Friday, August 25, 2006
I have keys to three houses
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.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
004. go to your studio and make stuff (to BenS)
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
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
Friday, August 18, 2006
003. completing, changing form (to BenS)
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
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
Saturday, August 12, 2006
002. actors & software developers (to Joseph)
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.
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.
Friday, August 11, 2006
001. booting (to Joseph)
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.
"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
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
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
rehearsing at work
Teaching bootcamp at work is like rehearsing at work. Exhilerating. Creating conscious people to work with -- and then working with them -- is fantastic.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
francis dancing
"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.
"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
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.
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.
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