Tuesday, 1/27

Fun today. Began with a relaxation exercise. Was sorry I came in a little late and missed a minute-or-so of laying on my back. Each moment helps. I like being guided through them, because it's less work I have to do and more focus I can give to relaxation and release. Muscles between my shoulderblades still grueling and painful. Will probably take years to reform them.

As I say, cavemanning was invigorating. Felt very free, very natural--unaffected, just cleaning because it's time to do that. I suppose I have a bit of romanticism for the distant past and the distant future--I imagine them stoic and lonely but answered bravely by their generations. Today we waste and pine. Or so it seems. The lens is largely fixed as my perspective goes. I can imagine it into rotations and telescopings, kaleidoscopies, but those pictures are limited to and by my imagination. Where fact and imagination differ I am at a loss to say, suffice it that my dreamscapes rarely resemble my waking, walking life--so it's hard to imagine that my imaginations approach the realities of the distant past or the distant future. I suppose it's a nonsense point. Singularity of reason. Tendrils still want to and do stretch beyond it. I will continue to romanticize epic distances. Traveling beyond the ends of the earth will remain an Odyssean task.

So speaking of the distant future, I imagined our group improv to be there. Well, not perhaps distant distant, but some centuries into the Space Age. New Agey Self-Realization Self-Help Guru Crap has blossomed into a fully formed societal mode, and this is the terrifying and self-parodying result. This improv felt different from some of the last ones--it was funny to the outsiders, but for me at least, it was fully engrossing. At no point did I ever feel self-conscious as The Almighty Wrench. I was simply a man living in my time and surroundings and enacting the rituals and obligations that had been passed to me. It felt very... unexplained, faithful. It wasn't a society of questioning, but of embracing. I could tell, however, that there was a seedy undercurrent to it--a repressed energy of dark consistency and character--it was waiting to bubble up, and it almost did with the murder of the immigrants. It didn't surprise me that it was a self-sacrificing, "kamikaze" society--it had that sort of feel about it, the mindless drone-hum of complacent agreement. "Going along" seemed the primary mode of living. Once I was elected leader, it was fairly easy to point the others in a certain direction--certainly this was helped by the "saying yes" part of improv, but it seemed the society was built on "saying yes." "No" was probably a foreign word, or perhaps only an occasional formality, an honor question.

Was really aware of my voice and how it was vibrating early on in the class, just after the relaxation. This was exciting--feeling my voice instead of hearing it. I admit I was aware of the aural difference as well, but it wasn't as startling or as immediately apparent--instead, my voice felt like a great eruption of resonance from some chamber deep inside me that I'd never really accessed before. And it wasn't forced like my "stage voice" has often been in the past. Just relaxed speaking was emanating from me with force and authority, a confidence and clarity that was relieving and stimulating. It made me feel good, happy in a simple way, reassured, carefree, and communicative. For as much as I talk and as much as I write, I rarely feel able to communicate--probably why I do so much talking and writing--but with such a self-obvious and well-founded voice which was producing itself without particular exertion, I felt able to communicate. Lots of little victories, a sum beyond the parts...

Oh, and here's a video a friend of mine made with a Text-to-Video thingy, using some lines from a poem I wrote a few weeks ago--it was a little embarassing, but mostly amusing... for me at least. I can't imagine it will entertain you too much, so follow at your own risk.

http://www.xtranormal.com/xtranormal/episode.php?aid=72031&mid=20090126180237272