Change in a chaotic system begins imperceptibly, in tiny motes, at the edges.
In the first year of theatre, I did not know it was the first year of theatre, either. The whole time, I thought I was going back to Microsoft in six weeks. I did not know that I would do nothing but theatre for four years, and stay in thrall to theatre for three more years, even after returning to work. Or that I would spend a year in Europe studying it, and become an ensemble theatre director with a sure hand for Chekhov and devising physical theatre. I did not know any of that.
2011 has been that kind of year.
one day you're eating
mulberries, then -- you're on a
strange road with strangers
strange road with strangers
This was a year of rending. Things I had held true of myself, I could no longer hold true. Things I had thought and believed, I no longer thought or believed. New, more coherent, more explored pieces of systems of ideas had appeared.
I can point at all the things that happened this year, and yet, I cannot see the pattern. Only points of light.
Points and points and points of light.
When you inject energy into a closed system, there WILL be changes. You cannot predict where or what the changes will be. But you can, with absolute certainty, predict that there will be changes.
-- Benjamin Ellinger
-- Benjamin Ellinger
I got sick Christmas day with a high fever, and for six days lay in bed, drinking only water, sleeping 20 to 24 hours a day. I was processing, and moulting, burning, fitful, restless, consumed. Solve the puzzle, I kept thinking, as I rolled in fiery slumber. Solve it. But after days, I realized it was not solvable. Trying to, even from the depths, just spiked my fever higher. Finally I let it go until I could think again.
I have leveled up. I have left the level of Do It Alone and entered the level of Do It With Others. Few of my reflexes or habits work, and almost all of them are anti-patterns. It is the shift to working as a system, not a node.
This was my desktop background all year:
A tsunami isn't a tidal wave but a series of waves—or wave train—in which the first isn't necessarily the most dangerous. Seen from on shore, a tsunami may be more like a rapidly rising tide than a series of giant breaking waves.
When you start to play together and evolve, the first thing that happens is that all your old habits break. It is destruction of a precise and remorseless magnitude.
If I had to name 2011, I would say it was The Year Of Entering The Discrete State Change.
If I had to name 2011, I would say it was The Year Of Entering The Discrete State Change.
