Body, memory, beast of intuition.

Thank you Jon Row.

I was walking last night to the grocery store and this thought entered my head. “Anything I do for me, is always the right thing.” Obvious exceptions being cocaine, alcohol and murder. Anything I do for me. The personalization of this project is coming into play and it is such a welcome relief.

Hours today for SA: Two. Not the required seven to hit our goal, but we’re getting closer. Also, night is young.

I’ve just spent an hour in the bath reading Stella Adler The Art of Acting. It’s so poetic that it would come back to that – or start there. And today I remembered why I want to be an actor, and in fact that I do. It was in reading that book. It was always the thing that struck me about that place and made me feel that I was at home – in thinking of Stella Adler-LA, where I went to school. Their respect for it, that verve and affinity – it was the way I felt.

On the street in midtown.

I think it’s easy to lose that and so it makes sense that I lost it. I’ve had to realize in the past few days that work things and learning things are in fact different. That just because I spend two hours going through roles on breakdowns or pitching myself or reading about a show, and another hour researching casting directors in New York so I can narrow my target list, that this is not making me a better actor. Maybe a more knowledgeable one, and maybe that’s the same thing, I don’t know. But it’s not keeping me fresh and ready and full. So it’s like, I spent 3+ hrs today working business side of it, something that will make me only fractionally more likely to get an audition, but okay, and another two (so far) working on body/mind/process. It sounds much cooler than it actually is, but reading Stella Adler in my bathtub spoke so deeply to me. She writes with such precision. Simple, brazen, honest. That is my style FO SHO.

“Life in the theatre isn’t necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn’t when you sign a contract. It isn’t even when you are in a play. It’s when you understand it. If you understand it, you’ll know why you want to act, and if you don’t understand it, you won’t want to act.”

Ceiling of Grand Central Terminal

I mean if this book wasn’t plucked from the heavens and delivered to my hands! Because right now, again, I understand it for myself. And that changes everything. It’s not even something I can explain. It is just a feeling. And maybe that is why it can be so quick to leave. I need to find words for it and then maybe I can hold it. ('If you can't explain an action you don't know it'.)

It is truly terrifying to me to be so honest. I feel like, if this was a book I wouldn’t care. Because it’s a blog, it’s like experienced in real time. Anyone could know anything going on with me. I would like to be less honest. I don’t know how.

Other takeaways, in brief:

Body. Good lord, Body. Importance of tuning, presence, posture. This is something I obsess over and have for awhile. I’m constantly thinking--how am I sitting? How am I laying in bed? What does this say about me? Where is my neck? How am I walking down the street and can I manipulate this element and make this a different person and a different character entirely – I will be someone entirely new.

“I have told you actors should not easily get sick. Nor should they get tired. They belong to a different class of people. They don’t give in. They hold themselves together, discipline themselves, take care of themselves. They’re alert, bright and interesting… A body in good condition must be second nature to you.”

This is why I meditate. This is why I do anything physical. It’s why I drink tea and lather my body with oil. It’s why I don't drink (in part). Why I obsess about my neck and my shoulders. If presence is a thing that can be learned I will certainly learn it.

Memory, and imagination. She says you have every memory you need, everything from the beginning of time that has happened to you and not happened to you, living within your body. This I believe to my root. I experience it in eating bread, in walking down the street, in imagining things that I can’t possibly know or experience; it’s why I read books and want to know politics. I experience it, literally, when I meditate.

I told Nikki about this and apparently it is a common phenomenon in meditation. I will be meditating, and an image will fly into my mind like lightning. Or a memory – a nothing memory, something of no significance that I didn’t even know I remembered, hadn’t thought about in years, and suddenly it will bubble up out of nothing. Out of NOTHING. And I know – everything I have ever done, every moment of my life, is stored here. Right here in my body. In the tendons, the joints, the infinite mass. In that sense, we never have to long or feel remorse for things past.

“You learn to justify, not just to pick up an empty bottle and ‘make believe’ it’s real. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s a bad habit. It’s a lie, and your body will react to the lie. You can fool your mind very easily. You have to work much harder to fool your body. It understands a lie immediately.”

Jesus in heaven this is so flippin’ true! Good god. I had this experience just the other day (you know who you are) and it reminded me of that power. That humble, unimaginable power that lives inside of you. In that sense I praise my intuition because it is I dare say flawless. And I trust it even when I ignore it and without proof. I have experienced this in acting and in life. “If you lie on stage it should hurt.” I believe Milton Justice said that. Shout out.

From Love & Resistance Stonewall 50 at NYPL 42nd Street

But Stella Adler would tell you that being a good actor meant reading novels and going to the MoMA. Understanding not just the "beat of your generation". In this we are simpatico and maybe my intuition isn't a total beast bent on my destruction.