Patsy Rodenburg: Why I do theater | Video on TED.com

Patsy Rodenburg: Why I do theater Video on TED.com

Nero by Vladimir Kush

As a young college student in theatre, I performed the role she talks about from Trojan Woman. (Andromache is a young mother whose husband has been killed in battle and during the play, her young son is thrown from the top of the battlements.) I can still remember the level of visceral grief that performance called up in me, even though I was not yet a mother. I have not acted since college, but seeing this video reminded me of my experience of the truth about the ART of Acting--not to be confused with the BUSINESS of acting (the teeth and tits work she speaks of). Like other forms of art, as mentioned in the previous post, Ms. Rodenburg reminds us that it is about truth telling. And telling the truth requires a lot of a person--you have to be willing to feel and bear that emotional truth yourself, then you have to tell it whether your audience wants to hear it or not. Often, in the moment, they don't--like the man in the story--because it is painful. But later, it is a blessing to have heard it, to have some reminder that this, too, is a shared human experience.

As Ms. Rodenburg mentions, theatre originated with the Greeks as a religious event. It was considered an event that could heal the psyche or soul. We still have theatre that heals, but it is harder to find. It seldom occurs in big, splashy, overpriced venues. It sometiems occurs in small, underfunded black box theatres with an unpaid cast. This is the beauty of live theatre.

Art for Love

This post is about the connection between art and healing and Love. I use the capital L to mean Agape, the unconditional, enduring, spiritual form of love most of us aspire to, and can only achieve in short bursts, rather than the Eros kind of love that only exists in short bursts. So let's look at the creative process as a path toward psychological healing and wholeness, shall we?

First you have to pay attention to yourself in order to see/feel/sense what is in there to begin with. And it can be pretty frightening, even if you are a typical American without any trauma, which is to say neurotic. Yes, I mean you. If you do anything that is contrary to what would be good for you, like eat sugar and McDonald's french fries, not exercise, pick the wrong men, pick the wrong women, drive too fast, etc. then you are at least somewhat neurotic. Don't argue with me, just nod and smile.  

Next, you have to be willing to bring it out into the world in some way, which means you have to REALLY see/feel/sense it. Even when this happens suddenly and without your conscious permission, there must be some part of you willing to let it happen. Often when I am singing in a semi-meditative state I will suddenly started to cry for no discernable reason, sometimes it is an unexplained grief. I can only explain this as having tapped into something 'down there' in my psyche that I have been unaware of. Sometimes a poem will be suddenly available in my brain, and I'm not even sure what it is about until I write it down and work with it a bit. Novelists talk about characters telling THEM what to write. I see these experiences as disowned parts of the self making themselves known, and I do my best to let them speak.  

Then, if you have any artistic leanings in any medium, and some amount of courage, you can put that experience into some kind of form--let people see or hear it. Every time I let someone read one of my poems, I feel anxious about what they are going to see about me that I may not have seen myself, and do I really WANT them to see that part of me. Professional artists take the time and have developed the skill  to refine and edit the raw expression into something less personal and less revealing, but you can never completely hide yourself. And if you could, what would be the point? The need to be seen is generally what drives all artistic expression, and must be stronger than the desire to remain hidden. But WHY are we compelled to expose ourselves this way? How does it help us?

You could certainly point to lots of creative artists, past and present, who were gifted and prolific, and yet died as messed up and unhappy as ever.

My light bulb moment on this ocurred years ago when a professor pointed out that it is not the mere act of creating a work of art that heals the psyche. What heals is the act of being witnessed by another person who sincerely cares about you, the person, enough to take in your work and respond with caring curiosity. This caring curiosity could also be described as the desire to understand another's experience, or empathy. That, he said, was the healing element, and is very different from critique or acclaim.

This idea is a foundational truth for me--witnessing someone, with the explicit desire to understand their experience, their perspective, their truth, is a healing act. James Hillman, in Healing Fiction, talks about psychotherapy as a place where this is happening, since we are creating and telling our life story in every session, and the therapist is receiving and witnessing that expression. It is an act of Agape, of Love. And that Love heals.

The trippy thing is that we actually now have scientific evidence that Love really does heal...listening with empathy to someone activates mirror neurons that facilitate an interaction between both people that then rewires the brain so that it functions better, which in turn improves relationships and everything you can list that defines an emotionally healthy and happy person. (read Dan Siegel for more on this)

The downside: It takes a long time and does not require pharmacology, so insurance still refuses to pay for Love. (sardonic laugh). Oh, and you have to be witnessed by someone capable of empathy and some measure of unconditional positive regard, so beware of sociopaths, in this regard.
Which brings me to my thesis statement: Creative self expression, and ultimately Art, occurs because of the artist's need to be loved. Like all human beings.
 
Discuss.

Because Someone Asked About Jung--Part Uno

A friend has asked for a rundown on Jung. Now that is an invitation I cannot pass up. I hope some other friends will take a moment to add their two cents worth to this first attempt to put into writing the sum total of my knowledge of Jung. Well, maybe not all of it...I don't even know what I know. I have an inkling of how much I don't know, so I hope that will keep me humble and honest here. 

As I only recently learned, during a lecture by Rick Tarnas, you really have to start with Nietzsche. It was he who coined the phrase, "What does not kill me makes me stronger." As I understand it, he was the first to really GET this idea that suffering actually has meaning and purpose...which is to make us stronger, wiser, deeper, etc. Now poor Friedrich was a very very very intelligent and thoughtful man, and very very very very lonely. He apparently never knew the love of a woman. He knew prostitutes, but was never LOVED by a woman. (Probably because of that 'stache...I mean LOOK at it!) Now this could not have been good for his psyche. In fact, Tarnas makes the case that his lack of intimate relationship did indeed hinder his psychological development in that his ego remained quite inflated. Anyone who has ever been married can attest to the marvelous, deflating effect a spouse can have on one's ego, yes?  However, maybe it was because he held himself in such high regard that he was able to see the enormous ego humans had maanaged to develop. So huge, that we had effectively ditched God.

This is where we get to his most famous, and mostly misunderstood statement, that "God is Dead" which points to our increasing desire to trust in Science and what could be observed and measured, thus turning our backs on what can't be observed, measured, and proved--the existence of the Soul, of God, of a Cosmic Order that infuses everything around us.  He saw that we were taking on so much importance in the universe (this was the post Rennaisance, Enlightentment era, when we were extremely impressed with ourselves) that we were about to supplant the deity. Mind you, we are only talking about the Western Psyche here, in all its glory and all its shame.

For most of our history, people generally thought of the world at large as having some sense of sentience, and that we belonged IN and TO the world and cosmos, were a natural part of it. The numinous deities lived in everything, and anything could be a means by which to connect to and understand them: tea leaves, entrails, serpents, planets, etc.  However, the Rennasiance changed all this. In a positive way, we woke up and grew up, individuated if you will, from this enmeshed relationship with the parental Gods and Goddesses. Science determined that the Gods did not live in the earth, the trees, the oceans, the mountains, etc. They no longer inhabited the sun, moon, and planets. No longer spoke to us through oracles and signs. Tarnas calls this the 'disenchantment of the universe', when the cosmos no longer had a consciousness, and became a lifeless lump of matter. The Western Mind set it up so that a disembodied God was up there in 'heaven' somewhere,  and only maintained a direct line to humans. Especially those living in Europe at the time.

That scene from Angels in America comes to mind...my version of the Angels talking to one another in the voice of Eddie Izzard: "Have you seen God lately?"... "No, I haven't seen him, I thought you had.".... "Well the last I saw Him was EONS ago."... "Holy crap, do you think he's GONE?"..."He can't be GONE...can He?"..."SHIT! What do we tell the humans?"..."Um...tell them he went out for sushi, and He will be RIGHT BACK."

This position, being the special beings on the planet with a direct line to Our One God made it possible for us to rape, pillage, colonize, and destroy the earth and other peoples up until...well...right now.

You know that game telephone, where you whisper a message in someone's ear and send it around the circle? Imagine getting a whispered message from God...how hard is is to ACCURATELY communicate the answer to your prayers. "What God? You say it's ok for us to go to the New World and grab all the gold from the Godless Heathens? Cool! Hey fellas , we're good to go! I got it straight from the Big Guy."  Or what if you DON'T get an answer to your prayers..."Hey fellas, we're good to go..."

We were no longer part of the world, we were the owners of the world. And the world did not have a soul, it was a lifeless lump of Unobtainium waiting for us to mine and use. It was our Manifest Desitny to do so. Poor, sensitive, insightful Nietzsche saw this coming, and proclaimed it loudly. He also got that we were ignoring a vast reservoir of interiority where God still lived quite apart from our contolling egos...deep within the human Psyche and in Nature.  People listened, but did not really really get it in a big way. However, Freud and Jung got it...and ran with it.

More to come.

Strays

Leaving a meeting in Pasadena today, walking to my car parked behind the restaurant, I saw a lovely tortoise shell cat that seemed to be watching me from just outside the kitchen door. I meowed to it. No response. Not even an ear twitch. I meowed a few more times, got no response. This is weird, to not even be acknowledged! Then I realized one was eye was strange, so I walked toward it. No movement. Finally as I got really close, it showed some sign of life, and I slowly reached down to pet its head. Now I could see the matted hair, could feel the bones just beneath the skin, and the one eye--blue grey and bulging out of its small head. It seemed to move painfully, but purposefully closer to my hand, so I gently rubbed the neck and legs and belly and back. It is never pleasant to pet a skeletal cat, and the cat seemed to both want and be hurt by the petting. I could not bring myself to pick it up, though. It was going to be hard enough to leave already. I thought about asking the kitchen staff if they took care of it or not, and if not, taking it to the Humane Society. That would mean euthanasia, most likely, since it was clearly old and in need of costly medical attention that I'm sure they would not provide. Then I saw a cat box fitted with blankets under the eaves, and decided it did have some kind of home here, if not all the love it needed. I walked to my car and the small cat tried to follow as best it could. I said, "No, I can't take you home." It seemed to understand and stopped at the steps up to the parking lot. Thank goodness. That would have been a heartbreak.

I pondered what would have been the right thing to do if the cat had been a mere stray, unwanted and uncared for by anyone? Would it not have been kinder to deliver it into the hands of those who could end its painful life? Most would probably say yes, because it is an animal and we think a painless death is a better fate than life on the streets without love and care. Yes, most of us would think that was the moral choice.

I'm writing this because the meeting I was at prior to the cat was with a roomful of people who work very hard to help stray children find homes; kids who have grown up in the foster care system because their parents were abusive, or drug addicted, or incarcerated, or all of the above. These kids have enough scabs and scars on their hearts to make it virtually impossible for them to receive love without it hurting so much it makes them lash out at the very ones trying to love them. They all desperately want to be loved, but it is not pleasant to hold a kid who is cursing at you and threatening to slash your tires because she thinks you hate her.

And yet, these kids grow up and turn 18 and then many of them end up on the streets. Worse off than the cat, because most restaurants don't put up with kids sleeping outside the kitchen. Most businesses call the cops. Our state had finally begun to put something into place for these kids...financial and emotional support and housing and medical care...to keep them sober and sane as they made that risky crossing from adolescence to adulthood. But it has now been cut--slashed rather--along with many many many other prograams that have been a lifeline for the traumatized children of LA County. The ten kids we had set up in apartments (chosen from many more who had applied) had to be cut down to 4 last month. Of those cut, some have already gottn into trouble with the law and will likely end up in jail. And once that happens, most of them are truly lost. The ones who don't go to jail will likely develop drug addicitons, end up homeless, not go to college, not have any kind of sustaining career, and have children they can't support and can't parent and who will eventually be put into the same system they came out of.  

Is that the moral choice? Is that the humane decision? Have we decided, collectively, that this is ok with us? Maybe we think they must deserve it? They must have deserved to be born to meth-addicted mothers and fathers, left to feed themselves at the age of 4 or 5, never knowing what it was like to be part of a family that protects you? Have we made the decision that prison guard unions should  have more voice and power in politics than Social Service agencies? That oil companies deserve more protection than our own children?

Because make no mistake, these are OUR children. They don't live in the Third World. They live right here in LA. And although we, as individuals, have not directly made those choices, We HAVE decided. And we have decided not to think about it too much.

The Exaltation of Emotions

This one is hot off the press...fresh from the oven...and just fell off the turnip truck. It came this morning as I was contemplating the pros and cons of being so connected to Feeling all the time, wondering if this was something to cherish or a sign to get back into therapy.  The truth came through loud and clear that whether or not it is a gift or a curse, and even though it is often uncomfortable, I do cherish it.


There is an Ocean Within

There is an ocean within
and all around us
Of Feeling
and Aliveness
And God.
I don’t want to be distant
From the intensity
Of knowing I am immersed
In something that immense
And powerful.
That intimacy,
I seek
Every day
Every night
In every touch
Of salt water
Wave
And undercurrent.
I want to surf
Sound
Float
And be pulled under,
Learn to breathe water
or drown.
Because otherwise
I am simply a bystander
An onlooker
Stranded on the lone and level shore.


Something else that came this morning: Emotions, which can be deceptive and unhelpful at times, can lead us to the Wisdom of the Heart. Thoughts, which can be incorrect and destructive at times,  can lead us to the Understanding Mind. Neither thoughts nor feelings ARE the wise understanding, they simply point the way to something bigger and truer.

That's all I got so far on this...

Thoughts from a Moody Poet

I used to never be "moody". I used to be so even keeled. Never got irritable, never really depressed, never over the moon either. Things are different now. I"m not sure exactly when they changed, but it's been awhile. And although I'm no big fan of this new world order, every mood has it's gifts if you choose to look for them...

You know those times in your life when you just want things to change, to get better, to move on already? When you are sick and tired of whatever you've been doing/thinking/feeling for what seems like an interminable length of time? When you know something has GOT to change, but you don't know how or what or when? This poem came from one of those times, a time when I felt compelled to consult whatever oracle was handy...and that night it was the runes. I drew the one called Isa or "Standstill", and it's wisdom was not welcome, but it was accurate. I often think of that night and this poem when I'm sick of winter, sick of feeling blue, sick of feeling stuck. It is not so much about giving up, as it is surrending to what IS and being THERE for as long as you must.   

Isa

Standstill.


Let the icy winds of Winter
Blow right through
Till you are clear
And crystalline.

Unmoved,
Dispassionately allow death
To silence
Your least
Breath.


Then, wait.
In stillness
Stand
And listen
As the wisdom wind
Blows you away, cell by cell.

Then
Still
Wait.

The winds will die
The ice will thaw
And a new sun, cold and small,
Will yet appear
In the East.


This poem came from an even darker mood, more depression than mere frustration. These moods have been descending upon me every year for awhile now, usually just as Christmas is approaching. I like to think of it as my psyche's natural response to winter, the desire to go within and be quiet, and like Persephone, spend a little time in the land of the dead in order to prepeare for the new life of Spring. But this particular year it came on me later, during a time when I should have been pretty happy overall. So, in keeping with my respect for the goddess in all her guises, I tried to find her reasons, and found a gentle rebuke for a certain self-indulgent wallowing I am sometimes guilty of...  
 
Persephone
 
She usually calls for me in winter,
But this year, I did not hear
Until the earth was in bud.
It seemed strange
To turn toward that dark stare--
To go down--
When life was already celebrating
A return.
But when the Dark Goddess demands a descent
You must go.


You must go down
To open more,
To be pried open in your most closed places.
To let the darkness that lives there
Spill out onto the floor at your feet
Like blood,
And you must grieve
The loss of the hurt
You held so dear,
Before you can join the flowers.

And, speaking of flowers, we should end with a mood of contentment and quiet joy from the months when I finally sat myself down to write the thesis required for me to graduate and move on with a new career. I procrastinated for a year, but then found I loved the process more than I ever dreamed. It's been 10 years since those lovely, wonderful, mornings indulging my creative and intellectual muses.


Some Joys

After the off-to-school bustle
A silent morning house
Soft clear light
Sleeping dog
Hot tea, books, and keyboard await.

A candle is lit
A prayer is whispered
Musica Divina begins with the flow of thoughts
And I write
Weaving threads of ancient myth
And my own
On Athene’s loom
I create something new.

Tonight, Rilke

Wicker Weaving, "Lotus" by Chaa

I found this poem tonight for the first time. I felt it at once, but not in a way I could describe. So I closed the book and took to writing a blog entry filled with the ill-matched threads of my currently frayed emotions. But that was not something I wanted to send out into the world. Too much personal angst. Just because one needs to vomit doesn't mean others want to watch or smell it. (Unfortunately, sometimes friends get it anyway, when they least expect it.) So after that purge, I am coming back to the poem to see what is there for me. I have no idea where this is leading, or if it will have anything to do with my mood today.


She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gracefully
into a single cloth--
its she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

First question, who is "she"? The feminine God? The Self? Soul? (I will use all these words to refer to the mystery in the poem, not because I think they mean the same thing, but because I don't want to pin "her" down.) I see her sorting through what has been lost, discarded, rejected from the psyche, making good use of each thread as she weaves a unified whole. Her weaving is like a meditative state that banishes the incessant fears and worries of the mind--the loudmouths of the hall. She then receives "you"--and who are you? Who are you to her?  Human to God? Ego to Self? Body/Mind to Soul?

"You are the partner of her loneliness".

Ah, this is the heart of it...even SHE feels lonely, and your presence does not erase that loneliness, though you share it with her. This reminds me of a statment of Rilke's from Letters on Love,  "I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."  Is the poem saying that even God is lonely? (Yes, actually, he says that a lot...probably because he was very lonely.)

The last lines hold the key to something bigger though.

"With each disclosure you encompass more"--the human mind/ego/psyche is enlarged by witnessing her as she reveals herself. This we know, listening to the small, still voice within, the voice that is able to maintain composure and silence and softness when everything outside is filled with chaos and despair, does bring a greater sense of well being, a greater ability to encompass all with equanimity (or something approaching that...)  And, as the you in the poem grows, "she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you"; so this is how God/Self/Soul grows and...dare I say...evolves? By being seen and heard by YOU...the small, 'insignificant' human self, willing to be a part of the conversation. 

Rilke makes this point at the end of another poem, "...inside human beings/is where God learns." ("The Winged Energy of Delight", trans. Bly). This is also a major tenet of Process Theologians, but I'll let others carry that thread.

Nice work! We've gotten to the essence of the poem, I think. At least one layer of it. The big question remains...what does this have to do with me? Today? Something in the book's preface pops up, written by one of the translators who is a Jungian psychotherapist (a woman after my own heart!). She talks about the core principle of "reciprocal individuation, which means that a deep and loving encounter generates development": the very act of meeting and witnessing another in an authentic way changes BOTH beings.

Depth therapists know that we are not "doing therapy" to people. If we are genuinely showing up with our whole selves,  "therapy" or healing happens between us and our clients--we both get to have a share of goodness, we both develop, we are both enlarged and stretched beyond what limits us. 

The witnessing of things and people, as a means of making them real, is a deeply spiritual concept and I feel it's great presence settling near me. This truth is what drives me.

It drives me as a healer, certainly. But it also drives me as one in need of healing: the need to be witnessed, to be mirrored, to be seen and heard is powerful and strong, and as ancient as my bones. (BTW--the first sentence and the second are all the same process. Yep, it works that way. We give what we need in order to get what we need.) It happens in any relationship when we have the courage to show up as ourselves and are met by someone with the capacity to take us in and hold us for awhile without trying to change, deny, suppress, or defend against what we lay before them. This is a very tall order for one human to another, but it is essential that we keep striving for it.

I feel like I'm missing a thread here and there, not able to tie it all in and up neatly. Perhaps you can help...