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Facing the Mask: 10 Essays on Living Art |
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10. Hands |
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By Poli Masens |
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Exploring in Essays, Philosophy and Practice of BodySpeak™™ training.
BodySpeak™™ is a transformative
art, a method of capturing the essence
of a movement or a state of being by a powerful process of
identification.
COMMUNICATING WITH THE BODY 1Mime uses silence and the body as tools for communication. When you write a book you take some consonants, some vowels, some commas and other writing materials and put them together in a certain way, according to your understanding, so that they express your thought fully. Eventually you have a book. It is the same idea with the body. Mime is a tool for self-discovery. With it the body can express itself. Bodies are letters in constant motion. Start with one movement, add another, and eventually you have a whole piece.
The techniques of mime help to integrate mind and body. Harmony of mind develops through using the imagination and becoming aware of the movements, actions, and reactions used in presenting oneself. When the muscles and breathing are truly moving in tune with the mind, the psyche is free to experience the meaning of subject and object, time, space, and consciousness.
Bodies are like broken vessels; they have to come together. Before this can happen you must know the shape of every piece and how it relates to the other pieces around it. Every area of the body has its own being. In order for the whole body to do one perfect movement with no broken pieces, first take it apart piece by piece. See what each part is made of. Learn how each part moves and teach it new techniques of movement. Decompose in order to recompose later. When we say decompose, we mean it in its essential sense to de-compose, to examine the particles that form the composition.
The key is attention, not tension. Teach the different body areas to relax before they act. Whenever you make a movement, be occupied with it. Do it consciously. Concentrate, focus on it. Become "pregnant" with what you are learning. Then something will be born.
Concentration doesn't take any effort; it is effortless. Just be with whatever part of the body or whatever thought or project you are working on. You never need to try to do anything. Just DO it! Express effort without effort. In mime, you can push a 10-ton truck uphill all by yourself. If you exert the energy it would really take, you would be exhausted by the time you were finished. Instead, when each body part knows what its own individual movement is, the whole action can take place easily and appear intensely real. Give - the - place - and - time - to - every - move - ment.
Mistakes are fine as long as you correct them. As soon as you see a mistake, correct it immediately. When you notice the pelvis is not in the right place, simply send a telegram to that body part. Mistakes are our teachers. Find out which areas of the body do not listen and teach them to listen. Find out which areas of the psyche don't listen, and do the same thing. Every situation teaches something if we know how to listen for it.
Stay within your own possibilities. Do what you can do. If you're sloppy, so what? Know that you're sloppy and learn to be more precise. If you're precise, good. Learn more precision. In order to prevent accidents in any movement, be lucid, awake, alert. Awareness prevents accidents.
The movements open the doors to perfection and the unknown. After perfecting a technique, forget about it. After you give up a technique, you can become it. It will be embodied in all of your movements and actions.
It is not enough to learn decomposition in body parts, exploring them and mastering their movements. You must remember to do them once you know them. The word remember has two parts: re and member. That means putting the different members of the body back together after they have been taken apart. After dismembering comes the reassembling. All the pieces of the broken vessel come together, but now they are equipped to fulfill their purpose and potential as a vessel. Assembling all the parts means looking at the whole picture.
There is more to creating a mime piece than knowing isolated movements. As was said before, they must be combined in a certain way according to your understanding so they express your thoughtfully. A nice body making precise movements is not enough.
But just as you learn grammar so thoroughly that you forget it by the time you write a fully expressive book, so do you discover physically all the laws of movement before the body can finally express itself fully. The scientific aspect of the artist is to put the fragments in a frame. When you have reached that place, you will be able to walk through the door marked "Unknown."
ARTISTIC ZERO 2Everything that happens at Le Centre du Silence is done to bring about radical changes in our ways of thinking. Many people think in words, but few think in movement and vision. Learn to think in images as well as words. Every moment is a new moment. We cannot hold onto the thought or image of a moment ago because this is a brand new moment.
Nothing that happens at Le Centre du Silence is accidental. This is true in terms of both what is said and done and the way in which it takes place. A teacher is a reminder. If he speaks harshly, there is a purpose for it. He must hint, but he shouldn't point the way. Otherwise, he stifles the imagination. A true teacher provides a nourishing environment in which the imagination may flourish.
Each of us comes to Le Centre du Silence ready to learn about the integration of words and images. We eat the creative food that is offered according to our hunger.
When people come together they carry with them thoughts, fears and personal histories. A person shouldn't write on paper that already has writing on it. The paper must first be erased. There is much that we must unlearn. On a blank, fresh sheet, a person can write anew.
The body will not often listen to what it is told to do. Comfortable, secure habits keep us from giving time and space to something new. What makes you resist receiving? "I'm used to it," you say. If you are heading for a fall and your ego gets involved in trying to stop you, you will get hurt. If you relax in stead, the body will take care of itself. Sometimes, the ego is out of place. Keep the ego from getting involved when it is not needed.
The body can be occupied with only one thing at a time. Any thought distracts. For example, the thought of panic causes the body to panic. Without that thought, the body would simply obey other commands. We are always afraid of breaking our bones or hurting our egos. By not trusting our bodies, we allow fear to be in us. When there is no thought of fear, there is no fear. When you find out what you are afraid of, fear can be released.
There is a plumb line that passes through the top of the skull, down the spine, through the just-kissing heels, and on down into the center of the earth. In "artistic zero," we stand sensing this imaginary line, breathing normally, eyes focused beyond the horizon. The caravan of thoughts goes by, but we pay no attention to it. In "artistic zero," we do nothing at all. It is a standing meditation and the origin of all movement the place of still, empty listening.
Even when standing still and empty in zero, there is always movement in the body. If you let this movement take your weight in any direction, you will reach a point beyond which you will fall. This is an important place. It is your limit, your edge.
Each and every person is limited in many ways. Only when you know your limits will you know what it means to go beyond them. When you go beyond your limits, you can discover the unlimited. Limitations are doors to the unknown. Learn to know them intimately.
Stand in "artistic zero" and lean until you reach your edge. Now lean further still ... Discover what is beyond the limit ... A single step! That's all! That step stops the fall. The step is the beginning of something new the next movement.
Beyond the limit is the land of the unknown. Don't be afraid of it; fear is just a limit like any other. When you go beyond fear, there is a sudden calm. When you go into the unknown, it disappears because you have filled it. Before taking the next step always find "artistic zero," even if it's only for an instant. That which has an end is subject to gravity. That which has no end is not. The unknown is endless, but there will always be a step, an image, or an idea to stop the fall if we trust "artistic zero."
The way you ask a question determines how you find the answer. Learn to ask the question with your whole body. See with your pelvis. Smell with your eyes. Swallow with your nose. To perceive the ideas that lie in the world outside our minds, we must seek total lucidity.
Life is a study of illusions. Mime seeks to insert some truth into the illusions by reflecting them. When you are in the land of the unknown and an image comes to you, let it occupy you completely. The image must be clear in every detail before the body can reflect it. It is not enough if it is just a feeling. Behind every movement there must be a clarity. Then, expression occurs.
The right time to begin anything is when there is silence. The right time to act, move or speak is when there is silence. We must place ourselves in a receptive state. If we forget, the teacher is there to remind us. The intention is to release fear. We are working for total lucidity and for freedom of the imagination.
ARCHETYPAL MOVEMENT 3Theatrical activity is a necessity for a community. It is the responsibility of the artist or performer to keep that necessity alive. In storytelling, the mind of the audience must be kept right there, expectant, hanging on to every word. Stop the sentence in the middle, and the audience fills in the blank. When an audience feels that, minds can't wander. This same feeling must be transformed into performing mime. The audience must be part of the performance. It must be transfixed, eagerly awaiting the next gesture.
Every mime piece has a skeleton, flesh, and skin. The skeleton is abstract. The flesh is concrete. The skeleton is the story line. The flesh is the movement, and the skin is the quality of the execution. How can we get that quality of execution that makes an audience actually live the experience of watching the performance?
There are many kinds of matter. Each has an essence. Each has an archetype. By holding the image of the substance clearly in mind, we can let our bodies become the essence of the matter physically.
When a mime drinks a cup of water, it is the cup of the cup of the cup. It is the archetype of cup or container. It should be the original cup of water that the first human being drank. That cup is a blend of the specific and the general. One must sift through lots of specifics to find the general. In mime, you reach the cause, the essence of a situation. You must be neither too specific nor too abstract.
A mime never sips 1963 French Pinot Noir from a blue crystal champagne glass. There is no label on the bottle of a mime. He sips wine from a glass. He show us the essence of wine by its effect on his nose, tongue, and equilibrium. He shows us the archetype of the wine glass by its delicacy, shape, and fragility. The mime must also seek essence in situations. He is not the Lone Ranger riding Silver, but a cowboy on a horse. If a mime piece is to be understood immediately anywhere in the world it must not be cultural, but archetypical in all respects.
For instance, how can the body be wood? How can the whole body absorb the thought of wood and express it without acting it? Wood has definite characteristics. It has rigidity and a certain texture. But what is the archetype? Take the pure image of wood and let the body wear it like a cloak. Suppose the wood thinks. How would it walk? Don't think just with the foot or just with the leg. Think with the whole body. The body itself must become wooden.
There are many kinds of matter: stone, wire, water, melting wax, freezing icicles, clay, feathers, vegetables, rubber, mercury. Each has an essence. Each has an archetype. By holding the image of the substance clearly in mind, we can let our bodies become the essence of the matter physically. Be clay. Melt like a burning candle. Be sincere with the image. After the body learns the essence of a substance, it can apply it to a character. Become a "wooden" person, a "rubbery" man, a "watery" woman or a "wiry" cat burglar. Each has its own integrity of movement. No matter what events befall the character, the essence is retained.
The same technique of "wearing the image like a cloak" can be applied to situations. For example, visualize walking on nails. When the image of this painful situation is visualized clearly, you find yourself living and moving in a wholly different medium. The medium is dictated by pain in the feet. You find yourself walking gingerly, trying to apply even pressure on all parts of both feet so the nails won't hurt any one part too much. The rest of the body reveals the pain. You must carry the image while you express it. Don't act it, but allow it to act on you.
Discover different media by visualizing walking through cold running water, over hot coals, through honey, and through glue that sticks to anything it touches. Visualize wet soap. No matter what part of the body touches the soap, it slips. Imagine a wall, a door marked "unknown," a tiger about to eat you. Swim into each image. Imagine being ten times taller than you are! Spend time with each new medium. Explore it and play with it. The freshness of an image is important. Don't interfere with the natural way the body is going to do it.
One must bring the image from that sphere of "no form" to "form." Once the body is trained to react and the image is visualized clearly, the body will reflect it faithfully. You must see the picture, be the picture, and allow the picture to be seen. In each case ask the question, "Do I have the image or am I the image?" Think movement!
When you use this technique to create a mime piece, the result is fantastic. There are six steps to doing a piece, and both archetypes and visualization can be used in each. First, know the material. This means know everything about the characters: why they are doing what they are doing, what sex they are, how old, where they live. Second, find the "how." Find the overall pattern, placement, and position of the pieces and internalize rhythms for the characters. Third, work the meaning, developing all the different levels inherent in the mate rial. Fourth, develop the relationships between the characters and the sequences. Fifth, find the dramatic elements and the dramatic movements that will express them. Lastly, after all this is known, forget it and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. When the piece is finally performed, do it as though it were being done for the first time.
A mime piece can be boring, interesting, or dramatic. If you know what you are doing, you don't waste any movement. If you are not yourself, the audience can't see itself. The audience can look at you, but it can't focus on you. Then, it gets bored. It be comes restless. If it is interested, it will remain calm. You must be a focus for the audience.
There must be continuity in thought and action. When you know the steps intuitively, then improvisation happens, not before. In that sphere of performance, you will burn to ashes if you are not pure.
When the totality of expression is understood, the mime performance becomes a focal point, a reflection that is active and centered. It communicates the multi-dimensional aspects of the self, soaring from abstract to concrete, from invisible to visible. That which is labeled by our three-dimensional limitations as "unknown" now becomes known.
GEOMETRICAL ECSTASY 4The perfect square has no corners. -- Lao Tsu
The mime is the geometrical human being in darkness. Without using her eyes she must know his line of movement and stay true to that line. She must also know the alignment of her body and its parts. She must see the form she wishes to create from within and project it with her body clearly. Only then can an audience experience her thought.
A mime does what mathematicians have been trying to do for all time: she actually squares the circle and circles the square. The rational is represented by the square. The circle represents intuition and feeling. To square the circle means to be rational, but with feeling. The body can do this both physically and non-physically. In mime, intellect marries intuition. The marriage or integration must be totally harmonious if it is to bear fruit.
We have a tendency to go to extremes. To circle the square we must have moderation. When a bell swings to its extremes, we hear a loud "bong, bong, bong." Only when it makes a tiny little swing in the middle do you hear a beautiful, subtle sound. This is the delicacy a mime achieves physically.
Like Euclidean geometry, the geometry of being has two axes, the horizontal and the vertical. Most of us take the verticality of our bodies for granted. We take for granted the steady horizontality of the floor where our feet are planted. We must take the most taken-for-granted things in life and study them. Mime allows us to see the axes and lines of our bodies.
Sometimes we use sticks to study line. A stick is like a fence. It gives you a geometrical line to move around. Although we do many exercises with the stick, we don't actually use it. We use the body. In a mime piece, a stick becomes an object out side ourselves. It can be a sword, an umbrella, a shovel, a door, a staff, a toothbrush, a fence. It can be anything. We can work, fight, love, and play with the stick. The task is to make the stick invisible, to make it disappear. By seeing the physical line of the stick we can see the non-physical line of our being, our double. It is the movement that happens around the stick that should be seen.
Any movement we do with one part of the body can be paralleled with a simultaneous opposite motion in another part. In pulling ropes, for example, the hands make one distinct geometrical line as they pull the rope across the body, and the pelvis moves in the opposite direction making a second line parallel to the first. The second line shows the motion of the body in relation to the rope. The movement is not just lines, but also the friction of those lines in opposition. Balance is the two opposites at work, pulling and pushing.
There are parallels all over the body: two legs, two arms, ribs, two lips, shoulders, nostrils, feet, toes, eyes. We see parallels everywhere we look railroad tracks, walls, ceilings, floors, relationships, trees in the forest, traffic on the high way. Without parallels, nothing would exist.
Every movement has a line, a breath and a center. The effect of your breath flowing though the moving part of the body is like the effect of wind on a leaf.
Our own center is like the center of a circle. It is the place where we know where we are. It is reality. It is the place we go out from and return to. When you know the center of a movement or where that movement originates, you can visualize the line that extends as the continuation of the movement. Thus, what appears to be linear reveals its natural non-linear quality . Wherever you stand, wherever you go is a center.
A mime artist has to be as sensitive as the antennae of a snail. When a snail senses sweetness it comes quickly with its slow, fluid motion. When it actually touches something it withdraws gently. The part that senses goes out and comes back into itself, as though taking back its breath. It has a rhythm that continues, echoing in space. The human body can learn to do this too, if it wants to. Lips that want to kiss will pull a head and neck toward another pair of lips. They anticipate the touch, kiss the space, and retract, withdrawing along the line of approach. Thus, by touching, one is touched. We don't have the patience or the resistance to stay in the transition. The snail can teach us to stay in the transit. If you learn the snail technique, you can write poetry with your body.
The snail doesn't work against nature, but with it. We don't imitate the snail, but we do try to learn from her ways. Here, our way of teaching mime is to return to nature. For ex ample, a falling feather can teach you the way of the spiral. The spiral is the geometry of ecstasy. It is doing the circle step by step. All harmonious movements have a circularity about them. Nature is respectful to the circular. A circle reflects nature's cycles.
The body has its own laws, its own consciousness, and its own geometry. It is an architectural form balanced and weighted. It is a structure very like a building, filled with tubes of all kinds that carry fluids, air, impulses and information . To be sure that the body's laws are experienced and learned, they have to be practiced. Observe, understand, and practice a law until it becomes yours. The intelligence that learns passes the information on to the one in you that knows. Geometrical ecstasy is conscious and controlled. It means being aware of lines, circles, avenues, and corridors of space. It means skilled delicacy. It means no random movement. That is geometry.
ON BEING ALERT 5Animals are instinctive: they have an ability to stay still, they have an immediacy of response, and they are naturally graceful and harmonious with nature. Animals know how to heal themselves. When wounded or sick, they withdraw and stop eating, licking the wound. Animals have many ways of communicating with one another. Their senses are sharp. Their movements speak. An animal stays alert because its degree of awareness determines its survival. The alternative to alertness is death.
Human beings have similar capacities, but don't choose to use most of them. A person's instinct speaks first in any situation, but the pushy intellect often gets in the way. It talks us out of following our intuitions. We rarely sit still as animals do or respond to situations immediately. Our bodies are naturally graceful, but we lose touch with them. When something hurts, we complain loudly and run to the doctor. We talk incessantly to one another, rarely listen, and thereby effectively block other natural means of communication. Our senses are dulled by lack of use. Although human beings have consciousness of their own mortality and animals seemingly do not, humans rarely behave with the moment-to-moment alertness that this knowledge demands.
The intellect loves to dominate. Its domination clouds the expression of our natural abilities. If you learn to turn the intellect off, when necessary, the abilities reassert themselves one by one. When you follow your true instinct, your actions usually succeed. Each of us has experienced the sharpening of our senses when we sit very quietly and focus our attention. Sounds we usually never notice emerge birds, crickets, wind, water. They fill the space. The scents of moss, rich soil, or the hair of a friend suddenly become noticeable. We can feel thoughts and emotions from other people as clearly as if they were visible, tangible objects. And, little by little, many people are reawakening ending to their innate ability to heal themselves and to their ability to communicate in ways other than speaking.
It is the same with movement. When you think about doing a movement your mind is not still, and the body doesn't do the movement correctly. Instead, both the mind and the uninvolved area of the body need to stay still, but alert. The movement can then take place while "you" remain in the center of silence. This is the difference between thinking alert and being alert.
Being alert and moving without thinking are two important animal characteristics to study if we wish to understand clearly the "animal in us" and integrate that naturalness of movement into our own motions. Every animal has its own essence, every person has his or her own essence, every species has its genius. We can learn to run, jump, leap, and be still with animal genius. Apparently, to keep us humble, the only thing we can't do is fly.
When we study animals, many of our closed-minded attitudes and mental blocks, such as fear, insecurity, and game-playing are revealed. You can't fool an animal. It senses your fear immediately and reacts by taking a stance and preparing to attack. A mother bear freezes dead still when she first spots you. Do you respond without panic? Then perhaps she takes her cub and withdraws silently into the woods. You can approach any animal if you control your thoughts to that degree of purity where you see the sameness between yourself and the animal. Love the animal, and you will find that place of oneness between you. The animal becomes your teacher in that moment. You learn its essence and the language of its movement, and you see its characteristics in yourself.
To experience our animal characteristics and to sharpen our awareness, we do many exercises in our workshops at Le Centre du Silence. In "The Cat," catness pervades your being. "The Phoenix," condenses the lifespan of this remarkable bird into a few minutes. When the moment of its death approaches, the phoenix gathers palm fronds, arranges them around itself, and burns up in them. Out of the ashes arises a little phoenix. In this exercise you become a bird you fly! You transcend the barrier of gravity between birds and humans, and you experience the legend on a physical level.
Other exercises develop individual senses like smell, sound, and touch. Can you recognize your friend with your eyes closed, using only your sense of smell? Does every centimeter of your skin touch and respond to touch with the same sensitivity your fingers have? When the senses awaken, refinement of the senses becomes possible. The result? Alertness, flexibility, balance, grace, and a host of other subtle faculties come into play. The body strengthens; every muscle and blood vessel responds. In the center of silence, movement speaks.
In yet another exercise, each student chooses an animal he or she is sympathetic with such as a cat, bird, elephant, or raccoon. The characteristics of that animal are transposed into the body. The student becomes that animal, following its behavior in its own setting. If you choose to be a bird, you hunt for worms, build a nest, sing to protect your territory, and fly. We don't imitate the animal, but we find the sympathetic meeting point between animals and humans and explore it.
Using the body as the medium for learning what the animal has to teach us, the exercises help students find inner resources that suggest their own inherent abilities to express themselves. When you allow yourself to "become" an animal, your body acts on a visceral level your intellect would other wise never allow you to "stoop" to. Your natural behavior on this level reveals a whole, new, unexplored world that expands your repertoire of natural expression. It is a delightful and totally absorbing exploration of the self.
We learn to transpose animal characteristics into human ones. Performing a slothful person and performing a sloth in a forest are two very different things. Performing inadequacy and being inadequate are not the same thing either. You have to be articulate enough to show inadequacy adequately or slothfulness keenly. With this skill, students are able to deepen the meaning of each movement they make, because they bring it out of a primordial place within themselves. And then, the movement speaks.