Shane's paintings & graphic novel

Three paintings by my friend Shane White. You can see his professional art here and his personal art here . You know you're an artist, when both your professional and personal sites are art.

Shane is currently working on North Country, an original 96-page graphic novel, to be published in early 2005. Double-click to enlarge.

Beauty week

This week's posts will mostly be Moments of Beauty. Bootcamp is high-processing, high-growth, high-creativity.

Look on the most high
and the most beautiful
as much
and as often
as you can.

--Leonid Anisimov, Honored Artist of Russia

Don't go back to sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don't go back to sleep
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep

--Rumi

Bootcamp

Michele McCarthy & Jim McCarthy

I'm working a Bootcamp with McCarthy Technologies this week. "Working" means team-teaching, coaching, leading. It also means growing exponentially. Participating in one of these laboratories is a peak experience, a huge growth accelerator.

Bootcamp is an intentionally recursive bootstrapping experience. Bootstrapping is what a tree does. The seed bootstraps itself from a seed to a sprig, a sapling, a tree, a flowering tree, a fruiting tree. How do you go from seed to tree? In a human, one algorithm begins, "Teach yourself everything you need to know to..."

Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy have spent the last ten years working on, "How do you teach people to fish?" Or, more accurately, "How do you most efficiently teach people to teach themselves how to fish?" The Bootcamp has gradually evolved and honed. You're given a shining book, a set of protocols, several levels of support, a deliverable, and a structured experience. The results are incredible, indelible.

"Once you know this, you never go back," says Jim. "You may choose not to use it -- but you never forget it's possible."

Bootcamp is an evanescence of humans. It is one of the only times I have experienced, other than theatre, where everyone in the room is functioning on all levels at once.

Thankful for therapy

Jim Rapson, therapist

"I went to therapy and it took," my friend Michele used to say. I was envious. Now I can say the same.

After seven years of therapy (and theatre -- the two entwined like a DNA helix), I am grateful to be setting off for my mom's house, and looking forward to it. I don't think I would have found peace with my mother, without the patient spiritual witnessing and partner-work of Jim.

I saw a movie once where they said, "You can make peace with your parents while they're alive. Or after they're dead. It's easier when they're alive."

Okay. Off to my mom's turkey, made the old-country way, with giblets and homemade gravy and all the trimmings.

Purring

I feel like all these tigers at once. Lots of good stuff happening. NonActors rocked last night in their final showing, three scenes set all over the room -- a glittering dance bar, an outdoor summer garden with white roses, a bedroom at night with turquoise plaid wool blankets and a man on his knees. My relationships are cracking, tons of growth and greatness all round. I can't wait for the upcoming Bootcamp -- I'm at a new level, so it will be too. I still feel 2005 will be the best year so far, a whole new level of emergence and integration.

With that -- I leave you to your day. Have a good thanksgiving.

Redfruit

Here are two great midwinter taste-treats. I stole the first, invented the second.

POMEGRANATE SALAD
1. Make a salad
2. Sprinkle pomegranate seeds abundantly
3. Add dressing & serve
Note: Especially good with avocado



STRAWBERRY-GRAPEFRUIT SALAD
1. Core a pink grapefruit into a bowl
2. Lavishly intermix sliced fresh strawberries
3. Serve. Especially good for breakfast, with eggs
Note: Incredibly beautiful. Has tons of vitamin C, for colds

Ahhh, Australia

Newport Beach, summer, looking south


Newport Beach, winter, looking north

I lived five blocks from this beach. I took a two-year job with Microsoft in the Sydney office, and spent my whole housing allowance to live as close to the ocean as possible.

I'd walk to this beach from my house, under wheeling flocks of cockatoos. First, there's the roundy (roundabout). Then the fabric store, the Thai place with great samosas, and you're at the main drag. Turn left. Three blocks to the beach, passing the fruit & vegetable shop, the newsstand, the butchery, the women's shop, the surf clothes, the men's tailors, the tiny grocery/everything shop, and the Greek guys' fish & chips place on the end.

My favorite was to go down around 10 at night. The beach was empty. The moon was out. The chips from the Greek place were steaming hot and greasy in their paper. And the ocean was a dark hushing swell, bathing you in coolness and peace.

Sweat the details

This from my housemate Jeff, who spotted it in his bookstore today:

Sweat the details --
And a puddle of perfection
will develop.

Improv evaluation -- work & meta-work

This morning I was standing outside at BCC, reflecting on Improv.

I treat these classes as labs. I pause at the end of each to measure results, and to set goals for the next one. The limitation lies in me; whatever I can teach, they can do. There is no limit to the actors -- they could walk on water and live on light, if I knew how to teach it.

RESULTS
Overall, I give myself a D. On the scale of what I am capable of, that is.
2. The direct level, of conveying improv skills, went okay.
3. The more important meta-level -- of creating an environment in which improv skills spontanteously spring, well-formed and easily, into existence in the actors -- rarely occurred.
4. The meta-meta-level, a characteristic slope of "increasing energy, commitment, joy, aliveness, & organicity" did not occur.

ANALYSIS
1. I was only focused on the direct level, so that's all we got.
2. It's fractal. For best results, the character of the environment must match the character of the topic. Drama wants to be taught with serious penetration. Comedy wants to be taught with lightness & laughter. I was trying to teach comedy with serious penetration.
3. It's also fractal in that, if the lab is my most important work as a human, it becomes so for the performers as well. This time it was not, for me or them.

NEXT TIME
1. To make the environment match the subject, ground the work in Commedia dell' Arte: Teach them to be clowns first, and teach them their history. Once we've gotten the giggly bouyancy of commedia, turn to improv.
Measurement: Am I laughing?
2. To make the work maximally meaningful for me, a) figure out how to get what I most want out of life, through this class, b) focus my attention on the meta-level, c) teach them about the meta-work goals, and d) give them a meta-topic: teach them to invent improv games, not just play them.
Measurement: Is joy, aliveness, & commitment increasing with each class?
3. Focus on the thing PAST the thing. Don't teach them to skate; teach them to play hockey, and skating will seem like the easy part.
Measurement: Is improv seeming easy, and something else taking all our attention?
4. EXTRA CREDIT: Are they conscious of the model? Can they articulate what's going on?
Measurement: They tell me to shut up, they're busy. They gain autonomy & selfhood as a troupe.
5. TRULY EXTRA CREDIT: What the hell, just teach them the whole alignment/shared vision model.
Measurement: They're learning improv easily & excellently, because it's not the most important thing in the room.
6. NOTE: These extra-credit goals might become the goals, for the quarter after this.
7. NOTE: This is all my own resistance. I'm actually ready to teach all that extra-credit stuff, and they'd get it as soon as I do.

CONTEXT & FORGIVENESS
For me, the first laboratory -- the first time I teach something -- is essentially research: Find out the baseline, where we are starting from. Think, Do, Notice, Learn, is the basic algorithm. In me, ThinkDo is almost one word. Dinking, yeah, that's it -- dink until you notice something, then learn and dink smarter. Get everyone dinking & noticing together.

So: A for courage in tackling a new subject. A for picking a subject which matters a lot to me. A for relentlessly searching for how to teach Improv my way -- for how to connect it to my principles and ethics. And A for doing a TON of experiments; a ton of learning in a short time. C for Asking For Help; didn't start doing that till the end. BONUS: Rediscovered the Odin feeling of limitless willingness & commitment, the 7th week.

NOTE
As Jim McCarthy says, "Have the student teach me the thing they want to learn -- excellently, completely, and to the highest standards of human artistic endeavor." As with many of Jim's sayings, this straddles the paradox -- there is a part in there that feels right, and a part that feels wrong. But I know what he means in practice, so it's useful. Maybe my resistance is just my brain's normal sparky fritzing and sputtering when it encounters recursion.

PS
These posts always feel like my "important" ones when I'm writing them. Because they articulate many of the levels on which I'm working. But when I go back to reread later, they don't impress or engage me much. They're just... lab notes.

Gael dreams

This is Gael Garcia Bernal. "Ga-yell," rhymes with Rafael. He was in the Che Guevara movie, Motorcyle Diaries, and Y Tu Mama Tambien.

When I am happy, I feel like Gael's character in Y Tu Mama -- dark, ripped, blinding smile, eagerly hanging out with a close friend who knows way more than me and is leading me into cool adventures.

Yesterday I was playing Snapshot -- Who or what are you right now, if you had to sum it up metaphorically? "I'm that dark guy in Y Tu Mama," I thought, "Right when they're about to have sex with the girl and he just falls back on the bed, completely relaxed. The other two are standing there kissing, but he's the sexiest one in the room."

When I feel like this, I can't stop smiling.

Last night I dreamed that I was at some kind of theater training with Gael. We spent all night wandering around together and talking. He had no shirt on. Once I put my hand on his back and stomach, feeling him. We went to see Caitlin's costumes for her new play. I woke up happy.

Although, now I'm thinking -- "It was a DREAM! We could have done ANYTHING!" But no, when I get Gael all to myself for a whole day, I walk around holding hands, talking about theatre.

I take this all as a sign of impending joy, sensuality, adventure.

Google Open House

CREDIT: Photos by Robert Scoble
MORE PHOTOS: http://scobleizer.textamerica.com/
HIS WRITE-UP: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/18.html#a8674 (Scroll down)

The Google Open House tonight was a party of 200 people, visiting a place where 10 people work. It was eerie -- their digs are so new, it looks like a movie set; like there aren't any real software people there yet. They haven't been there long enough to settle in.

Fortunately, there were several Google people from the Mountain View office, as well, and I also talked to a developer from the New York office. Chris and Radmila were there too. I asked a lot of questions.

"Search is finding the information people want."
"The easy part of seach is finding stuff. The hard part is figuring out its relevance."
"The hard part of anything implemented at Google is scale, robustness, and simplicity of UI."
"The best tool for searching blogs is technorati.com."

The most surprising thing to me was how flat and free Google's culture actually is. Their emphasis on DOING is a powerful motor. Thinking by doing is unstoppable.

It felt like early days in any joyously-funded research culture: If you have an idea, implement it. Show people. They shrug at failures, considering those as useful as the successes. I was struck by the lack of blame in the culture. And the trust in massively parallel organic processes -- lots of people just doing, all at once. With, perhaps, for once the rudimentary tools to actually make that work. Or more accurately, the culture of building the tools you need to make it work, as you're working. Do, for the doers, by the doers. Open communication. No silos, no secret society at the top. Small teams. Strong use of tools like threaded email boards discussing everything from which features to do, to what companies to buy. In short -- an impressive unconscious Shared Vision around trusting, sharing, surfing, & using massive information flow.

Another striking thing is how fractally their culture & organization mirrors their product. Friendly, flat, fast and far-reaching. Google's search engine = Google's way of working = Google's organization.

They felt noble, and ennobling.

They also had that best-of-breed puppy vibe. It was incredibly energizing to feel a youthful company. Not youthful in that their people are young -- though most of them are -- but that the company itself is young. Strong. Hopeful. I felt oxygenated. Apple felt like that, back in the day. It is a feeling I associate with a) money coming in by the firehose, b) critical mass of good smart people, and the resources to support them, and c) the projects that seethe around that nutrient-fountain.

My favorite quote of the night:
"If you can delight people -- if you can give them something they love -- there will be ways to make money on it."

I want to believe this is true. Experience in theatre, though, plus some timely insights from my MBA friend Rob, remind me this is not a given. Delight is great... AND there also needs to be a solid business eye kept on the money flow.

Google, coaching, & life

I'm making progress on my future.

RULED OUT -- GRAD SCHOOL
UW PhD in Drama
Columbia MFA in Directing
Exeter PhD in Performance Practice (for now)
Stanford MBA

LOOKING GOOD -- GOOGLE
Google in Kirkland - have friends, am doing resume
Google in California - have friends, am doing resume, Aptitude Test last question

ON THE SIDE -- LIFE COACHING
Took first Life Coaching course, from Academy for Coach Training
Am taking Vision Coaching from McCarthy Technologies
Got hired by McCarthy Technologies to coach a Software Development Bootcamp the first week of Dec

THEATRE
A given. Still high from working with those three actors last Sunday.

Life Coaching, you say? Where the heck did THAT come from? What IS it?

Well, the foundation of it was laid seven years ago, when I was a coach at McCarthy Technologies (then McCarthy Teamworx), doing Software Development Bootcamps. This week, I took the first course at the Academy of Coach Training. Short story -- Life Coaching is like athletic training; it's a partner to help you do things you want to do, but never seem to get started on. Or, that you could do more easily with support. It's a results accelerator.

It differs from therapy in that therapy is healing-oriented, and coaching is action-oriented. Therapists are subject-matter-experts on childhood & development, and have much deeper education in their field. Personally, I want a coach and a therapist. The more support I have, the better I do. I want a lawyer AND an accountant AND a bookkeeper AND a tax person AND a banker AND a personal assistant. My view is, "Therapy -- of course. Coaching -- when you want to get stuff done, or done faster."

I can see a Life Coaching practice dovetailing nicely with Google and theatre, laying a foundation for my future. Multiple revenue streams, here we come.

So universe, if you're listening -- I want it all, please. A great Google job AND a solid life coach practice AND an easy deepening of my theatre work. And a dancer body, a shining house & yard, a book, a building, a fantastic marriage with fantastic intimacy & sex, and the best year of my life so far, in 2005. love, rachel

Akropolis retrospective, introspective

I saw Akropolis twice last week; Friday, and their Sunday closing show. Sunday was the best of the run -- hot, loose, whole new worlds of meaning, all three performers broken through to a new level. I was hearing lines I'd never heard before.

Friday, on the other hand, was one of those didn't-quite-click days. Unlike most plays, where, even if it's not clicking that night, you can still have a decent ride on the plot -- here, the clicking IS the play. Without it, Dream felt like strings and sticks, with no illumination. I found myself wondering, "WAS it good before? Or has it always been like this and I was just deceiving myself?" Then Sunday, when it blazed forth as molten white-light, better and stronger than ever, I realized, "No, I was not mistaken. It's like fire: it's either lit or it's not. If it's lit, there's a whole range of hotness."

The intimacy was what had broken through to a new level Sunday. Jennifer was intimate with the notes -- they came absolutely soft, from nowhere. The players were intimate with each other, and with their movement scores. The wild thing about Akropolis, the true thing is -- there is no limit to their intimacy potential, and yet they remain strangers. In this, they are beginning to resemble the Odin, and Leonid's company -- great moons. Sunday was a whole new place of intimacy -- softness, abandon, trust, desperation, surrender -- almost in the realm of lovers, and yet, like lovers, strangers.

When I make devised theatre, I create intimacy first, then evolve the form that reflects that. They create form first, then find the intimacy within it. It doesn't matter; either journey will take you all the way.

But eventually, everything has to be all the way -- the form has to be all the way truthful, and the actors living within it must be as well.

I notice in myself, that if I am processing something big, I sometimes get sick. My body has to purge, or shut down, to handle that amount of information. I feel like the actors in this show had gotten just beyond the sickness; that if they had two more weeks of the run, the show would have broken through into something else entirely.

Vulnerability. That's what was finally beginning to tremble into being, just as it closed.

We must walk off the cliff. Wherever the edge of the cliff is tonight, find it and leap. The leap might kill you. In that leap is the living.

==================================

Robyn Hunt, a Suzuki-lineage holder and my teacher, says, "Actors need to be watched." Sometimes I wonder what it would do for Akropolis to have the size of crowds that generate heat and power. On the other hand, sometimes I think they only need to be witnessed; to know themselves in the danger-light of a single watcher is enough to send them careening toward madness.

Under all this, it is probably myself that wants to be more vulnerable and more intimate, to leap off the cliff, to know myself witnessed.

In Improv Saturday, we had were only three actors. The same number I had at the Odin. And the same calibre -- strong, smart, willing, limitless. I am ready to work with only this level of actor. Commitment. That is another similarity between Akropolis and myself: to others, we appear extremely committed. But inside, we know there is a whole other level of commitment that is possible, and coming.

Come, come, whoever you are

Come, come, whoever you are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
It doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come

- Rumi

Goin' to the show

Tonight I'm taking my NonActors class to see Akropolis. Tomorrow, Improv is going to the 8pm Jet City show. Then Sunday, I'm taking the rest of NonActors to Akropolis for closing night. Next weekend, it's Next Step Theater, the little community theatre who could... and who regularly sells out.

I feel so lucky. I love having ensemble theatres here. I love being able to show actors this calibre and range of ensemble work. Oh, face it, I love theatre.

clear, your moonface
Juliet, dark your bright Mercutio --
tremble, swords

TheraFlu, the wonder drug

Okay, can I just say -- I love this medicine. You dissolve the powder in hot water, like tea, and voila -- lemony goodness that makes your throat stop hurting and lets you breathe again. When I went to the Odin, I took several packets with me. I ended up giving several to the actors, who peered nervously at the fine print, but ended up -- like me -- converts.

I'm fighting off a cold right now, and this is helping.

Beautiful books

I love illuminated manuscripts. Here are a few, as today's Moment of Beauty. Double-click to enlarge.


Old Tibetan music manuscript


Russian manuscript


Ethiopian manuscript


German manuscript


Persian manuscript


English manuscript


Artist's Book with imaginary language by Tim Ely

Spiritual flu

I'm reading a book, Spiritual Genius: Ten Masters and the Quest for Meaning. Huston Smith, the last guy in the book, says, "Depression is spiritual flu." He says when he is not living in what the Celts call "the thin place," near the divine, he knows he is depressed; he's got the spiritual flu.

That is exactly what has been going on with me.

After years of living in that "thin place," I currently am not. I've been searching for solutions on the mortal plane -- "Maybe the right sandwich will make me feel better. The right job. The right grad school." But no -- spiritual wildernesses are their own beast. The solutions are spiritual.

I keep forgetting I am a Mystic.

For me, the mortal world shadows the spiritual one. If I solve my spiritual blockages, the mortal problems solve themselves. I've been tackling it wrong-way-round.

Not red, not blue, but purple

This is another way to look at the voting. This shows, it was close across the board. We as a nation are conflicted.

I guess, actually, you need both sets of data -- the stark red and blue map to let you know the bottom-line, and this one to let you know where the people's hearts are. This one gives me more hope.

It also makes me realize, it's not the South that is the staunch bastion; it's Idaho/Wyoming/Utah. Who knew.

CREDIT: This is BoingBoing's post, which I found through Georgia's blog.

Work quickly! Be wise!

You are now
like a yellowed leaf.
Already
Yama's minions stand near.
You stand at the door to departure
but have yet to provide
for the journey.

Make an island for yourself!
Work quickly! Be wise!
With impurities all blown away,
unblemished,
you'll reach the divine realm
of the noble ones.

-Dhammapada 18, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

FrauenPower

Major Rachel Rutherford
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
PC game

Check it out -- I'm immortalized. I first found this character, named after me, about a year ago. There are only two game designers in the world who would do this: Ben Palmer or Gregor Whiley.

Or possibly, one of the guys at Beam who worked with Ben years ago, when I gave everyone toy guns as consolation-prizes after Microsoft cancelled our game. The guns were incredible -- about four feet long, intricately made out of heavy black plastic, with big blunt foam-tipped bullets and a handle you could pump ten times to maximize how far they'd fly. They were strong enough to fly eighty feet -- down a hall if the ceiling was high enough, or across one of those field-like, 60-desks-in-one-open-area rooms. We took them down to the parking garage to have wars.



I bought fifty of these guns at Toys R Us, during the Computer Game Developer's Conference, then enlisted help to fly the 4 hockey bags of armament back to Australia where I, and Beam, lived. Ahhh, yes, the days when I spent my salary on weaponry instead of theatre props. Not much has changed.

Anyway, I appreciate the homage. Here is where I found the image.
====================================
Several hours later

At the time, these toy guns were the perfect gift. They made us laugh, gave that little "ooo" of a good toy, were an outlet for disappointment & grief, and became legendary. Now, though -- in light of Iraq and our wretched political situation, suddenly it doesn't seem so amusing to see a little drawing of a gun in an American's blog. :(

I comfort myself, however, that Ben is English and Gregor is Australian. I have evidently left some positive imprint of Americans.

Akropolis riven & ravening

I saw Akropolis's Dream of a Ridiculous Man the opening weekend, and again Fri & Sat of the second weekend.

Totally different. The form is the same -- same songs, same ultra-precise physical scoring -- "Even my toes are scored," said Jennifer -- but its catch-fire has changed.


The Dreamer and the Madwoman


The Prince holding the Dreamer
CREDIT: All photos by Mariana Markova.


Friday night, it was all about the Dreamer. Joseph Lavy was like a gymnast, peaking. One of those joyous, do-no-wrong, do-impossible-things-easily flight-nights. He looked like living light. To see someone as physically skillful as Joseph reach his transcendent level, is unforgettable. There were whole new moments, just because the rest of his body could be forgotten while the hand flicked -- where before, the body had required attention. He created time -- pools of moments that used to be busy, became suddenly languid, preparation to a pounce. Noisy movements grew silent and swift. An amazing performance, which swept the show.

Saturday couldn't have been more different. Saturday was all about the Madwoman and the Prince. The show slammed early into the kind of heedless breakthrough it usually doesn't hit until 2/3 through -- with the rope. The show had a darkness and a danger to it, focussed through the lens of the Madwoman and the Prince. It was their fight tonight which destroyed all pretense -- desperate, furious, as silent as the death fights of cobras, and as essential. When the Prince sang to the Madwoman, wooing her with her own song, it sounded like the earth singing -- elemental, soft, deep. The voice came through Eric like it would come through a tree, like it used to come through Brynna -- some warm wind with the performer had befriended, an intimate stranger.

We had a post-show discussion Saturday night. Deep, cracked-open people, now in contact with the actors' gleaming inteligence. "Dostoevski lets his characters have their independence," says Joseph Lavy. "He doesn't tell them what to think." And, "That really happened -- a man, an atheist, went to the priest and said, "I don't believe in god. But I've been seeing all these visions of demons. Can the demons be real, if god is not?" "Sure," shrugged the priest."" "You have played both Hamlet and the Dreamer," I asked. "How do they compare?" "They are not at all the same," he said. "Those are different issues and systems of doubt. Hamlet's doubt is around whether the Ghost is real, and whether he can believe what the Ghost says. Dostoevski's doubt is more multi-levelled and pervasive. Dostoevski says of himself, "I came to faith through the crucible of doubt.""

"The way we sing, there is not just the note," says Jennifer Lavy, "But there is also the whole life of the note, surrounding it. It is this complicated impossible life of all these notes which makes the sound. That's why it sounds like there are more than three of us singing. In one of the early running songs, we are actually singing in unision -- but it doesn't sound like it. Because we are all pulling and tearing at the note in different ways. At one point, I am actually singing two octaves at once -- the note and a higher shadow note."

"We do physical & vocal training at least 8 hours a week, and during some phases of the year, 5 or 6 days a week," says Joseph. And, "When we build a piece, there are 5 or 6 levels of evocation, levels which we have built and are consciously working on."

"Each night," says Eric Mayer, "Is a confrontation. It is not a presentation -- it is a new confrontation, in that moment. It has to be."

I have been thinking about what to give Odin Teatret for their 40th birthday this year. I didn't do anything for their big fest. Last night, I realized -- what I would like to give them is this show. It would nourish them so much. A moment of beauty, and of reassurance that the lineage is being pursued -- in younger, different hands -- at their same level of discipline and craft. Its demanding truth would feed them, in a way that few performances can.

It would be the perfect gift -- sending something I love, in people I love, to other people I love, who also make something I love.

Last night I brought some actors from the Improv class I am teaching, themselves a dark green-water group, strong and thoughtful, to the Akropolis show. Brad reflected on Mephistopheles and Faust. ("There is no Faust without Mephistopheles," answered Joseph. "They do not exist without each other.") PJ said, "Those performers are in a whole other world. I want to be like them when I grow up." Anya, who is from Russia, said, "There are two kinds of Russians. Russians who love Tolstoy. And Russians who love Dostoevski. Me, I love Dostoevski. This show -- this was real Dostoevski. Tolstoy is moralistic -- he always makes his characters obey. Dostoevski is more kind; he loves his characters, he gives them their own life, their freedom. And they all go crazy at the end. Of course."

Radmila and Chris and Lakshmi came. I thought, looking around the room -- "It is no coincidence who is here tonight. Who has been brought for this one moment of fine truth, and fed by it, and changed." Eugenio's groups are no larger than this. No less influential, no less important.

There is a line in the show I think of as Joseph's centerline. "I am always thinking about one thing," he says. "I am tormented by it."

Mine is, "I could move a mountain if god told me to." ("So why do you doubt?" asks the Prince.) "My belief is not perfect," answers the Dreamer. That's me right now. For seven years I moved mountains, hearing god. Now -- my belief is not perfect.

"If everything in the world were sensible," says the Dreamer, carrying a chair matter-of-factly across the space, "Nothing would get done."

====================================
SHOW NOTE: Today's Sun 11/7 show is CANCELLED. Three shows left, Th-Sat, 11/11-13, 8pm, $15 cash at the door. Paylot is $6, around the block on Pike between 10th and 11th. 206/934-7905 for reservations.

Strategy, vision, Google

The game startup is not going to work out. But during the week while I was their on-deck VP of Strategy, I wrote a Strategy doc for the CEO. It was short -- a definition, 14 principles, an example of a great vision, and two pages of implications for the company. An eight-page manifesto.

"The most efficient strategy is to have the same vision in everyone's head," was one of my core principles. "First reduce noise, then send signal," was another. "People improve infinitely and exponentially in the areas of their strengths. Their weaknesses stay weak," was another. It was a synthesis what I live by, drawn from software, theatre, spirituality, art, and team studies.

The example of a great vision I gave was Google's philosophy, "Never settle for the best." Within this, they list ten things they have found to be true, including: "Do one thing very very well" and "You can make money without doing evil."

I'm going to apply to Google. They have a few positions here in Seattle & Kirkland; most of their jobs are in the California Bay Area, in Mountain View. I'm open to moving. They also have a good sprinkling world-wide, but I don't have the languages for those.

Being VP of Strategy taught me two things: 1) Seven years of studying how to found & run a theatre company -- after 15 years in software -- has taught me how to run any company. 2) My software & theatre worlds converge in Greatness. When the people involved are fully ignited, incendiary, on fire as a group -- and I mean in a kind of way that most people have never experienced, in a way which engages their whole human sentient genius -- then it's good no matter what we're creating.

I used to think finding your calling was a Glory thing. Now I'm realizing, it is a homey thing. You like driving Hondas so you drive a Honda. You love spaghetti, so you eat spaghetti. All you think about is theatre, so you make theatre. You can organize anything, so you get a job organizing. At the heart of the holy fire, it's the perfect temperature for you.

I need groups of diverse wild humans, who want to open and embrace their full potential, while making some Great product -- the more metaphoric, the better.

Nix on the PhD

I decided not to apply for the UW Drama PhD. I have learned to pay attention to where the universe says "Yes" and where it says "No". It persistently said, "No" to the PhD.

When the universe is saying Yes, doors open, walls melt away. The PhD path had kindly doors and walls, but they neither opened or melted.

Jeff, my housemate, is a profound introvert and loves working at his bookstore, Half-Price Books. The work, the pace, the organizing, and the immersion in books nourish him. I am a different animal.

In their gentle, inquiring way, that's what the UW profs kept saying -- "Are you SURE you're not a different animal? Cuz, looking at your seven years in theatre, you sure look like one. People can change. If this is in your heart, please apply... but are you sure?"

Jeff said a similar thing. "Their gods are not your gods," he said, laying on the couch, sipping his tea. "Your gods are Leonid and Eugenio. Their gods are the journals. Your church is an empty studio. Their church is a university hall. You've wandered into the wrong church."

When strangers and your housemate start saying the same thing, it's time to listen.

The meta-thing I learned is, if you want to know if a Way is for you, seek masters of the Way. The professors were present, direct, thoughtful, and attentive. They answered questions without beating around the bush. They asked good questions. They spoke respectfully, and plainly.

On the meta-level, just by being around three masters, you can tell -- is this who I already am? Who I am becoming? Around Eugenio and Leonid, the answer was a pure Yes: I too, will someday have a company, built on sound principles, doing Great work, and publishing & teaching worldwide about it.

UW drama PhD

I've been checking out the University of Washington's Drama PhD program. I met with two of the professors and an adjunct professor; and am meeting with the third professor -- whom I know from Playwriting class -- in a couple hours.

There is some part of me that would be happy to curl up with books about theatre for the rest of my life. I have curled up with them for seven years, so it's a familiar practice. I read them like storybooks. Once upon a time there was a man who led ten thousand people in an outdoor play to reenact their revolution. Once upon a time, there was a man who made a two-hour silent play in a cathedral. Once upon a time, there was a woman who would repaint and rebuild the theatre itself, to fit each play. Once upon a time, there was a man who led his actors on long night runs, across farm trails, under the moon. Once upon a time...


Hutchinson Hall, UW drama building

The school of drama is built in what was originally a women's gymnasium -- so it's still got those flying ceilings, wood floors, and tall narrow convent windows that open onto huge trees. The first time I went in this building, into room 201 with its high ceiling and goldenwood floor, I burst into tears. I realized -- some people are learning theatre in surroundings like THIS. I am kinesthetic, so when the space is right, all kinds of things are right for me. I'm sure the architecture is at least half the reason I keep feeling pulled me toward this school.

Turns out, the nearest cafe -- the Ballmer Cafe -- is right across the street in the business building. The buildings could not be more different. The drama teachers have, for offices, quiet tall-ceilinged old rooms with white walls, heavy dark doors, and dreaming shelves of books. The business teachers have offices that look like Microsoft -- industrial, windowed, matter-of-fact, normal-ceilinged, buzzing with computers and phones, with black business desks & gleaming computers.

My worlds, across the street from each other.

I'm not sure I will apply; I am discouraged about my chances of getting in. But I would sure love to experience it.

Fun night

NonActors tonight should be fun. Intimate. Due to illnesses, schedule conflicts, and new jobs, we'll only have five actors tonight.

So, for a treat, instead of class, I'm going to have rehearsal. More potent, deep, demanding. I learned this the first time I worked on Macbeth. We had a small turnout one day, and I thought -- well, then, let's GO. I get the best results when I do it for myself -- when I don't settle for less than what I need, what I know is possible.

Lee Eisler, my choreography guru, says, "You can begin to make a dance at any level you want. You can come in with nothing. You can come in knowing it's going to be about kids in a classroom, with everyone cast, backstory bios you hand out, and a sketch of who starts where on stage."

I found that freeing. I'm always more interested when it's out at the edge of my limits, deepening my own artistic growth. The scary urgent stuff.

Pocket full of mumbles

Okay, here's what I wonder.

We went from a $3-trillion surplus to a $4-trillion deficit. It's like starting with $30K in savings, and four years later, being $40K in debt. Because you used all the money to torch your neighbor's house.

I'm not sure that's recoverable, financially. Not to mention, how long will it take your neighbor to forget? Chairman Mao says, even with the best and most vigilant program, it takes five generations to eradicate a culture. Look at Israel; that hasn't been forgotten in two thousand years.

It's just so stupid. So last-century. I mean -- I work with people from all over the globe, every day. Don't you?

To rebuild that financial base would take a clear vision, good leader, and decades of patient effort. I knew the American empire was ending; I didn't expect it to end so swiftly, on my watch.

Who you gonna call?
Ghostbusters!

I was driving into town the day after the election wondering, "I wonder how long we will have roads?"

I have squandered my resistance
in a pocket full of mumbles
such are promises --
all lies and jest.
Still a man hears
what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest

-- Paul Simon, The Boxer

The right thing to arise from these ashes is a global nation. I know bloggers in Pakistan, Poland, Belgium, Buenes Aires, New Zealand. Software and theatre have long been multicultural. History says another nation will arise, but I think the global nation is creeping in on little cat feet, using the internet as its nervous system.

We'll ignore, for the moment, that Ballmer is gutting Microsoft, so the rate of creep is likely going to slow down.

"When we built the arpanet, cornerstone of the internet," says Ken Harrenstien, "We were building it with Department of Defense funds. One of the design requirements was, it had to be able to withstand direct focussed attack. We weren't able to test our design, though, for 20 years. Not until Desert Storm." He paused. "It passed," he said, with an engineer's matter-of-factness.

Awake!
For morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the stone that put stars to flight

Eugenio always has at least one conscientious objector employed at his theatre. They are an oddly wavery defiant flag of strangeness, in alien waters.

We vote with our feet. Art knows no boundaries, connects all. Beethoven belongs to all of us, and Chopin, and Rumi.

"My religion is kindness," says the Dalai Lama.

Published unbeknownst

I blogged recently about Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I had also planned to write a general-purpose review for Theatre Puget Sound's Theatre Reviews board. More, "You gotta see this show!" and less dreamtime.

The next day, I was surprised to discover my own review from the blog, already posted on TPS. Well, not SO surprised... I had told Akropolis I'd be writing a TPS review, and they liked the blog one so just sent it over. I was also relieved -- magically, while I slept, I had delivered ahead-of-schedule on my commitment.

But what a strange sensation. To read my private love-heart, unreeled on a huge public board. I felt like I was seeing a great dark-grey curtain unfurled across the back of the stage. Something vast and expensive you didn't know you had. Seeing my review in context with other reviews made me realize, my writing is as different from the other writing, as Akropolis is from the other theatres.

Theatre directors have a saying, "You can't see your show till the audience arrives." Magically, as soon as strangers are looking it, you can see everything you missed. Like, take Nanda Devi. For six weeks, I had been focussed on the actors, the flow, the musicality. And then, the day we had an audience, I realized -- oh my god, the DOORS are the main character. We were performing in a room with two large wooden doors on the right, through which all entrances and exits came and went. SWING, talk talk, SWING, SWING, talk talk talk, SWING, talk SWING SWING.

I can't really see my writing until it's published. Seeing it like that, I realized my writing sounds like John Freedman, like Jan Kott -- articulate writers, in thrall to theatre.

Yesterday, I got an email from a stranger, saying, "Great post, I loved this writer's prose."

That's when I got the, "My god, I'm published," feeling. An affirmation that I can write from my love-heart and be received. Before, I had fantasized that if I wrote vulnerably, I would be attacked, mocked, incisively and articulately ridiculed. I never fantasized that a stranger would say, "I, too, dream."

Anxious To Please, a book of transformation

Therapist James Rapson and actor/writer Craig English, friends since 3rd grade, have written Anxious To Please. It was originally called Manhood: The Transformation of the Nice Guy, and that pretty well describes it. The book isn't out yet, so I'm going to plug their website a little.

Anxious To Please talks compassionately about the particularly unforgiving self-imprisonment of Nice Guys, and the 6-step model for Transforming into one's whole authentic self. They invite Q & A's, so ask away. They are currently expanding the book to also address Nice Girls, whose situations are similar but with some important differences.

I have worked with Jim, and find his understanding & practice of transformation profound.

"The process of change for every person is unique, following an enigmatic path toward greater depth and awareness."

-- Jim Rapson

Craig and James

I liked on their site:

- this essay on Manhood (on a linked site); good overview
- this Q&A on Fighting
- these related quotes, "Words from the Wise"

They have some Nice Guys workshops, and Jim also runs an ongoing group for New Dads. More contact info & newsletter signup on their site.

========================
The next day.

Okay, so what I didn't say is WHY I'm raving about this book. Two reasons. One is, I haven't seen Jim for several months and miss him, so writing about his book feels like a way to connect. The deeper one is -- this "Nice Guy" strategy totally describes me. I would say most of my work in therapy has been about moving from that "pleasing others" strategy into my authentic self.

That's why I like Jim's essay, "Manhood," so much. In it, he lays out how Nice Guys act, why they do it, and what it gets them -- and doesn't get them. Then he lays out the six ongoing practices that transform this behavior. I think I've got four and a half of them going. But anyway, this essay is like the ur-manuscript. If they make the book from this, it'll be great.

NaJoFiMo

I'm bowing out of NaNoWriMo. Can't write a novel this month, I've got to find work. I hereby enroll in...

...National Job Finding Month.

Depressed globally? Act locally. Make positive effort for the good. Do not get tossed away.

Kipley said it best...

Howl

Therefore I will wail and howl,
I will go stripped and naked:
I will make a wailing like the dragons,
and a mourning as the owls.

-- Micah 1:8