts. They are deep, liesurely, filled with breath and grace.

I want to see if I can write like that here -- directed to one person, but for all to read. But not now. It is 10:44pm, I am wide awake -- and will be till 2:00am -- and I have much I want to write for work before tomorrow morning.

When work is not just work, but my own shining Work -- the latest Lab in the long line of theatre & teamworx -- it feels like worship.

one plus one is all
it takes to open
ten thousand gates of heaven

end of an era

2006-05-30T00:45:00.000-07:00

Jeff Allen-Burkhart

Jeff is moving out Wednesday.

"We should have a ceremony," he said. "Let's burn down the house," I said. We only have one house rule -- Don't burn down the house.

I don't have a vision, yet, of how I will live there after he's gone. When he said he was moving out, my first impulse was for me to move out too.

When a relationship unfolds organically and truly, I feel peaceful no matter where it goes.

This picture is the only one I could find on the net of Jeff. But he doesn't look like this any more. He looks darker, clearer, more loose and true.

Intiman, Richard III, my evolving work

2006-05-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

The Intiman Theatre just won the Tony Award for "Best Regional Theatre." This is in recognition of their good work, and also for how well that work travels to venues such as Long Wharf, Broadway, London. Bart's show at Lincoln Center, Awake and Sing!, was also nominated for several Tony's, including Best Director.

Bart's Richard III opens soon, running 6/9 - 7/15 at the Intiman. This is Bart's only Seattle show this year. It's Shakespeare, which is his sweet spot. And it's a play he has directed twice before, which means he is warmed up and can go places only possible after dived fully into the material twice before.

Here is a video of Bart talking about Richard III. Click either the High-Res link or the Low-Res one, depending on the speed of your connection.

Richard III is a show I recommend seeing twice. Once to let it wash over you. The second time to see all the things you missed the first time. This show is of the excellence we would normally need to travel to Ashland, Oregon to see -- but it's right here in town.

As always, Intiman tickets for people age 25 or under are only $10.

=========

So why do I write about this? Because watching the Intiman blossom & flourish, watching Bart's directing deepen & mature, is like watching a rosebush flower. Or watching a tree grow as its branches become massive, its trunk thickening to grandeur.

It's the same joy I feel watching Kipley's puppet theatre take off. There is no magic. Day by day, these are just hard-working people, doing what they love. Yet year by year, there is perceptible, sometimes startling, change.

Your job is to do whatever is necessary to get this work into the world, says Eugenio Barba.

It gives me hope. I am grateful for their constant effort for the good. The world is a cleaner place for such effort. Bart or Kipley making theatre; Rich or Brett making games; Lee making dance; Jeff growing as a person; Jim practicing therapy; mastery is just a by-product of their consistent work. The process feels juicy, whole, natural.

I don't have a name for my form yet. But it is growing as surely. It used to have a form, which was theatre. Now it is formless, but none the less massive, powerful, or continually-evolving, for being currently invisible. I am using this power shakily in team meetings, more surely with individuals. It is like riding horses of the wind, using reins made of wind, which dissolve and reform -- now solid, now moist air.

I don't know what I'm doing yet. But this is the first true follow-on to the initial work with Lyon, which was, in turn, the first true follow-on to theatre.

In the big picture, this is the part where I go sideways and paint for a while. I am literally painting, with Wes, and metaphorically painting, making videogames. Meanwhile, my theatre self grows and evolves, rippling in the free dark of the unconscious.

paint progress - 5/25

2006-05-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

Wes has started working from photos instead of live models. He still likes live models, but this way we can paint at our pace, rather than waiting for our schedules to mesh with the models'. Wes's Mae West Fest plays have finished, so he has time to work. His drawing has leapt to a new level -- fewer lines, surer strokes, the essence captured. I went over this week, and he had more than 10 faces drawn, ready to paint. I was blown away.

I am going to get a duplicate palette and start painting at home, so I can paint more often. Also, then I can work on backgrounds while Wes works on faces. Then we can work together during our weekly seshes.

It worked well to take a few weeks off. I need regular breaks.

We're almost out of the Punjab paper, which Daniel Smith has discontinued. I'll look for a similar Indian Village substitute, 20" x 30". We want to stay with the same format for all 50 portraits.

I'm also working on the model release form, so we can get expectations & rights squared away.

In the last three weeks, Wes and I have both had our birthdays. This time next year, we'll be opening our show.

give your longing to wound

2006-05-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

Give your longing to wound
and to own more things
away to the willow

--Basho (1644-1694), translated by Robert Bly

home from Bethlehem

2006-05-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

tasting fore-echoes
of the dark god's Song, i
remember who i am

bigger than when last
i looked, nameless and less sure --
home from Bethlehem

my mother waters
pineapple sage, columbine,
with an old brown hose

john stands against the
sky, blue shirt, sweeping the roof,
crowned by green maple

pileated woodpecker
digs her claws in the sill,
bellies to the glass

i can no longer
tell the sacred from the plain --
all work is the Work

articles & Public Service Announcements

2006-05-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

I notice my blog is a combination of articles -- posts about what I am thinking or doing -- and Public Service Announcements.

After not blogging for a while, yesterday I caught up on my PSA's. Did you know that:

- Akropolis is performing their next show in an old mansion?
- Jerry Peerson's got a website with his tunes on it?
- Ana's company, Gardzienice, does transcendant rigorous work in Eastern Poland?

There's a lot of other processing going on.

I am having huge insights right now around:

- United 93, the glory of men, movies, community-based theatre, respect, Microsoft
- how to get More Joy Now, especially at work
- my life work, catalyzing growth & thereby growing, cocooning, destruction that is creation
- MFA koan, Teamworx, self-actualizing recursion
- it's not "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto god that which is god's." It's all Caesars and it's all god's. It's all god/Caesar's. And we, also, are god/Caesars/temple-sweepers.
- how everything's connected
- life coaching
- doing it the new way

New therapy office

2006-05-17T02:35:00.000-07:00

Jim Rapson

I have been seeing therapist Jim Rapson since October 1997. Well, today marked our last session in the building he's had all this time. The next time I see him, we'll be across town in his new digs.

It feels great. Like a huge snow day.

Where the old office was

Jerry Peerson -- check out his music

2006-05-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

Jerry Peerson, songwriter/musician

Here is Jerry Peerson's website, the guitar-player/singer we painted, who performed at Wes's gallery opening. He performs around Seattle regularly. Check out his site, listen to his tunes. My favorites are Fidele Amour, Y, Tell Elizabeth, and in some nostalgic way because my dad would have loved this song, JRC. There is another that I loved in concert but don't see on his site, Tequila, that begins like a crooning lullabye, then gradually blossoms into a full-on power ballad.

There's also an email list on the site, to sign up for announcements.

Playing the Seattle Music Northwest Rock Folk Indie

Jerry has a couple gigs coming up this week, if you're in Seattle.

---Wed.May 17th-2006
Performing a few songs solo by the request of birthday girl India Turner. There
will be multiple artists performing so this should be an eclectic and enjoyable
event. Jerry will play around 900pm
Caffe Bella-located @2621 fifth ave 206.441.4351
http://www.myspace.com/indiaturner
http://www.caffe-bella.com/

---Fri.May 19th-2006
Jerry will be playing twice this night. First as a solo act then with the band
Altspeak. http://www.myspace.com/altspeak
Show begins at 930 Pm- 6$ cover
Located @ the Rainbow, 722 NE 45th St, Seattle http://www.therainbowlive.com/calendardesc.html

Hope to see you.

Best,
JLPeerson
www.myspace.com/jerrypeerson
www.jerrypeerson.com

Note -- our painting of him is on his myspace site. COOL!

Music map - Live Plasma

2006-05-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

So check this out, with thanks to Rick Kolesar for the link: Live Plasma, at www.liveplasma.com.

You type in the name of a musician or band that you like. Up pops this "map" of similar artists. Kind of like Amazon's, "People who bought this book you're looking at, also bought these other four."

The map looks like this.

Musicians you might like, if you like the Indigo Girls

Paint progress - 5/16, moms, sales

2006-05-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

Here's where we are.

Here is another format I was trying earlier, with thumbnails.

The top one is more visually accurate. And it includes our moms. You gotta paint your mom.

"I don't want to sell any of paintings," I said. "I'd sell them all," said Wes. "In a heartbeat." "You'd sell me?" I said. "I'd sell you. I'd sell my mom. I'd sell your mom." I started to laugh. "We both need the money," he went on. "We can always paint more." I began to get charmed. I realized I COULD sell almost any of them. Especially if we have the ability to make high-quality prints. Except Holly, we promised her she could keep hers. And I bet the moms want theirs.

Akropolis's Oedipus opens in 2 weeks

2006-05-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Oedipus, by Akropolis Performance Lab

Akropolis is about to open their new piece, Oedipus. With several new company members, the piece is being shown in a nontraditional site -- the historic, Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs. Definitely a show not to miss, as it only runs 2 weeks, June 2-17. NOTE: Some nudity, recommended for mature audiences only.

TICKETS: 1-800-838-3006
brownpapertickets.com
$15 general/$10 students, seniors

Plan extra travel time to allow for parking & finding your way, because... ABSOLUTELY NO LATE SEATING. Come early, bring a friend and a map, hit a Starbucks, and treat yourself to the full immersive experience.

The historic house where Oedipus will be performed

Beautiful indoor space for performance

Here is the full blurb from Akropolis's site.

“Nothing can escape the plague. It fastens on everyone.”
~ Seneca

CONTACT: Jennifer Lavy (206) 856-6925
13538 27th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98125
akropolis.performance.lab@gmail.com
www.geocities.com/akropolis_lab

Akropolis Performance Lab presents new adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus

SEATTLE WA (May 1, 2006): Akropolis Performance Lab’s (APL) newest theatrical work, an adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus, runs June 2-17 in the historic, Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs.

The natural and supernatural worlds collide in Seneca's version of the Oedipus story. With plague raging outside, the people of Thebes gather in the royal house for refuge from the terror paralyzing their society. There, they witness Oedipus who, determined to rid his land of the plague just as he previously rid it of the Sphinx, learns that the plague will continue until his predecessor's murder is avenged and the murderer banished. Oedipus's quest for knowledge and truth restores prosperity to his people with devastating consequences.

Into Seneca's telling, Akropolis weaves Latin meditations on fate culled from the Carmina Burana Codex and set to luminous, haunting polyphonic music inspired by the traditional songs of Ukraine, Macedonia, and Russia.

As in all of APL’s productions, the text, the song, and the action are inextricably linked. Only at the union of these elements is the story fully manifest. Striking physicality and saturated, complex vocal music are hallmarks of any APL event. Adapted and directed by Joseph Lavy, and featuring music devised and directed by Jennifer Lavy, Oedipus re-confirms APL’s powerful artistic range.

Because this production of Oedipus contains some nudity, it is recommended for mature audiences. The production runs 90 minutes with no intermission. There will be no late seating.

Akropolis Performance Lab, which is proud to be sponsored by Theatre Puget Sound, is now in its sixth year in Seattle. The company has mounted all-original work, including main-stage productions of an adaptation of Macbeth, Song of Songs, Jeanne The Maid: A Trial And Execution Of Jeanne D'Arc, and 2004's highly acclaimed Dream of a Ridiculous Man — which was remounted as part of the Theatre4Play Festival in conjunction with last year’s national Theatre Communications Group conference and was also the subject of a feature article in the winter 2006 issue of The Stage theatre magazine in Moscow, Russia.

WHAT: Oedipus, adapted from Seneca

WHO: Akropolis Performance Lab

WHERE: The historic Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs, 2336 15th Ave S., Seattle WA 98144

WHEN: June 2-3, 9-10, 14-17 at 8 p.m.
June 11 at 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

TICKETS: $15 general public, $10 students and senior citizens
Purchase in advance through Brown Paper Tickets (1-800-838-3006 or www.BrownPaperTickets.com). Day-of, cash-only sales begin 30 minutes before curtain.

PERFORMERS: Elizabeth Erber, Holly Fowers, Margaretta Lantz, Jennifer Lavy, Joseph Lavy, and Andrew Loviska

ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY: Joseph Lavy, APL co-artistic director
MUSIC DEVISED AND DIRECTED BY: Jennifer Lavy, APL co-artistic director

NOTE: This production contains some nudity.

Rachel2- in progress

2006-05-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Rachel2 - first version

We got this far, then decided to redo the painting almost entirely, starting with the face. When the face changes, the background follows.

Rachel2 - second version

Rachel2 - detail face

In the first one I was happy and smiling. In the seond one I was sad and smiling. Wes paints what he sees.

But this face is way better. It's got the color breakthrough of JERRY and WES2, with the fineness of RACHEL1 and WES2.

"I think painting two of everyone is part of the form now," said Wes.

We're taking a short break, while Wes is in two shows and I'm snowed at work. Next step is we're going to start visiting Seattle galleries to see where we want to have our show. Jerry, who played & sang amazingly at Wes's solo show opening last week, has agreed to play our opening as well.

Wes2 - Done

2006-05-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

WES - Self-portrait, from life

Detail - face

Detail - eyes

This one called for calligraphy... and after a certain amount of ink, it was suddenly done. This is a continuation of the work begun in the portrait of Jerry -- where the painting of the face summons the background. We're just getting better at listening, not thinking, obeying.

Found a room, Gardzienice, how do we sing this

2006-05-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Radmila, who introduced me to Shiwani, we have found a room for Ana, the Polish theatre artist who's coming over for a training. The room is right by the UW campus, spacious, light, and private.

This is Gardzienice's website, if you want to read more about Ana's theatre company.

Gardzienice, in eastern Poland

An early Gardzienice work

Gardzienice is as strikingly physical, vocal, transcendant, groundbreaking, and historically significant as the Odin. They, too, are not just a theatre -- they are an entire philosophy, ethics, and way of being in the world. I don't know their company well, unfortunately -- but believe me -- RESPECT IS DUE. One of their trainings, for example, is night running. The actors go out at night, and run for miles on paths through the hills.

For a long time, Gardzienice began their exploration of each new piece with the question, "How do we sing this?"

How do we sing this.

refuse to choose

2006-04-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Refuse to Choose

Great book by Barbara Sher, author of I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was.

This book is focussed on people who don't have a single focus in life, but instead, want to do LOTS of things -- and do. She calls such people "Scanners," and describes 10 or 12 different types.

I am a Serial Master. A Serial Master's pattern is to stay with one thing for years, until they master it, then move on to the next thing. Finding the next thing is like falling in love; it cannot be predicted or summoned, only encountered. A Serial Master's true skill is excellence. I am a Serial Master, with Wanderer rising.

seeking room near UW, July-Aug

2006-04-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

I have a friend from Gardzienice, the legendary theatre company in eastern Poland, who is coming for a month to study at the University of Washington this summer. She will be here 7/25 - 8/25, and is looking for a room to rent within walking or biking distance.

I'd like to find her a beautiful place that's spiritually renewing.

If you have any leads, have a room in your house you'd be willing to sublet, or know a childless or empty-nest couple with extra bedrooms and a fondness for European artists or theatre, let me know. She is friendly, non-smoking, speaks Polish & English, has no allergies, and loves pets.

Any questions, email me at realrachel@aol.com.

wrong job, career paths

2006-04-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight I ate dinner with Rich. "If you do anything, what would you do?" I asked. "What I'm doing now," he said. He has the same job I do. We talked about the by-invitation-only boardgame convention he had just returned from; the games he's working on; the games he's playing. When we got back to work, he showed me the map he'd created for PuzzleHunt last year, and how, when you zoomed in, it revealed tiny buildings with tiny clocktowers with tiny clockhands.

"I set the clock's time to be the same as in that Nicolas Cage movie about the treasure hunt," he said. At that exact moment -- my defenses down, late at night, tired, gazing at games within games within games built solely for pleasure -- I suddenly realized, I am in the wrong job.

Rich is a dolphin in the ocean of joy, when he is making games. I am a dolphin when I am rehearsing or life-coaching; when I and others are focussed on becoming our whole mysterious authentic selves.

"I think NTJ's are better than most people at figuring out what they love, and accomplishing it" he said. "We're good at abstracting, from reality. We are good at analysis, so once we've got the abstraction, we can see what's there. And we're planners -- once we see it, we go get it. In college, I majored in game design. Then I decided to get a game internship, and got it. I decided to go fulltime and got it. I decided to move to Microsoft doing games, and got it. I decided to go fulltime in Microsoft games and got it."

An ENFP works differently.

I decided to drop out of college and follow my bass-player boyfriend to California. I decided to play piano for ballet studios at night. I left piano to get a job in software because my software housemates wore jeans and slept in and made a lot of money and had interesting work. I left software to lead Software Development Bootcamps because attending Bootcamp had blown my mind. I left Bootcamp to study theatre because I was great at improv in Bootcamp, and wanted more training. I left theatre to work with Lyon -- to do a company as mysterious as theatre, and as conscious & meta-conscious as Bootcamp & software. It didn't work out, but that still feels like my trajectory. I am headed toward theatre-plus-something-more-conscious.

The thing that will crack all this open is going to the gym.

Once I start to move, I'm going to move forever. I walked for an hour on Sunday with Shawn. Another hour on Monday with Rob. Yes, said my body contentedly. Yes.

took the paintings to town

2006-04-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

Today I took the 4 portraits Wes and I have done, plus 5 of the co-paintings I did with Sal. I showed them to Jeff, over at his housesitting place. I showed them to my whole program manager team at our staff meeting. I showed them to Jim, my therapist. They had the same effect everywhere: a hush, followed by a long absorbed gazing. When I put them away, it was like taking light out of the room.

The wildest, for me, was showing them at my PM meeting. I set the paintings against one wall, one row on the whiteboard, one row on the floor. It was like sending an electric shock through the room. Their faces softened and opened, and they stared. When the site team came in for the meeting afterward, the same thing happened again -- they all stopped, stared, and couldn't stop asking questions. It was like they were drugged. They couldn't look away.

It is incredible to send that kind of lightning-bolt stimulus into people. It is a measure of the quality of these paintings, and their unconsciousness, that people are so struck.

After the PM meeting, I had gotten time with Linh to learn how to do the kind of game I'm doing next. "Hey," I said, thinking of the co-painting. "Let's draw a co-mind-map." I spread a big piece of butcher paper on my art table, and for half an hour we drew all the areas of my upcoming game that a PM would worry about. We drew at the same time; we drew on each other's areas; we linked to each other's. "We need a bigger paper," she said at the end. "I've got more paper, I'll book us again," I said.

It is amazing how much I learned from her. I have been getting braindumps and reading docs, but this was SO much better. So clear, so fast. I pinned it up on my wall.

This is another way I am integrating my life. Instead of keeping art over HERE... and work way over HERE... I am starting to let them mix together.

ochre and turquoise
on the same brush -- brilliant green,
streaked and buttery

Speaking of portraits, you should see Radmila's. When she is ready to share her paintings, I'll post a link. When I see her portraits, I stare. And stare. And stare. She is working in black and white, and their power is incredible.

What I really want to say is, I miss the people at work. I wish I knew them like I know actors. After even 3 hours, I know actors better than I know work people in a year. I feel like I am drinking dust, wading in dust, breathing dust, when I don't know the people around me and they don't know me. So, taking the diamond cutter's advice, I am starting the change by revealing myself.

Wes 2 - in progress

2006-04-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Wes 2

Here is one of our paintings, in progress. At this stage, Wes has finished the face, using a stunning blend of the techniques from "Jerry" (portrait #3, already posted) and "Holly" (in progress). I have made the first mark on the background. It's part of a quote from Eugenio Barba: What you must do, you must do -- and ask no questions. The white of the t-shirt is the paper itself, an incredibly thick, stiff, rough-textured Punjab watercolor paper.

By the time we finish, the quote will be buried, as will most of the yellow. A secret of the painting.

Paint progress - 4/17/06

2006-04-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Reading, by Trevor Romain

2006-04-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

[I am reposting this from Trevor Romain's blog.]

April 06, 2006
THE READING
by Trevor Romain

I have written about a wonderful 12-year-old named Megan Stento before, but I was reminded of her yesterday and thought I'd share her story once more:

Megan was an amazing 12-year-old girl who taught me how to turn feathers into wings.

I remember visiting Megan at the hospital one morning and telling her about a new book I had just written called The Other Side Of the Invisible Fence. (Which is unfortunately out of general circulation, but available on my web site.)

“I’m going to dedicate the book to you," I said.

“Thanks,” whispered Megan softly, with parched, dry lips. "That means a lot to me."

Megan was a beautiful child with a smile that could reach across an entire room. The effects of chemotherapy and grueling radiation sessions did not dampen her wonderful demeanor.

“As soon as the book comes out, I’ll read it to you,” I offered.

Megan said nothing for a few seconds. Then she said, “You’ll have to read real loud if I’m in heaven.”

She turned to me and smiled.

“I will.” I said. “If you die before this book comes out I’ll climb on the roof of my house and read so darn loud you’ll hear me all the way up there."

Megan fought an incredible battle, but she was no match for the savage cancer that ripped her body apart from the inside out. She died only days after our conversation.

Megan’s mom Becky spoke to me after the funeral. “You are going to keep you promise to Megan aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” I said, fighting back my tears.

Becky called me later that day and asked if the family could come over to my house when I climbed on the roof to read the book. She thought it would be a good memorial to Megan.

“Absolutely,” I told her.

“Becky called me the next day and asked if I wouldn’t mind very much if Megan’s class came to the reading on the roof.

“I would love that.” I told her.

A few days later the principal of the school called and asked if the entire school could come to the reading on the roof.

That’s when I said, “I don’t think it’s possible. My garden is too small.”

Well, that did not stop Becky Stento. By the next morning she had arranged for me to do the reading on the roof of the Laguna Gloria Art Museum here in Austin. The location was ideal. The two-story building had a flat roof with a deck on it and was surrounded by a beautifully manicured green lawn.

It rained the entire week before the reading and we were fearful that the reading might not take place. Then on the morning of the event, as I climbed the stairs to the roof, the sun came out and bathed the entire garden in a warm golden light.

Once on the roof I leaned on the little wall surrounding the deck and looked over the edge.

My heart stopped.

Sitting on the lawn on chairs and blankets were almost a thousand people. I still do not how so many of them heard about the event.

The entire crowd was completely silent. The only sound I heard was the chirping of happy birds in the woods surrounding the lawn and the occasional barking of a dog way off in the distance.

The silence touched me in ways I cannot describe.

I looked up into the sky...and read the book to Megan.