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.